In honour of the day, here are four things that are good about self-publishing and four things that aren’t so good about it.

Good

1. I’m about to publish a full-length novel, roughly a year after first having the idea. That’s a really short time from idea to production.
2. My book didn’t sit on someone’s desk until another someone told them it wasn’t worth publishing, when it then got sent back after a few months or so. I was able to get feedback from many people and use my own editor, without someone else having to give it the green-light.
3. I didn’t have to get an agent.
4. I control distribution and know exactly where all of the money has gone or is going.

Not-so-good

1. I keep wondering if I should have spent longer on it!
2. I haven’t made it through the process that is often used to confer authorial legitimacy. (Well, actually, I have on the non-fiction and technical side with a PhD, multiple papers and a text book… but not on the challenging fiction side.)
3. I have to look after all of my own business and it’s surprisingly time-consuming.
4. I have little marketing and nothing large-scale, which means that I may have total control of a distribution mechanism that will sell very few books.

It’s a net positive but I’d be lying if I said that I wasn’t a little nervous.

Ok, a lot nervous.

Four days!