Publication in instalments

Despite having fallen headfirst into having my first novel published in 2014, the process of getting my second novel published was anything but easy, writes subscriber Katherine Blessan.

I began writing Home Truths with Lady Grey (despite some editorial recommendations to change the title of my book, it has stayed the same throughout!), in 2015 and with some stops and starts and other writing projects in between, it has finally been published. It was submitted to 52 agents and publishers within that time. I was about to self-publish when I got the surprising offer of publication from The Conrad Press, a small but very ambitious hybrid publisher at the end of November 2021. November was in fact the deadline I set myself to get a publisher and James Essinger just beat me to it! The publication process has not been a oneoff date all wrapped up with a pretty bow. In February, struggling with the realisation that I was not going to be allowed to pay Clays by credit card for the first print run, I called James to tell him I couldn’t afford it, and he suggested I publish it as an ebook in the first instance. So, the ebook came out on the 27th March, with the print book available from 4 May. Having been inspired by Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn podcast, I also decided to bring my novel out as an audiobook simultaneously. Using a screenwriters and actors’ Facebook page I was a part of, I put out a call for an actor who’d be happy to do an audiobook on a royalties-only basis and with no difficulty at all, I manged to find the fantastic Rebecca Parr to narrate my novel. With a few challenges in between – I hadn’t realised how important highlighting the sections where I wanted a northern accent in advance were rather than just relying on her to pick up on my written dialect as clues! – we managed to publish the audiobook