What was the quantity of your print run(s) + how much did it work out per book?
I did a print run of 500 books, at a cost of $3000 (Canadian). That was $6 a book, so I sold it for $11.95 to cover the stores' cut.

How can people get your book now?
Interested buyers can still find my book at Indigo and Chapters. Most of the smaller stores are out. I know Glad Day has a dusty shelf-full they've never sold 'cause for some reason no one ever went there for it.

Why aren't there any women self-publishing books?
My dad was a parole officer, I grew up in a bungalow in Windsor, and I'm a fag. So I didn't get any help from the Masons or anything for being a white male. I paid to put my work out there, and people liked it or didn't. From where I stand on the edge of the literary forest I see lots of women whose stature and ability I'd sell my kidneys for. Women are certainly not considered less creative or capable. I really don't know. There's so many women's 'zines that it seems really odd, doesn't it?

What inspired you to make a book?
I filled a few shelves with journals over a dozen years, and finally needed to share my writing with others. But people don't want to read reams of self-analysis, they want details and story. So I looked at things in my world and found I suddenly had a story idea--a blend of something I wanted to say, the idea for a few characters, and a bunch of 'what-if' events. Making the book was a child of necessity. The story was a Y2K thing, and I had to put it out quickly--which no press was willing to do--in order to not have my first story die like a jellyfish on the sand. And now I'm finding it much easier to approach The Man with my next book since I have good sales figures and reviews under my belt. And the contacts I made are proving invaluable, and overwhelmingly generous in their willingness to help me.

What did you do to promote it?
I hired a relatively new firm to do my publicity, one of whose partners used to work for a large press. They charged me $1600--$800 before and $800 after their useless campaign. They didn't provide a list of the actions they'd taken on my behalf as I'd asked. They booked me on a local CBC morning radio show, which did little for the book. But they did get the book to Emily Pohl-Weary at Broken Pencil, from which has given me every boon that followed in my career. Reading series got me more attention than the campaign, were fun, and were free. I'd like to think I would have found Emily through them anyway, so I'd say the marketers were a complete waste of money, except for the tax write-off it afforded me.

What would you do differently, and why?
What I would do differently is not hire the people above, and get into doing readings sooner.

Anything else to add?
My tax preparer is a gentleman named Jim Kelly (416-955-0060). He is ethical, yet still a miracle-worker in my books. He turned my finances around, and has a particular understanding of taxes as they relate to the particular needs of culture workers. People who self-publish are doing self-employment work, and you don't have to turn a profit to qualify for deductions. I have a full-time day job and I can still claim expenses based on my off-hours writing work.