Orna’s Annual Planning Workshop 2024
Do you want to focus on growing your publishing business in 2024? Join Orna Ross, founder-director of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and a group of dedicated indie authors for what has become a fixture in the indie author calendar: Orna’s Annual Planning Workshop for Authors and Poets: live at 5pm (UK time) on January 6th 2024, or in replay.
How can I register for the Annual Planning Workshop?
You have two options to secure your place:
- You can register for the workshop, live or in replay, as a one-off, here: SelfPublishingAdvice.org/planning24
- You can make a longer-term commitment to the “publishing for profit” method and get additional benefits by becoming one of Orna’s workshop planning patrons on: Patreon
- Once registered, you’ll be provided with full details of how to prepare and attend.
What to expect from the Annual Planning Workshop
This workshop brings together writers from various backgrounds and experiences, but all united in their determination to make 2024 their most productive and profitable year as a self-publishing authors.
The aim is to provide a supportive and collaborative environment for creative planning, enabling you to go deeper into your own publishing values and motivations, set good creative intentions, and develop an effective publishing plan for your writing and publishing in the coming year.
A series of fun and engaging activities–including brainstorming sessions, f-r-e-e-writing exercises, and prompts, will tap into your imagination and foster creative flow, so you can explore:
- the challenges and opportunities that indie authors face in the coming year and how creative planning can help,
- the importance of rest and play to the creative process, in publishing as in writing, and the principles that enable creative publishing,
- the three hats an indie author must wear and how to improve your abilities under each.
Throughout the workshop, Orna and the group will share ideas, experiences, and tips on topics such as time management, finding inspiration, and overcoming resistance.
Go Creative! Planning for Authors
Orna Ross, Director of ALLi
Orna devised the Go Creative! planning program for herself, some years ago, to enable her to enjoy her busy life as a bestselling novelist, poet and director of the Alliance of Independent Authors.
She began by sharing it with a few authors, but her recent Kickstarter showed her that there is wider interest and she is now making it available to you and any indie author who is interested.
The Go Creative! planning program:
- draws deeply on your creative passion and mission to emphasize the links between your values as an author, and the value you offer your readers,
- recognizes that self-publishing authors must wear three very different hats: maker, manager, and marketeer,
- focuses on profit, runs a pay-yourself-first policy, with a “money day” check-in twice monthly,
- sets creative intentions and tracks progress: daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly,
- incorporates creative rest and play into your weekly plans as well as creative work,
- fosters creative joy in growth.
The program is supported by a first-class author community and a swathe of resources from Orna and the Alliance of Independent Authors.
You’ll do your first plans for making, marketing, and managing your book business in 2024, there and then in the workshop. And you’ll leave feeling motivated, energised and raring to go in 2024.
sample worksheet
Register Now
Secure your place here: Register for the Big Annual Planning Workshop
Testimonials
Joanna Penn, bestselling author, award-winning entrepreneur, and host of The Creative Penn podcast
Orna’s events have been life-changing for me. With wisdom, kindness (and the occasional kick in the pants!) she is able to cut through the noise and focus on what’s really important for creatives. Her f-r-e-e-writing exercises have helped me with my books and my business. I highly recommend her.
Mark McGuinness, award-winning poet, creative coach, and host of The 21st Century Creative podcast
Amid all the hype about the latest tools and technologies, we don’t hear so much about wisdom, compassion, and hard-won experience. Orna Ross has all of these in spades, and is generous in passing on her knowledge. I value my conversations with Orna and always come away with a valuable new perspective on things. I’m sure you will too.
Suzanne Power
Orna Ross is a genius. She combines incisive knowledge of publishing, huge appreciation for words, great humanity for the writers producing them, and invaluable materials – all to get to the heart of your writing life, and provide the scaffolding of your writing business. She has worked with me as both mentor and as a facilitator and I think the world of what she does and how she does it. No ego, true presence and a brilliant talent.
Her ethics and her examples are ones to trust and to follow. I will continue to do so and consider myself lucky to have the chance to.
Dave Cohen
I spent nearly four decades working in comedy thinking my precious art should not be sullied by anything as vulgar as marketing. In the last couple of years Orna has taught me that if you can think creatively about it, keeping control of and marketing your work is as important to a writer’s career as the work itself.
Karen Dodd, Suspense Author
As the author of two books and one on the way, I feel fortunate to have found Orna and her coaching at just the right time in my author career. She has a way of winnowing in on exactly what the intimate, small group needs as we went through our various challenges together. Orna presents information clearly and through her willingness to answer all questions, she fosters a trusting and compassionate relationship between mentor and participants.
Our group is made up of authors at all stages of the process—some were even traditionally published. After each session, we leave with our handouts and a written plan that we can implement immediately. I can’t recommend Orna’s Go Creative sessions highly enough.
Archana
Orna has exhaustive experience being an authorpreneur both from her own personal journey navigating the publishing space as an author and working with/mentoring other authors who are walking the same path. I find these workshops to be a distilled essence of this highly specialized knowledge that she has gathered through time.
As a result, this is highly effective and beneficial for an author in terms of the multiple hats that we wear as an authorpreneur. Orna defines them as – maker, manager and marketer. The pay yourself first approach that I got to learn from the workshop is how I’m going to be structuring my business as I believe it’s going to set me up for success. Also appreciate the flexibility of attending only the workshops on topics that I most want to learn about and the Q&A time at the end of the session.
Beth Ball, Epic Fantasy Author
I learn so much in each of the sessions, and I really appreciate all of the work you do to help us with both strategies and mindset on the indie author journey.
Belinda Strotheide, Writer and Business Trainer
I just wanted to take a few minutes to say how much I appreciate your creative planning training. My college degree is in business, I’ve spent years listening to entrepreneurial training, I’ve helped businesses, nonprofits and communities think through the process and formulate their plans and goals. You have helped me see the process in a new way. A way that lets me view it creatively, with the business aspects as a framework rather than the focus of the activities. Thank you! Also, thank you for your sensitivity and respect toward the individuals in the meetings. I also like how you push us to go for the deeper truth of who we are creatively and address the real reasons we may get stuck. A really BIG THANK YOU. What you’re doing is so very helpful.
