I became a published author!
Yes, on the 8th August 2011, I finally decided to publish a short story to Amazon. That book was the uniquely-titled, Cigs, Bolan & Strange Men With Guns.
(Some older versions of the cover)
(and the current cover)
I'd been writing stories since I was young and, after taking a writing course with the Open University in 2010/2011, and making new writer friends, I was motivated to publish something before I hit 30 (which was five days after I published).
The self-publishing world was certainly different back then. No Amazon Ads or Kindle Unlimited, and there was more chance of visibility. According to the Amazon dashboard, I made over 800 paid sales with that one book. These days I'm lucky to get 5% of that.
I also used Smashwords a lot in those early days. This was before the creation of Draft2Digital. Smashwords is still excellent for creating promo coupons if you want to give away your books for free.
Looking back, I've had fun as an indie author. It's been hard, frustrating at times, expensive, but the fact that you can create new worlds and situations, and that people enjoy reading about them is hard to beat.
Here's to another eight years!