Featherstone 
Three Writing & Publishing Podcast Episodes I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You About
Whoops me! These podcast episodes have been available on the ALLi site for a little while but I haven’t posted about them until now due to a bad case of manuscriptitis. Yes, that’s the chronic bookish ailment I live with that keeps me mostly head down (when it’s not in the clouds as Mum would say), doing the thing I love most: helping authors with their books and strategy.
FYI: before you try sending me your author-antibodies or book-inoculation advice, I’m not looking to be cured.
So here they are (better late than never!), three new conversations for the Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast that will get you thinking, dreaming and hopefully trying and doing new things that help you on your writing and publishing journey.
- Your Book’s Digital DNA: A Conversation About Metadata with Abbey Clark from NielsenIQ BookData
- Publishing with Purpose: Nonprofits and indie publishing with Anna Borzi AM
- Verse, Visuals, and Special Edition Decisions” Making a Book with Intention with Lande Jewels
Your Book’s Digital DNA: A Conversation About Metadata
I know, I know. The word “metadata” doesn’t exactly make your heart race. But this conversation with Abbey Clark, Account Manager for Metadata at NielsenIQ BookData Australia genuinely matters to your book’s visibility.
Here’s the thing about metadata: most authors think of it as that box you fill in on a publishing platform. Title. Author name. Done. But metadata is actually the entire digital ecosystem that determines whether your book gets found by readers, retailers, libraries, and the algorithms that connect all of them. Abbey calls it the digital DNA of your book, and after this conversation I really can’t think of it any other way.
We cover everything from when to start setting up your metadata (earlier than you think), to which fields have the most impact on discoverability, to the common mistakes that undermine a book’s reach. We also talk about what happens when your metadata is out of date, like when you win an award or release a new edition, and how to make sure those updates actually travel through the ecosystem.
If you have a book in the world, or one coming, this one is genuinely essential listening. It’s the behind-the-scenes infrastructure most authors overlook entirely, and it costs nothing to get right.
Publishing with Purpose: First Nations Writers Publishers
Anna Borzi AM is the Chair and Director of the First Nations Writers Festival and its publishing imprint, First Nations Publishers. She grew up in Papua New Guinea, and has spent years living alongside First Nations communities around the world, and also has a background in international investment banking.
Her volunteer-run charity, The First Nations Writers Festival, started as a literary event and has grown into a publishing platform, often the only publishing pathway available to the Pacific writers it serves. We talk about what it means to publish in an authentic voice, in colloquial English, for a global readership and how to produce and distribute on a lean model.
The part of this conversation that I keep returning to is Anna’s discussion of the shift away from expensive festival appearances and traditional advertising toward sustainable, purposeful social media marketing. It’s a reminder that doing more is not always the answer, and that knowing your mission makes it easier to know what to say no to.
Beyond the Manuscript: Lande Jewells and the Decisions That Shape a Book
Lande Jewells, a pen name, which we talk about, is based in London and has written Musea, a poetic guide to London’s museums written entirely in rhyming verse, with illustrations.
But the conversation goes well beyond the book itself. Lande raises a question I think more authors should sit with: are we expected to show the same kind of social responsibility in how we produce our books as other businesses are expected to show in how they produce their products? Her answer, put into action, led her to produce a special edition of Musea crafted by book artisans whose livelihoods were affected by a missile strike in Ukraine. We talk about how that collaboration came about, why she wanted to make the people behind the book visible, and what working on a special edition taught her about publishing that she couldn’t have learned any other way.
We also get into Kickstarter as a publishing model and the very practical realities of getting an unconventional book into the world.
Come Find These Episodes Wherever You Listen
The Self-Publishing with ALLi Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms, and you can find the production and distribution stream, which is my corner of it at selfpublishingadvice.org/podcast.
Hope you enjoy the listen, and here’s to you and your books.
— Anna