Today I published my historical novel, The Night the Bridge Cried. The whole experience should be called, The Month the Author Cried, or I Must Have Been Crazy to Publish This Myself!
Years ago, I sold my first book to a traditional publisher. I got an advance, reviews, wide distribution, and invitations to a lot of events. At the same time, I gave up my rights to the story, and my publisher made some decisions that weren’t in my best interest. So, in 2024, when I wrote my memoir, Dr. Beare’s Daughter, I decided to keep my rights and publish it myself. It can’t be that hard.
It was a long trip down a boulder-strewn toll road to hire an editor, copyeditor, proofreader, book designer, cover artist, and photo restoration service, some of whom were scam artists, incompetent, or wandered off, leaving me to find and hire replacements. Then I had to find a recording studio and sound engineer to produce the audio book. I lost my voice a few times from recording for twelve hours to get eight hours of clean audio.
After all that, I had to upload the various book files to distributors—then reupload them—umpteen times—to the fix the errors that had been hiding, but had suddenly jumped out screaming in the printed proofs. For all my efforts there was no advance money, just invoices.
When I finally pushed the publish button, I thought I was done, but then the real work began—promotion and publicity. People wouldn’t read it if they didn’t know it was there. I never wanted to get out there and promote, but it had to be done.
Over this past year, praise and encouragement from the readers of Dr. Beare’s Daughter made me forget what I’d been through, and strengthened my belief in keeping all rights to my own voice. I decided to write The Night the Bridge Cried and publish it myself. I learned from my mistakes—I won’t repeat them.
I made new ones. A list of my misadventures would be longer than a roll of toilet paper and consume more ink than is found in a brand-new Bic pen. What kept me going is my belief that I’ve written a good book that has a valuable message. Will readers think so too?
I’m not waiting to find out. I’m already back at work writing Conceived in a Canoe, the sequel to Dr. Beare’s Daughter. I plan to publish it myself. After all, I’ve already made all the self-publishing mistakes there are.