What is Indie Author Lab? START HERE and download your resources.
Jntroducing Indie Author Lab (IAL) in association with ALLi, London Book Fair and Author Nation. FAQ & IAL Online Give it a Go Offer
As you may know, I recently trialled Indie Author Lab at the London Book Fair, in association with the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), the online global non-profit for self-publishing authors. Since then labs have come together for small private retreats and large author conferences, including Author Nation 2026.
Now, in response to demand, Indie Author Lab Online has found a home here on my Substack as a year-round, online program—a space where the Lab can live between live gatherings, and beyond them.
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a novelist and poet, a proud indie author who’s sold tens of thousands of books in more than 100 countries—and the founder of ALLi. I created this personal creative development practice for writers because at ALLi we’ve seen how indie authors are being flooded with information.
Some is plain wrong, some helpful but presented in unhelpful ways. Another tactic, another tool, another ten things we’re apparently doing wrong. It’s exhausting, and I see many talented writers grow disheartened, even despairing, beneath the weight of it all.
I believe the answer to this challenge is not more information but the opposite: time and space and a guided creative process that allows us to access what we already know. Indie Author Lab is built around the guidebook I wrote for ALLi, Creative Self-Publishing and my Go Creative! planners for authors, which were created thanks to a 2024 Kickstarter.
It also incorporates the most up-to-date thinking harvested from premier publishing events around the world.
Designed to be a space for reflection, focus, and forward motion, refreshed by the best thinking from the global writing and publishing conference calendar, the Lab shapes itself around your needs and challenges.
The premise is simple: Arrive with your most pressing challenge. Leave energised, with some core creative work done, and the next month mapped out.
In the age of AI, we all need to go deeper—into our reasons for writing and publishing at all, into what we want to achieve, and into our best definition of a writing and publishing life well-lived.
And we need to consciously plan our activities from a creative perspective, so we can say ‘No’ to what might look shiny and sound exciting but is not right for us, right now.
Indie Author Lab runs on an idea I’ve spent my whole creative life proving to myself and others: ‘creative’ is a state, not a trait. Creativity isn’t a gift handed to a lucky few. It’s actually your primary, most elemental state—and one you can enter consciously, through practices that anyone can learn.
Once you’ve experienced this, resistance and self-doubt, talent and energy, stop being verdicts and become conditions you can work with, accept, or change.
The clarity we’re looking for is within, waiting for us to listen, engage and respond. Indie Author Lab is a guided process for doing that. Yes, a chartroom holds recent sessions from the London Book Fair, Author Nation and more—but the real advances happen when we surface what's most relevant to us, right now, and get to work and rest and play with what we most truly want.
I offer all my writer subscribers and friends a month’s trial, to test the waters and see if Indie Author Lab might be what’s needed, or not. If you’re curious, drop me a direct message in Substack to say so and we’ll set that up for you.
The Indie Author Lab isn’t more noise to keep up with. It’s the opposite. So take a breath. This isn’t about giving you more to-dos. There’s nothing to catch up on and nothing you’ve already missed.
Let me show you around (see below). And let me know your thoughts with a DM or email any time.
I hope to see you soon for some mapping and planning. Until then, happy reading, writing and publishing.
May the flow rise to meet you!
Indie Author Lab: Questions & Answers
What is Indie Author Lab?
The Indie Author Lab is an education and creative-development programme for writers founded by me, Orna Ross, and run in association with the Alliance of Independent Authors, the London Book Fair, Author Nation, and other leading writer conferences and retreats. And now online, here on Substack.
Indie Author Lab Online isn’t a one-off event. It’s a workshop series, not a webinar. An ongoing space for reflection, focus, and forward motion—designed around your challenges, refreshed by the best of the global indie calendar, and led personally by me, month after month.
Though it offers the latest thinking, the Lab isn’t really about advice. The Lab is guided by experts, yes, but very much led by you. There’s a chartroom with talks, panels and Q&As with experts who know all about the craft and the business of publishing—but the heart of it is your own self-directed work, rest and play.
Getting honest about where you find yourself, right now. Naming the challenge that top of mind for you at the moment. Going deep to ensure that’s actually the challenge you should be working on. Drawing on the support available. Practicing creative rest and play as part of the process. And only then, mapping your way forward.
Who is Indie Author Lab for?
Workbook exercises and planners meet you where you are, and unfold through a universal creative and publishing process, making the Lab suitable for all levels, from aspiring author to authorpreneur.
Indie Author Lab: What’s included in the Substack Membership?
Indie Author Lab Workbooks: A workbook is built around the seven processes of publishing—editorial, design, production, distribution, marketing, promotion and rights licensing—but it also harnesses the magic of creative process and practice. Beginning where you are, it directs your focus to the particular challenges you’re facing right now.
Chartroom of Selected Resources: The best of the indie author year, gathered in one place. Talks, sessions, and insights harvested at the London Book Fair (UK), Author Nation (US), and other leading indie author events around the world—distilled and brought to you, online through the magic of Substack. Ebook copy of Creative Self-publishing, the guide I wrote for the Alliance of Independent Authors, now used by creative writing and publishing teachers around the world.
Downloadable, printable tools, based on the exercises in Creative Self-Publishing and a proven sequence of success that has worked for thousands of indie authors. Quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily planners are provided.
Monthly online workshop. Substack Live Audio session each month in which you tackle the next part of your writing and publishing plan, using the planners and workbook to go deeper, and focus your momentum. And each month, there’s the audio Q&A session (the ‘Ask Me Anything’ part of the monthly live creative salon) where you can ask your questions and get responses, live.
Indie Author Lab: What should I expect across the month?
Week 1: Setting your month-sized intention
In the first week, you set a month-sized top creative intention under one or all of three headings: Maker, Manager, Marketeer. You are offered creative practices that turn down the noise and enable you to listen for your own answers—or you choose a favoured practice of your own. Then you fill out the maps and make a plan to carry into the month to come, together with the supportive tools, shared practices and community to keep you on track.
Week 2: Doing the work (and rest and play)
Using the archive for inspiration, while keeping to your practices, you write, publish, and market according to your own intention, at your own pace. The tools from Week 1 travel with you, and you observe the creative process doing what the creative process does. Not every day will go in the direction you want, or feel 'productive'. That's not failure; that's information to note, and to bring to our workshop.
Week 3: Substack Live Workshop
This is the heart of the lab each month: the workshop on Substack Live. The moment you hold your intention and what’s actually been happening up to the light and ask (with attentive curiosity not critical judgement): what's working, and what isn't?
Each workshop starts with a short talk around a theme, then a review of what’s happened since setting our intentions two weeks before. Together we do a series of exercises and create a plan that is ours alone—not a generic checklist, but a clear sense of where we need to place our attention, and why.
We finish with a Q&A. Bring any writing or publishing related questions. I’ll answer where I can and the hive mind will also have lots to offer. The session doesn’t finish until every question is answered, that’s my promise.
Week 4: Finishing Energy, Cycle Completion, and Celebration
Now you renew—recommit to the intention; revise—adjust the plan to meet where you actually are, not where you thought you’d be; or release—let go whatever is not working. So much of the creative life is learning what not to do.
The focus now is on completing what you started to your satisfaction, so you can set a new top intention next month.
Then remembering to celebrate your win.
Whatever is happening in your writing or publishing life, this planning and production process has room to hold it, and will expand your creative capacity and discernment, so you can set, work, gather, release — and begin again, just where you should.
How does it work on Substack?
Everything comes to your inbox. Each month a Lab post—next workshop date and details, your workbook and anything else you need—arrive to you by email (unless you opt out), the way any newsletter does. You can read the instructions, download the planners, and play the recording right there in your inbox, without having to go anywhere or log into anything.
You can also read on the web or in the app (iOS and Android, free). Every post also lives on Substack, so you don’t have to worry about posts getting lost in a crowded inbox. All of my writing lives together in Substack, organised into sections. The Indie Author Lab is in the ‘For Writers’ section—so you can go straight there any time and see everything in one place. You can consult this on any device: desktop, tablet, phone. If you’d like it all in your pocket, the app makes that easy. The app is also where our member-only community chat feels most alive.
Joining the conversation. Every post has a comments space beneath it, and members also have our closed community chat—a warm back room you can step into whenever you like. Some months you’ll be chatty; some months you’ll simply want to know we’re here. All good.
Making it yours. You’re always in control of what lands in your inbox and how often. Tap your account settings any time to adjust your notifications—take everything, or just what you want. Your call, always.
That really is the whole of it. Set things up once, and from then on you simply show up.
What if I need More Support?
The community chat room is a warm, member-only space you can step into whenever you like—to think out loud, to cheer someone on, to ask a question, or simply to lurk among others following the same process.
Use the chatroom to share your small accomplishments and bigger wins, the inevitable wobbles, the hopes and dreams you haven’t told anyone else yet.
Some months you’ll be vocal; some months you’ll just want to know we’re there. All good.