‘The days of our years are threescore years and ten,’ according to Psalm 90, and I have passed this biblical age limit. I spent the last ten of those years writing my memoir, where I describe my gradual uncovering of the story of my father’s family history; they were assimilated German Jews who left Bavaria for London, on the brink of World War Two. Stumbling Stones: the Holocaust, my family and me is finished, and as good as I can make it. Now I want it to be off my laptop and out in the world. Being a non-celebrity, I am told that memoir is hard to pitch to agents and publishers. I tried for a while, but was continually knocked back, despite having won a few writing competitions with excerpts from it. Increasingly, I was hearing that even if you pass the threshold of finding first an agent and then a publisher, it is still no guarantee that your work will see the light of day; apparently publishers may buy the rights for more books than they will actually publish in any given year. My lifespan clock is ticking away…
So, what should I do? Self-publishing, as a novice, didn’t appeal to me; it sounded like a steep learning curve with lots of opportunity for disastrous rookie mistakes. This memoir will only get one shot at being birthed. So, when I heard about ‘full self-publishing services’ it sounded like an ideal solution. These services offer editing, cover design, proofing, formatting, and metadata analysis – everything you need to publish a book – and then they upload your book to the platforms you choose. You, as author, retain full rights, and you don’t share royalties with them, having paid the organisation for their services upfront; their involvement is ended once the book is published. As a member of ALLi (the Alliance of Independent Authors), I knew I could rely on their vetting of all the services in their catalogue. Some of these services also offer discounts for ALLi members. I jotted down all those who seemed to have experience in my field, memoir, and began my research.
I filled in contact forms, sent emails, spoke on follow-up online video calls, and slowly whittled down the original number. Some were too expensive for my budget, while others couldn’t work within my timescale. Once I’d settled on a handful, I asked for sample edits. This turned out to be critical in making my final decision; their editor has to ‘get’ what your book is trying to say, and also what stylistic level you aspire to – whether it’s high literature, informal demotic, or somewhere in-between. At this stage I also bought several books which had been produced by the services on my shortlist so I could judge their quality for myself. Then I made my decision.
There are still a few weeks to go until I can hold a physical copy in my hand, so I can’t give you the final verdict quite yet. But I’m happy with the process I set in place, and also with the premise of a full self-publishing service. Will I do the same for my next book? That one will be my debut novel, so I intend to try to get an agent for it – mainly because agents do more than find a publisher (they also handle foreign and other media rights, and much more besides), and also because I hope this will be the first of a series. But for my memoir, I believe this was the right decision. It will be for my readers to judge.
