The British PR consultant and author Paula Garner has interviewed the author Jackie Barrie about her Amazon best-seller, "The Little Fish Guide to DIY Marketing". In the interview, Ms. Barrie reveals some of her secrets about how to publish on your own:

"(...) My first book is sitting at #8 in its category, with  7 x 5* reviews (I took a screenshot to prove it). (...) Amazon sales rank is a mysterious thing. I oversimplify, but it seems to be  based on the number of sales per hour, with a weighting to adjust for long-term best-sellers such as Harry Potter.(...)  My printer, Lulu, prints books on demand (minimum quantity 1), and is due to send 'creator revenues' into my PayPal account after 6 to 8 weeks.

The book was available from June 2010, but people only started buying it when it 'went live' on Amazon in October. It's as if it suddenly became real as soon as it was available on Amazon. Top tip: You can track sales at www.novelrank.com . It's fascinating, but  don't become too obsessed."

"What about testimonials," asks Paula Gardner.

"When selling anything, what other people say is more convincing than anything you say yourself, so I knew my book needed reviews to be printed inside and on the back cover. I sent PDF copies to volunteers, but found less than half of them actually contributed their comments (hopefully due to lack of time not because they didn't have anything nice to say!). Of course,  it's hard to 'chase' people when they're not being paid, so it caused another delay in the process. Eventually, I collected some lovely reviews and was ready to go to print at last. The next stage was a huge learning process, with a number of key decision points along the way."

"Why did you chose self-publishing, and can you offer any advice to anyone agonising over the decision?"

"If you want to find a traditional publisher/agent who will look after everything for you (and take a percentage), your best bet is the latest copy of The Writers' and Artists' Yearbook (available in all good bookshops) and there are lots of other resources online. If you need help with your content, there are a number of book coaches/midwives, independent book publishers and short-run printers/publishers for you to choose, for a fee. Despite warnings all over the Internet about their deteriorating customer service, I chose to self-publish through Lulu.com.

If you do the same as me, you then need to decide whether to self-publish or let Lulu be your publisher. Being a bit of a control freak, I decided to become a publisher as well as an author."

"So tell us....what about getting onto Amazon..."

"I wanted the book on Amazon, so I paid Lulu about 50GBP for Global Reach Distribution. (...) Here, I hit a snag. I'd originally designed my book at A5 size, with lovely white paper, but it turns out you can only have a few sizes for distribution, and A5 is not one of them. I had to change the artwork to fit US trade size - I just added bigger margins and re-uploaded it. Trouble is, I couldn't have that size on white paper, only cream.

Once all the size, paper and distribution is sorted out, it takes 6-8 weeks for your book to appear on Amazon. (...) Top tip: Other sellers may offer your book as 'used' or 'as new' at a discount. If it doesn't cut your margin too much, you could set yourself up as a discount seller too, to compete with those sales.

"How did you market your book?"

As a self-publisher, you have to do your own marketing. I invited everyone who bought the book to review it online. I did online marketing at no cost, using social networking sites such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. For example, I ran a Twitter 'retweet' competition that promoted it to new followers. I also did local PR and announced it in my newsletter. And finally, I keep a small stock of books to sell at events I attend (...)."

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