Welcome to the SPF Weekly Write-Up, where each Wednesday we collect together the self-publishing news of the week so you don’t have to.

This week: the RITAs are cancelled, and the first guest speakers are announced for the Self Publishing Show Live.

Trouble at RWA, RITAs Cancelled

I’ll be surprised if you haven’t heard about the happenings over at Romance Writers of America already – it’s all anyone in the indie sphere seems to be talking about. First there was a dispute between authors over cultural depictions in a twenty-year old novel, then between the authors and the RWA, and now, following this controversy and the withdrawal of support from Big Five imprints, the 2020 RITA awards have been cancelled.

We won’t go into any further details than that (it’s all over the internet and the news has made its way into the SPF Facebook groups already), but you can read about the situation here.

SPS Live – First Guests Announced

The first ever Self Publishing Show Live event is now less than two months away – who would have thought? It sneaks up on you. Well, we’re excited to announce the first four guests!

First up we have Joanna Penn, who many of you will know from her podcast, The Creative Penn. She’s a good friend of SPF, a thriller author, and a great public speaker.

Then we have LJ Ross – perhaps the most successful indie author in the UK – who will be sitting down with Barry Hutchison (who writes crime fiction under the name JD Kirk).

And then we have Jasper Joffe, who will be part of a panel of small publishers who are revolutionising the way writers get their books into the hands of readers. Jasper did 2m in sales last year, and at one point had as many as 18 books in Amazon’s top 100.

That’s not everyone, of course… More to be announced soon.

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.