Maria Frankland: 'I'm living proof being a self-published author can be successful - I earn £100,000 a year'

Rejection wasn’t just in her formative years either, Frankland had to get used to it from publishers, but now with more than 30 novels under her belt and having achieved six-figure turnover annually the past two years she can look back, perhaps not with fondness, but with real pride and purpose.

York-born and living in Otley with extremely supportive husband Michael, and her two sons, life is definitely on the up, and Frankland says there’s nothing she likes exploring more in her books than toxicity in relationships.

“Mine are usually set in a domestic context, often featuring a family or couple.

"I want to explore the darkness that exists between people that are supposed to love each other and expose that toxicity and everything that can exist behind closed doors, that’s how I work,” she says.

“It was reading Gone Girl that brought me into the psychological thriller genre.

"My first book hadn’t done well, nothing had happened and I was writing another when I realised I could make mine into a psychological thriller.”

That seminal moment has led to Frankland writing four novels a year, last year she wrote six.

“I’m back writing four. I tried six as an experiment, but it took my love of writing away a little.

"I felt under too much pressure, but it’s still a lot better than receiving rejections. I had 46 before a friend convinced me I should self-publish.”

Most of her books are, and she’s happy that way, while having six now published by Bookouture, imprint of Hachette, one of the ‘big five.’

“There are still those that are sniffy about self-publishing but it works for me and it got me a contract with one of the big ones,” she says.

"When I tell people I’m an author their first question is ‘who’s your publisher?’ and I can say Bookouture, so I sometimes say that, dependent on who I’m talking to.”

Frankland is a vibrant force and proof that in today’s publishing world, self-publishing is no longer to be sniffed at. She now has her own imprint, Autonomy Press.

“It didn’t happen overnight,” she says.

"The first three years of dedicating myself to only writing books, after having previously been a primary school teacher and then running my own creative writing groups, following degree and Masters studies at Horsforth, were a real struggle financially.

"It was like I was shouting into a void. There were plenty of times when I could have given up.

“I’m very disciplined, writing in mornings, marketing my books in afternoons. I had a few readers trickling in slowly, but if it wasn’t for Michael working two jobs I would never have been able to do this.

"Michael said I didn’t need to worry about bills, he believed in me, he’d read my books and thought I had something and was prepared to back me for as long as it took.

“The book that propelled me was Lockdown in early 2024. It seemed the one that caught everybody’s imagination.

“All my books are set in or always start and end in Yorkshire. My latest, The Road To Revenge, is set on a road trip in America because Michael and I did it last year - the road trip, not the revenge.

"I was writing notes while we were en-route.”

Next up from Maria is The Twin Brother due out in June. It’s a life Maria thoroughly enjoys, in her own world exploring secrets and dark times, that she remembers vividly in her youth and adult life.

“I’ve another out in September and the fourth in November. Writing has always underpinned my life. It was my therapy, what kept my head straight, to be able to write and to read.

“I used to shelter in the library as a child, the librarians must have looked at me and thought ‘what on earth?’ I would read anything I could lay my hands on, definitely a lot of Enid Blyton’s Mallory Towers series set in a boarding school.

“I’m not courting sympathy. That’s just where my love of books came from because I spent so much time escaping as a reader and a writer.

"I never thought, back then, that I would make a living out of being a writer. It was just what I always was.

“It was year four writing full-time when I went into profit and began contributing again at home and when Michael was able to give up his second job.

"I’ve had two £100,000-plus years of turnover now. I don’t mind you printing it. It shows other self-publishers it can be done.

“Sixty per cent comes from Kindle Unlimited, Amazon’s subscription model. I advise it for any thriller or romance writer.

"It took a while to get it going but is very lucrative for me. You’ve got to build, bring in one reader at a time, that’s what I’ve done.

‘I’m living the dream. It’s an absolutely belting career and to anybody who’s thinking about publishing independently, go for it, it’s hard work but worth it.

Maria Frankland will be speaking about her books and independent publishing at Aberford Literature Festival, Sunday June 21.

https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/aberford-literature-festival

https://www.mariafrankland.co.uk/