ALLi Blog: The Self-Publishing Advice Blog

Increase Your Profits with Translation Sales: Self-Publishing Conference Highlight

Want to license your book into a translation but unsure where to start? Join Margaux Weisman, business development director at DropCap Agency, and Monica Meehan, vice president of business development and rights director at DropCap Agency, for an insightful discussion with Michael La Ronn on the world of translation sales and how DropCap Marketplace can help connect authors with foreign rights buyers.

Debuts, Awards, TV Buzz, and More: ALLi Member Milestones April 2025

This regular post from the Alliance of Independent Authors celebrates ALLi member successes to inspire our indie author community. Our ALLi Member Milestones, April 2025, celebrate the successes of author members Kelle Lima, S. G. Baker, Amy M. Le, Gary Corbin, Marcha Fox, Barbara Mostella-Oliver, Catherine Matthews, Anna Lucia, L. S. Westhoff, and Mark David Gerson. Congratulations to all those featured in this month’s roundup and to everyone in our community who has hit a milestone!

NaNoWriMo Is Closing Down After Two Decades: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

“So long and thanks for all the fish” is one of the most famous quotations from my childhood. It is, of course, the title of the fourth book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series—and the last line spoken by the dolphins as they exit Earth before its destruction. Whatever Adams’s intention, it is a phrase I have always associated with wistful goodbyes.

Former Book Retailer of the Year Disappears from High Street: Self-Publishing with ALLi featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing News Podcast, Dan Holloway reports on academic publisher Taylor & Francis using AI to translate books into English, sparking backlash from translators. He also covers OpenAI’s controversial Studio Ghibli–style image filter and its copyright implications and notes the end of WH Smith’s presence on the UK high street as the retailer shifts focus to airport book sales.

W H Smith Sale Signals Shift in Book Retailing: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Occasionally, I come across a story that may have limited reach but strikes a very personal chord. I hope that, like the best chefs, if I season my reporting sparingly enough with them, I get to indulge without too much offense. This is one of those stories. One of the UK’s most famous and longstanding retailers, W H Smith, has been sold. The simple blue-and-white signs bearing its name will no longer frequent the high street.

StorySelling for Authors: Self-Publishing Conference Highlight

Join Bill Mueller in this session for novelists, poets, and nonfiction authors who want to harness the power of StorySelling to create deeper connections with their audience and encourage them to purchase. Learn the psychology behind why stories work, a life-changing technique for uncovering and crafting compelling stories from your own experiences, and how to seamlessly integrate stories into your marketing and promotional materials across a wide variety of platforms.

AI Translation Sparks Backlash from Translators and Authors: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

Another week, more AI angst. While the Meta AI scandal is not going away any time soon, this week it is AI translation that’s causing the issues—specifically, academic publishing giant Taylor & Francis’s decision to use AI translation to bring research to an English-language audience.

Author Jules Horne on How Writers Can Use Deliberate Practice to Build Skills and Confidence

I'm more of a pantser—someone who figures things out on the page rather than planning every move. But when I heard that Scottish author and writing coach Jules Horne had applied the concept of deliberate practice—something musicians and athletes have used for generations—to writing, I was intrigued. Her book, Deliberate Practice for Creative Writers, argues that focused, bite-sized exercises can help writers build their skills more efficiently than just grinding through another draft. In this Q&A, I ask her how it works, how she uses it herself, and how writers like me might apply it without giving up spontaneity.

Inspirational Indie Author Interview: Annie Fox. Former Educator Writes Fiction That Helps Young Readers Find Themselves

My ALLi author guest this episode is Annie Fox, an educator and author who writes for young adults. She talks about how her background in human development shapes her fiction, why she chose to go indie, and what it really takes to reach readers in a crowded market. Her work explores identity, belonging, and what it means to find your people.

Book Excerpt from ‘Creative Self-Publishing:’ What Does Success Look Like?

Welcome to a new monthly feature on the Self-Publishing Advice blog, where we highlight standout titles from ALLi’s library of self-publishing guidebooks. This month, we’re featuring an excerpt from Creative Self-Publishing, written by ALLi Director and Founder Orna Ross. You can purchase a copy of the book in our bookstore, or, if you're an ALLi member, you can download this and all of our guidebooks for free in the Member Zone—just log in and go to “Publications.”

Authors Call for Compensation as Meta Faces Backlash Over AI Training with Pirated Books: Self-Publishing News with Dan Holloway

The “Meta used pirated copies of my books to train its AI” scandal is most definitely not going away. A recap for anyone who hasn’t been on the internet since last Thursday: The Atlantic published a search facility for the aggregated piracy site LibGen. Writers have been using it and finding out that their titles are on the list (including two of mine). Meta gave the go-ahead from the highest level to use LibGen to train its LLaMA AI. Allegedly, that highest level knew it was a piracy site. Now, those writers call for compensation (inter alia!).

Meta Faces Backlash Over AI Training with Pirated Books; Unbound Shuts Down: Self-Publishing with ALLi Featuring Dan Holloway

On this episode of the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Dan Holloway reports on growing outrage after authors discovered their titles among pirated books used to train Meta’s AI model. A searchable LibGen database, highlighted by The Atlantic, has sparked widespread concern over copyright violations. Dan also covers the collapse of Unbound, a crowdfunding-based publisher, and what it means for indie authors.