It’s never been easier to get published

Or is it? Plus another Ask the Author event announced

Jun 06, 2025

It’s never been easier to get published.

Or so we’re told. What they mean, of course, is that anyone can wang down 90,000 words and upload it to a self-publishing platform like Amazon KDP.

There are no gatekeepers between your genius and a grateful waiting world. Which means there are no editors either. No designers, no proof-readers, no marketers, no legal team. It’s all down to you.

Unless you hire people to do it for you. There might not be gatekeepers anymore, but there is a toll-booth if your destination is ‘high quality product.’

Paying that toll isn’t cheap. According to The Literary Consultancy, developmental editing of a 90k word novel with them would cost £1450. Cover design? You could do it yourself on Canva, but hiring someone could cost £200-£500 and that doesn’t even include the page layout and formatting that book design typically includes.

This gap between getting the traditional publishing house suite of services provided to an author under contract and the DIY self-publishing rabbit hole is where hybrid publishing comes in.

A hybrid publisher provides all of the production services involved in publishing a book but at a cost to the author. Some hybrids may share that cost with the author or they may ask the author to front up all of it, along with the risk.

At least two of our Caversham Writers members have published books in this way. Louisa Guise published her nonfiction book How To Leave A Group Chat with The Book Guild. Nicolette Carter published her children’s picture book The Pink Peacock (which she also illustrated herself) with Austin Macauley.

In 2010 a new kid on the block arrived that promised to change everything. Unbound launched using a crowdfunding model to pay for the costs of production, in which potential readers pledged money at a choice of levels. When the requisite number of pledges was met, the pledges were called in and the book would get published.

The first book published by Unbound was Evil Machines by the late Monty Python star Terry Jones. More recently, in 2023, they published 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, which became a Sunday Tines number one bestseller.

The hope that this publishing model would revolutionise the industry was dashed earlier this year when Unbound filed for bankruptcy in March. Sold out of administration and rebranded as Boundless Publishing Group, the company hit the headlines again last week when the CEO announced they would not be honouring historical payments due to 238 authors and agents totalling £657,000.

One author who published her first novel with Unbound is Stephanie Bretherton. Bone Lines came out in 2018 and I bought a copy within a couple of days of its publication. It’s a a dual-timeline novel that follows Dr Eloise Kluft, a present-day geneticist, and a young woman who sets off on a perilous journey with her infant daughter 74,000 years ago. I loved it and I went on Twitter to tell the author so.

Those were the days. Before the Nazis took over, Twitter was actually a place you could meet lovely people. Remarkably, Stephanie replied and followed me back. We’ve never met in person, but have stayed in touch online.

Earlier this week, Stephanie told me the follow up to Bone Lines is now out. The Fire In Their Eyes was published on Wednesday. Here’s the blurb:

An ancient cave newly unearthed in Yemen.
A scientific research facility in the Norwegian Arctic.
A fertile valley, home to an isolated tribe in prehistoric Kenya.

In book two of The Children of Sarah series, Dr Eloise Kluft is wrenched from her new-found happiness to join the battle against an emerging biological threat.

In a distant era, an ageing shaman must pit her hard hard-earned wisdom and the gifts of her bloodline against the terrifying dangers she has foreseen for her family.

Looking to an uncertain future, a hopeful young couple navigate the fraught path to parenthood in a world where little makes sense but the courage to love.

The Fire in Their Eyes follows characters first encountered in Bone Lines, as they negotiate life’s risks and joys... and as the heritage of our remarkable human journey is passed along.

Stephanie is also the Managing Director of The Breakthrough Book Collective, the imprint under which The Children of Sarah series is now published following the demise of Unbound.

And I’m delighted to announce that Stephanie is the next author to come and talk to Caversham Writers.

We’re holding it on Zoom on Wednesday July 2nd at 7pm. You’ll need to register for the event on Meetup to get the link.

We’ll have lots to talk about with Stephanie and she’s great value for it. So we’ll be covering not just her writing journey, her books and her path to publication, but also how she extricated herself from Unbound and went about setting up the author collective Breakthrough Books.

So what are you waiting for? As ever, it’s free:

BBC Upload

Part 2 of my interview for BBC Upload on Radio Berkshire went out last night. (See here for part 1.)

I read the piece I came up with for Prompt-Write Night a few weeks ago, which despite the host calling it a poem is actually a short story!

Listen at the link below, my bit starts at 1:18:20.

Upload with Leo Ulph - 05/06/2025 - BBC Sounds

This Week's Meeting

Writeshare Night - Read Your Work To The Group

First of all, a warm welcome to the group to Claire and Steph who joined us for the first time this week.

We had fewer readers than usual this time, which gave us more freedom to go off topic when responding to the pieces we heard.

Abigail read the second half of her children’s fantasy short story after presenting the first half to our recent feedback event. I loved that we picked up the story with a very literal “collection of resources” that often occurs at the midpoint of a story, with Abigail’s protagonist Little Bit gathering the things he’ll need to free someone trapped by a witch in a prison of light.

Gordon’s short story involved a family dealing with a father’s dementia. It’s an emotive topic, handled beautifully in dialogue that progressed the narrative smoothly. Gordon plans to submit this piece (and others) to a writing competition. Best of luck, Gordon!

Next Week's Meeting

Prompt-Write Night (In Person Event!)

Wednesday, June 11, 2025 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM BST

Feeling stuck? Unblock yourself in this writing session where I set a prompt or theme for members to use as a jumping off point for an hour of writing. You can use it to write fiction or non-fiction, poetry or prose.

Free To Join, Free To Attend

As you know Caversham Writers is free to join and free to attend and I want it to remain so. That doesn’t mean it is free to run, though. I organise the group meetings on Meetup.com who have seen fit to double the fees paid by group organisers over the last year.

This has led to many groups shutting down or moving platform. I like to think of Caversham Writers as a local group with a global reach and I want us to remain open to voices from all over the world. Meetup provides that global reach so I intend to stay there, but would welcome any contributions toward the costs of running the group.

So if you enjoy this free newsletter and our weekly free events, please consider helping out by buying me a coffee at the link below.

Buy Me A Coffee