Some people avoid any discussion of death and dying, but I have always found the subject fascinating.

You are here one minute and gone the next. Very strange. And much harder for all those around you than it is for you, yourself. They are the ones who must cope with the strangeness of it all.

I was so fascinated with death and dying that I carried out a series of interviews about what it is like to work in end-of-life care. Put together, these ended up comprising a highly successful book.

It chronicles the experiences and views of a wide range of people who work with the dying, especially nurses, but many others including doctors, managers, therapists and a very reflective cook.

The Timing of Death

There are many issues that fascinate me, but one is the extent to which a dying person can control when he or she dies.

I had heard rumours before my research, but it confirmed that some people tend to wait for a particular event and can hold on surprisingly long when it is important.

And some others wait for the moment when their loved one is out of the room, presumably to avoid their distress, before letting go.

Long-Term Couples

But there is yet another intriguing discussion to be had on this subject. This is the apparent fact that long married couples can often die in close proximity to one another, within three months or less. Sometimes even weeks or days.

This is often commented on. My parents certainly did, dying aged 90 and 91 within three months of each other. I went from having a full set of parents to being an orphan, admittedly not a young one, as I was in my late 50s.

A good friend did the same thing not long ago. She was in her late 80s, her beloved husband of nearly 65 years had died, and she just lost all interest in living. She died quite soon afterwards.

You will perhaps know similar cases.

There are some very touching stories of married people dying within days – or even hours ­– of each other. People tend to find them heart-warming, reinforcing our romantic ideas about the power of love.

Is this all just a coincidence or is there an explanation for such patterns?

Research on Couples

Those who have researched this subject seem to think that there is a genuine phenomenon, termed the ‘widowhood effect’, so it is more than a coincidence. It is particularly common among men, i.e., widowers rather than widows.

It is also known as ‘dying of a broken heart’.

It is thought that the lives of bereaved spouses are upset so radically by the death of their partner that they are vulnerable to both physical and mental health issues.

Women are often more resilient, in part because they tend to have built up more close friends around them.

Women are also more likely to eat better, but both men and women tend to pay less attention to their food, because of loss of appetite and lack of companionship when eating.

None of which explains the rapid dying, since neither mental health problems nor poor diet lead directly to immediate death.

Anyone who wants to read further on this issue will find a reasonable summary of recent research here.

What Is Our ‘Take-Away?

Everyone wants to learn these days. If there is something important going on, they want to know the ‘take-away’.

This one seems a bit complicated.

Looking to your own life, you may want to ensure that your spouse has people who will provide company (and decent food) if you know you have a short life expectancy.

You may also want to be conscious of potential problems for yourself if your spouse dies first. As we get older, we do tend to think about these things a bit more.

Perhaps you know someone who has lost a spouse and could help them in this regard. You may want to gently offer some help, difficult as this can be.

But those working with grieving spouses will already appreciate the need for some companionship and good nutrition – they should be high up on their agenda.

Perhaps you can do more than be alert to the issue.

A version of this article was first published by SixtyandMe.com

I write frequently for an online women’s magazine called Sixty and Me. It  is a wonderful place for older women to learn how to look better, feel better, be a better person and get more out of life. But this article does none of these things.

Yet it is on a subject that I find so interesting, I want to share it with you. It is about some evidence that people who are seriously ill can – in some unclear way – determine the timing of their death.

The nature of the evidence

When carrying out long and deep interviews, it sometimes happens that the people being interviewed raise issues that were never part of the initial research.This is what happened when I undertook a series of interviews with nurses, doctors and others who worked in hospice care for a book on the subject. My principal interest was in their motivations for such work and its impact on their lives.

But in the course of such discussions, many referred to particular patients who they remembered well – and issues arising from their interaction. And one of these issues was this matter of the timing of deaths. All of the patients involved were necessarily gravely ill and in the process of dying, as that is why they were receiving hospice care.

Timing over a matter of days or weeks

The first phenomenon here was the ability of some patients to hold off dying until some particular event of importance to them had come to pass.

One nurse mentioned that a very ill man was expecting his family to come from Australia to see him in England. To her surprise, he managed to stay alive until their arrival and then, soon after, died. But there were others who were keen to see a granddaughter married or a new grandchild born, who also managed to stay alive until the event. There were said to be more deaths following certain holidays, such as Christmas.

No one interviewed had an explanation for these events, but they were stated as facts – and happened too often to be taken as mere coincidence.

Since undertaking this research, I noted that there has been some discussion of the timing of deaths in the course of a year. It seems that there are notably more deaths at the beginning of a new year than in the last days of the previous year, suggesting that dying people ‘hold on’ to see the new year arrive. Indeed, there was particular evidence of this at the turning of the Millennium. Evidently, there were strikingly more deaths in the first week of 2000 than in the last week of 1999, as reported in the Guardian Newspaper (17 January 2000). The Associate Director of the National Council on Aging, commenting on the noted ability of seriously ill people to hang on until a significant event, said “The mechanisms are something of a mystery but the phenomenon is very real.”

Timing over a matter of days

But hospice staff also noted that some people seemed to find the right moment to die. Several cited examples where patients died at just that moment when certain circumstances changed. A number seemed to want to die alone.

A large family, for example, had been spending a lot of time with their dying relative over a period of days. But at one point, one of the visitors needed to deal with their car and the entire family went to the car park for a few minutes. Strangely, this was the time when the patient suddenly died.  Another nurse told of a wife who asked her very anxious husband to go make her a cup of tea. At the time, she was not drinking or eating, but the husband, wanting to please her, went on that errand. Before he could come back, she had died.

It was thought that patients wanted to make their passing easier for their relatives.

We shall never know.

Lessons 

And what can we learn from these stories?

It is possible that they are all coincidences and one shouldn’t make too much of the issue.

But it is also possible that our internal make-up is much more complicated than we tend to think. Links between mind and body are little understood.

I happen to find it fascinating

This article was first published by SixtyandMe.com

This article was first written before the coronavirus struck the world. It has even more cogency now.

Death and dying do not make for a jolly subject of any conversation, but it is part of life. And none of us is getting any younger. Is death or dying something you think about very much?

You may prefer to think it will never happen and leave it at that. But if you are one of those people who like to prepare themselves for what is coming down the line, you might want to give it a passing glance from time to time.

As We Grow Older

I am not obsessed with death, but it does cross my mind on occasion – and probably increasingly. Before I was 60, I rarely gave it much thought at all. The possibility of dying seemed almost as remote as it did when I was a child, which is to say it was over a very distant horizon.

Now that I am in the second half of my 70s, I have to face the fact that my remaining years are increasingly limited. The statistics are not brilliant as you grow older, for obvious reasons. And, with each quickly passing year, they only get worse.

None of us knows when we’ll die, of course, but it is time to begin to recognise the situation.

Yes, some of us live well into our 90s – and centenarians are becoming much more common. I even have good health and good genes, my parents having lived to age 90 and 91 respectively.

Yet, these are details. The truth is, we will grow older and frailer and will have to face the end, sooner or later. In the words of a young woman living with AIDS, quoted in my book on the subject some years ago, “You haven’t got forever any more.”

Dying

Is it the moment of dying that worries you?

Although some people die in great distress, the much greater likelihood is that you will do so fairly peacefully. The profession of palliative care is getting increasingly clever at keeping people pain free. In the coming years, it can only get better.

I haven’t reached the stage of thinking where I would want to be – or, indeed, where I am likely to be.

Nor do I often think about my own funeral. Occasionally, when I hear a particularly beautiful piece of music, I will say casually, “You can play that at my funeral.” But in fact, it would be better played at a funeral I was attending during my lifetime as I would actually hear it.

Being Gone

Or is it the fact of no longer living that worries you? Of no longer being there to enjoy the many pleasures of life? Or no longer being there for your family and friends, some of whom may rely on you?

These are undoubtedly ‘heavy’ issues, which you may want to prepare for.

In fact, we do make many preparations without thinking of them as such. The urge to ‘downsize’ stems partly from the wish to make our passing easier for those who must administer your things. Perhaps you have done this for someone else and it came home to you how very complex such matters are.

Visits to long-lost relations – or friends you don’t see very often – may also be stimulated by the thought of doing so before it is ‘too late’. Such thoughts may remain un-articulated but are nonetheless real for everyone concerned.

Death of Loved Ones

If anything, I think less about my own death and more about the possible death of my husband, as statistically, this is the more likely first event.

Having been married almost all our adult lives, it is scary to think about being alone. Those of you who are already widowed will doubtless know what I mean.

Writing About Death

Although I really am not obsessed with death, I have written two books dealing with two different aspects of it.

One was about young people with HIV and AIDS, all of whom were dying because there had been no cure back then. It is not a morbid book at all, but it is an honest one about people facing an early death.

I was impressed with their resilience and called it Wise Before Their Time, because that is what I felt they were.

The second is about people who work with the dying. I had worked as a volunteer in a hospice and found it fascinating that so many people could go to work each day to help others die. I interviewed nurses, doctors, chaplains of various faiths, administrators, and even a very reflective chef.

I called it Life in a Hospice, because this is what it was about – the living before the dying.

Preparation

I recently watched a TV interview with Sir Ian McKellen, who always struck me as a very thoughtful man. I also have a soft spot for him as he wrote a terrific Foreword for my book about people with AIDS.

Himself in his 80s, he said he did think about death quite often and had even planned his own funeral. (And noted that he thought it sounded like such a good occasion, he wondered if he could plan an early dress rehearsal so he could attend).

He surmised that old people thought about death a lot, because it was a form of preparation. When the time actually came, it probably helped them to feel that they are ready.

(This was initially published by SixtyandMe. See https://sixtyandme.com/thinking-about-dying-doesnt-have-to-be-morbid/)

A friend asked me recently whether she should take on the role of volunteer in a cause she believed in and for an organisation she trusted. My immediate reaction, based on my own experience, was “Yes, go for it.”

Being a volunteer is likely to present a whole new series of challenges from anything you have seen before. You will be faced with new problems and will search inside yourself for new ways of coping.

As we age, we need such challenges to feel young and vital. It keeps us on our toes. I believe that research I’d read somewhere suggested that new experiences of this kind are good for our long-term health.

Volunteering After 60

There are many types of volunteer work. Some will involve the use of skills, such as teaching children to read, or driving old or disabled people to medical appointments and the like.

Other tasks will involve helping organisations with their paperwork. Or sorting clothing or other donations to charity shops.

To me, it is most satisfying to work directly with people – visiting lonely old people in their homes or helping out in care homes. In my case, I worked in a hospice and gained enormously from it.

The benefits from such work are surprising – both in the sense that they are likely to be more than you thought and in the sense that they are unexpected.

Thrown into the Deep End

If anyone had told me beforehand that I would want to make tea for dying people, I would have doubted their rationality. Yet that is exactly what happened to me. Doing it and wanting to do it.

The first time I ever walked into a hospice, I did so with some trepidation, concerned about what horrible things I would likely see. Yet all I saw was an incredible peace and tranquillity that very much drew me in. I can still remember it vividly. I wanted to be part of the place.

And so I applied to a local hospice and was taken on. The ‘volunteers manager’ interviewed me briefly and said OK. No background check. No training. Just thrown in at the deep end.

That was 20 years ago. These days, there is doubtless a great deal of bureaucracy required to obtain such a role.

My Involvement with the Hospice

I spent roughly four hours in the hospice every Saturday afternoon, week after week, unless I was away.

The institution was very small – 16 beds – but almost always full. People were admitted much earlier than they would be now. All were dying, but some of them lived for some months in the hospice prior to leaving this world.

Somehow, it felt important just to be there, just to help at this very intimate moment in people’s lives. If anything I could do would lessen the burden of patients or their families, I was very pleased.

My job was to talk to patients, especially those with no visitors, make them tea, and discuss the menu for the next day. When I started, it felt very daunting just to do these small things.

After a few weeks, however, I got used to it and became adept at making what seemed like appropriate small conversation. Visits generally went smoothly.

Difficult Moments

But now and again, I would be faced with something that gave me pause, but also taught me the skills I could muster when necessary. Here are a couple of examples.

The hospice had a chef who went to some trouble to make the food appetising. One week, around the time of Mad Cow Disease, there was beef on the menu. People all over the country were often uneasy about eating beef, although it was said that it took 20 years for infected beef to have any effect.

But yes, one patient studied the menu and asked, “Do you think I dare to eat the beef?” I said I thought it would be ok, trying not to smile. I do not have a natural poker face and this was not easy for me.

A more difficult situation was that of a father who had travelled from the south of France to see his son, who was dying of AIDS. The man clearly had not known his son was gay nor that he was ill, so it was a lot for him to take in.

I felt very sorry for him, suddenly so far from home, dealing with this delicate situation, and no English. I mentioned to someone that I spoke some French. What I had not taken into account was this man’s thick Provencal accent – famously difficult for anyone to decipher.

He began to pour out his heart. I understood exactly what was going on, but it was a strain to get the particulars. I realised I was out on a limb ­– with little I could do.

I decided to answer when I could, but otherwise, to repeat, with as sympathetic air as I could muster, “C’est tres difficile” (“It’s very difficult”). I have never forgotten that man’s pain.

Special Moments

And there were also special moments. A young man dying from AIDS, who loved opera and had a CD player, asked if I would sit with him and listen to an aria from the Pearl Fishers. Sun was streaming in from the window. It was memorable.

There was also an older man with motor neurone disease, a former architect whose mind was clear as mine, but he had no physical movement. He communicated via a board with letters, directing me to them one by one.

One day, he asked for an ice cream, which I needed to feed to him very slowly. When it was gone, he had a big smile on his face. I said casually, “You liked that, would you like another?” and he signalled “yes.” Another half hour spent, another special moment gained.

Volunteer Work

Yes, volunteering can be so rewarding; you owe it to yourself to make possible such experiences. I would be very surprised if it was not found to be enormously satisfying. Sometimes, even a privilege to be there.

I worked at the hospice for four years. I had to stop because my husband and I had decided to travel a lot. I could no longer guarantee to be there every week. Even volunteers need to be dependable.

But I found the experience so interesting that I wrote a book based on interviews I conducted with hospice staff, Life in a Hospice. In the book, nurses, doctors, and many other people – even a very reflective chef – talk about the joys and challenges of such work and its impact on their lives.

It may not be for everyone, but you might find it moving.

This was initially published on sixtyandme.com (see https://sixtyandme.com/having-free-time-after-60-can-be-so-rewarding-as-a-volunteer)

You work hard, carefully and totally out of the limelight. You produce a book that has some importance, as it is about the wonderful care that can be provided to people at the end of their lives. You think it will bring hope to ordinary people, worrying from time to time about how it will be for them or their family. Not to mention some support to those who do this work, as their labours and their difficulties are not often given much recognition.

The book gets the occasional review, but is not well marketed by the publishers, and falls into that vast collection of books that sell one or two copies a year. This is not good enough. So, you get the rights to the book back and re-launch it on Amazon. It begins to sell a lot more copies.

And then you get a review that understands what it is all about:

This is a gem of a book for anyone interested in palliative care and hospice work. There are many myths and preconceptions around what goes on inside the walls, many of them increase people’s anxiety and fear about contemplating death and dying.

Ann Richardson has taken a unique approach to this subject by sharing insights from a wide range of people who work in a palliative care setting. Their reflections are incredibly honest and insightful, as contributors share the joys and sorrows of their role. Anyone reading this collection of insights will gain a true picture of how those working in the setting bring a range of practical skills to the task in hand, but also bring themselves whole-heartedly, and often at personal cost.

There is a starkness in some of these reflections that represents the challenge of working with death every day, but if prospective patients were to read this, they would gain an assurance that those offering care are people of compassion and a deep sense of caring.

Hospices are unusual places in that they represent ‘thin places’ between life and death. People often have a view of what a building will be like that is at a great contrast from the reality. Ann’s presentation of such a variety of hospice life snap shots is a valuable resource for potential patients and their families, to give confidence in the support they will receive.

Staff and volunteers have reflected on their work with congruence and it is a tribute to Ann that they were prepared to speak about their emotions so freely. It is a unique collection of honest reflections and I commend Ann for bringing such a collection together to inform the public of the different roles with in the life of a hospice, but also to allow such a range of people a voice to share deeply held personal insights into these places which offer specialist palliative care.

Ann gives a picture of a hospice which could be representative of the many similar places that exist in this country, providing other hospices with a great resource to share with patients and staff alike.

by Karen Murphy, chaplain at Weston Hospicecare and President of Association of Hospice and Palliative Care Chaplains (AHPCC).Karen Murphy and Bob Whorton are the authors of Chaplaincy in Hospice and Palliative Care, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2017

Yes, hospice care is important – I hope many more people are able to get this message.

To buy Life in a Hospice, available in paperback or as an e-book, go to https://amzn.to/2FbSta9 or https://www.books2read.com/u/bpWk0z

On a complete whim, I applied for a BookBub promotion for Life in a Hospice a few weeks ago and, much to my surprise, got it. I thought they were interested in crime or romance books – not serious books about end-of-life care. But happily I was wrong.

For the uninitiated, a BookBub promotion means you pay them (BookBub) a not trivial amount of money ($142 in my case), lower your ebook price to 99c/99p on one agreed day and wait to see what happens. Sounds crazy, but it can work (and it did in my case). It is very easy to apply (and no charge), but not everyone gets accepted. Among authors, it is seen to be a great honour to get it.

You can apply for the US (but it costs a lot more), so I took the less risky route of applying for the promotion to take place in the UK, Canada and Australia. I lowered the price for a week beforehand – and did what I could to tell potential readers I had done so. I sold about thirty before the actual day.

The actual promotion day is very exciting because you can clock Kindle sales in real time. Two hours after it  had started, the book was already up to 60+ sales, then a bit after it was over 100 and on and on. I did take plenty of time away from my computer, but it was very compelling to keep having a peak. Sales on the other channels did not show up immediately and were a delightful surprise when they were displayed the next day.

BookBub said I could expect 300 sales (presumably, an average for the category) during the one-day promotion. In fact, I sold 401 books, mostly through Kindle but 76 via Kobo/Apple. Most were sold in the UK, but c 100 were sold in Canada and c 50 in Australia.  With an additional twenty or so sold in the days after the promotion at the normal price (presumably by people who don’t get their act together quickly enough or who respond to a friend’s recommendation), I sold about 450 copies altogether.

It doesn’t make a lot of money, as you pay for the promotion, and you make only 35p from each sale at 99p. My break-even point was 300, so I made a small profit.

BUT what I did see, which I had forgotten about, is a huge jump in the Amazon rankings. The book went up to #1 in three categories in the UK (including ‘nursing’ and ‘death & grief’), listing for the time as ‘#1 best seller’, and very high also in the US (although the book wasn’t officially on sale there, I had reduced my price in case people were looking). And the overall ranking (eg of ALL kindle sales) jumped hugely. My favourite was that the book was ranked #8 in Canada of ALL kindle books. I thought it was wonderful that a serious book about hospice care could be so high in any such list! It fell quite quickly, of course, but I did feel like Queen for a Day.

So if you are a writer, it is well worth applying, especially as it is free to do so. I am told that if you are turned down, you can apply again. I know one man who applied 12 times before he got it. Good luck.

If you want to buy Life in a Hospice, it is available on Amazon at 

getbook.at/Hospice

or on other channels at

https://www.books2read.com/u/bpWk0z

Hey you – yes you! I see you rushing off. You see the word ‘hospice’ and you think death, gloomy, morbid – not for me. You search for a good crime novel instead. No death there, of course.

But Life in a Hospice is anything but gloomy. It is a book of stories, told from the heart. And from all sorts of viewpoints. Perhaps the most important word is “life”.

You want a story with a bit of love? There’s more love in a hospice than anywhere in the world. You have an urge to be moved? Yes, of course, when talking about the end of life, that goes without question.

You want to see the complexity of human relationships? For sure, that is there in abundance. Some humour? You won’t be disappointed. You may be surprised.

Life in a hospice shows what it is like to work in a hospice and, by extension, what it is like to be a hospice patient or visiting relative. It is told in their own words by nurses, assistants, chaplains, doctors, managers and even a very thoughtful hospice cook.

They tell of the withdrawn woman who blossomed under the care of the day centre. There is the man who asked to die under a tree – and they arranged it. There are the two young daughters who asked for their father to be buried with some cigarettes and a can of lager. Throughout, there is the enormous sense of ‘privilege’ to be working in a hospice.

Yes, it is about death and dying, but as you’ve never seen it before. Hospices are teeming with life – with love, laughter, arguments and tears. To quote a cliché, “all life is there”.

And if, perchance, you are wondering where you should go when your last days or near – or, indeed, are helping a relative or friend to find such a place – you will be enormously reassured.

Reviews? You can bet they were excellent.

Now maybe that was worth staying for.

Amazon: http://myBook.to/Hospice

Other e-books: https://www.books2read.com/u/bpWk0z

Life in a Hospice was initially published in 2007 with some good reviews and an endorsement from the British Medical Association. But despite its continuing relevance to people everywhere, it fell into a fallow period, with few sales and certainly no more reviews.

Imagine my pleasure, then, when I find that the relaunched version (a year ago, spring 2017) is selling well and getting one excellent review after another.

Some of these come from people who know about hospice care already:

“As a Palliative Care physician working in the hospice setting, this book was a great help to me in many ways. It helped me really understand and relate to the many roles and perspectives within the hospice, from the chef to the nursing staff in an open honest way. It helped me see other coping mechanisms and struggles and truly re-inspires me as to the good work being done.” Matt (on Amazon.co.uk)

“As a hospice volunteer, I well know the beauty that can occur at the end of life. This book is a beautifully written and thoughtful explanation of much of what occurs in a hospice.”  Janice B. (on NetGalley)

Some come from people whose own personal lives are touched by its contents:

“What a beautiful but complicated book. As the child of two elderly parents, this is a subject I think of almost daily: this book is going to make it a LOT EASIER to deal with. The advice is smart and just and should be easily understood by any level of reader. A great sourcebook for people who are or may be dealing with this subject.”  Janet C. (on NetGalley)

And some could see it might be a help in the long run

“This is an absolutely wonderful book. It’s a must-read for everyone, especially those who are not yet aware of the fact that death is an inevitable part of life. The way people in hospice care are dealing with this is, as strange as it sounds, wonderful and it may come as a surprise that it is not all darkness and gloom.” An avid reader (on Amazon.co.uk)

It does a writer’s heart good to see such a welcome for her hard work and commitment.

Have you ever gone back to read books you wrote some years ago?  Most writers, I suspect, don’t. We write, we publish and we move on.

Some writers say that when they do go back, it makes them uncomfortable to see their earlier, less formed self.  They have learned so much in the meantime.

Indeed, some remove their own books from sale, lest readers think this is the best they can do.

Looking back with pleasure

But there is another response. Some of us return to old books to find ourselves surprised at how good they were. We have also learned much in the meantime, yet our earlier self was unexpectedly thoughtful. It is wonderful to discover.

Last year, I returned to two books I had written many years ago, which were trade-published. I was so impressed with both that I re-launched both for new readers, after getting my rights back (much easier than you think).

Ten years ago

Ten years ago, I wrote a book offering the thoughts of hospice staff about working in end-of-life care, Life in a Hospice. It had been published by a highly respectable medical publisher and had a Foreword by Tony Benn, a well loved MP. Indeed, it was Highly Commended by the British Medical Association in 2008.

But I was irritated by the lack of publicity by the publisher (taken over by a major conglomerate) and wondered how relevant it would feel today. Yes, what a delight. I was very touched by the stories and it felt fresh as a daisy!  That prompted me to take back the rights and re-publish it as both a paperback and e-book, but added a new cover.

RESULT: I must have been right, because after selling one or two books a year, it has sold nearly three hundred copies since March 2017. That’s not Harry Potter, but it is good for a book on hospice care.

Twenty-five years ago

That experience prompted me to go back to a book I had published in 1992 setting out the personal stories of people with HIV/AIDS when it was a life-threatening disease, Wise Before their Time. It was long out of print, although there were second hand copies available on the net. I approached the task of reading it with some trepidation, as I could well have been embarrassed.

On the contrary, I found myself incredibly moved by my own book, which I had not read for twenty-five years.

Although the stories have no current relevance, as people diagnosed with HIV can now anticipate a normal life span, they had a historical significance.

Again, I took the rights back and republished it as both a paperback and e-book, again with a new cover.

RESULT: It is selling less dramatically, but selling nonetheless. And it has garnered nothing but five star reviews, which is pleasing.

Conclusions

I am not a young woman, so these books – old as they are – were not written in the full flush of youth. Perhaps if I were able to go back to writings from my twenties or thirties, I would well be embarrassed.

But for those of you who have traditional publications long out of print and wonder whether to just forget about them – think again.

Take them out and have a look. You might be pleasantly surprised. And if you are a member of ALLi, you know that self-publishing is easy.  The next step is obvious.

This post was first published by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)  See https://selfpublishingadvice.org/self-publishing-back-catalogue-hybrid-authors-advice/