Tag Archives: indie

Indie?

The reasons why I am considering indie publishing.

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I hate risk.  I hate uncertainty.  I really hate exposing my work to an unforgiving world. But a compelling list of reasons conspire to push me to take the leap into the risky, uncertain indie publishing landscape.

Reason number one:  A writer needs the feedback only an audience can give. While learning, authors get feedback from other writers, which is good for structural and detailed edits, but most of the time, these well-intentioned critiquers find something wrong, and a lot of somethings. They view the work from backstage. They see the strings, the stage makeup, the fog machine.  So the overall effect is lost.

Friends and family read but, not wanting to offend or discourage,  give adulation and encouragement.

An audience sees the effect of the elements and reacts emotionally to the actual story—either positively or negatively.

Creatives need an stage to hone their craft The Beatles didn’t sit around playing for other musicians hoping that they were improving. They got out, They hustled. They exposed what they were doing to public scrutiny and received immediate reaction. Artist, actors, musicians all preform to get feedback, to earn their chops, to pay their dues. Why should writing be any different?

And indie publishing provides a method to gather information.  Is an idea marketable? Do people connect with the writing style? Are the characters and plots compelling?

Second: My stories fall into the urban fantasy/sci-fi genre and that is a hard sell to agents and publishers in this market.  Even the most polished of stories with the most unique of plots struggle to time finding a home in the shrinking environment of traditional publishing.  If an agent isn’t convinced that a book is a home run, Stephen King-style bestseller, it never get out of the dugout.  Heck, it never even get into the stadium in the nosebleed section.  Indie publishing gives the writer the power to buy the team.

Third:  I have been hanging on to a well-paying part time job for some time.  It’s never going to give me a comfortable life or be mentally satisfying, and I’m approaching the point where walking into my cubicle feels like slowly being closed inside an Iron Maiden.   I need to start laying the bricks for path out.  But that means I can’t wait any longer. I need to take a breath, jump off the abyss, and hope that my years of learning have created a parachute that will let me land not with a splat, but maybe with a thud.

Here’s to not splatting.

To the writer’s out there, have you considered indie publishing, if so why or why not?  To the readers, does the fact a book is indie published affect your buying decisions or attitude while reading a book?  Let me know in the comments below, or just drop a hi to let me know you visited.