Living Our Best Creative Lives; And Inspirational Indie Author Steff Green

Welcome to AskALLi, the self-publishing advice podcast from the Alliance of Independent Authors. This week, it's our monthly Writing Salon, where we discuss the craft of writing with author Dan Blank and ALLi Director Orna Ross. This week, Orna and Dan talk about managing all of a writer's assets. As writers, we think about the work we need to do to create our books but perhaps not enough about the writing we do to build other assets that are very important to our author business. In this salon Orna chats with Dan about the value of websites, branding, processes, teams, and other intellectual property. How to evaluate these assets, and our book projects, through the lens of profit and pleasure. And how, in a busy creative life, we need to look after our most important asset: ourselves. Also, on Inspirational Indie Authors On today's Inspirational Indie Authors interview, journalist Howard Lovy talks to Steff Green. She's a paranormal romance author, teaches self-publishing courses, and is also a children's author who just Kickstarted a Gothic Picture Book. It's a book about bullying called Only Freaks Turn Things Into Bones.  Steff talks about how she was bullied as a child due to her blindness, which gave her a deep understanding of how a bullying victim feels. And, like the main character in the book, she was a Goth kid. Howard and Steff also discuss how she successfully launched a Kickstarter drive to fund the book. Find more author advice, tips and tools at our Self-publishing Author Advice Center: https://selfpublishingadvice.org, with a huge archive of nearly 2,000 blog posts, and a handy search box to find key info on the topic you need. And, if you haven't already, we invite you to join our organization and become a self-publishing ally. You can do that at http://allianceindependentauthors.org. Now, go write and publish! About the Hosts Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller's "100 top people in publishing". She also publishes poetry, fiction and nonfiction, and is greatly excited by the democratising, empowering potential of author-publishing. For more information about Orna, visit her website: http://www.ornaross.com Dan Blank is the founder of WeGrowMedia, where he helps writers and artists share their stories and grow their audience. He is the author of the book "Be the Gateway: A Practical Guide to Sharing Your Creative Work and Engaging an Audience." Howard Lovy has been a journalist for more than 30 years, and has spent the last five years amplifying the voices of independent publishers and authors. He works with authors as a "book doctor" to prepare their work to be published. Howard is also a freelance business and technology writer. Find Howard on LinkedIn and Twitter.