When my father joined the ranks of indie-authors back in the early 1980s there were small and large publishing houses all over the place. On an earlier round a draft book of his, on the subject of children and play, had been picked up by one of those houses. He made no money from going what we now call the “traditional” route, but for the publishing house the money was available somewhere in the myriad of grants that the Secretary of State (a defunct federal department) made available.

My father’s indie-author project focused upon his experiences in World War Two. The topic did not fit into the funding criteria with which Canada’s large and small publishers were working.

Dad wrote his first draft by hand. My mother did the first round of typing. He then engaged a former secretary to re-type the manuscript from the beginning to the end. Photocopying…