Last week I looked at the complex set of spreadsheets I use to track my ebook sales and gave a whoop of delight: I had just sold my two-millionth book, something I would never in my wildest dreams have considered possible just over four years ago, particularly as the vast majority of those sales were achieved through self-publishing. Initially my most ambitious target had been to sell a thousand copies.



It’s been quite a journey, and all the more exciting for being so totally unexpected. There is no point denying that I became self-published because I wasn’t able to interest an agent in my first book. I had originally written Only the Innocent for my own benefit and pleasure, but I was encouraged by family to give publishing a go. I contacted 12 literary agents, and they weren’t all negative. At least two said they enjoyed the book, but it wasn’t the type of story publishers were looking for.

Many people believe that if the writing was good, the author would be offered a traditional publishing deal

I mentally shrugged and stuck my novel on a virtual shelf, and it was only when I was researching another book – yes, I enjoyed the experience so much that I was writing a second novel, again with no intention of publishing it – that I discovered it was possible for writers to upload their work to Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing website. I decided to give it a go and the rest is history.

In the last four and a half years, there have been some dramatic and brilliant changes in my life, but my initial vision of days spent doing nothing other than plotting and writing were way off the mark. The self-publishing model can look attractive because, depending on the price of the book, the author can take up to 70% of the proceeds of each sale – which is a bigger return that they would get through a traditional publisher. But it takes a lot of work to make those sales: when I started to follow my marketing plan for Only the Innocent, I was working 14 hours a day, seven days a week. For three months, not a word of a novel was written. Even now, with my fifth full-length novel, Kill Me Again, released on Kindle less than a month ago, I am still working similar hours – but I love the variety and the challenge.

For me, traditional publishing means poverty. But self-publish? No way Read more

I’d like to say that there has been a dramatic change in attitude towards self-publishing since I released my first novel. In some quarters that is definitely the case. But sadly there are still some influential people who believe that, first, self-published authors sell a lot of books because they are cheap (Kill Me Again is currently in the Kindle UK top 20 and only one book in the chart is more expensive) and, second, that if the writing was good, the author would be offered a traditional deal. Despite being placed 14th in the UK Kindle chart of all authors over the past five years – above many of my favourite authors – some festival organisers still believe I don’t have as much to say about writing and selling books as a traditionally published author, regardless of their popularity.

But that’s a minor gripe, and I am happy to trade the occasional (and diminishing) lack of recognition as a serious author for the unbelievable support that I get from readers. Nothing thrills me as much as hearing from people who have read and enjoyed my novels – readers who probably don’t know, and couldn’t care less, how I am published.

Self-publishing isn’t for everybody. There are some overwhelming decisions that have to be made: who should design the jacket? Who should edit? Which title is the right title? For all of this, I am lucky to have a brilliant agent, Lizzy Kremer, who supports and guides me. Even now, 2m books later, I find it hard to believe – and disappointing to have to accept – that the chance of my books being displayed on the front table in a major bookstore is slim. But never say never!

I didn't want to resort to self-publishing, but it's an exhilarating change Read more

In the end, it doesn’t matter how a writer is published as long as readers enjoy their work. Although self-publishing was never part of my original plan, it’s been an amazing experience and not one that I could possibly regret.