Self-publishing

After four years of hard work with a well-known New York City literary agent, around Christmas 1999, I gave up on the traditional route and decided to publish my first novel, a Silicon Valley cyberpunk thriller called Acts of the Apostles, myself.

In April, Halima Khatun became the first two-time winner of the Selfies Awards, triumphing in the fiction category with The Secret Diary of a Bengali Newlywed, the third in a series that started with 2021 Selfies fiction winner The Secret Diary of an Arranged Marriage. She is a former journalist, writer and PR consultant.

Having grown up with the old Foyles as my playground I have always loved books, and having spent much of my childhood in a boarding school where the weekly routine included the obligatory letter home, and my young adult life working overseas in the days before international telephone services were affordable, writing has always been part of my life.

New research by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) claims authors who self-publish currently earn more than traditionally published authors.  Read more

I started this year's Year in Review blogs with traditional publishing partly because that Department of Justice anti-trust case produced such juicy tidbits that I couldn't ignore them, and partly because I have always started with traditional publishing. Back in the day, I saw all of us (writers, readers, and publishers) as creatures that emerged from traditional publishing.