I get asked regularly about how to publish a book, and whether it is best to find a publisher or to self-publish your story.

First of all I suggest you work your way through my sophisticated flow chart*: 

Done that?

Now read some of these articles:

• How to become an Amazon bestseller
• How I edit my books
• Some thoughts on Travel Writing today
• Why I have returned to self-publishing (though have now since returned to working with a publisher!)
• On the agonising process of sitting down to write a book
• How to become an author
• Some cold water about the difficulties of getting started
• What does a literary agent do?
• Do you need a publisher?
• 10 Steps To Getting A Literary Agent

By far the most useful resource I recommend to everyone who contacts me is The Creative Penn website. Joanna is a prolific author, a savvy entrepreneur, and knows everything worth knowing about writing, self-publishing and marketing. Anything I could tell you about my very positive experiences self-publishing There Are Other Rivers, I learned from Joanna and her website.

My final word of advice: GET WRITING! Don’t worry about your “shitty first draft“. Just brain-dump your story down on paper (computer). Once you’ve written 100,000 words you are in a great starting place to begin deleting almost all of it and writing something decent. But this is the very best way to actually write a book (as opposed to the easier option of just telling people you are writing a book but actually getting nothing done…)

* the final yes/no is the wrong way round. I’mm an idiot. Can’t be bothered to re-draw it all though…