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 new opportunities an indie boost brings, the lies budding writers tell themselves, and the 29 best SP podcast episodes of all time (apparently).

Self Publishing Opportunities

As we’ve mentioned plenty of times in the Weekly Write-Up before, whilst the traditional publishing industry remains relatively flat from a business perspective, self-publishing grows more popular with each passing year. As such, Forbes has written an article compiling all the different opportunities this growing industry presents – besides the obvious (writing books). These include becoming a publisher, and offering editing and cover design services.

You can read Forbes’ article here.

Writing Lies

The key to writing a book? Sitting down, day in and day out, and putting words onto the page. It really is as simple as that (selling the book afterwards is another thing entirely). Of course, it’s easy to rationalise why you “can’t” do it – too busy, not talented enough – but really, you’re just avoiding the threat of failure.

Here’s an article that lists the most common excuses for not writing, and why you shouldn’t be listening to yourself saying them.

The 29 Best Self Publishing Podcast Episodes of All Time…

…according to the Good Men Project, which is apparently a website dedicated to what it means to be a good man. I have no idea – it came up during a search of “self publishing news”.

Despite the random source, it’s actually a pretty good list of podcast episodes for an aspiring indie author to check out. There are ones from The Creative Penn, The Author Biz and, of course, the Self Publishing Show – five episodes in fact.

They are: #93 (Cecelia Mecca), #175 (Shayne Silvers), #176 (David Gaughran), #177 (Mark Dawson) and #134 (Adam Croft).

You can look at the full list of recommended podcast episodes here.

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.