
Weekly Journal
The Journey of Self-Publishing

Brian Gruber
17th August 2017
Times are tough for publishing but opportunities for unbridled content creation are unprecedented. I love the process of self-publishing and know I should pursue an agent and a publisher — can it be cowardliness or laziness? — but prefer the DIY process. Own my own copyright, have the work on Amazon forever via print-on-demand and Kindle, make changes as I like — add photos! Add reviews and press interviews! Add new material! Maybe it’s because I’m 62 and have spent a career marketing and packaging other people’s content, but why not write what you want in the way that you want? Amazon’s CreateSpace platform provides that for me with generally excellent customer service and pretty idiot-proof tools. Pick your paper, set your pricing and distribution, write a description, create an author’s page, cherry-pick from the interior and cover creative service options, get editing help if you like.
For my second book, I traveled around the world on a Kickstarter-funded project called “WAR: The Afterparty,” to explore the after-effects of a half century of U.S. military interventions. I ended up in Cambodia after trekking through Central America, the Balkans, the greater Middle East and Southeast Asia. I began putting the book together on the Cambodian coast and finished on Koh Phangan.

Residents at The Castle now have a copy of this book!
For “WAR: the Afterparty,” I exploited a whole range of web tools. Kickstarter to fund my travel and writing. Couchsurfing and Airbnb for
Here is some information on links for accessing DIY tools that I have used for self-publishing and travel writing.
Amazon’s CreateSpace
You can pay Amazon’s CreateSpace a couple hundred bucks for interior creative services, a thousand for editing, four hundred for cover design or be a real do-it-yourselfer and pay nothing at all. There are many self-publishing platforms but Amazon makes it easy, with robust tools and full integration into their dominant platform. Sign in with your Amazon account, or create one, and you can literally create your cover, set pricing and distribution, choose paper and trim size and be online (forever) selling in an hour.
“I love the process of self-publishing and know I should pursue an agent and a publisher — can it be cowardliness or laziness? — but prefer the DIY process.”
Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform
Or make it really easy for yourself and start with Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform. Creating an
Couchsurfing
If you want to do travel writing for cheap, check out couchsurfing.com. It’s a terrible name — I don’t want to surf on someone’s couch, thank you very much. I stayed in a villa in Kabul, Afghanistan for three weeks, connected with a Kurdish surgeon who showed me northern Iraq and served as a free interpreter for my book

Consider trying CreateSpace.
Kickstarter
And just in case low-cost travel and publishing tools are not enough, get friends and complete strangers to fund your writing adventures. Kickstarter is only one of many, many crowdfunding platforms but it is the biggest by a factor of six last time I checked. Another super easy-to-use platform — a few tens of millions in venture capital funding will do that for a site — with a few critical how-to’s: leverage your community as most of your funds will come from people whom you know and trust; create a brilliant intimate video telling your story with heart; deliver creative and project-relevant ‘rewards’ for contributors.
Yes, if you are going to write, why not live by the sea at The Castle, where your libertine instincts can run free and you can tell stories, not for an industrial publishing machine (RIP) but because you have a story to tell. Take advantage of the mesmeric scenery and write the story you’ve always dreamed of writing, then be brave and try out self-publishing! If you’d like to know more about self-publishing and Brian Gruber and his work, feel free to contact us here: www.contentcastle.asia/contact.
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