Workington Dynamo

by Neil Nixon
(Kent, UK)

This is self-publishing only because I did it myself. The novel here is listed as published and distributed by Lulu.com, the largest print-on-demand operation on the planet. I've been writing my whole adult life and writing books for almost a decade and a half.

One thing that has taught me is that completely self-published works stand virtually no chance of success, especially if they're novels. This one was a damage limitation exercise. The novel here was originally done for another publisher and when I'd got over 60,000 words down the head office decided to get out of fiction publishing. This happens if you write for a living. Frustrating as the decision was it proved useful in one way since all of us with novels in preparation got to keep the cash advances. I went on and finished the book. I spent the next few years working on other things and moved to an agent who doesn't do much fiction, but I still wanted to do something with this book. When the shelf-life of the contracts abandoned by the first publisher finally ran out I went back to the file on my computer.

In the end I wrote off £200-00 to get professional covers done, buy in review copies and place the book on catalogues and sites like Amazon via a 'distributed by Lulu' deal. I'd recommend it, but only if you know what you are doing. The one major change I made to the book was giving it a new title: Workington Dynamo. Moving it from a book aimed at the UK in general to a local interest title in the north of England, after which I set about doing press and some book shop gigs to get more publicity. I had already published a few successful books aimed at the same geographical area and a lot of traffic through my site came from the interest in these books. I also placed adverts on Facebook pages and used some of my other media work " like local radio appearances linked to football " to push it.

It's been worth it in terms of sales and if I count up the time spent giving the old document a makeover and the small amount of my own money, it's been fairly cost effective, and useful in terms of getting publicity that helps a range of other projects. Of course, all of this came off the back of a manuscript I'd already written so I'm not counting the hours actually spent writing the book. I already had enough experience in PR to be able to arrange most of my own press so this cost me nothing other than a few phone calls and the time involved. The major interest in the book comes from Cumbria, where the story is set, and from Cumbrians who have moved to other parts of the world. I already knew and understood this market. Getting local coverage in terms of newspapers and radio, is fairly easy in this area.


In the end this was a labour of love as much as a commercial venture so it mattered to me that the whole thing felt right. By doing most of my own work I felt in control the whole time. I even turned up to the photo shoot for the cover. I wouldn't want to do ALL my books this way, and I certainly wouldn't want to think about buying my house or putting children through university with this method of publishing.

Visit Neil Nixon - Author.