Self-Publishing Spotlight: BIRD HITS GLASS by Beate Triantafilidis

Welcome to our new blog series, Self-Publishing Spotlight! We’re shining the much-deserved spotlight on some of our wonderful authors who have self-published their books. Next up is Beate Triantafilidis, author of BIRD HITS GLASS. Beate booked in for a Manuscript Assessment with Market editor Susannah O back in 2020, and published her debut novel in May earlier this year.

What is your story about and where did you get the inspiration to write it from?

BIRD HITS GLASS is a contemporary novel that follows Grace, an ambitious millennial woman whose career-centred life in London is disrupted when her body collapses in invisible pains that the doctors can’t explain. As her body confines her to bed, her relationships start to fray, and Grace becomes increasingly obsessed with social media. When she discovers a chronically ill social media influencer, she's buoyed by hope that recovery is possible, while beginning to question her assumptions about relationships, love and what it means to live a full life.

I started writing the novel after becoming chronically ill myself. For a while, I had considered starting a novel, but I didn’t have a clear idea of what I wanted to write. Then, when I became sick, I simply opened a word document and started exploring through fiction topics that I personally also wrestled with at the time as a result of becoming sick, like loneliness and connection, loss of identity and new dynamics in relationships – and over time, those initial explorations grew into a novel.

How close was the experience of being published to what you expected? Were there any big surprises?

Like most writers, I originally hoped to go the traditional publishing route of getting an agent and then securing a mainstream publisher. But after completing multiple submission rounds and failing to get an agent to pick up the novel, I decided to publish my novel with Matador, the self-publishing imprint of the publisher Troubador. 

I would say the biggest surprise with this publishing journey was having the confidence to choose financially backing my own novel over leaving the words on my laptop. Partially, this was a result of experiencing life-altering illness – compared to that, the creative risk of publishing a novel seemed small. But my collaboration with Cornerstones also played a huge part. Having a professional literary editor express support for the project really helped me believe that it was worth publishing. 

A huge upside to self-publishing that I hadn’t really considered was retaining so much autonomy throughout the publishing process. By publishing through Matador, I still got that professional support of copy-editing, cover design, marketing and distribution to bookshops that I think every novel should ideally have. But because I was backing the novel financially myself, I had full decision-making responsibility at each stage, and I loved being so involved throughout the process.

What advice would you give other people who are thinking of self-publishing?

If you’re unsure whether to self-publish, try to unpick what’s holding you back. I initially hesitated, because I worried that having failed to get an agent for the novel meant it wasn’t good enough to be put out into the world. I also worried that self-publishing could prevent me from succeeding with the traditional publisher route for future novels. But ultimately, I decided that I really wanted this particular novel to reach readers, and that counted for more than my fears. I also found it helpful to remind myself that other people I admire had chosen self-publishing for their first books, from my friend Evie of Mindfully Evie to Jane Austen.

If you decide that self-publishing could work for you, I would then recommend carefully considering your goals for that particular book, and then researching the different self-publishing options. Self-publishing comes in many forms, and each type can be a good fit for different people and different book projects. Personally, I had three key criteria: I wanted a publisher that could offer all the services around editing and design; for the novel to exist as a physical book, not just as an e-book; and distribution support, so the novel could be available to order from bookshops. 

What was the most important piece of advice you received while collaborating with Cornerstones?

To focus more on narrative drive. BIRD HITS GLASS was a literary fiction project, and in the draft that I submitted to Cornerstones, some of the scenes and chapters were repetitive and didn’t push the story forward as much as they needed to. Working with my Cornerstones editor helped me see what I could cut and edit to keep the momentum strong throughout the novel. Now that BIRD HITS GLASS is published, many readers have told me that they couldn’t put the book down and ended up reading it over only the space of a few days, which I think is a result of implementing that particular editorial advice.

What stage in your writing career are you at now? Are you working on anything new?

Since my novel was published at the end of May, I’m now mainly focused on marketing the book. At a literary talk recently, I heard the amazing Hanya Yanigahara describe this as the author stage instead of the writing stage. I found that so helpful to hear, as I’m itching to dive back into drafting my second novel instead, and I have to remind myself both stages are equal parts of the writing life. I’m hoping to carve out more time for writing alongside book promotion in the coming months though - I have about 65,000 words of a rough first draft of my second novel, and I am hoping to finish that draft by the end of the year.

If you could go back and talk to yourself just before you started writing your first manuscript, what would you say to yourself? 

You get to control whether your work gets published or not. The traditional publishing route has many benefits, and I’m planning on submitting my second novel to agents, but that is only one way of doing it. I would also reiterate what I did tell myself when I first started: writing this novel is first and foremost about playing with creativity and enjoying the writing process. Once you’re done writing it, then you can decide whether it’s worth publishing too.

BIRD HITS GLASS was published in May, and is now available to order online or in all good bookshops. Thank you to Beate for the insight and answers in the second edition of our self-publishing spotlight! Her editor, Susannah O, is available for mentoring and reports – do get in touch with the Cornerstones team for more information.