London Writers' Salon

Indie authors Joanna Penn, Orna Ross, and Eleanor Anstruther on going direct to readers and protecting your rights, the business and money side of self-publishing, and building an audience by serialising on Substack.
You'll learn
Why the writers you admire may not make their money the way you think.
What separates an independent author from someone who simply self-publishes.
When a traditional deal makes strategic sense, and why your book is an intellectual property asset.
How a ten-poem experiment revealed what self-publishing really changes.
The seven processes that make up the craft of publishing, and why production is only one of them.
Where marketing connects to the book itself, and why outsourcing it too early rarely pays.
A money principle every indie author should adopt from their very first sale.
How years of rejection can become the foundation of an independent creative life.
What a year of one-minute daily posts taught one writer about the fear of pressing publish.
The non-negotiable rule for serialising a novel on Substack, and how to keep readers from losing their place.
Episode Links
#033: Joanna Penn — The Indie Writer Path, Web 3.0 & AI-Assisted Creativity
#052: Orna Ross — How to Succeed as Indie Author, Marketing Essentials, Paying Yourself First
#144: Eleanor Anstruther — The Book Industry Rejected Me. So I Built My Own Audience on Substack; Serialising Online, Writing Literary Fiction; Being an Independent Artist, Creating Your Artist DNA
Resources & Links
Eleanor Anstruther — website
A Perfect Explanation by Eleanor Anstruther
The Literary Obsessive on Substack
Orna Ross — website
Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)
The Creative Penn Podcast
Writing in Community — LWS Community Anthology
About Lulu
If you're self-publishing a book, Lulu now offers a Direct Buy Button that enables you to sell direct to your reader through a simple code. There's no cost to using it and it makes it easier to sell books directly from anywhere: your newsletter, social profile, website or podcast - and you don't have to worry about shipping or taxes. For more information head to lulu.com.
About the Guests
Joanna Penn is an award-winning, New York Times and USA Today bestselling thriller author as J.F. Penn, as well as writing non-fiction for authors. She has sold over a million books across 176 countries and 5 languages. Her podcast, The Creative Penn, has been downloaded over 10 million times in 228 countries.
Orna Ross is a bestselling and award-winning author of historical fiction and inspirational poetry. She is also a creativity facilitator and the founder-director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi). She has been named one of The Bookseller's Top 100 people in publishing and advocates for self-publishing as an artistic expression and viable business option for authors.
Eleanor Anstruther was born in London, educated at Westminster School and studied History of Art at Manchester University where she was distracted from finishing her degree by a trip to India. She was lost and found for the next twelve years, starting a commune and travelling the world before finally settling down to write. Her acclaimed debut novel, A Perfect Explanation (Salt Books), was long listed for the Desmond Elliott Prize and the 2019 Not The Booker Prize. Since then Eleanor has grown a significant following on Substack, concentrating her new work there where she serialises her novels ahead of publication, as well as running a hugely successful interview project called 8 Questions. Her memoir, A Memoir in 65 Postcards & The Recovery Diaries, and her second novel, In Judgement of Others, were both serialised on Substack before publication, and her latest novel, Fallout, was published by Empress Editions in April 2026. If you'd like to connect directly with Eleanor, come on over to The Literary Obsessive on Substack, and get in touch.


For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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Sunday Times bestselling author Emma Gannon on healing burnout through play and joy, trusting your creative intuition over people-pleasing, and what she's learned from self-publishing alongside traditional publishing.
You'll learn
Why burnout might be healed through play and joy rather than by pushing harder.
How some books arrive in a month while others take years, and why there's no single right way to write one.
The case against selling a book before it's written.
A squirrel-inspired method for gathering raw material and letting a book's themes reveal themselves.
What to remember when you're tempted to talk yourself out of writing a book.
When people-pleasing quietly drowns out your creative intuition, and how to hear it again.
How small, everyday acts of creativity keep the spark alive between big projects.
What to do on bleak days, and why your younger self might hold the answer.
Self-publishing from the inside, including the numbers behind one book.
How judging a major literary prize can stretch you as a reader.
Resources & Links
📄 Interview Transcript (unedited)
Emma's Substack, The Hyphen
Emma Gannon's website
Our previous podcast episode with Emma: #089: Emma Gannon — The Success Myth, Substack, Self-Publishing, Productivity Dysmorphia, The Arrival Fallacy, Being A Happy Creative
A Creative Compass by Emma Gannon
A Year of Nothing by Emma Gannon
Table for One by Emma Gannon
Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert
City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert
Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
How to be Hopeful by Caitlin Moran
The Pound Project
Writing in Community — LWS Community Anthology
About Lulu
If you're self-publishing a book, Lulu now offers a Direct Buy Button that enables you to sell direct to your reader through a simple code. There's no cost to using it and it makes it easier to sell books directly from anywhere: your newsletter, social profile, website or podcast - and you don't have to worry about shipping or taxes. For more information head to lulu.com.
In Partnership with Discoveries 2027
This episode was recorded in partnership with Discoveries 2027, the Women's Prize Trust's writer development programme for unagented and unpublished women writers. Discoveries is designed to empower new voices, unlock potential, build confidence, and increase writers' skills and knowledge.
Submissions for Discoveries 2027 opened Tuesday, September 15. Submit here.
About Emma Gannon
Emma Gannon is the Sunday Times bestselling author of nine books, including A Year of Nothing and OLIVE, which was nominated for the Dublin Literary Award. Her second novel, Table for One (2025), was selected as People magazine's 'Fiction of the Week.'
Emma also writes one of the UK's most popular Substack newsletters, The Hyphen, which has thousands of paid subscribers. In addition to her writing, she hosts creativity retreats around the world and served as a judge for the 2025 Women's Prize for Non-Fiction. Her latest book is A Creative Compass: Finding Your Way to a Creative Life.



For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
*
FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
Twitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalon
Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Poet, publisher, and educator Anthony Anaxagorou on treating rejection as part of the job, pushing an idea to its edge without losing the reader, and ending a poem where it can keep travelling — a re-release of episode #012.
You'll learn:
Why walking away from writing for years doesn't necessarily mean you ever left it.
How to treat rejection as part of the job rather than a verdict on your worth.
What happens to your work when one stamp of validation starts to feel like an entitlement.
How a restless, never-satisfied mind can become a creative engine.
A morning listening exercise, borrowed from Lydia Davis, that can hand you the first line of a poem.
What to do when you're stuck on a line and the answer is sitting on your bookshelf.
Why “accessible” is one of the most loaded words in poetry.
How far to push an idea before you lose the reader.
Two ways to take a flat, literal line and make it tell the truth slant.
Why your poem probably starts later and ends earlier than you think, and what the reader does with the space you leave.
Resources & Links
Original episode: #012 Anthony Anaxagorou — Push Past Self-Doubt and Think Like a Poet
Anthony's website
How to Write It
After the Formalities
Heritage Aesthetics
Out-Spoken
Out-Spoken Press
“Tell all the truth but tell it slant” by Emily Dickinson
About Anthony Anaxagorou
Anthony Anaxagorou FRSL is a British-born Cypriot poet, fiction writer, essayist, publisher and poetry educator. His poetry has been published in POETRY, The Poetry Review, Poetry London, New Statesman, Granta, and elsewhere.
His third collection, Heritage Aesthetics (Granta Poetry, 2022), won the 2023 RSL Ondaatje Prize. His second collection, After the Formalities, was shortlisted for the 2019 T.S. Eliot Prize and called a poetry book of the year by the Telegraph and Guardian. He was awarded the 2019 H-100 Award for writing and publishing, and the 2015 Groucho Maverick Award for his poetry and fiction, and in 2023 was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. In 2012 Anthony set up one of London's leading poetry nights, Out-Spoken, a monthly poetry and music night now held at London's Southbank Centre, and established Out-Spoken Press – a publishing house that looks to challenge the lack of diversity in British poetry publishing.
His craft book, How to Write It, was published by Penguin's #Merky Books in 2020.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
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Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!

Bestselling novelist Marti Leimbach on the art of writing a novel, surviving early success and the long career that follows, and turning lived experience into fiction — a remastered version of episode #016.
You'll learn
Why your relationship to the page has to outrank every other voice in writing and publishing.
How to tell apart the voice that says you're no good and the voice that says you're not finished.
The case for admitting you're not up to the task before you sit down to write.
What a genuinely good writing day looks like, and why a single sentence can count as one.
Why no novel is ever perfect, and what Picasso understood about original work.
How enormous early success actually lands on a writer, and what the morning after looks like.
A way of finding the real story inside a draft that has grown far too big.
When self-doubt is a sign of talent rather than a lack of it.
Why some books have to be written as fiction rather than memoir.
The trick of convincing yourself you have unlimited time when you clearly don't.
Resources & Links
Marti's Books on Amazon
Marti's website
Marti's Instagram
Great On The Page — Marti's Substack
Original episode: #016: Marti Leimbach — The Art of Writing a Novel
About Marti Leimbach
Marti Leimbach is known for her bestsellers, Dying Young, made into a film starring Julia Roberts, and Daniel Isn't Talking. She is interested in neurodiversity and has shared the stage with young inventors at the Human Genome Project (Toronto), the National Autistic Society, and the University of Oxford. Her interest in science influenced her YA thriller, Dragonfly Girl.
She teaches on the Masters Programme in Creative Writing at the University of Oxford. Dragonfly Girl is her eighth novel, but her first for young adults.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
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FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
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Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
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Pellerin Books founders Laura Palmer and Jessie Sullivan on how readers discover books now, where to put your marketing money, and why the quality of the book still decides everything.
You'll learn
The rule that quietly decides which authors get a publisher’s time, budget and attention.
Why the first question about marketing a book is never “how?”
How to research your readers and your market without paying for a single tool.
The metric that makes an ad campaign look like it is working when nothing is.
What a cover and a developmental edit should cost, and the one place never to skimp.
Why raising your ad budget too fast makes it perform worse, not better.
How subscription reading changed what a sagging middle chapter costs a writer.
Whether a publisher actually cares how many followers you have.
Three books on writing that between them cover almost everything, and the two-word rule that keeps readers turning pages.
Why you cannot keyword your way into a reader’s life in the age of AI search.
Resources & Links
📄 Interview Transcript
Pellerin Books
K-Lytics
Publisher Rocket
Kindlepreneur
Pellerin Submissions
Bookbub
Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You’ll Ever Need by Jessica Brody
On Writing by Stephen King
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders
Pellerin Publishing Advice
About Pellerin Books
Pellerin Books is a new independent publisher of popular fiction, built for the way readers discover and fall in love with books today. It publishes immersive, emotionally engaging stories readers can’t put down – from thrillers to romance, historical fiction to science fiction, saga to fantasy and everything in between. It is a digital-focus publisher, which means ebooks and audiobooks are at the heart of what it does, although all its titles are available in paperback for readers who love to hold a book in their hands.
At Pellerin, we believe deeply in good books and the difference they can make. We became publishers because we believe in the craft of storytelling, the power to create living worlds and characters that reach beyond the page. Making books, for us, is a way to be part of that strange magic that binds reader and author when the right book gets into the right hands.
About Laura Palmer & Jessie Sullivan
Laura’s love of storytelling drew her into the publishing industry in 2007 as an assistant at Quercus Books, where she was part of the team that discovered and published Stieg Larsson. In 2010, she joined Corvus, where she rode the ebook boom, delivering sales previously unheard of for new authors, and was shortlisted for the Kim Scott Walwyn prize for women in publishing. In 2012, she co-founded Head of Zeus, alongside publishing veterans Anthony and Nicolas Cheetham. As executive director and fiction publisher, Laura ran three imprints and published more than a hundred authors at Head of Zeus. Bestselling authors she has worked with include Dani Atkins, JP Delaney, Dan Jones, Graham Masterton and Amanda Prowse.
Jessie Sullivan has spent her career at the intersection of publishing and performance-led marketing. She is one of the most commercially effective marketers in modern publishing, with over £8 million in directly attributed revenue and more than £10 million in total marketing impact.

For show notes, transcripts and to attend our live podcasts visit: podcast.londonwriterssalon.com.
For free writing sessions, join free Writers’ Hours: writershour.com.
*
FOLLOW LONDON WRITERS’ SALON
Twitter: twitter.com/​​WritersSalon
Instagram: instagram.com/londonwriterssalon
Facebook: facebook.com/LondonWritersSalon
If you’re enjoying this show, please rate and review this show!