I have just been asked for advice about self-publishing from someone who has come into the possession of a First World War soldier’s original memoir. It’s hundreds of pages long and includes many photographs and colour drawings. Obviously such a thing from that era has value as a view of an extraordinary time, but whether it is worth the toil and expense and risk of self-publishing it as a large colour book is a whole different proposition. As a self-publisher you do not have the advantages of a major publisher with their financial clout and publicity machine, so your book has got to really make an impact in order to get noticed and have people talking about it. So I asked him the question: ‘What does this material say (or allow you to say with the way that you present it) that is unique and original, that will make it stand out from all the other books about the First World War?’
Being on the verge of publishing my own large colour book after three years of work and with a print run costing £29,000, I realise that that question is one that I also have to answer. I Shall Not Be Away Long is based on the First World War letters of Lt Col Charles Bartlett. The letters provide an immediate and uncensored portal into the life and times of a rather roguish infantry officer, full of humour and surprises as he attempts to navigate the challenges presented by the war and his marriage. On their own they make fascinating reading but to really make use of them to transport you to that time I have presented them visually to give the idea that you have opened them yourself and I have included images that evoke the circumstances in which they were written. I can’t recall seeing another book that has done this in this way, nor one where nearly every person and item and event mentioned in the letters has been investigated to be able to present the wider context of the main story in the letters. In particular, the lives that have sailed alongside Charles Bartlett’s, some for only very brief times, have in many cases got quite incredible stories attached to them. Just as with the people that we meet in our own lives, there are secrets that are hidden from contemporary view. Sometimes these have not escaped the historical record and so we end up knowing more about Charles Bartlett’s acquaintances than he probably did. We also get to see what happened to them all and get some idea of the long-term effects of the War. All of this gives context as does the benefit of hindsight to be able to take the views and beliefs that were held at a particular time and compare them with what we know now to have been the case. This is nowhere more starkly shown than in his comment one week after the start of the Battle of Somme (albeit from 13 miles behind the lines) that ‘The news seems very good and everyone seems very pleased’. If there is anything to be taken from all this it is that there is always a story beneath the surface and we would do well to question our assumptions about most things – and indeed it is only by asking questions and seeking answers that we can make progress, whether that be in self-publishing or in life in general.
You can get an idea of the contents of I Shall Not Be Away Long from this flick through the book:
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Recent Comments
Patrick Miles on The diary of a writer-publisher: 36 Wonderful, Andrew! Thank you very much. I will borrow that title, if you don't object... I hope you will allow Calderonia to feature your own next magnum opus after the Great... (February 28, 2026 at 8:18 am)
Andrew Tatham on The diary of a writer-publisher: 36 A brilliantly evocative and thought-provoking medley of observations that would not be out of place in 'The collected life of a flat-cap penguin' (your words, only slightly... (February 27, 2026 at 9:48 am)
John Pym on The essential Oxford novel Horace Hare’s acid and immensely readable Oxford Confessions deserve to sell even more pleasingly than Yale classicist Erich Segal’s Harvard/Radcliffe smash-hit weepie, Love... (January 29, 2026 at 2:39 pm)
Graeme Wright on The essential Oxford novel If I may be so bold I'll throw into the Oxford quad Javier Marias's novel, All Souls. Here's a taste, courtesy of Penguin and Amazon: "At High Table in an Oxford College, the... (January 28, 2026 at 12:11 pm)
Theo on Goathead is launched Dear Patrick, I wish you and Jim well in this new venture!
Theo (November 11, 2025 at 2:00 pm)
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Captain of the 11
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George Calderon c.1901
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George Calderon, 1912
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
Guest Post: Andrew Tatham, ‘The Pursuit of Uniqueness and Originality in Self-Publishing’
I have just been asked for advice about self-publishing from someone who has come into the possession of a First World War soldier’s original memoir. It’s hundreds of pages long and includes many photographs and colour drawings. Obviously such a thing from that era has value as a view of an extraordinary time, but whether it is worth the toil and expense and risk of self-publishing it as a large colour book is a whole different proposition. As a self-publisher you do not have the advantages of a major publisher with their financial clout and publicity machine, so your book has got to really make an impact in order to get noticed and have people talking about it. So I asked him the question: ‘What does this material say (or allow you to say with the way that you present it) that is unique and original, that will make it stand out from all the other books about the First World War?’
Being on the verge of publishing my own large colour book after three years of work and with a print run costing £29,000, I realise that that question is one that I also have to answer. I Shall Not Be Away Long is based on the First World War letters of Lt Col Charles Bartlett. The letters provide an immediate and uncensored portal into the life and times of a rather roguish infantry officer, full of humour and surprises as he attempts to navigate the challenges presented by the war and his marriage. On their own they make fascinating reading but to really make use of them to transport you to that time I have presented them visually to give the idea that you have opened them yourself and I have included images that evoke the circumstances in which they were written. I can’t recall seeing another book that has done this in this way, nor one where nearly every person and item and event mentioned in the letters has been investigated to be able to present the wider context of the main story in the letters. In particular, the lives that have sailed alongside Charles Bartlett’s, some for only very brief times, have in many cases got quite incredible stories attached to them. Just as with the people that we meet in our own lives, there are secrets that are hidden from contemporary view. Sometimes these have not escaped the historical record and so we end up knowing more about Charles Bartlett’s acquaintances than he probably did. We also get to see what happened to them all and get some idea of the long-term effects of the War. All of this gives context as does the benefit of hindsight to be able to take the views and beliefs that were held at a particular time and compare them with what we know now to have been the case. This is nowhere more starkly shown than in his comment one week after the start of the Battle of Somme (albeit from 13 miles behind the lines) that ‘The news seems very good and everyone seems very pleased’. If there is anything to be taken from all this it is that there is always a story beneath the surface and we would do well to question our assumptions about most things – and indeed it is only by asking questions and seeking answers that we can make progress, whether that be in self-publishing or in life in general.
You can get an idea of the contents of I Shall Not Be Away Long from this flick through the book:
Find out more and order your own copy from www.ishallnotbeawaylong.co.uk
Share this:
Related