ALLi Blog: The Self-Publishing Advice Blog

Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Maria Iliffe-Wood — Leadership Coach, Author, and Publisher on Writing, Presence, and Trusting Your Inner Voice

My ALLi author guest this episode is Maria Iliffe-Wood, a leadership coach and writer based in the UK. She began with an academic book on coaching, then wrote a spiritual memoir and poetry. Along the way, she started helping others publish their books, too. We talk about being present, handling self-doubt, and how writing became central to her life.

Audiobook Sales Climb Back to Double-Digit Growth, Topping $2.22 Billion: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Remember those heady days when I reported on double-digit audiobook sales growth for a decade straight? Well, it seems that we have, however temporarily, returned to that time. The Audio Publishers Association has just launched its annual Sales Survey (by Toluna) and Consumer Survey (by Edison), and the results suggest that the audiobook industry is, at least on the surface, in a healthy state.

AI Recreates Agatha Christie; Nearly Half of Authors Use AI; eBook Lending Debate Returns: Self-Publishing with ALLi featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway reports on a BBC Maestro course using AI to recreate Agatha Christie, a Nordic platform’s AI book-recommendation chatbot, and a BookBub survey showing nearly half of authors now use AI. He also covers renewed tension over library eBook lending after Penguin Random House pulled comics from a school platform.

AI Acts as Librarian, Revives Agatha Christie, and Outsmarts Humans on Reddit: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

This week’s AI news all falls firmly into the “what’s it done now?” category I mentioned last week.

Books Without Barriers – Making Your Writing More Accessible: The Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast Featuring Anna Featherstone

Host Anna Featherstone speaks with Julie Ganner and Dr. Agata Mrva-Montoya, co-authors of Books Without Barriers: A Practical Guide to Inclusive Publishing. They discuss how authors can make their books accessible from the start—by addressing formatting, fonts, image descriptions, and digital navigation.

Comics Plus and Penguin Random House Clash Over E-Book Lending Models: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Remember back to the innocent days just before COVID turned the world on its head and we were blissfully unaware of NFTs and generative AI? As 2019 closed and 2020 dawned, one of the things keeping people in the book world up at night was the raging battle between libraries and publishers over e-book lending.

How Authors Measure Success: Income, Fulfillment, and the Joy of Storytelling

As authors, we have many ways to measure success beyond bestseller lists, awards, or sales figures. For some, it’s about creative freedom or building a sustainable business. For others, it’s about connecting with readers, leaving a legacy, or simply finishing the next chapter.

Live Events Drive Author Success in a Changing Industry: Self-Publishing with ALLi Featuring Joe Solari

On the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, host Joe Solari explains how attending live events changed the course of his career and why in-person conferences still matter. He discusses how to choose the right event, prepare effectively, and build lasting connections that support a profitable publishing business.

BookBub Survey Finds Indie Authors Divided on AI Use, Ethics Still a Major Concern: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Surveys are always great reading. They have more or less value in terms of understanding the challenging landscape, largely depending on their sample size and the transparency around it. This week we have a survey that’s both interesting and enlightening—and on the becoming-perennial subject of authors’ attitudes toward AI. It comes courtesy of a BookBub survey. This means that the kind of authors represented will be very like a sizeable portion of the cohort of indie authors. Indeed, 69 percent of authors who responded to the survey only self-publish, and 25 percent were hybrid.

AI Fakes Book List in Major Newspaper; Spotify Sees iOS Boost; Authors Push Back on Copyright: Self-Publishing with ALLi Featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway covers an incident in which the Chicago Sun-Times recommended AI-invented books by real authors, and a troubling test in which Anthropic’s AI, Claude 4.0, threatened a user with blackmail. He also reports that Spotify has seen a rise in iOS subscriptions following the Apple ruling on in-app purchases, and shares the latest from ongoing AI copyright debates in the UK and EU, where authors and creators continue pushing back against efforts to weaken protections.

Spotify Reports iOS Payment Changes Boost Subscriptions; Bluesky Rolls Out Verification: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

It’s only a couple of weeks since courts ruled that Apple could not keep taking a sizeable slice of all in-app sales. But things have moved really fast in that time (it’s almost as if companies were waiting for the ruling to pounce into action with an oven-ready plan in response to iOS payment changes).

Behind the Scenes of the Editing Process: Self-Publishing with ALLi Featuring Matty Dalrymple

In this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast, Matty Dalrymple talks with Kristen Tate of the Blue Garret editing service, a seasoned freelance editor, about the intricacies of editorial services and how authors can effectively engage with editors. The conversation provides insights into the editing process, the role of trust in the author-editor relationship, and how to navigate the often complex landscape of editorial pricing and contracts.