After months of work and years of preparation, I can finally call myself a published author! Not only that, but a self-published author!

And I don’t just mean that I’m not being published by a big publisher like Amazon or Barnes & Noble. I mean print-it-yourself bind-it-by-hand self-publishing. You might be asking yourself, why?

Believe it or not, this is a choice I made with full knowledge of my alternatives, and despite them! I have a very clear vision of how I want “Hope in Darkness” to look like, and nothing else will do. So, as my mother always says: when you want something done right, be prepared to do it yourself.

1. I wanted the books to be short. Traditional publishers want your works to be a certain minimum length. The most expensive part of a book is the cover and so they want to pad the book out with (comparatively) cheaper pages. But long books are intimidating, and that’s not what I wanted. I didn’t want to write one long, definitive work on depression. I am writing short, focused, topical resources to target exactly what a person needs.
2. I wanted the booklets to be spiral bound. Again, this is directly against what big companies want. Spiral binding is a pain to ship, to store, and to manage in large quantities. But it was important to me that the books were able to be folded back on themselves for easier reading, writing and marking.
3. I wanted the text to be flexible. Because I am printing these books myself, I can adjust the manuscript at any time as needed. If a friend, reader, or professional gives me valuable feedback, I can go in and make the edits right then and there and from that point onward, every new copy will be better than before.

Of course, there’s a learning curve. I’m learning how to bind my own books, how to most effectively assembly-line them, and what size batches work best. I am also teaching myself things like setting up a website, processing payments, and collecting and remitting sales tax. But all in all, I would say it’s been worth it.