I love discovering books by independent authors, particularly writers who haven't had the backing of a major publisher but have a real story to tell. That is exactly why I think Poopsnoop is such a valuable place for discovering independent books and small writers.

My own book deserved to be discovered because it tells a huge tale and was written to help people. Waterfall Down by Shirley Yanez without a big publisher behind it would only have amazon and paid ads to promote it and show up in searches. This isn't a conventional celebrity memoir or a carefully packaged success story. It is a raw and honest independent memoir about overcoming adversity, ambition, loss, starting over and finding yourself again.

My story takes the reader from growing up in poverty in Leicester and struggling at school with undiagnosed dyslexia, through an extraordinary rise into the City of London, financial success and an apparently glamorous life — before everything eventually came crashing down. What makes the story particularly compelling is what happens afterwards.

This becomes a memoir about personal transformation, not simply a story about success and failure. It asks some uncomfortable questions about ambition, identity, money and what happens when the life you have spent years building turns out not to be the life that makes you happy. For anyone looking for an inspiring life story, women's memoir, self-made woman story, overcoming adversity book, personal transformation memoir or a book about starting over in life, this is an unusual and fascinating read.

And this is exactly where I think Poopsnoop is brilliant for independent authors.

If you don't have a major publisher behind you, getting your book discovered can be incredibly difficult. You can write something wonderful and still struggle to get it in front of the right readers. Poopsnoop gives small independent writers, self-published authors and independent publishers somewhere to tell people why their books are worth discovering. Instead of competing with enormous advertising budgets, an independent author can build genuine recommendations and searchable content around their work. And that matters because people increasingly search online for things like:

best independent memoirs UK

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Those are the sorts of searches where a book like Waterfall Down can find readers who may never have come across it through a traditional bookshop or major publisher. For me, that is what makes Poopsnoop exciting. It gives independent authors a voice, helps readers discover books outside the mainstream and creates a place for stories that might otherwise get overlooked. Sometimes the best books aren't the ones with the biggest publishing budgets. Sometimes they're the ones written by people who have actually lived the story.