Why self-publish your book about Sweden?

When writing a non-fiction book, it is always worth checking whether publishers or agents are interested at the idea stage. I had written a first draft of A Decade in Sweden when I sent out submission letters to agents. I first concentrated my quest for an agent in Sweden and found that there aren’t many agents around. However, I did get one bite from an agent who really liked the book. Unfortunately, that agent left their job and I had to start my hunt over. I sent the book to a handful of agents in the UK and got a similar response from an agent in London. On this occasion, although they liked the book and found it interesting, they said it was aimed at a niche market and wouldn’t sell in the quantities that they would like. Again, I was back to square one again. As A Decade in Sweden was my first attempt at a book launch, I looked into self-publishing as a way forward. I looked into distributors online and choose one that I thought was the best at the time. I released the eBook first through BookBaby without checking all my options including getting my own ISBNs. When I decided to print the book, I looked around for the best price vs. a good product. I eventually found Book Printing UK, who were situated near my hometown of Northampton, and forged a relationship with them for all of my book projects. The real moral of this story is to reach out to agents and publishers when you have a book of non-fiction on the go or at the idea stage because you never know if that book deal is around the corner. If you have something interesting to say, and a project that is commercially viable, you might find that your book sprouts legs and starts to take on a life of its on.