My 20th self-published book
Updating my website for the first time in longer than it should have been, I paused to take stock of where things are at, more than 12 years after I took the plunge, and up stakes and moved to Perth from the Eastern states, to begin a full-time career as a writer and storyteller.
If I am true to myself, I’d always harboured dreams of writing books for a living but never really had the guts to give it a go. As a freelance copywriter it had been ‘feast or famine’ a lot of the time but in a mainstream industry like advertising there was always a market for my copywriting talents.
But writing books – who’d want me to tell their story and , more importantly, who’d think what I’d written was good enough to publish?
Then I discovered, with the help and support of my former business partner, Roger Andrew, we entered the wonderful world of self-publishing.
No big-time publishing giants to judge you or influence what you say and how you present it!
Self-publishing means that you are in charge of your own destiny and while the major publishers have the might of their distribution networks and global marketing at their disposal, I’ve learned to never doubt the ability of a powerful story to cut through and grab attention.
The ‘proof of the pudding’ for me is that, in December, with the publication and release of Fred Thompson’s biography, “Not Bad for a Boy from Belfast”, it marked my 20th self-published book, a milestone that, when I started out on this journey, I never thought, in my wildest dreams, I’d ever achieve.
With another two books in the pipeline at the moment, it looks like I’m not finished yet.
To all those wonderful people who trusted me to help tell and publish their stories, thank you for the faith and confidence you showed. From all the positive feedback I’ve received over the years and the referrals your stories have generated it looks like I still have a little way to go on my journey.
What better way to end this blog than with some words of wisdom from a writer whose few chosen words echo what I strive to achieve with every story I help tell and publish,
“My task, which I am trying to achieve, is by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel—it is, before all, to make you see. That—and no more, and it is everything.”
—Joseph Conrad