Self publishing doesn't always mean doing everything yourself. In fact, you'll often be able to publish a better book if you hire professional editors and cover designers. You may also want to hire professionals for book formatting, social media management, and other aspects of your business—and make no mistake, publishing is a business.

In this free-first panel, four self published authors will share how they've approached hiring and collaboration processes in their own self publishing businesses and provide advice for how you can find the right professionals to work with in your own publishing career. Our panelists are CM Lockhart, Dianna Gunn, Scarlett Chase, and Tanya Gold.

Effective Outsourcing for Authors: How To Find/Work with Illustrators, Social Media Managers, and other Industry Experts is part of Storycrafting Sessions: Publishing, a one-day virtual conference hosted by the Weeknight Writers Group. Check out the full panel schedule for more information.

Our panelists

C. M. Lockhart (also known as Chelsea) writes books about Black girls who aren’t all that nice. Her debut novel, We Are the Origin, was released June 2022, and her latest series, The Lady Widow, is her first venture into the sci-fi genre. She is the owner of Written in Melanin, which encompasses a podcast and YouTube channel of the same name, founder of the Melanin Library, host of the Melanin Chat, contributing editor of Magic in the Melanin: A Black Fantasy Anthology, and co-founder of the DNF’d Book Club. More information can be found on her website, https://WrittenInMelanin.com

Tanya Gold (they/them) is a book editor, French to English translator, educator, and literary omnivore.

They’ve been in publishing for over 20 years and have worked on all sorts of delicious books. These days, they mostly work on and devour SFF, horror, retellings, queer stories, interactive fiction, and graphic novels.

They also coach editors and writers, and teach in a bunch of places, including at Emerson College's MFA in Popular Fiction.

It’s been suggested that they read too much for their own good. This might be true.

Hey, my dudes!
My name is Scarlett Chase. I've released two solo works and have been a part of two limited-time anthologies so far. I'm a wide author and will be writing across different Romance subgenres. At least that's what the ideas I have coming out of my ears are saying. Though my first book came out in December 2021, I finally feel like I'm on the right track and more in control with all the things. It's very exciting. If only I could write as fast as The Flash can run.

Author photo of Dianna Gunn, taken by Sandy Kennedy

Dianna Gunn writes fantasy, horror, and occasionally science fiction. She released her first novel, Moonshadow's Guardian, in 2018, and finished the Moonshadow Rising Duology with Moonshadow's Champion in 2024.

Gunn expanded her writings in 2024 with murder commissions, custom death scenes written for friends and fans. She compiled these stories into Killer Debt: An Anthology of Murder, released in 2025.

When she's not writing or editing, Gunn runs programs for authors through the Weeknight Writers Group, a social enterprise dedicated to providing affordable and accessible support for fiction writers.