Who are we, you ask ? Well it’s a great question as the world of publishing is a strange and wonderful place. EDJ publishing was founded, devised and set up by new author Eddie Johnson hence the name Ed J made into the precariously pronounced Edj (Edge) Publishing. The concept epitomised Eddie's feeling of constantly being left at the edge of the literary world. Not well known enough to attract an agent and scared to employ a so-called 'vanity publisher'. With little he could do about being famous, at just over 50 Eddie felt lost in a sea of insecurity.

He certainly didn’t relish the risk of ploughing his pension pot into a project probably doomed to failure, by trusting it to be handled by companies who once paid would have no vested interest or desire to promote his work. The minefield of query letters and agent approach emails left him numb and disillusioned. Having sent hundreds of enquiries he knew that his writing was probably not the issue, but that getting a response to a query letter was a lot more luck than judgement. Having found 'experts' all over the place only too happy to take his money to 'advise' on how to get better results from this seemingly unguaranteeable process, he decided the best way to get published was to – do it himself.


FAME BREEDS SUCCESS

Doing that in itself, some will say is easy, however most self-published authors who have sold a few copies and subsequently got little or no interest in their books will tell you, it might be easy to do (depending on your PC skills) but it certainly doesn’t guarantee success in terms of sales.

Even the quality of the book is no guarantee of success. Fame breeds success, so if you’re lucky enough to already have some level of fame, getting your book published is easy. Even if the quality of the book is uncertain, as might be the identity of the real author, fame carries the numbers needed to become relatively successful in the literary maze. This is not sour grapes, just merely a very annoying and inconvenient fact that 90% of aspiring authors have to try to banish from their minds.


WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?

So Eddie looked long and hard into vanity publishing and decided that the cross between uncertainty, the chances of losing a lot of money to gain a quite probably inferior product and no longer being in control of his own work, was definitely not what he was after.

Then he came across an independent company that specialised in cover design and other aspects of book development. On speaking at length with this company Eddie soon realised that if you are not lucky enough to get an agent for your work that 'doing things yourself' could also be a minefield full of deep financial potholes.

Working in conjunction with this company Eddie set about developing EDJ as a brand. The company he had found facilitated production the all-important cover design required to sell your book online or instore, but was also able to offer professional editing services, typesetting and font design along with providing Eddie invaluable help with ISBN production as well as helping him develop this author platform website.

Whilst still having to invest Eddie found doing these small steps was infinitely more manageable for someone of his lack of technical competence. He started to make Breaking the Tranquillity of Solitude - his own trilogy of books into a sort of test case. As you can see on the books section of this site his covers are amazing.

Only time will tell if all the hard work will have been worth the effort for his own books, but if you have any single aspect of producing your own work that you need help with please feel free to contact us and we can direct you to any one of many different experts that Eddie has consulted during this process. 

At this early stage in our development it would be untrue to say that we are able to “publish” but we aspire to eventually do just that. Rather than signing his life’s work over to one of many vanity publishers who only saw’s £signs on his pages, Eddie bit the bullet and dived head long into his adventure in self-publishing.

THE FUTURE

Who knows what the future holds but Eddie is ploughing on and is extremely interested to speak to anyone who can genuinely offer assistance as well as being only too happy to discuss his journey so far with anyone just considering doing similar. Literary agents, experienced and successful self-publishers are invited to contact him at any time.