Indie Unconference Europe 2025
The Road to Published Series
Ford Knows Books will observe “Summer Hours” for July/August—posts every other week.
Some of you will recall what a fraught experience the London Book Fair was for me last year—within five minutes of entering the cacophony of noise and people at that mega-conference, I said to myself, “This was a mistake.”
When I heard about the Indie Unconference Europe in a Reedsy newsletter, I was intrigued by the informal program, the small number of attendees, and the location: Matera, Italy.
I don’t recall ever having heard of Matera specifically, but most people will have seen it at some point or another: it’s Sassi district—a series of terraced and interconnected cave dwellings—has been used as an iconic “old city” stand-in for movies such as 007’s No Time to Die, and Crazy Mel’s The Passion of the Christ, with filming underway this summer for the follow-up, The Resurrection of the Christ.
Across the valley can be scene excavated caves used by Paleolithic hunters and shepherds, which on the Matera hill have been more or less developed since Neolithic times, making it the third oldest continuously inhabited city in the world. In the good old days, the body heat of the family’s animals helped keep them warm in winter, just one of many state-of-the-art caveniences.
The conference is produced by Shaun Loftus and friends of
, a boutique publishing and author services company based near Florence.I felt so welcomed into Shaun’s circle of colleagues, clients, and friends, many of whom have attended several iterations of the Unconference over the years. The wealth of knowledge from all the participants was humbling and awesome, with many decades of experience and innumerable books published in different genres, both traditionally and independently.
The format was casual and conversational. After an evening reception on Wednesday evening, Thursday morning we gathered to introduce ourselves and brainstorm topics of discussion for the next three days. There were no formal keynote speakers, though a few of the participants were invited to kick-off discussions in areas of interest for which they had “expertise,” including me with Substack. 🤭
The topics everyone wanted to talk about included: AI, direct sales, advertising, marketing trends, pivoting between genres, different apps for the writing and publishing process, audio books, and covers. In the course of the different conversations, any number of other topics were also discussed and shared.
These were incredibly generous and knowledgeable people, committed to sharing what they knew with others, and also learning about all aspects of what is still the relatively new and untapped (and misunderstood and maddening) field of independent publishing.
More in this issue:
→ AI: The Rise of the Machines
→ Beyond Traditional Publishing: Direct Sales and Marketing
→ More Research Needed: Writing and Publishing Apps
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By the Way
While I was away, the utterly delightful
dropped a TikTok video for Lamb and found the Three Key Takeways for my debut novel that she’s famous for—have a look!
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