What I’ve learned from publishing five books in ten years is that writing is a game of snakes and ladders. (Shop talk alert!) My first book, The Naked Swiss: A Nation Behind 10 Myths, was published by Bergli Books, Basel in 2016 with an advance of 5,000 francs. It was non-fiction and sold well in Swiss terms.
High point was a Financial Times review. Low point was giving a talk where one person showed up and my voice was drowned out by a bouncy castle generator (long story).
Before this I had completed a novel set in Ireland, my first work. I got some good responses from agents and even made a debut novel prize shortlist. After a while, I paid for professional feedback from a reputable editing services company, which told me it worked and was ‘worthy of publication’. But I never found an agent and finally felt I had to give up on it and focus on non-fiction. Getting some short stories published around this time softened the blow.
My second book, The Naked Irish: Portrait of a Nation Beyond the Clichés, also non-fiction, was published by a small Irish imprint, which sort of faded away shortly afterwards. The book came out in late 2019, just before Covid, and didn’t sell well in Irish terms, not helped by the fact that I wasn’t living in Ireland.
High point was an interview on prime time Irish public radio. Low point was not earning out my small advance.
Then came my first novel Voting Day, which I self-published with the help of a crowdfunding campaign simultaneously in English, French, German and Italian. On this project, I found the translators myself and worked with a Fribourg marketing company called The Fundraising Company who helped with budgeting, fundraising and production. Very luckily, at the last minute, Bergli Books agreed to distribute these four books, which made them much easier to sell (a role now taken over by Zytglogge Verlag).
Just before the self-published Voting Day quartet was due to come out in February 2021, I was contacted by a UK publisher Fairlight Books, looking to publish the English version. I had submitted to them the summer before. When they heard about the self-publishing project, they still wanted to go ahead with the deal. Of course I said yes and was delighted to see a new edition of Voting Day published as part of the Fairlight Moderns series in 2022.
The high points of these two projects were the solidarity generated, and the sense of achievement of publishing the book on the 50th anniversary of Swiss women being granted the right to vote, which was my original plan. No low point for Voting Day!
A few things happened together in 2024. I stopped freelancing and got a 9-5 job working for a book wholesaler. Fairlight Books agreed to publish my second Swiss-based novel, Before the Leaves Fall. Yay! And thirdly, I self-published collection of my freelance-era articles as an ebook. The title of this fourth published book is All About Switzerland. For this I used the Ingram Spark platform but I found it difficult to promote for various reasons, not least because it came out the same week I started the new job.
This book has neither a high nor a low point. I got some satisfaction from learning the ropes of Ingram Spark but not having a physical book meant I missed opportunities to sell it at events. Sales on this one are minimal – eek.
Which brings me to Before the Leaves Fall, published in October 2026. This novel tells the story of Ruedi and Margrit. He works for an assisted dying organisation and she’s his first client. I expect this book will do as well as its sister title Voting Day: a modest success in small press terms.
The high point of Before the Leaves Fall were the two launches – in Stauffacher, Bern and The Gutter Bookshop, Dublin. I suppose the low point is the lack of media reviews but the book has received a lot of love from book bloggers (see my previous post), for which I am very grateful.
There’s been one other casualty on my publishing trail – a children’s book about two kids on the run from Life Ltd., a sinister, all-powerful company running their country. The title is The Wrong Side of Life and I call it Prophet Song for kids. I believe this book is worthy of publication but I stopped submitting ages ago and I don’t know if I have it in me to try again.
This is the publishing life for an unagented author who lives in a non English speaking country and has to work for a living. Believe it or not, the highs outnumber the lows. I have met wonderful people through writing and enjoyed amazing professional opportunities, especially interviewing great writers like Rachel Cusk, Deborah Levy and Jonathan Coe. And I know that thousands of people have read and (hopefully) enjoyed my work.
I hope you enjoy my personalised Snakes & Ladders board. I had fun making it. If I were to invent a proper writer’s (writers’?) game it would be a combination of The Game of Life and Monopoly. There’s an Irish whiskey now called Writers’ Tears so why not!
I’ve read that 80% of authors stop after three books, so I’m glad to be in the persevering minority. The reason I keep writing is that it makes my life interesting and I need that. As Georgia O’Keeffe once said: “I would say that I was always busy and interested in something – interest has more meaning to me than the idea of happiness.”
Clare O'Dea 