by Tom Ashford
Welcome to the SPF Weekly Write-Up, where each Wednesday we’ll be collecting together the self-publishing news of the week so you don’t have to.

This week: the winner of Amazon’s Kindle Storyteller prize is announced, an eleven year old from South Dakota self-publishes his own books, and Mark Dawson makes an unexpected appearance on your telly.

And the winner is…

…Hannah Lynn, for The Afterlife of Walter Augustus! She beat four other (I’m sure equally impressive) shortlisted authors to claim this year’s Kindle Storyteller prize – an award that recognises outstanding books published in English through KDP.

The book sounds fantastic, by the way. Here’s the blurb:

Walter Augustus is dead. His current state of existence has become a monotony of sweet tea and lonely strolls and after decades stuck in the Interim — a posthumous waiting room for those still remembered on Earth — he is ready to move on. Only when he is forgotten by every living person will he be able to pass over and join his family in the next stage of the afterlife. At last the end is tantalizingly close, but bad luck and a few rash decisions may see him trapped in the Interim for all eternity. Letty Ferguson is not dead. Letty Ferguson is a middle-aged shoe saleswoman who leads a pleasant and wholly unextraordinary life, barring the secret fortune she seems unable to tell her husband about. However, when she takes possession of an unassuming poetry anthology, life takes on a rather more extraordinary dimension.

Congratulations, Hannah!

11-year-old Novelists. Whatever next?

Here’s a story to warm your heart.

Evan Anderson, from South Dakota, is eleven. He’s also already written his first book, and is hard at work on his second. Even better – he’s self-publishing!

Apparently Evan got the idea to go down the self-publishing route by interviewing Jean Patrick, an author of several books for children. She told him about Createspace, and given the obstacles presented by a.) being ten at the time and b.) his book only being eighteen pages long, he thought it was the best choice.

The result is The Adventures of Waffles the Cow Detective – The Kidnapping of Chris P. Bacon, which he wrote, edited, formatted and illustrated all by himself.

Extremely impressive! I can’t wait for him to release the sequel: The Disappearance of Albert Einswine.

Mark Dawson on BBC South Today

Start getting your autograph books signed before he’s too famous to be seen with us!

Our very own Mark Dawson appeared on the BBC’s South Today programme to talk about his new book, Sleepers, which by complete coincidence shares a few themes with the recent Salisbury spy poisoning… which just happens to be where Mark resides.

As the interview says, truth can be stranger than fiction!

He also gets a chance to fly the flag for self-publishing too, pointing out the stark difference in royalty rates between the independent route and the traditional model. Hopefully there were some aspiring writers in the South of England watching!

Tom Ashford

Tom Ashford is a professional copywriter, author of numerous dark fantasy and sci-fi novels, and the Head of Content at the Self Publishing Formula Blog. His books include the Blackwater trilogy and the Checking Out series.

He lives in London with his wife, in an apartment that doesn’t allow pets. Find out more about Tom here.