Penguin, Bloomsbury, Random House, John Murray. The array of traditional publishing houses is enormous. They take the bulk of the profits from the books you write then return you a pittance in the form of royalties. There was once so much glamour in this model; they would take you out for splendid lunches and give out substantial advances but alas, those days are gone.

Amazon, Kindle Direct Publishing. This is the easiest and most popular alternative to traditional publishing, because you have access to the world’s largest online marketplace to sell your books, either physical products or eBooks. They handle the platform, the printing and the distribution and for that they still take a cut, much smaller than a normal publisher, but still a pittance in comparison.

Naively, I decided to bypass both of these options and go it completely alone. I made this decision on the basis that if I am going to self-publish, I want all the revenue to return directly to me.

Only now do I realise the immensity of this undertaking, bypassing normal publishing and Amazon KDP and doing EVERYTHING myself. I know why normal publishers still exist, despite the insistence I received that self-publishing is the future. A while ago I was in contact with one of my favourite writers, Tahir Shah, and the most memorable piece of advice he gave me was to self-publish my work. He is the author of amazing books of his own quests, far more mystical than mine, like Trail of Feathers, House of the Tiger King and In Search of King Solomon’s Mines. His books have long been an inspiration of mine and while we unfortunately lost contact, that piece of advice has lingered with me, perhaps forever.

The book has been delayed, owing partly to my own incompetence, and doing everything myself currently doesn’t feel worth it. I know it will in the long run but right now the whole DIY thing has encouraged a ‘me versus the world’ complex to resurface, something I thought I had left behind a long time ago. A certain amount of that is needed to stay afloat and a whole semi-forgotten soundtrack of bands like The Germs, Black Flag, Circle Jerks and Bad Brains has become daily listening once more, pushing me on to do all the tasks I need to.

Writing is supposed to be the difficult part, so I’m told. That was ironically the easy bit. Formatting and typesetting the manuscript has got me tearing my hair out. Learning about marketing made me realise lots of people don’t actually read things properly and the rest of them don’t give a shit about books, let alone self-published ones (again, see: me versus the world). There is an enormous list of little tasks that I would rather not be doing, like putting up posters and sending endless emails into the void of disinterest, or trying to drum up trade on internet history groups without sounding like I am BEGGING for sales, only for the post to be taken down, because I am guilty of exactly that. There are many tasks I haven’t even started yet.

In my naive mind of only a few months ago, I had imagined that Trevithick Day would be this momentous occasion where I sold the bulk of my initial run of 500 books and leaving me the summer to hike, bike and kayak across Cornwall. That was surprisingly optimistic for me. I know now that this will take me all summer and I am all for that, diversifying this DIY project in every way I can. Provided I sell all 500 by September, I can finish the final leg of the project in Costa Rica and Nicaragua, come home and prepare appropriately for Part Two / Attempt Number Two: Trevithick Day 2025.

I came back from Peru on the 5th March (St Piran’s Day, conveniently). That is essentially when I began the preparation for self-publishing. Prior to that the book was unfinished and I had no idea about where to print it or how to present it. That was just under seven weeks ago. I have certainly come a long way since then, but giving myself two months to finish, prep and publish my own book from scratch for the first time ever is an absurdly small amount of time. I have learnt so much, the most important thing being: give myself more bloody time next year!!!

Pre-order ‘Long Road to Nowhere (Part One)’ now (click on the underlined bit) and you are guaranteed to make a very stressed man just a little bit less anxious. Cheers and gone once more.