Three Creative Practices for Body Mind and Spirit

The Go Creative method offers three forms of creative practice: . Creative Practice: Body: Effortless Exercise Effortless Exercise is moving the … Read more

How Self-Publishing Saved My Writing Life: Thoughts from #LBF2014

ALLiance of Independent Authors members at The London Book Fair
Some ALLi members at The London Book Fair

What a week!

The London Book Fair ended yesterday and it was, in the words of my old neighbour's daughter, whenever she's seeking her highest praise for an exciting experience, “off the wall mental”.

During the fair, I found myself:

* On Monday 7th: speaking at Digital Minds Conference with the Director of Author & Publisher relations at amazon.com, Jon Fine, and indie superstar, Hugh Howey, sharing with the publishing trade my reasons for switching from being published by one of the “Big Five” to self-publishing my own work. And why I founded ALLi (The Alliance of Independent Authors). And, I hope, helping them to understand

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Opening Up To Indie Authors: Book Launch

Opening Up To Indie AuthorsCopy of my speech at the Open Up To Indie Authors launch at The London Book Fair

The guidebook we’ve gathered here today to launch is part of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)’s Open Up To Indie Authors campaign (found on Twitter with the hashtag #PublishingOpenUp).

This campaign is aimed at book fairs and conferences, award bodies and libraries, festival and event organisers, retailers and reviewers, and anyone who acts as a bridge between writer and reader — and at self-publishing writers themselves.

Open up to what? To the most exciting and expansive movement in the books business for centuries: author publishing.

Half or more of the books on Amazon’s bestseller lists are now self-published. ALLi has many members who have sold more than 100,000 copies of their books; some who have sold in their millions and many more who are producing work of outstanding literary merit.

Corporate publishers and agents are watching and pouncing on successfully self-published authors, hoping to woo them over.

There is no denying that publishing times are a-changing — but those changes are still not reflected throughout the literary world of libraries, reviews, bookstores, festivals and prizes.

This book, and the associated campaign, hopes to change that.

#PublishingOpenUp

The Open Up To Indie Authors (#PublishingOpenUp) campaign includes

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Final Launch Roundup

Closing a week of posts about the launch of the Alliance of Independent Authors at London Book Fair, this (long) post offers:

LAUNCH of self-publishing independent authors alliance

  1. A fascinating and lively podcast discussion I took part in on The Naked Book, about self-publishing's place in the industry.
  2. Some favourite quotes from the launch of ALLIA.
  3. Links to some great follow-up posts by bloggers who were there
  4. Best tips for those thinking about self-publishing from four superb indie authors.

[That's me in the photo on the right, getting a tad

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Launching Free

[#ALLIA  #writing] Maybe it's because I'm Irish but every book I've ever written has had a lot to say about freedom — even my very first publication, a nonfiction book with a small feminist press in Dublin (Attic, now part of Cork University Press), called BodyMatters For Women.

That was a health and exercise book – the day job then was fitness instructor – but the most important chapters, for me, were those dealing with ways to break free of our society's messed-up messages about women's bodies.

From there to the book I'm working on now – a novel about

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