I am learning at last. I can link my blog to another. I think! I wish my IT expert son-in-law lived nearby. Why all this bother about tech skills? Well I've done it. I've finally stopped dithering and blethering and have struck out as an independent novelist publisher.

Oh, not on my own. Nor did I succumb to the wiles of a scam publisher. No Publish America stuff for me. No, I've found a few writer colleagues who feel like I do about the whole Traditional Publishing scene and are prepared to work with me as a cooperative group who will publish together under our group name.

It's a hard way to go. Attitudes are set. The Historical Writers Association will not allow me to join if I go this way and don't wait the 19 years is it Ms Morgan keeps quoting. In New Zealand I will be called a vanity publisher and my credit as a tutor of writers will fall! Some of my trad published writer friends will sneer. Others will cheer as they struggle with editors who ask for radical cuts or additions to make their novels 'easier to understand' or 'more marketable,'

But I am convinced that the almighty power of Trad publishing, with its pernickety editors and despotic agents, is broken. Indeed unless they adapt and change a lot more swiftly than they are doing, then they will fade away, moving sideways into conglomerate units producing mass information and nothing else.

I don't know how our group will manage all the details yet but we advance one step at a time, cheering each other on and regarding this as an experiment. It's an adventure but one we control. It's rather nice to have some say in cover design and pricing. And good to know that our novels go out to be read as we intended them to be.