Anna Featherstone talks with author Sarah Martin about the production and distribution of her two purpose-led nonfiction books, Dear Psychosis and Dear Carer. Sarah explains how she built a professional publishing team, changed her approach for her second book, secured consignment with a local bookstore, and used speaking engagements—including one that generated a 260-book order—to reach readers.
Listen to the Podcast: Purpose-Led Publishing
Sponsor
This podcast is proudly sponsored by Gatekeeper Press — your partner in premium independent publishing. Empowering authors with expert guidance, 100% rights, 100% royalties, and global distribution. From editing to marketing, their all-inclusive services help you publish professionally and confidently. Gatekeeper Press — Where Authors Are Family.
About the Host
Anna Featherstone is ALLi’s nonfiction adviser and an author advocate and mentor. A judge of The Australian Business Book Awards and Australian Society of Travel Writers awards, she’s also the founder of Bold Authors and presents author marketing and self-publishing workshops for organizations, including Byron Writers Festival. Anna has authored books including how-to and memoirs and her book Look-It’s Your Book! about writing, publishing, marketing, and leveraging nonfiction is on the Australian Society of Authors recommended reading list. When she’s not being bookish, Anna’s into bees, beings, and the big issues of our time.
About the Guest
Sarah Martin is the author of two books, Dear Psychosis (2023) and Dear Carer (2026). She is a perioperative nurse, carer peer worker, and SANE Australia peer ambassador with lived experience navigating Australia’s mental health system as a carer. Sarah is passionate about breaking the silence and stigma surrounding mental illness and ensuring that carers know they are not alone.
Read the Transcript
Anna Featherstone: Welcome, and thanks for joining us from your special part of this beautiful planet we are so lucky to call home. I'm Anna Featherstone, recording today from the lands of the Palawa people, the original storytellers of lutruwita, Tasmania — where it's been a fabulous week with everything from platypus encounters to apple collecting and pressing. Today's conversation is going to give you some great ideas about what new authors can achieve with just one or two books, the journey between those two books and what you learn along the way, and how a book born from deeply personal experience can find its way to the people who need it most — through speaking stages, hospital corridors, carers groups, and of course the local bookshop.
Our guest is Sarah Martin — author, perioperative nurse, mental health advocate, carer peer worker, and SANE Australia Peer Ambassador. Welcome, Sarah.
Sarah Martin: Thanks, Anna. I love that introduction — you can do my intros anytime.
Anna Featherstone: You do so much — it makes it easy. We've known each other for a little while now, and what's come through so strongly is that you're on a mission to break the silence and stigma around mental health. One of the ways you've gone about that is through your two books: Dear Psychosis in 2023 — a nonfiction account of your family's journey with psychosis, bipolar disorder, and depression — and now your second book in 2026, Dear Carer, which is like a handhold for anyone loving someone through complex mental health concerns. In that second book you take a different tack, drawing on the insights of many people outside of the family unit. We've got a lot to talk about. Where are you joining us from today?
Sarah Martin: Surprise, surprise — I'm normally a Sydney dweller, but we're actually in Singapore. While you've been seeing Australian marsupials, we've been on a monkey walk this morning and saw monkeys and a couple of little snapping turtles. Very good.
How Dear Psychosis Was Born: A Facebook Message from Istanbul
Anna Featherstone: Let's start with your first book, Dear Psychosis. One day you received a Facebook message out of the blue from a Syrian refugee, telling you that your daughter — who was traveling alone in Istanbul — was having a mental health crisis. That's a whole story people can read, but what I'd like you to do is take us back to the moment you decided that experience needed to become a book.
Sarah Martin: Even though I'm a nurse, I had no idea about mental health — how to treat it, what we should do. Nobody did. I'd ask the nurses, the psychologists: ‘Where can we go?' And there was just nothing. I wanted a book I could read, that would show me somebody else had been through a similar experience. Same, same but different, because none of us ever walk the same path. I felt lost, alone, guilty — all the emotions — and I needed something out there for me, and I realized there wasn't anything. So when our daughter was well enough, I said, ‘I've collated a bit of information and started writing. I've got enough for an article — actually more than enough for an article, but not quite enough for a book. Would you mind writing some words down?' Our oldest son, who'd come across to Istanbul to find her, did the same. Then we had enough for a book. And when she was well, I said, ‘Can we put this out there to help other people like us?' And she said, ‘Yes, Mum, stop asking me. Yes, let's do it.'
A nonfiction book is often born when you can't find something for yourself. And we all know that the words we write aren't going to mean something to everyone — but they'll mean an awful lot to certain people. So if you're writing nonfiction: keep going. Don't let anyone stop you.
What She Learned Between Books: Editors, Coaches, and Formatting
Anna Featherstone: You had no idea how to put a book together when you started, like most of us the first time. What were some of the bumps in the road, and what did you do differently producing the second book?
Sarah Martin: A friend of mine said I should get a book coach. So I joined one — a group, actually, with about four of us writing memoir or narrative nonfiction and the rest writing business books. I thought: if I get one tip per session, this will have been worth it. And I did. That's actually how I first heard of Anna Featherstone, and then through the Australian Society of Authors I attended one of your online talks.
I went to pitch the book to publishers — I thought everyone would love our story and of course they'd want to publish it. They were interested in reading it, but I feel like there's a kind of cloak that comes over people when you talk about mental health. It's not in their wheelhouse. It went no further. So: how am I going to get this book out into the world? And then — Anna Featherstone, self-publishing. I purchased your book, and it became my Bible. Almost every second or fifth page is marked. I'm not an annotator, but I certainly was with your book. The reason I self-published I put down to that book.
I also had a rejection via a friend who'd sent it to a publisher in Western Australia, and she said, ‘Nobody wants to read this story because it's very similar to others out there.' I knew that wasn't true. And the rejection actually made me more hungry. I was never, ever going to write another book — that was my first and only. But then I got the bug.
Anna Featherstone: Talking about production — did you lay out the first book yourself or outsource?
Sarah Martin: I outsourced. I had an amazing editor, a copy editor, and a proofreader. For the proofreader I put it out there and got about five replies. Three didn't have websites, and I cut those straight away — if you want to sell your business to me, I need to see what you're offering. One who replied said, ‘Oh, this is great.' I told her it was on mental health, so there'd be trigger warnings and sensitivities. She said, ‘I'm a late-diagnosed woman living with bipolar.' And I went: this book is for you. She has since gone on to edit my second book, Dear Carer. It's serendipitous. I couldn't have asked for someone more perfect.
Anna Featherstone: There's an editor out there for every book. And when you find that fit, it's a beautiful coming together of minds. Sometimes people settle for any editor — they might be writing fantasy but they get a thriller editor — and that can be a huge clash. Finding someone with that same background and interest means the book becomes their passion too.
Sarah Martin: For formatting, a friend who is a fellow writer — we've been writing together most Tuesdays and Thursdays for almost a year now — said she'd do it for me. Her name is Melinda Charlesworth, and she's just published her own book, Hike Like a Flamingo. She said, ‘There are no mates rates. This is business. Our friendship is something else.' And I wanted it to look professional. I didn't want anyone to be able to see at a glance that it was self-published. I wanted it edited, I wanted other people to read it. You become so involved in your own writing that you look at it and think, ‘This is perfect' — when actually it needs tweaking.
Cover Design: Confronting for Dear Psychosis, Warmth for Dear Carer
Anna Featherstone: Did you change cover designers between books? They're very different books and very different covers.
Sarah Martin: The first cover — Dear Psychosis — is a girl with thick black marking pen all over her face, and this was an actual photo of my daughter. A friend offered to do that cover. With Dear Carer, the new cover is a big red heart with two little legs standing there, small hands holding the heart, and butterflies. It's a beautiful cover, and I needed it to be very different from the first. The first cover either makes people pick it up and talk about it, or makes them walk away — but either way it starts a discussion, which is what mental health conversation is all about. With the second book, I wanted it to feel like a big warm hug. Carers often don't think of themselves as carers — they're just looking after a loved one, it becomes part of their DNA. I didn't start thinking of myself as a carer until I became a carer peer worker. So I wanted Dear Carer to gently reach those people who don't yet know they need it.
Anna Featherstone: And the Dear Carer cover was done by a professional cover designer?
Sarah Martin: Yes, that's her actual job. A proper cover designer. And the cover really does feel very warm.
Romancing the Local Bookstore — and Selling Nearly 90 Copies
Anna Featherstone: For authors who feel daunted by distribution — approaching brick-and-mortar shops who might turn you down, approaching speaking opportunities — tell us about eventually winning over your local bookstore with that first book.
Sarah Martin: I heard — I think it was you, Anna, or Kelly Irving from The Book Coach — saying ‘You need to tell people that you're writing a book. Don't be silent about what you're doing.' So I thought, I need to romance the local bookstore. I went up there with three possible cover images and showed them around. They looked at the face-with-marking-pen cover and said, ‘Oh no, there's no way we'd ever sell a book like that here.' That ended up being the cover.
At different stages I went back. Then, just before I launched, I bought six small posies of flowers and brought them in to thank the staff for their help along the way. They said, ‘When the book's out, bring us five copies.' Book came out, I brought five copies. On the Thursday. On the Saturday they emailed: ‘Can you bring another five? We've sold out.' Then another five. Then ten. I ended up selling just under 90 copies of Dear Psychosis through that one bookstore, and I am their best-ever self-published seller.
Anna Featherstone: Amazing. So it really is about romancing — but you've also got to put yourself out there.
Sarah Martin: With Dear Carer — two weeks old now — I've sold ten copies at Lane Cove Bookshop and they've asked for five more. I emailed them today and said, ‘The thing about carers is they don't think of themselves as carers. If you put this book in the front of the store, it'll walk out on its own — someone coming in for a romance or a mystery will see Dear Carer and think, this might actually be really good for me.' It's stepping out of your comfort zone to give a little tip. But this is real life, lived experience. People won't always go looking for a book like this, but if you give them a little sniff of something, they will.
Anna Featherstone: And you're distributing on consignment through that bookstore, and listed with IngramSpark and the online retailers. But another big distribution channel for you is speaking engagements.
Speaking Engagements, Carer Peer Work, and Becoming a SANE Ambassador
Sarah Martin: I became a carer peer worker in a local hospital alongside my work as a perioperative theater nurse. When I published the first book, I gave a copy to my carer peer work team and said, ‘This is the living version of what carer peer work is about.' They read it and the speaking invitations started from there.
Anna Featherstone: For listeners in other countries — what is carer peer work?
Sarah Martin: In Australia, carer peer workers are people who have supported someone with a mental health condition — a partner, a child, a sibling — and who now support other families in similar situations. Consumer peer workers are people who live with conditions like bipolar or schizophrenia themselves and support others with those conditions. I'm a carer peer worker, so I speak to parents, siblings, work colleagues, anyone who has an affiliation with someone they're caring for. It's a paid position within the hospital, and we also sit on committees to make sure that when decisions are made in a hospital setting, the voices of carers and consumers are not forgotten — because people often talk about you rather than to you, which is unfortunately common in mental health.
Anna Featherstone: And how did you become a SANE Ambassador?
Sarah Martin: A journalist friend of mine spotted me at our son's surf boat race, sitting on the beach going through my manuscript. Her husband walked past and said, ‘Look at that lady with the big bundle of pages.' She looked back, saw me, and said, ‘I think I could get you on ABC Life Matters — I have a friend there.' So my daughter Alice and I went in and recorded a segment. At the end, they mentioned SANE's online forums and resources. SANE then contacted Alice and me and asked if we'd be peer ambassadors. We both said absolutely — anything to break that silence.
Anna Featherstone: That's such a perfect example of being visible with your writing — showing up, even if it's on the beach going through a manuscript. You never quite know what it might lead to.
Sarah Martin: I've just done three keynote addresses with Uniting — an organization that supports carers and consumers living with mental health conditions. They'd heard me speak through my carer peer work. The more you get out, the more you get on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn — keep doing it. I find LinkedIn really hard to break into, but you just keep knocking on doors. A friend of mine said, ‘Put your books into competitions. They might not get anywhere, but think about who's reading your book. The judges are people who may never have found it any other way.' So: get it out there. Say the words.
Awards, Competitions, and Supporting Other Authors
Anna Featherstone: You've had experience with awards — it can go very well for some people and be a waste of money for others. Have you gotten more selective with the second book?
Sarah Martin: Even with the first book I was selective, because it's expensive. Dear Psychosis won first prize at the Chanticleer Book Awards — an international American award — and the Goody Business Book Awards, another international one. I was so proud. This year I'll put Dear Carer into a few Australian awards, because I feel the book deserves that opportunity. But the important thing to remember: don't worry if your book doesn't win. I have a friend whose cover is absolutely stamped all over with awards, and that's amazing. But your book is perfect for what it is. We need authors to support other authors. It might mean buying and championing the work of someone you've never met — but that's what builds this community.
Bulk Sales, Wrapped Books, and No Rules in Self-Publishing
Anna Featherstone: When you're speaking in those rooms, are you allowed to sell books at the back, or are they sometimes purchased in bulk by the conference organizer?
Sarah Martin: With my last one, the conference organizer asked for 260 books. I wrapped them individually. My husband said, ‘Why are you wrapping these? They're just going into a bag.' And I said, ‘Everyone's really special.' I just love the idea of a little bit of heart going into it. I wanted the carers to know I appreciated them, and that's one small way to show it. As self-published authors, we can do whatever we want. We can contact editors, we can contact Anna Featherstone for assistance. There are no rules — you can't not do something just because it's not conventional.
Anna Featherstone: Exactly. Why not? Why not give that a crack? If you don't knock on that door, you'll never know.
The Cozy Crime Novel in the Drawer — and What Comes Next
Anna Featherstone: You started a cozy crime fiction novel before Dear Carer called you instead, and put it in a drawer. Has it come back out yet?
Sarah Martin: Yes — after this holiday. I needed to breathe a bit, have some space. And then it's definitely coming out, because it's got good legs. It actually needed that time away. Now I've got more ideas for it and I can't wait. It's a completely different direction, and I can't wait to bring it out.
Anna Featherstone: And what's your feeling about how sales of Dear Carer will go compared to Dear Psychosis?
Sarah Martin: Marketing is so hard — I think it's the hardest part. Once you put a book out, you don't just have a year and then that's it. You are forever marketing, forever talking, forever giving those words airspace. It means knocking on doors, sending emails. I've had some bookshops where getting paid has been hard, so I won't go back to certain stores. Now when I send books to a bookshop, I track the total in every email: ‘This makes 15 books in total.' My local, Burnside Bookery in Lane Cove, has been amazing. And Better Read Than Dead in Sydney — James there did not hesitate. Many bookstores you email just never reply, and I don't think they always realize the gold that independent authors have written.
Closing: Building a Brand, Keeping the Line, and Showing Up
Anna Featherstone: I love how you're building that line — Dear Psychosis and Dear Carer. You're building a brand, and that's really smart. Where can people find you and your books?
Sarah Martin: Sarah Martin Author on the website, and the same on Instagram. I do most of my stuff there. Don't stop. Keep showing support for your author community — readers, writers, editors, anyone. If people read your book, you want them to tell other people. I say to my friends, ‘Your job is to tell people about my book.' That's it.
Anna Featherstone: ALLi is great for that too — such a wonderful community of independent authors learning from each other and sharing information. This podcast is shared around the world, and people take heart from hearing from authors like you, who are putting one foot in front of the other, listening and learning, and being part of a community.
Sarah Martin: It's the sharing. Don't stop. Keep doing it.
Anna Featherstone: Beautiful. Thank you so much, Sarah. It takes courage to write the books you write and share the stories you share, and it's a huge generosity the way you show up for carers and families navigating some of the hardest moments of their lives. Purpose-led publishing is something I find incredibly powerful. You can find Sarah's books and her work in the show notes. And to all of you out there — whatever you're writing about, whatever corner of the world, lounge room, or library you're creating from — thank you for being part of this very special ALLi podcast family. I'm Anna Featherstone. Best wishes to all of you until next time. Thanks, Sarah.
