The Public Lending Right (PLR) Scheme provides authors with an income of up to £6,600 a year from loans of their books from public libraries in the UK and pays out more than £6 million annually.

You can have a free one through such online publisher/retailers as Amazon. Or you can buy one from Neilson UK at £89. Each. Buying in bulk brings the price down: ten will cost £164. If a book is published in paperback, hardback and ebook, you need one ISBN for each…

A book needs a reader. Therefore the reader must be persuaded to read the book. If you are not there to hold the book aloft and extol its virtues, you must employ an ambassador to do so. Enter the Cover.

Non-fiction works definitely benefit from reviews. These must be from other experts in the field and it does not matter whether they agree with your findings or not, as long as they do not criticise your writing or dispute your facts.

Traditional publishers are undoubtedly the best route. Very few, however, take scripts that have not come to them through an agent. Of those that do, there is usually a routine of open and closed windows in which they will accept unsolicited submissions.

Some agents are generalists, some specialists. All, however, expect to receive upwards of 2000 submissions a year. And in that year select just a couple of new writers. These will be those they can forecast to make money for them or win awards which reflect favourably on their careers. Or…