Subscribe For Substack Essays

I use Substack to publish more personal, reflective writing alongside the blog resources.

You will find practical lessons on how to self-publish, alongside commentary on creative ambition and the realities of bringing your manuscript to life.

If you are interested in both the strategic side of self-publishing and honest behind-the-scenes thoughts, it’s the best place to follow along.

Excerpt (29 June 2026)

There is a particular kind of guilt in self-publishing: the feeling that if your book does not sell, it has somehow failed. Spend enough time around online publishing discourse, and you start to absorb the idea that marketing enthusiasm is mandatory and that authors who dislike selling are simply resisting reality. But I’m not convinced book sales are the only meaningful measure of success.

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  • "Now, as we sit here in 2026, creative writing makes me cry. In the blink of an eye, in what has felt like a singular tick in time, the way we write fiction is no longer uniquely ours."

  • "Here is my plea: share your story projects with strangers in the comments. Tell bedtime tales to your toddlers. Fawn over folklore when you’re in a museum. Roll over to your partner and ask if they want to hear something scary before they go to sleep."

  • "The thread seems to share a common realisation that, when you self-publish, you don’t end up with a book at all; you end up with a product. And what is a product in our ever-entrepreneurial society but something that must be marketed and sold?"

  • "There are fears that even standout stories get lost in this ocean, and that authors are stuck between a rock (posting on Instagram) and a hard place (posting on TikTok). Authoritative voices say that every author hoping to be worth their weight in salt must ‘play the game’ of commercial activity or risk feeling like a no-sales failure forever."