Selling Sh*t – Writing and Publishing My First Book

I have been writing for as long as I’ve been unwell. My first novel, Causa, was in the works since 2017, but it wasn’t until I fell extremely sick with ulcerative colitis in 2018 that the rest of my life was put on hold and I regularly committed to putting pen to paper. 

Causa was an experiment that was finished about 30 years earlier than I ever expected. So early, in fact, that it was March 2019 and I was still suffering a terrible flare up of my disease. In the absence of sport, a social life, and any hope of career development, I needed to write something else to keep me sane. 

After trying and failing to get literary agents interested in my debut novel, my mum’s suggestion was that I just keep on writing. ‘But keep writing what?’ was my deflated response. She highlighted the stories I rolled out to entertain friends and family when they’d visit me in hospital, the embarrassing and often hilariously sticky and sh*tty situations I found myself in since diagnosis with an incurable disease of the bottom. 

And so, Sh*t Happens – Around the World in 80 Dumps a Day plopped into existence, but I didn’t know quite how big a splash it would go on to make in my life at the time. 

Finding a publisher

Fast forward to 2021 and I was still(!) ill, albeit two major surgeries down and a few major organs lighter. Sh*t Happens had grown into twelve short stories, one of which had been shortlisted for the International Perito Prize and published in their 2020 Anthology. Of the remaining eleven, I’d posted a few on my website and the response had been so positive that I decided to try getting the collection published. 

Rejections came thick and as fast as my dashes to the loo, until one small publisher responded stating their interest. Excited but cautious, I reached out to some of their current authors. Two responded and neither were hugely impressed with the company, even one who had won a respected literary prize for her debut novel. It seemed they were something close to a vanity publisher in disguise, so poor were the contracts offered to authors. On turning down their offer, the publisher in question became quite rude and aggressive, confirming immediately that I’d dodged a bullet. 

I was gutted and left feeling completely disheartened. After a while, however, I started thinking, how hard could it be to do for myself what this small publisher had offered? To set up an independent press, to print some high-quality copies of Sh*t Happens, and to get the message out there myself?

A friend and I had developed an iPhone app at university that was no longer compatible with the App Store, but we still had a brilliant logo for it. We’d named the app Study Track, and the logo was a book folded over train tracks (designed by my artist mum). By happy coincidence, I realised this logo could work perfectly. I would call my small publishing press Track Press Books.  

Publishing is just the start

The goal with writing and publishing Sh*t Happens was never to make money. Writing it was solely a therapeutic exercise in the most torrid of times. Publishing, the target was for the book to find its way into the hands of those going through similarly tough times, to help those not struggling to empathise with chronic illness sufferers, and to entertain all along the way.

So far, I’d say it’s been a small success. There is still so much more I could do to market the book and reach more people, and that’s what I’ll discuss in the next instalment of Selling Sh*t. Thanks for reading, let me know what you think in the comments and if you have any experiences with writing or marketing books, tell me how it has gone for you!