We are going through a period in Britain where we are denigrating British history and culture and esp the contribution of women e.g. the novel. I want people to stop doing that and to appreciate the obstacles that women eg Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë overcame to see their novels in print. I want people to say “I never knew that Jane Austen write Pride and Prejuduce when she was a teenager”.

@Rob Cole I want to get my books into bookshops. I don’t see that Amazon helps with that at all. I intend to do small print runs of my books. then plan to see if I can get them into bookshops. I emailed a bookstore recently. They replied quite positively. I hope 2 or 3 others might. I want to do events in bookstores. If the stores cannot obtain the books at trade prices, I have to fund the events myself and supply the books. I accept that my chances of getting my books into the main bookstore chain in the UK, Waterstones is slim. My number 1 goal is to be invited to literary festivals, history conferences etc. I definitely need physical books to further that aim. My long term goal when I am aged 70 and retired is to sell the rights to my books to a trad publisher.

@Rob Cole o hear very mixed things about Ingram Spark around the quality of books and ease of uploading. For now, I am going to get paperbacks from Book Vault, D2D and Curios and compare and contrast. I am going to go more or less door to door with bookshops asking what I need to do to get/persuade them to take my books. With a 30 trade discount, there is no profit. As another book guru said, books are like burgers. There is no profit there. You need soda and fries. My soda hopefully will be courses. I plan to do a digital course which will be £40. Not the earth but more than a book.

I am sending this book to the US copyright office because US copyright means something. If my copyright is infringed, I have a proper enforcement process. I don’t want bots reading this book and feeding it out for free. The UK government has made it clear it is not interested in protecting writers and others from AI and from other infringement. Writers from JK Rowling downwards lobbied on the issue and got nowhere. I want to sell this book around the world, including in the US. I currently think that having an actual copyright certificate is better than merely asserting the right to copyright. There is a high chance I won’t bother with future books. It has been a very slow process.