As you ought by now to be aware, I have written and published a novel. A close friend has told me that my plotting does not compare with that of Marcel Proust, nor my characterisations with those of Dostoyevsky. But he assures me it is otherwise a decent novel. He says he enjoyed reading it. He is, moreover, buying copies to hand round as presents to his friends and loved ones. This is, you will agree, a better indication of what he thinks than any amount of written or spoken praise.

Of course, I invite you to do likewise. I think we have missed Eid and Diwali—I am not prejudiced in these matters—But Christmas and Hannukah are approaching; and I will, for the trifling sum of £8.99 each plus £2 postage and packing, send you any number of copies of The Column of Phocas signed and inscribed with any message you may desire. I will even get Mrs Gabb to gift wrap them.

You can take advantage of my offer by following either of the links at the foot of this article.

But here is an end to my advertising. Several people have asked me in the past few weeks how I managed to publish a book that looks like a real book and can be sold on the Internet and via Amazon. So I will go now into the whys and hows of self-publishing.

I begin with why. As said, I have written a decent novel. It only took a few weeks to write on my various railway journeys; and though it is taking longer because of my other commitments, the sequel is just as easy. My problem was not with the writing, but with getting someone else to publish me.

From my reading of literary biography, there was a time when you could write a novel, and then send it off—perhaps under a pseudonym—to a publisher, who would carefully read it and then bring it out in a limited edition to see how it might sell. If it ever existed, that time is passed. Most publishers nowadays are members of large conglomerates. For them, a novel is a commodity, and the lower the speculative element in publication, the better it is for them. They want something in a style that is currently popular, and preferably from an author who is already known. So what if the product is ghost written trash fathered on a television personality? Their object—and I do not think it fair to complain—is not to promote literature, but to make a profit. If, like me, you are unknown as a writer of fiction, and if you write a novel that does not easily fit into one of the established categories, you have very little chance.

And you have very little chance even if what you have written is manifestly outstanding. I do not think much of the Harry Potter books. But, plainly, many other people disagree with me. Even so, J.K. Rowling took years to get her first novel accepted for publication. If, like me, you are merely decent, the outlook must be gloomy.

Indeed, in recent years, publishers have tended to refuse all manuscripts submitted directly. The spread of word processing has made it easier than ever before to write fiction, and publishers have been overwhelmed by submissions of variable quality. They have therefore taken to considering only work submitted through a literary agent.

But this has simply transferred the flood of initial submissions to the agents. These also cannot cope; and so they have adopted policies as restrictive as those of the publishers before they stopped accepting submissions directly.

The result is that, unless you are unusually enterprising and persistent, or lucky, you will not get your first novel—or your first book, for that matter—published so easily as you might in the past.

The answer is not to sit about, lamenting a state of affairs you can do nothing to change. It is to do the whole job yourself.

This is much easier than ever before. When I first looked at self-publication in the 1980s, I had a choice between spending an ocean of money and producing something that looked like a school newsletter. I could use a manual typewriter to punch holes in a stencil, and then run off jagged and whimsically faded copies on a duplicator. I was once told, let me add, that they only way to avoid getting ink on your clothes is to strip naked within a yard of any duplicator. I can tell you this is good advice! This done, I could staple the sheets together, and hope what I had written would be read without too much prejudice against its format. Otherwise, I could put myself into the hands of the vanity publishers. These might produce something vaguely resembling a book. But they might not. Whatever the case, they would run off thousands of copies and charge a prohibitive unit price. No bookshop would stock them. No mainstream publication would review them.

The technological revolution of the past few decades has made all this a distant memory. Using Microsoft Word, or any other word processing software, you can format a book in any style that takes your fancy. My own preferred style is the "Everyman" series. This may not be suitable for a new novel. But that was a matter of my own possibly defective judgement. You can format an archetype in any font you please, justified as you please, with headers and page numbers. You can even generate an index if that is what you want. This requires some familiarity with computers. But it is probably less difficult to acquire than to use a sewing machine effectively or to learn how to drive.

Next, you need a cover. You can do this also in Word, though I prefer to use Publisher, which comes with the more expensive versions of Microsoft Office. This gives much greater freedom with positioning text and pictures and the spine. Again, getting the cover right is a matter of judgement that some people have and others have not. This being said, there are templates for book covers all over the Internet; and anyone can produce a basic cover.

Then there is the matter of an ISBN. I believe these were introduced in the 1960s by the British publishing trade as a means of identifying a stock of new publications that was already expanding beyond manageable limits. An ISBN is made up of eight digits that remain constant and identify the publisher, plus two digits that identify the publication, and a final checksum digit to ensure soundness of the whole. The numbering system—it will soon contain 13 digits—is now used in just about every country. It allows books to be traced more effectively than would otherwise be possible.

The problem emerging is that book shops tend to refuse anything that is without an ISBN. Certainly, on-line booksellers like Amazon will not touch anything without one.

But this is a problem easily solved. When Chris R. Tame and I started the Hampden Press in 2001, we obtained an eight digit ISBN and a sample eleven digit ISBN for free. We were then expected to buy further numbers. I believe this practice has now changed, and you must pay for this. I do not know where you should go for your ISBNs now, as the company we used has been bought by Nielsen Bookdata. But in England, you can try Carolyn Timms of Nielsen Bookdata. She will point you in the right direction. In America, there is bip.bowkerlink@bowker.com  at RR Bowker Books in Print.

As for buying subsequent numbers, there are websites that will automatically generate them for free once you have the initial eight digit number. The one I use is provided by The College Park Press.

You may also want to translate your ISBN to a bar code with another number the function of which escapes me. There are also free services on the Internet that will do this. The one I use is provided by Robbie's ISBN Bar Code Generator.

It is not enough, of course, to generate an ISBN. You must also register this with the various bibliographical agencies. Without this, your book will not appear on any of the databases, and might as well not exist. You can register by approaching the English and American companies given above.

Now, there is the printing. My experience is that an initial print run should be around a thousand copies. Fewer, and your unit costs will be high, and you may run out of copies. More, and first delivery of boxes may get you into the divorce court. Printing remains expensive, whatever your print run, and it is worth shopping round for quotations. Some of these can be prohibitive. The cheapest printer I have been able to find in England is Biddles. These print the "Modern Masters" series and provide a fast and professional service, so long as you provide them with the right kind of pdf file. My unit cost for The Column of Phocas was only £1.30. Assuming a unit price of £8.99, this leaves a tidy sum to cover other expenses or to be regarded as profit.

We come finally to the marketing. Here, I must confess, I am not very good. I have generated some publicity in the local media, and have had some flattering reviews placed on Amazon. I have also nagged all my friends into buying copies. But my distribution of copies to friends in the national media has resulted so far in no publicity. Nor have I been very enterprising at getting my novel into the bookshops.

But this is something of which you may have greater knowledge. Indeed, since I have shared all I know of publishing, you may care to reciprocate with some advice on marketing.

So, there it is—self-publishing made easy.

I regret that, unless I am one of your close friends, or have some reasonable expectation of services from you, I will give no personal advice to authors beyond what I have given above. This is not because I am particularly unfriendly. It is a simple acknowledgement of the fact that I am both busy with earning a living and profoundly idle when it comes to replying to e-mails. By all means, write if you must. But do not be disappointed if you hear nothing back.

NB—Sean Gabb's novel The Column of Phocas (£8.99)is ready for dispatch. Buy your copy now from http://tinyurl.co.uk/z31v or via Amazon: http://tinyurl.co.uk/2cnw