Besides developing software and websites I have also been involved in writing and publishing books.

I have always wanted to write and publish books, but I did not know how, but I was soon to learn.

I wrote a book and it was published by a POD (Print On Demand) publisher, named Exposure Publishing/Diggory Press. I did not know at the time that this publisher was somewhat dodgy, but just getting a book published was a major step forward. I was very excited and when the book arrived I was thrilled to see my work in print.

I awaited in anticipation for my royalties but I was to be disappointed. When I enquired about my sales with the publisher and of course royalties, I seemed to hit a brick wall. I did discover though that renumeration takes about three months from the time the book is published and so I patiently waited.

I soon found out that there was more to publishing a book than I had first thought. I had expected as if by magic that my book would appear in the high street stores. How wrong I was. It was not going to happen! The reason for this is that high street stores obtain book from wholesalers (who in turn buy the books at at about 55% discount or more from the publisher), and the publisher usually pays for shop shelf space and promotion too. So for any POD publisher unless they have a lot of clout and lots of money to promote your book they are not going to be able to get a book in a store. This was the main reason why most big book store chains won't carry POD books. They make no money out of them.

It was disappointing not finding my book in high street stores. However, I did find my book available with numerous online book vendors such as Amazon and Albris and fact in online bookshops all round the world.

I Publish Myself

Needless to say, I was unhappy with Exposure Publishing/Diggory Press and although eventually I did receive some royalties for my book Breast Cancer "Prevention and Cure" Your Choice! (about £40 in total over a period of about 12 months), that was that and I received nothing more. Now I had a problem. I had updated the book, and added a new chapter about the Cure for Cancer that I had stumbled on and identified. I needed to publish the book, and so it made sense that I did it myself. So amazingly, Tekline Publishing became a publisher of books and as it turned out it was not difficult to do.

In order to publish a book you must purchase ISBN numbers and these were quite cheap to obtain. Then I brought a very good Book Cover Designer Software for the cover and finally I set up an account with Lightning Source, who origially printed the book by Diggory Press. It was in fact Lightning Source who had made all the arrangements for books they printed to be added to the major online bookshops such as Amazon through their huge distribution channel operation centered around Ingram Book Company.

It was not long before I had a copy of my first book that I had published myself - and for the first time as a publisher I could monitor my sales and I directly received royalties. This sounds all well and good, but I soon discoverd that publishing a book is an an expensive business. Besides the initial costs involved in getting the book published that I had to foot myself, once published I had to send six copies by law to the six national libraries, including the British Library.

As for royalties, after three months I began to receive royalties both from the USA and from the UK. This amounted to about £4 to £6 per month, but this was hardly enough to live on, and some months I did not receive any. The reason of course was two fold. For every copy I sold through the online bookshops such as Amazon, I only made about £1.50 a copy . Secondly, unless people knew about it one could hardly expect to sell any. Put simply I needed to market my book through as many channels I could, but therein lies the problem. I worked full-time during the day in the capacity as Software Development Manager, and that left only evenings and weekends to do anything. Family matters and other issues took over and so there was little I could do.

Things have changed! As you will have read elsewhere on my site, I gave up my full-time well paid job in Aylesbury, and moved to Barnstaple, Devon with my family. I am now self-employed and Tekline Publishing is my only source of income. However, before I can begin to market my books properly, I need to earn a reasonable and steady income first. Hence I am concentrating my efforts on developing and selling websites and software. Once this side of my business brings me in a steady income then I will be in a position to market and publish more books. That is not to say that I have stopped writing books. My latest one a trilogy called "The Answer To All There Is" is a book that cries out to be read. So until I have sufficient funds to publish the books in paperpack, I will publish them online for you to read.

Click on the book covers alongside to the right for more information about my books and read them online.
Enjoy!
Fred Harding