My handle online is Generalistalan. I've always worn it with a bit of pride and a bit of defensiveness, that nagging feeling that being spread across too many things means you're not quite serious about any of them.

Then I sat down with James Russell, and felt considerably better about myself.

James is an Auckland-based author who has sold around 170,000 books across a dozen countries. He's also a publisher, distributor, marketer, podcast host, and school tour organiser. He stores his New Zealand stock in his garage and ships it from his house. He built all of this because he was bored on a train.

Almost.

The real story: James was a journalist for twelve years, including a long stint at the New Zealand Herald. He started writing bedtime stories for his two sons on the commute. People who heard them said they should be books. He thought, why not, and printed 5,000 hardbacks out of his own pocket. No publishing deal. No idea what he was doing.

So he started ringing bookstores. Every bookstore in New Zealand, on his lunch breaks from the Herald, sitting in a cafe across the road. Most said no. He rang Paper Plus eight times before they finally caved.

Then he got made redundant. A month later, the Bologna Children's Book Fair, the biggest in the world, was taking place in Italy. So he booked a ticket and went.

He had no appointments. Publishers were too busy to stop. Two and a half days went by without a single meeting. He sat down on a couch in the final couple of hours, not paying attention to whose stand he'd collapsed next to, and a woman sat down beside him. They got yarning. She turned out to be the head of Sourcebooks, one of the largest independent publishers in the US.

She asked to see the books. He handed one over. She looked at it for about thirty seconds.

"I'll publish those. I want world rights."

He came home with a deal covering all English-speaking markets outside New Zealand and a thirty-five thousand dollar advance. Combined with what was left of his redundancy, it was enough to keep going. Within the year, his first two junior novels both went to number one.

None of it was planned. James is pretty clear on that. He didn't decide to be a journalist. He met a newspaper editor in a pub in Ireland, thought he seemed cool, and talked himself into a job. He didn't decide to be an author. He wrote stories for his kids and someone said they were good. He didn't decide to be a self-publisher. He just couldn't afford to wait for someone else to do it.

What he did do, every single time, was take the next step without needing to see the whole staircase first.

Try this

Think about something you've been putting off because the timing isn't right. Now flip it: what's the actual cost of not doing it? James was made redundant and immediately spent money he didn't have on a flight to Italy. That sounds reckless. But doing nothing wasn't a neutral option. It was just a slower way of ending up in the same place.

What's the flight you keep not booking?

The community he's built around the books is worth noting. He visits forty to fifty schools a year. He launched his first book by hiding thirty papier-mâché dragon eggs across Auckland hillsides, with clues on his website so kids could track them down. He built an augmented reality app so readers could point their phones at certain pages and watch 3D dragons appear. He started a podcast, Mad Surf Stories, specifically to reach readers for his adult surf thrillers, because that community rewards showing up consistently over time.

"If you make good stuff, it's always been about word of mouth."

That's not accidental. That's someone who worked out, somewhere between the garage and the Bologna Book Fair, that community outlasts campaigns, relationships outlast algorithms, and the only way to keep selling a book from 2012 is to keep showing up and reading it.

James's new book, Marlin Foundling and the Circus of Lost Children, launches June 15th. He's driving from Invercargill to Matakana to do it. In his own car.

Of course he is.

Find him at dragonbrothersbooks.com

Download James’s self publishing guide