Much like with the Bulgarian History Podcast itself, I began working on my first book because I felt it should exist.
My career goal was long to get my PhD, become a professor, and ultimately teach and write books about Bulgarian and balkan history. When I decided to turn off the academia path, the podcast became the easiest way to pick up at least part of that career I had always wanted. But for years my focus was with the podcast alongside my regular career as a writer and voice actor.
During the Covid-19 pandemic I finally felt I had the spare time to really take on the challenge of writing a book. The First Bulgarian Empire seemed like an obvious place to begin, it was the first major part of Bulgaria’s history that we really know a lot about, it was where the podcast had begun, and it wasn’t very well covered in English language books.
I had a few advantages when it came to writing the book. First, I had the episodes of the podcast’s first season covering it. Granted, those were written many years earlier but they still served as a good starting point. I also now had the time and about a decade of experience as a writer to help me focus and get the job done.
As a result, the actual writing of the book largely happened within a few months. I went back on occasion and added things and tried to improve the text wherever possible. I also traded work with a fellow editor, handling the editing of her PhD thesis in exchange for her editing my book. I was also lucky enough to be put in touch with Simeon Nechev who helped me create a cover and custom maps. But my focus shifted towards finding a publisher.
Naively, I thought this part would be fairly straightforward. I had a built-in audience via the podcast, had worked in marketing for a decade, and was experienced with interviews. I felt more than ready to help promote the book and thought these advantages would give it a very good shot of success. I had even met with some Bulgarian publishers around the start of the project and they expressed interest. However, once I had a completed draft, I found few if any even answered my emails.
Even publishers specializing in Bulgarian history weren’t interested, telling me my book was too academic and that I should have a PhD in order to write something like this. The fact that this came with no specific critiques of the text itself made me quite frustrated. If the book was well-written, accurate, and added something important to the field, who really cared about a PhD?
In fact, when I approached an academic publisher they had the book anonymously reviewed by three historians specializing in the region and period. Their feedback was overwhelmingly positive. The problem with this publisher was that the resulting book would have cost around $100 a copy. I was well familiar with this kind of academic book only designed to be purchased by libraries because I had spent a small fortune on such books to help write the podcast. To me, charging that much eliminated the entire purpose of the book and so that offer was rejected.
This continued for around four years. Every once in a while I would pour hours more work into preparing proposals for various publishers, but nearly all were met with silence. By the summer of 2025 I finally felt I had waited long enough and decided I would simply self-publish the book. I had long resisted that route because I worried it wouldn’t be taken seriously and that I wouldn’t have the capacity to help organize distribution.
That last point was important because I could have easily just self-published and sold exclusively online. But I wanted the book to be available at bookstores and ideally at historical sites. The goal was for regular visitors to Bulgaria to find this book and enjoy it. I wanted to help publicize this remarkable history and relying solely on self-publishing would mean largely limiting the book to people already familiar with my podcast.
Very fortunately, right around the time I decided to give up on finding a publisher I met with Aric. We had lunch the year before where I heard about his wife and his plans to move to Plovdiv and launch a project to promote Bulgarian culture, history, and heritage. At this meeting I was delighted to hear that Aric and his wife had indeed completed their move and were pushing ahead with that project. When he mentioned that they were also publishing books, it immediately seemed like the perfect opportunity.
I had always wanted to find a publisher who would appreciate why I wrote the book and would share my goal of raising awareness of Bulgaria’s history. Aric and his publishing venture shared that goal on a deep level. It was really a match made in heaven.
That was only a few months ago and I’m delighted to say the book is available and selling well. We have lots of events planned to promote it and the early feedback has been excellent. It ultimately took around five years between the initial idea and the book's ultimate publication, but looking back it was worth waiting for the right partner to make it a reality.