Our guest speaker in October was Holly Greenland, a self-published author and content writer, currently undertaking a study investigating the shared characteristics of self-published authors through a PhD at Kingston University.
Holly self-published her debut novel “Murder on Maternity” through Amazon’s KDP platform in 2020 and recently co-authored a guide to democratic engagement as a commission for the Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA).
Before returning to academia, Holly worked across the public sector, including at the BBC and UK Parliament, building over fifteen years’ experience in market insight and communication strategy, as well as content writing, production and publishing. She continues to freelance for the charity and public sectors.
Holly shared her personal experience and insight in self-publishing, and why she chose to explore how personality types, demographics and other characteristics may (or may not) influence an author’s chances of success. The session also included some initial findings from the study, which gathered information from over 800 authors. The final goal of this research is to build profiles of different types of self-published authors to support writers of the future to plan their approach, investment and goals when self-publishing to increase their chances of success.
Murder on Maternity is available as a paperback, or on Kindle, from Amazon.
You can find out more about Holly on her website: www.hollygreenland.com
