by Chris Harris
Over the past few months, I’ve been documenting something I’d talked about doing for years: writing and publishing a book. These pieces were written as it happened, recording the ideas, the writing, the mistakes, the editing and the occasional moments when I wondered what on earth I’d started. The book now exists, so I’m republishing that journey here from the beginning.
Building the Foundations
This has really been the second week of laying the foundations for what I hope will eventually become a much larger writing project. A great deal of the time has been spent trying to establish the podcast and all the various channels needed to support it. Like most people of a certain age, I find that setting up social media accounts, linking platforms together and navigating endless technical hurdles is rarely enjoyable, but it is a necessary part of the process.
The podcast itself took longer than expected to get right. Our first attempt managed to upload only the audio version, which was not quite the plan. Louise deserves enormous credit for persevering through a succession of technical problems until we finally managed to get the video version working properly as well. We are now prepared for next time.
Alongside the podcast, I posted the first promotional short story on Substack and wrote several articles relating to the book project. The readership figures are modest (low to neglible), as you would expect at this stage, but they have been better than anticipated. Anyone who has started a Substack publication will know that it is perfectly possible to spend weeks writing articles that are read by almost nobody.
The content is now feeding into multiple platforms at once. Everything published on Substack is also appearing on my blogs, and I have even discovered that I can simply add links through the URL without creating much additional work for myself onto the Medium platform. But that is a part of the process, picking up the knack and easier methods which gradually make everything easier and quicker.
There was a moment of panic when both of my WordPress blogs suddenly stopped functioning altogether, leading me to spend an hour trying to diagnose a problem that turned out not to be my fault. Eventually WordPress acknowledged that they were experiencing wider technical issues and had received numerous complaints. While they were somewhat vague about the details, it was reassuring to discover that I had not accidentally broken anything.
Perhaps the biggest surprise so far has been Bluesky. Of all the social media platforms I have experimented with, it has generated the strongest response. The numbers are not huge, but they are considerably better than I expected. New followers have appeared at a slow but consistent rate.
Learning the Process
One of the advantages of doing all this myself is that it forces me to understand how the various platforms actually work. It would be easy to hand everything over to somebody else, but I suspect that would simply leave me dependent on outside expertise without understanding the fundamentals myself.
At this stage there is value in making mistakes, learning from them and gradually building confidence across different channels. Every platform behaves differently, attracts different audiences and rewards different types of content. What works on Bluesky may not work on Substack. What works on a blog may not work on a podcast. The only reliable way to discover these differences is through experience.
There is also something satisfying about seeing the various pieces begin to connect together. The podcast promotes the stories, the stories support the books, the blogs provide additional material, and the social media accounts help direct people towards everything else. None of it is producing dramatic results yet, but the structure is beginning to emerge.
The process reminds me a little of building a business from scratch. In the early stages there is often little visible reward for a considerable amount of effort. Most of the work takes place behind the scenes, creating systems, learning procedures and solving problems that nobody else ever sees. Only much later do those foundations become visible.
Looking Ahead
The current plan is to continue doing all of this myself for at least the next twelve months. Partly that is about keeping costs under control, but it is also about ensuring that I have enough content and enough understanding before attempting to scale anything further.
With a bit of luck, my first novel will be completed and published during that period. The short story collection will be published soon, providing a second book and helping to establish a more coherent body of work. By then there will hopefully be something substantial to promote rather than simply the promise of future projects.
At that point I will probably consider bringing in professional help with publicity and marketing. However, years of running a business have taught me that these services tend to work best when there is already momentum. Marketing companies are excellent at refining a message, expanding an audience and amplifying something that is already happening. They are much less effective when asked to create interest from nothing.
For now, the objective is straightforward. Keep writing, keep publishing, keep learning and keep building. If I can spend the next year creating a solid foundation of stories, articles, podcasts and readers, then any professional support brought in later will have something tangible to work with. That seems a far more sensible approach than trying to accelerate the process before the underlying structure is properly in place.
Make both our days by buying a copy of my book!
Something About England: Amazon.co.uk: Harris, Christopher, Turner, Louise: 9798174255661: Books
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