In 2008 I was invited by the Society of Authors to write a diary for a week, from a writer's perspective. Here is the result.

I’m rich! Well, OK, not rich exactly, but getting there. It can only be a matter of time before I am lying in a hammock somewhere dictating my next bestseller.

What has brought on this feeling of euphoria, you ask. Well, I had an email today informing me that I’ve earned a couple of quid from a book I self-published using Lulu. It’s a print-on-demand service, and although getting rich from it could take some time, it has at least two good things going for it:

Firstly, it gives a writer an opportunity to publish, in a very professional-looking way, a book on a subject that is of such a minority appeal that getting it published by the more traditional route is very unlikely to happen.

Secondly, the time lag between sending off your ‘manuscript’ and seeing the published book can be as little as two weeks. That is excellent for people like myself for whom the concept of ‘deferred gratification’ is anathema.