The Business
I had thirteen subscribers. That’s the whole reason why the move was easy, and it’s the only piece of advice in this post that I would push on anyone. Every article you will read about leaving Substack is written by someone with ten thousand subscribers, agonizing over the
indie author
The honest, unfiltered account of building an indie author business from the inside.
The Journey
At Self-Publishing Show Live (SPS) in London this year (2026), someone in the audience asked a question I've been considering for months. They wanted to know how you juggle it. All of it. The writing, the ads, social media, mailing lists, cover design, the metadata, the accounting,
The Business
The answers were in six months of my own data all along. I just never had time to find them.
Resources
From 30 years as a designer to running a publishing business: the four tools doing most of the visual work.
The Business
It's not just time. It's the mental load of running two businesses in parallel.
Craft
Thirty years of design thinking turned out to be exactly the foundation I needed to write fiction.
The Business
The system behind the analysis, and why getting organised first is what makes it work.
The Journey
It took a global pandemic, a lockdown, and a partner who knew me better than I knew myself.
Craft
I spent years not finishing novels. Then I tried something different.
The Business
The tooling is the easy part. Everything before and after it is where the real work is.
Resources
An honest look at Bookbub and Facebook/Meta ads, the wins, the mistakes, and what I'd do differently.