Barbara Kyle, one of my interviewees, who also writes under the pen name of Stephen Kyle, is a Canadian author published in New York. Her opinion of self-publishing at that time was clear. "If you’re a fiction writer," she said. "Forget the self-publishing route. Writing a novel takes a lot of time and effort. Why squander that on a venture that has so little hope of bringing the tangible reward of sales?"At the time of this interview, I totally agreed. I had a literary agent who was taking my first novel THE RAVEN’S POOL to publishers in New York.

But then, my agent got a "thanks, but no thanks," letter from HarperCollins. When New American Library also declined I started to get a little worried. I had just finished reading a book called HOW TO WRITE KILLER FICTION by mystery writer Caroline Wheat, who said: "In today’s corporate environment, a few mega-houses in New York City use imprints that make it appear as if there are 20-30 big publishers when the truth is that there are now fewer than ten." For example, The Bertelsmann Book Group owns Random House, Ballantine, Fawcett, Bantam Doubleday Dell, Crown Books, and Knopf.

Why does this matter? In the old days, your agent submitted your book to, for example, Random House. If the Random House editor turned it down, it was submitted to Bantam. And if that failed it went to Ballantine and so on. But that’s not the way it is anymore. If one imprint rejects you, they all reject you and that’s because they belong to the same big house. You are only allowed to submit your manuscript once and that limits how many opportunities you have. Basically, less than ten.

So, I was getting pretty anxious. I didn’t hear from Joanne’s office for five months—which isn’t unusual. But I happened to be surfing the web one day, and stumbled across a message board for writers. Someone was asking about Joanne Kellock, my agent. The person responding said she had died.

I knew she was a one-woman operation, but surely she had made arrangements for someone to handle her business if anything happened to her. I called her office and those in charge of her estate tried to find another agent to take my manuscript, but without success, and THE RAVEN’S POOL landed back in my lap, unpublished.

I started to seriously consider an alternative to traditional publishing. With my agent unexpectedly dying from cancer, I decided to publish THE RAVEN’S POOL through Trafford.

My books are suspense fiction that integrates archaeology, myth and indigenous cultures. So, I decided to target the people who would most likely want to read this kind of novel. I sent out book announcements to universities, to colleagues in anthropology and archaeology, and to public libraries. I also sent some books to colleagues for free, hoping they would like it and pass the word. Within a few months THE RAVEN’S POOL began to sell, and even turned up on the catalogues of most of the libraries to which I had sent notices. A reviewer from The Midden (a periodical of the BC Archaeological Society) requested a copy for review.

Next, I went online and searched for the key words, "archaeology fiction." I found a Swedish researcher, Cornelius Holtorf, who was doing a study on archaeology and popular culture, and told him about my novel. I also approached The Society for American Archaeology which has a global membership of over seven thousand. I found a website at the Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center that specialized in reviewing fiction with an archaeological bent. I was surprised to see that my title had already been reviewed. 

The Mississippi Valley Archaeology Center posted a positive review. Cornelius Holtorf, after reading my novel, cited it in his non-fiction book, ARCHAEOLOGY IS A BRAND: the Meaning of Archaeology in Contemporary Popular Culture. The Society for American Archaeology agreed to put my book on their list of fiction. The following year, the Bellingham Public Library listed my book on a website to promote recent fiction set in the Pacific Northwest. TCM Reviews posted a favourable review and offered my novel as a prize in one of its online contests. THE RAVEN’S POOL received over two thousand entries. This was encouraging because it was all free advertising.

In the summer of 2006 I published a sequel, WHITE RAVEN. I was invited by the Ontario Archaeology Society, Hamilton Chapter, to be their author for a fundraiser which took place at Dundurn Castle. Fifty people turned out for my PowerPoint presentation, reading and book signing. Half of the proceeds from book sales went to the OAS. Incidentally, the OAS learned about my books through an Internet chat room. One of the archaeologists in BC to whom I’d sent a free copy, read it and chatted it up. 

That winter, the Victoria Times Colonist printed an article on self-published books published on and about the West Coast (that’s where my books take place), and mentioned both of my titles. I was finally making inroads but only on the West Coast. Here in Ontario I kept running up against a stone wall. I was having problems getting the Toronto Public Library to purchase my books and even my own library in Hamilton, after purchasing THE RAVEN’S POOL, didn’t buy WHITE RAVEN.

So, I donated a copy to both. Toronto decided they didn’t want it, (I’ll get back to this story in a minute), but the Hamilton library catalogued it. In 2007, WHITE RAVEN was one of the library’s Adult Summer Reading Club picks. After that, the Hamilton public library bought more copies and my next title.

Before I move on to my third book in this series, I want to insert a footnote. I thought that libraries didn’t buy books published longer than two years ago. I was wrong. Although THE RAVEN’S POOL was published in 2004, the San Francisco Public Library bought it in 2009, along with the sequels.

In spring 2008 I published my third novel, RAVENSTONE. I received some positive and negative Internet reviews. One that I especially liked compared me to Hollywood director M. Night Shyamalan, who made the blockbuster film, The Sixth Sense. Others however didn’t see it that way and said everything from it was a pity that the author wasn’t as deft with characters as she was with sites and artifacts to "I wouldn’t recommend this book to my friends." Ironically, the reviewer who did like the book thought my characters were boldly fashioned and were what "fuelled the energy of the tale."

Although I hated having my work panned, the criticism motivated me. I decided to get endorsements from top selling, award-winning authors—Except that I didn’t know any.

Then it occurred to me that I had interviewed exactly those types of authors during my days writing for Suite101. I still had their email addresses, so I picked the two who wrote fiction that most closely resembled mine and contacted them. First was Barbara Kyle. I was a bit uneasy about asking her to read my book. Her thrillers written under the pen name of Stephen Kyle had sold into the hundred thousands and her recently released historical novels were headed the same way. As you’ll recall she had strong negative opinions on self-publishing.

She agreed to read the book, and that gave me the courage to ask TJ MacGregor, who has written more than forty books and is a winner of the Edgar Allan Poe award. She also said Yes. Thankfully, both praised RAVENSTONE and gave me marketing blurbs with which I could use to promote the book.

I put these on my cover and purchased an ad in Archaeology Magazine. I used TJ MacGregor’s exact wording in the ad: "Intrigue, romance, duplicities, an ancient mystery: Ravenstone is captivating." The magazine has a circulation of over two hundred and fifty thousand, and immediately sales went up.

Although my novels are not promoted in mainstream media, people are finding my titles. Public libraries in Canada and the US and even university libraries which don’t normally carry thrillers, have catalogued my novels. And even though I was once warned that no library would touch a Print-On-Demand book, some of my best customers are libraries.

Recently, academic librarian Gwynneth Heaton, also a self-published author, spoke at the Canadian Library Association Conference in Montreal to encourage libraries to purchase Print-On-Demand books. Along with several other authors’ works, she took my novels to put on display.

And that brings me back to the Toronto Public Library. There is nothing more frustrating or humiliating than having a book donation turned down, especially after the system makes you go through major paperwork in order to submit it. But the story has a happy ending. A few months ago, the Toronto Public Library purchased thirty-six copies of my books.

What I did with my novels is an example of micro or niche marketing. Although a niche market seems, at first, to mean a very small readership, with Internet marketing it is really as wide as the entire world. One reason I chose Trafford for my publisher was because the company makes books available globally through all major online bookstores. In the last couple of years my books have even begun to sell in the UK.

When I decided to self-publish, I didn’t invest in a distributor, a publicist, or a marketing team. I opted for a longer term strategy. Because I’m committed to writing a series, I’ve cultivated a readership that is dependent on my writing new books for that series. I’ve noticed that people who purchase one of my books usually buy the other two. So my first novel, THE RAVEN’S POOL, published in 2004, continues to sell today. If a reader discovers any one of my titles and likes it, they often check out my backlist. This goes for libraries also. Whenever I’ve noticed that a library has catalogued one of my novels, I contact them to inform them of the other two.

Thank you.