Three months ago, I decided to put together a twice-a-year in-person book festival ‘celebrating self-published authors’, knowing – from looking after several book swap cupboards in the Aylesbury area, including most recently in the local train station ticket offices – that there was a fabulous reading community in the area.

So I found the perfect location – the Holiday Inn hotel on the A41 dual carriageway and booked four dates: 26th April/4th October 2026 and 25th April/3rd October 2027.

While most festivals run yearly, I wanted to run ‘Self-Pub Fest’ more often, probably having smaller local events in the quarters in between (January and July). But ‘this’ January (2026) would be way too soon, surely… No, they would start in April then I’d see how that went then have time to find another venue for July. But that would still only reach a local audience. What about the wider community. There are tens (hundreds?) of thousands of self-published authors online.

About a month ago I decided not to start with the April but go mad (I feel that way now!) and launch it in January. So, in 9 days time, we’ll be running a full day 10am-6pm of seven genre panels on the hour every hour with the exception of 1pm.

You can see from this photo (if you click on it it’ll take you to the 25th January page) that there are still quite a few gaps. I have four names to add (which means making pages for them – I still have a day job!) but as long as I have one person for each panel, it will go ahead. Otherwise anyone who turns up with have to talk to me. 🙂