Self-Publishing: The Good, The Bad and the Beautiful

As more writers turn to self-publishing to get their stories out into the world, does the option offer radical creative freedom, unbound by genre or marketing expectations, or do platform algorithms and discoverability make it harder than ever to be seen? 

This panel, chaired by self-publishing scholar Rachel O’Connell, invites three writers who got their start with self-published works — Alyson Greaves (Welcome to Dorley Hall), N M J Coveney (Everything Not Saved), and TJ Williams (Shades of Onyx) — to comment on the good, the bad, and the beautiful of pursuing self-publishing and where their work has gone from there. 

This panel was curated by students from the University of Sussex and the Brighton University.

Alyson Greaves is a trans woman who transitioned in the early 2000s and to whom nothing eventful has happened since. She started writing fiction on Archive of Our Own in the 2010s, but wrote nothing original until 2020, when like many other people she was stuck inside. In 2021, she started The Sisters of Dorley, a web serial on AO3 — and later Scribblehub — that is still going. Through the story she was introduced first to self-publishing on Amazon, then to Patreon, then to an editor who wanted to pitch it to their publisher. The second book, Secrets of Dorley Hall, comes out in late 2026. Alongside this, she has continued to publish independently, with her sci-fi trans body horror novel Kimmy and her nostalgic trans/cis f/f cheerleader series When You Fell from Heaven finding success outside mainstream publishing. She is currently working on the next chapter of something, probably.

N M J Coveney (Nick) has worked in the book publishing industry for over sixteen years in a variety of roles. Everything Not Saved is his debut novel. His life-long passion for stories whether in books or computer games has been voraciously pursued in enjoying as many of both as humanly possible. Nick lives in London with his husband, fellow author Patrick Ness, their family currently consists of an overthinking Irish Doodle, Biscuit, an extremely happy Cockapoo named Oreo and a (human) baby daughter

TJ Williams is a queer, autistic author who uses they/she pronouns. She lives in England with too many cats and a toddler who likes to throw things at her, reads an unholy amount of mm books, and can quote Peppa Pig word for word. Since they were old enough to hold a pencil, they’ve been creating worlds to escape into, and any time someone tells them one of their books resonated, they have a little happy cry. It’s her goal to write the kind of stories she couldn’t find when she was growing up, because all queer POC deserve to see their love stories. All their books feature Black and brown characters, queerness, disabilities and body diversity. She loves to crochet (iffy), bake (rarely) and rewatch her comfort shows (happily).Find them on social media at @tjwilliamswrites

Rachel O’Connell (chair) teaches creative writing, LGBTQIA+/queer studies, and recent/contemporary American literature and popular culture at the University of Sussex. She is also the co-convenor of the MA in Sexual Dissidence, an MA programme in LGBTQIA+/queer studies offered at the University of Sussex. Rachel’s research focuses on writers’ identities and strategies in romance fiction and self-publishing, and on the interactions between fiction, publishing practices, and digital cultures, technologies, and economies. Rachel also researches queer genders and sexualities from the Victorian period to the present, across British and US literature and culture. She has published work on Imogen Binnie’s trans road novel, Nevada; on gender, sexuality, and precarity in the TV show RuPaul’s Drag Race; and, in a forthcoming article co-authored with Dr Luke Robinson at University of Sussex, on Casey McQuiston’s queer romance novel Red, White and Royal Blue.