Self-Publishing: Perfect for Passion Projects 

People planning to self-publish are often advised to target a commercial genre and write a book that matches its readers’ expectations. Many indies have built successful careers on that principle, e.g. JD Kirk, Rachel Maclean and LJ Ross. However, self-publishing can also be a brilliant channel for non-commercial manuscripts in small niche markets that you want to get into the hands of readers for your own reasons. 

For example, you may have had a remarkable life experience that you’d like to share to benefit or inspire others. Or you might wish to leave a printed written record of your family or local history for the benefit of future generations. Unless you’re a celebrity, such projects are unlikely to appeal to traditional publishers, whose business model is to acquire only those books that will make a significant profit on their investment in editing, design, production, and marketing.  

As an indie author who calls the shots, you are free to publish whatever you like, regardless of profitability. Profit and sales are not the only justifications for self-publishing. Professor Dr Alison Baverstock, teaching the publishing degree at Kingston University, once said self-publishing can be justified even for a print run of a single copy. Scale and financial gain aren’t everything.   

Indeed, some of the most rewarding self-publishing projects I’ve been involved with have been low budget and low profit. In some cases, the resulting books haven’t even been put up for sale, but given away.  

My very first self-publishing project was a collection of blog posts raising awareness and understanding of what it’s like to live with Type 1 Diabetes, which affects my husband and our daughter, and by extension our whole family. No commercial publisher would have touched it, but it was a sufficiently worthwhile project to gain endorsement from the CEO of JDRF, the Type 1 Diabetes charity, and BBC Radio 4 Today anchor Justin Webb, whose son had recently been diagnosed with Type 1.  

More recently, I self-published a funny little novella – a quirky blend of second-chance romance, magical realism, and a tribute to the beauty of the Cotswold countryside in spring, and a complete departure from my established line of cosy mystery novels. Mrs Morris Changes Lanes (the title a cheeky take on Christopher Isherwood’s classic Berlin novel, Mr Norris Changes Trains) was so niche a proposition that I knew it wouldn’t sell in huge quantities, but I loved the story so much that I was prepared to invest in a beautiful hand-drawn cover by Rachel Lawston (www.lawstondesign.com) and a professional edit by Alison Jack, who had provided design and editorial services for all my self-published books. I was very proud of the resulting books. The novella took years to break even, but I’m so glad I had the skills and courage to make it happen.  

I was also involved with a series of local history books in my home village, for which I was one of the contributing writers. We had a very limited target market: local residents and the village diaspora. Yet sales have not only covered production costs, but made enough profit to fund substantial donations to local causes. 

I’ve worked on two books produced to be given away, both memoirs of terminally ill men who wanted to turn their typescripts into printed books before they died. Perhaps the most rewarding moment of my whole self-publishing career was receiving a photo of one of these gentleman with a huge smile on his face as he held the printed proof of his book. He died the next day. 

I’m delighted that two alumni of my Simply Self Publish course have recently used what they’ve learned to launch their own very valid niche book projects of their own: John Goodall’s The Infallible Fortune Teller, a widower’s memoir about his marriage to an Iranian, and Stella Darvey Joory’s Rachel: A Life in a Turbulent Country, a biographical novel based on the life of her mother. “This book was my life’s work,” says Stella.  

So, if you have a passion project that you’d like to share with the world, I hope these case studies convince you that self-publishing could be just what you need to turn your vision into reality.  

Find out more about the Simply Self Publish course here (insert link). Registrations are now open for the next course, which will run April-June. I look forward to hearing about your self-publishing ambitions.  

© Debbie Young 2026 

Last chance to register for the Spring 2026 Simply Self Publish course, which kicks off 7 April. To find out more, check out the course and brochure here.