Starter for 6: Indie Authors Scotland

"We set up in June 2013 after Sinclair spent many hours in cafes with lots of people keen to learn how he had self published seven books and sold over 100,000 copies. He had a background in IT and web design before becoming a full time crime fiction writer. He handles all the techie bits of self-publishing. I have a background in training, coaching, NLP, positive psychology and run Happiness Clubs. I help our writers to develop a positive, successful mindset and make the most of the opportunities self-publishing presents.

"We offer an online training programme called Bookcamp where they can learn everything they need to know to produce and sell both eBooks and print books. We also offer a professional service to produce their books if they don’t want to do it all themselves. 

"We encourage everyone who wants to self-publish a book to produce the most professional book they can and have fun doing it. We offer a range of options to help them do this and we NEVER take royalties as we think this is the writer's reward. We have built a community of independent authors who also encourage and support each other. As the community grows so does our business as we develop more training or services to help them.

"We joined Starter for 6 in March 2014. It’s a competitive process to get in, we had to prepare a presentation and show that our business was innovative. We knew we had a great idea but wanted to build our business muscles and Starter for 6 was an ideal way to do that.

"The programme has really helped us to develop our idea. We added the book publishing services to our business as a direct result. We now have a much clearer vision of what we can do for our customers as well as understanding how the business stacks up financially.

"We successfully pitched for funding at the end of Starter for 6 to help our business grow. We have also gained lots of knowledge, great connections and more business confidence to go out and make a difference in the publishing world. The whole programme is amazing – learning with other creative people is great. The training, support and encouragement is first rate, and the funding is a bonus – the energy that this will inject into your business is worth so much more." [Kim MacLeod]