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Posts Tagged ‘Indie’

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Limited

Monday, October 17th, 2011

Fiction print books conform to a limited set of word count brackets, and hence, page count, that have evolved as a result of financial limitations – namely the perceived value of a title in a specific genre, and the cost to print, bind and distribute each book. Most commercial fiction tends to float around the 300-page mark; readers of erotic fiction prefer shorter books (and more variety in their reading) and prefer to buy more, cheaper books; fans of the more dwarves-elves-and-dragons-type fantasy demand huge page counts, and are prepared to pay more. These are generalisations, but you can check the submission guidelines of any publisher to see that most ask for work within genre-specific limits.

In the middle ground of page counts, it’s a case of retail price versus reader expectation, but at the extremes of the range, it’s about the physics of printing. A 3000-word short can’t be bound with a flat spine, as there’s not enough depth of paper to glue the spine onto, and using an effectively flat jacket – as with most weekly magazines – looks cheap and devalues the product. A 200,000-word book can theoretically be bound, but it’ll break its spine the first time you open it.

My point is that the nature of printing has dictated page count. Until now.

eBooks increase in size at a very small rate as word count increases. A quick look at my book on Amazon reveals a file size of 488KB at 105,000 words with a to-spec, 221 KB  cover image and no other graphics. If I’d written 210,000 words, it’d be about 750 KB. A million? Just shy of 3 Meg. Hardly big numbers, given that a song from iTunes comes in about 10 Meg, and we throw album-fulls of those onto iPods without thinking twice.

In terms of distribution cost, there’s nothing stopping a writer producing books of a length far in excess of what is currently considered the norm. But why the hell would you?

eBooks are still subject to limitations within the market, and right now, that’s the price you can expect to charge. Text books and event fiction titles from name brand authors appear to be following the existing pricing curves, but publisher promos and self-publishers do seem to have established a new baseline cost for fiction, namely $0.99, or $2.99 if you think you can sell at that price. The curious twist is that that price point appears to be accepted as the fair rate for a title, regardless of how long that title is. With $0.99 as the minimum you can charge for a Kindle book, you can find quality short stories, novellas and novels at that price. At $2.99, you’d struggle to sell a short, but a novella or novel both fit. Beyond $2.99 is the realm of short story collections and full novels, but without a strong reputation and name recognition, you’d probably struggle to make significant sales at that price.

As a new writer publishing his own work, I’m firmly stuck in the $0.99-to-$2.99 camp, which is fine, as I have some distinguished company amongst my independent peers, but with such a limited scope for earnings on a single book, the equation (more books) > (longer books) makes clear business sense. In researching my next project, I’m looking for enough ideas to fill a book of 150 pages max, as what’s the point of writing it longer, when I could spend the time writing another title, which then has its own shot at that $0.99-$2.99 per unit?

Stories need to run their course, so there will always be long books, but I can’t be the only writer thinking this way, and I honestly believe that books are going to get shorter, on average, as a result. That’s fine with me, as I love shorter stories around the 150-200 page mark, but it may come as an unpleasant surprise to those eBook buyers currently sniffing out bargains.

 

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To Be Me, Or Not To Be Me

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

I’m working on a couple of writing projects right now that share little common ground with my debut book, Make a Move, and my initial instinct was to publish them under a pseudonym. However, as a self-published writer, I need all of the cross-selling opportunities I can get, and hiding those connections between books could well be shooting myself in the foot. While pen names are used for creative and personal reasons, I suspect that most are employed to satisfy a business need, specifically to allow marketing departments to keep their author brand clean, or to allow readers to understand the genre into which an author fits.

But which is it?

I ask because I’m not too bothered about my author brand. As a writer in control of my own output, I’ve no one telling me what to write, and I intend to exploit that opportunity to the point of abuse. I don’t, however, want to alienate readers by “conning” them into believing I’m only going to be one type of writer, when the next book could share no trace of DNA with the previous one. Yes, it’ll always be my voice, but is that enough?

Given the metadata surrounding eBooks – the myriad opportunities to communicate with a potential buyer before they commit to a purchase – do they provide digital-only writers with a blank canvas upon which to paint their career, or does too much freedom dilute the relationship between authors and readers, to the point that the readers lose trust and look elsewhere?

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Posted in eBooks, Publishing, Writing | 4 Comments »

Self Publishing, Rounds Four and Five

Wednesday, February 9th, 2011

A literary agent I follow on Twitter posted this link today, in which the author highlights a few of the breakout self-publishing success stories of the last couple of years. It’s a nice piece focussed primarily on Amanda Hocking – nothing I didn’t know, and the comment list at the bottom is comfortingly predictable – but it caught my attention because 1) it’s on the USA Today website, and 2) the agent who tweeted the link has never directly referenced any material discussing self-publishing before.

I’m not calling this a turning point in the self-publishing (r)evolution, as my perspective is not as detailed as it should be right now, but it’s definitely a beat – a notable mark on the line from obscurity to… who knows?

Any artistic movement (and that’s all self-publishing really is – a group of creative people working outside of the accepted norm) needs acceptance from the mainstream in order to achieve any degree of longevity, but this acceptance comes in broad stages, rather than tiny increments, hence the title of this post. The way I see it:

  • Round one was Vanity Publishing. Everybody lost in round one.
  • Round two was the birth of self publishing. Lots of people trying things out and seeing what worked. A few companies saw the opportunity to monetise this uncoordinated creativity, and clear paths to market emerged. I joined the game near the end of this stage, just as things were getting interesting.
  • Round three saw a number of self-publishing authors emerge as names; these people were making money. Real money. The disparity now was between how those successful writers were viewed by their peers (inspirational, affirming, self-serving, you choose) and the mainstream (J.A. who?). Outside of the eReader early adopters and the eWriting cognoscenti, most people still had a pretty low opinion of self-pubbing writers.
  • Round four… well, we’re not quite there yet, but the linked USA Today article suggests, to me, that we’re very, very close. Round four will be the point where mainstream readers will start to give self-published works a chance. These will almost all be eBook readers – given the lack of print copies of most self-published work – and low price will be the primary reason they’ll take a chance on a new writer with no name-publisher backing. This is the point where solid writing, good cover design and careful, thorough eBook conversion and formatting are vital to winning mainstream acceptance, which is still a long way off.
  • Round five is where things could, in my opinion, get nasty.

The biggest threat to self-publishing success is anonymity, and the worst thing anyone with an interest in keeping self publishing off the radar could do is say something to draw attention to it. When no one knows you exist, there is literally no such thing as bad publicity, and the complete lack of commentary from mainstream publishing regarding indie authors has helped to keep self publishing from breaking out.

Now, though, indie authors are out of the margins and across the page. Nobody, no matter how ingrained their stance on indie-vs-mainstream publishing, can argue with Amanda Hocking’s sales numbers, and anyone reading about her in the press is going to see those sales as, at worst, interesting, or at best, validation. Very soon, there is going to come a point where those whose livelihoods depend upon mainstream publishing are forced to defend their place in the publishing food chain, and hence the higher prices of their authors’ books versus indies, and in the absence of positives to argue on their part, their only option will be to point to the negatives – real or perceived – of buying indie.

I’m not saying that anyone’s going to write opinion pieces slamming the production value of indie work, or that negative reviews of celebrated indies’ work will appear in publications that previously wouldn’t touch a self-pubbed book, or that the most successful indies will be offered book deals to show that these “hidden gems” were carelessly overlooked and can now reach new heights of success with the proper backing, while simultaneously removing the authors’ voices from the debate. No, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, because I hope it’s left for the readers to decide for themselves what authors they buy, and what their books mean to them. But this is business, and sometimes people in business have to play rough, so if it happens, I won’t be surprised, and I hope no other self-publishing writer, no matter how successful, is either.

 

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Posted in News, Opinion, Publishing, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Make a Move – Christmas Pricing

Monday, December 20th, 2010

Make a Move is now available from Smashwords for $0.99, and will be available direct from the Kindle Store at the same price (plus delivery fee, if it applies) within 24 hours of this posting. The UK pricing on the Kindle Store will also reflect the discount.

I’ll be running this discount for two weeks; after January 1st, it will return to its usual price of $2.99.

You Said You’d Never Discount Your Book That Low

Yeah, I know, but I’m working this DIY publishing thing out as I go, so I have to be prepared to admit when I’m wrong. When Make a Move first came out earlier this year, things were different. There was no significant Kindle ownership in the UK, and eBook sales were still negligible, even if they were growing. In that market, I believe that discounting is bad for everyone, and I wasn’t prepared to be part of the race to the bottom. Now though, things are different, and I hope to see a lot of DIY publishers offering holiday discounts for the following reasons:

  • The Kindle Wifi model is sold out in the US. Although Kindles seem to have sold well this year (with no sales data to corroborate that, it’s just my opinion) I think this is the holiday shopping season in which they’ll finally go mainstream. Every publisher – DIY or otherwise – should be taking the opportunity to get their books onto Kindles as people load up after Christmas Day.
  • Traditional/Legacy/Mainstream Publishers aren’t in a position to discount that deeply without selling at a loss, which no one is going to do in this sales season, so this is a chance for DIY publishers to get a toehold in the market. By offering people the chance to try your books at reduced risk – while still making some money yourself – we can get people reading/discussing/recommending indie titles. DIY publishing isn’t going to eclipse the mainstream, but I do think we deserve a little more of the storage space on people’s Kindles.
  • Amazon is the only platform through which I can distribute directly from the UK; for all other retailers, I have to work through Smashwords. That’s fine – I love Smashwords – but the turnaround time on price changes with the other retailers is just too slow. Barnes and Noble is still an 8-week lead time to see changes I make at Smashwords reflected on the site. For the duration of this sale, Make a Move will be one third the price on Amazon as it is on B&N, iBooks, Kobo et al, and these retailers need to realise that agility is everything in this emerging market. If they can’t open their platforms to individuals, then they need to work with Smashwords to reduce those lead times.

So I’m going to swallow my pride and give discounting a try this season, and hopefully turn more of my browsers into readers, but I do think this Christmas will be a turning point for eBooks, and I’m hoping that all independent author-publishers get to share in that success.

Happy Christmas, everyone.

Steve

 

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Writing Skills, Publishing Skills, Selling Skills…

Saturday, December 18th, 2010

Over the last year, one theme that’s recurred on a regular basis is that of indie authors vs indie musicians/filmakers; as in, how come the indie directors and songwriters get the respect, and we don’t? At first I dismissed the phenomenon as a by-product of timing – the independent movements in those industries have been around, or at least visible, for longer, and they’e earned the respect through a number of breakout hit releases. I still think that’s a factor. Recently though, as I’ve been involved in indie music and film projects of my own, I’ve seen the phenomenon from the other side, and it’s given me an insight.

Anyone Can Play Guitar

No, they can’t. As a musician, you’ll find yourself hanging out with other musicians, so you get the impression that everyone has a degree of musical talent. Most people, however, don’t. Not because they lack the raw ability, but because they lack the time, desire, or opportunity to learn. And, yes, some people will never be able to play, because their brains just aren’t good at that kind of thinking.

You tell someone you play guitar, they assume you’re good. The same is true of film-making at any level. You say you shot a roller derby video, people assume you know what you’re doing and that the end result is going to be awesome (it is, by the way – Steve). They don’t assume it’s going to suck.

You tell people you write, they assume you suck.

Not Everyone Can Write

Yes, they can. Not everyone can write well, but they can write. Most people use a computer at home or at work, so they all know their way around Word. They can use a web browser to research as well as you can. They can spell – maybe.

And this, I think, is the key to the different attitudes the three creative endeavours receive. Musicians and film-makers are seen to have technical skills that non-participants don’t, so even if the song or film is bad, it’s better than anything the unskilled observer could produce, which translates into a sympathetic view of the work. Add to that the significant financial investment in producing anything that can be played on an iPod or a DVD player, and the creatives are further elevated in perceived stature. Ignoring my computer, which I use for lots of things, my basic home recording setup – including instruments – cost over £3000, and I’m not quite done yet. My writing setup cost about £40. I could write an amazing book and record a terrible song, and the latter would still be seen as the greater achievement, as anyone can write a book, but not everyone can play guitar.

Customer Perception is Out of Our Hands

No, it’s not. Producing an eBook independently is never going to require a huge cash outlay unless you pay for professional editing, typesetting and conversion, but even if you do, that value perception won’t be increased, as readers won’t know. The book will be better for it, but readers won’t know why, or how much you spent. A professional cover designer adds visible value, but there are great designers working at all cost scales, so no help there.

But writers do have skills that non-writers don’t: namely grammar and typesetting/eBook conversion. The problem is, these skills are being aggressively devalued, and the group responsible is, well, us.

I’ve read way too many blogs/tweets stating that grammar is an evolving discipline – that it’s alive – and that as long as communication is maintained, anything goes. Anyone questioning this stance is branded a grammar Nazi (gotta love the internet) but a thorough understanding of grammar is what separates a skilled written communicator from the rest of the population that don’t understand even basic sentence construction. It’s a skill that makes our book understandable to anyone, and yet we seem hell-bent on throwing it away. Is grammatically correct prose seen as elitist? Condescending? Not to me. I think classical grammar combined with stilted writing can alienate readers with more modern tastes, but that’s just style; the underpinning grammar isn’t to blame.

Formatting an eBook isn’t easy either. Uploading a Word doc to Amazon is easy, but taking control of how your text is displayed on an eReader requires time, effort, and a steep learning curve. It’s a discipline most people would struggle with, yet it’s another skill that separates skilled eBook writers from the crowd. So why do so few independent authors try to do a proper conversion, or connect with someone who can help them? Even eBooks from my favourite mainstream authors are riddled with formatting errors, so this is one area in which a writer can elevate their standing, yet so few try.

As modern, independent writers/DIY publishers, we do have skills – skills we should be proud of – but as long as we’re happy to allow their devaluation, or to actively participate in that process, readers and outsiders will continue to look down on our independent trade while lauding others.

And right now, as a reader first and a writer second, I can’t say I blame them.

 

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Posted in Music, Opinion, Typesetting, Video, Writing | No Comments »

Self-ish Publishing

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

I’m a big fan of self-publishing as a movement, and not just because I’m an active participant. Amazon’s recent moves to extend their reach as a content distributor can’t leave anyone in any doubt about their ultimate intentions – to eliminate the publisher from the writer-to-reader chain – but I’m not alarmed by that possibility. I’ve read some of the work of my self-publishing peers, and I know that the quality is out there. Worst case: if traditional publishing houses become marginalised, there will still be quality content for readers to buy.

The key benefit of increased access to self-published work is, in my opinion, the strength of the relationship that can be forged between author and reader. It’s the indie author’s unique selling point, and it has to be respected. In this internet age, if you’re working to build a fan base, and you take a wrong step and alienate a few readers, you’re done.

There is a fine line between DIY author and DIY publisher, and author’s need to be clear about what they’re trying to be. If you want to be a publisher, that’s great – although you’re entering a field with thousands of people who are better at it than you, and you’d better have a unique angle upon which to sell books. If you’re a self-publishing author, you have to maintain your integrity – or at least appear to – as the second you resort to typically publisher-like behaviour, such as release-windowing on key retailer websites in order to concentrate sales and reviews, the trust you’ve built up with your readers is gone.

There’s nothing wrong with being business-minded, but having “indie” status doesn’t excuse activities for which publishing corporations are regularly lambasted. Ask yourself why you chose to self-publish, and answer truthfully, as your readers will spot the lie even if you don’t. A writer with a quality, yet niche or hard-to-categorise product can justify their independence without losing respect; a “me too” publisher probably can’t, and you’ll eventually get found out.

 

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Gutterball

Wednesday, October 13th, 2010

A common complaint aimed at self-published books is the lack of quality control, specifically in the proofreading and typesetting. I’ve not read enough self-published books to be able to definitively validate this complaint, but if you look at a page of new releases on Smashwords – any page – you’ll find at least one book with typos in the book description. Not just loose or minimalist grammar, but actual typos. Do you want to bet the purchase price on the quality of the manuscript? Neither do I.

Aim For Quality

Getting a book ready for sale is hard, and formatting for a particular eReader is a big part of that. The KindleGen tools Amazon provide are not intuitive, and it took me a long time to research the process online, learn the tricks and traps, and produce a product I was happy with. Even the Kindle Previewer application missed a bug in my HTML that didn’t show up until I tested it on an actual Kindle. It’s not easy, but I think it’s worth the effort, as the automated conversions available play towards the Kindle’s default formatting, and that doesn’t allow you the control you need to nail the layout. I don’t want first-line indents on the opening paragraph of each episode/scene, but the Kindle, by default, will add them, so I overrode them. The monospaced font is too big compared to the default font, so I manually overrode the font size for a script section, setting it -1 size relative to the current base font (and honouring the users’ right to adjust the size to their taste). Neat formatting touches are another way to add quality to the product – the kind of quality you’d expect from a “traditionally published” eBook. If you want to compete with the mainstream, you have to match the quality of their output. “Good enough” just isn’t, well, good enough.

Accept no Substitutes

I was so happy when I got my Kindle for my birthday; I’d been holding off buying/reading a list of books so I could fill it with content – traditionally published and self-published – and just dive in. In the first week I jumped between collections of short stories, novellas and non-fiction before finally choosing the first novel I woud read. I was about two pages in when I spotted the first typo; nothing major – just a missing opening quote. I shrugged it off and got back into the story. But not for long. A slow-burner, most pages were action/description until people started meeting up about 5% of the way in, so the errors weren’t as prevalent, but by the time the protagonists met and started to talk, I was counting five or six typos. Per page.

Large blocks of text were missing opening quotes, leaving you half way through a line before you realised the speaker had changed, and there were other typos – obvious formatting errors where letters had been replaced. Now, I know I’m not an average reader; I was a bit OCD about typos before I became obsessed about the quality of my own work and trained myself to hunt them down, but this would be distracting for any reader. Me? I was completely kicked out of the story, and didn’t know what the hell was going on. I persevered to 10%, but then called it a day. I was mad. I emailed Amazon support and asked for a refund and for them to scrub the book from my Kindle, and even though I was past the seven-day return window, they agreed. My argument was that the book was not of a saleable standard and that it should be removed from sale until a corrected version was available. They said they’d contacted the relevant party and had passed on my comments.

So, who was the DIY author who’s careless conversion so offended me?

It was…

Wait for it…

Not… an indie.

It was a book from a publishing house. A big publishing house. One of the biggest publishing houses.

And it wasn’t cheap.

Get Your Mind Out of the Gutter

I’m not going to say what the book was, firstly because I have a submission with the publisher in question right now, and secondly because it’s not the author’s fault – they had no part in the conversion – and they don’t deserve to lose any more sales (although, sharp-eyed friends on Goodreads may notice my to-read shelf is missing a book, but let’s keep it a secret between us).

I couldn’t understand what had gone wrong. The print version of the book could never go out in this condition, and conversion is surely a case of reworking the final manuscript draft into HTML, so what had gone so wrong in the process? I’ve been working as a professional writer for a long time, and I’ve used most processes involved in getting text onto paper, so it didn’t take long to spot the clues and work it out. Example: on numerous occasions, “ll” was replaced with “U”. Kind of looks the same if you squint, right? Another example: “some_word?” was replaced with “some_wordY“. Again, you can see that the characters are in the same league, if not the same ballpark.

I’ve converted a lot of text, and I know that basic characters – the core alphabet – are never changed unless you overwrite them on purpose. Mathematical symbols, accented characters, even things like double-quotes and em-dashes can easily get nuked across devices, but you’re safe with “ll”. The only way those mistakes made it into the text were from OCR – Optical Character Recognition – the process whereby printed text is scanned into a computer, which then converts the graphical interpretation of the characters into editable text. Usually by guessing, as I’ve yet to see an OCR system that’s even 90% accurate. Yep – somebody mashed that book flat onto a scanner or photocopier and scanned every page into a computer. You know how else I know? The character substitutions aren’t consistent; it only happens some of the time. This, in addition to the fact that it was opening – not closing – quotes going missing, is a result of the person scanning the book not being able to get the pages flat due to the spine curve; the more the text curves into the gutter margins, the less accurate the scan, and therefore the OCR.

So what? Maybe this is a perfectly legitimate way to convert a print book to electronic format? Maybe the original digital manuscripts of this (very recent) book were lost? Maybe it’s cheaper to farm out conversion to a third-party using unskilled labour to manually scan-in the books? Maybe I’m just being naïve?

And maybe someone at the publisher should have got it proofread.

The Weakest Link

I’m mad as hell about this, as you can probably tell, given the length of this post. But I’m not mad as a reader/consumer (like I said, I got a refund). I’m mad as a DIY author-publisher. I need eBooks to be a success in order to maintain my distribution platform. Without eBooks, I can’t sell beyond the UK. Hell, beyond Greater Manchester is difficult. Publishers are fighting to maintain revenues on eBooks, while customers are pushing to reduce cover prices. Perceived value is everything in this intangible market; when text is all you’re selling, it has to be correct, even if the story sucks. Anyone selling poorly converted content is undermining that value perception – whether inadvertently or not – and is directly impacting eBook adoption.

So many people point to the self-published books “flooding” the eBook market as the weak link in the business model, but anyone, no matter how well-respected, can step into that role, and the more respected the source, the more damage is done.

 

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Posted in eBooks, Publishing, Typesetting | No Comments »

Conflict in the Comfort Zone

Thursday, September 30th, 2010

I’m conflicted.

A couple of weeks back, I started wondering if I should start submitting Make a Move to publishers again. It was never my intention to stop; I decided to put the book out myself to have some fun while waiting for responses, but the process has taken so much of my time that the submissions have fallen by the way. Then a couple of people independently asked about my submission status, and that confirmed that I needed to give it more brain time.

The problem is, I like where I am right now. Not in a “indie ’till I die!” kind of way, but I like the creative freedom that I have. I’m not a writer who worships the process; writing has always been hard for me, and I have to force myself in front of the computer most days. What I do love is how the stories and characters make me feel – how they make my readers feel. I love ideas – how they collide and coalesce into something amazing. Books let me capture these experiences and share them, but they’re not the only way.

Right now, I’m working on a script for an indie film – nothing major, just a 10-minute short – that features a band. I’m also writing/playing/recording the music for the soundtrack. Thinking about the roll-call of musicians in the fictional band, I realised that the soundtrack would need to feature the instruments they play (I have a keyboard player, there need to be keys/synths in the music). The reverse is also true; I can’t have characters playing instruments that I (or the multi-talented @theanonwonder and @jooleemarie) can’t play, as we wanted to do the music ourselves, without bringing anyone else in. I love that relationship between the reality of the music and the fiction of the film – it gives me the restrictions I need to produce my best written and musical work. The situation transcends story.

I love working this way. I fires me up. I have the best job in the world. I’m just not getting paid for it…

But would an advance on Make a Move change anything? I’d be contractually compelled to write the second season of the book, instead of being able to rely on the understanding of my readers while I get the film done. And I’d have more money, but not enough to give up my day job, which I like. I’d have print distribution, which would get my books out to more readers, but unless the goal is financial reward, more readers isn’t a goal in itself. Sales of the book are far from stellar, but I know the best way to drive more sales is to get the second book written and published, which I can currently do at my own pace.

I think the main reason I still want a book deal is that I love the publishing industry. Yes, I said it. Even though I find their output largely unreadable, and I’ve often said bad things about the way they operate and the mistakes they’re (in my opinion) still making, I love the concept of the institution of publishing. I guess it’s the same way people still see a need for the royal family; they’re a flawed institution, but they’re important just because they are. And as I love publishing, I feel like I should play my part in the big machine, even if I’m not convinced it’s the best path for my career as a writer, or for Make a Move.

Like I said, I’m conflicted.

 

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Posted in Music, Opinion, Submissions, Writing | 2 Comments »

My Personal Reading Revolution

Sunday, September 12th, 2010

T minus two days until I get my Kindle, and I’m a bit excited about it. Aside from all the books I’ve been planning to load onto it (Spook Country by William Gibson will be the first purchase – given the author’s contribution to technological free-thinking, it seems appropriate) it’s finally going to let me get into the backlist of indie books I’ve been meaning to read for while.

29 Jobs and a Millions Lies by Jennifer Topper was the first eBook I tried reading on a screen, but I got tired of the scrolling, too-high-contrast text, as it was stopping me from losing myself in the story. I think that was the first time I seriously considered an eReader; if I was going to find new, original works from the periphery of publishing, I’d need a mechanism to consume them.

I did toy with the idea of shelling out the large cash for an iPad, but as I’m typing this on a laptop, lying in bed, I couldn’t see the attraction. Plus, as I watch my battery indicator tick down past 20 minutes left, I know I’ve made the right choice of reading platform.

So this post isn’t a prediction, or an opinion, or a review; it’s just me sharing my thoughts – that I’m about to join the eBook evolution as a reader rather than a writer, and I have no idea what it’s going to change. I know one thing won’t change – story, which is all I’m really interested in – but for everything else, all bets are off.

 

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The Importance of Being Indie

Monday, May 24th, 2010

“Writers need to stop defining themselves by their publisher, or lack thereof. “Indie” is becoming a meaningless affectation.”

@glecharles, 1:00 PM May 19th

I really, really wanted to agree with this when I read it. It resonates with how I feel about my book and what I’m doing – that I’m competing with all books, and not just the independently produced ones. I’d never send my book for review by a publication dealing only with indie books; I’m putting Make a Move up for the Pepsi Challenge against every book out there, and I’m competing on story, character, dialogue and ideas, knowing that my editing and printed product are comparable with anything the mainstream can offer, and won’t let me down. The quality of my book is more important to me than any label I could attach to it, or myself.

And in a perfect world, that would be enough.

Thing is, if you don’t label yourself, someone else will. And that label is “vanity publisher”. It happened to a writer friend of mine last week; she was enquiring about whether attending a seminar on book marketing, targeted at publishers and held by a respected outfit in Manchester, would be of benefit to her. The reply she received told her that there would be little of interest to a vanity publisher. Nice.

This stereotype – the vanity publisher – was weak ten years ago, outdated five years ago, and is now just tired. Even its irony value as an inaccurate, mindless cliché sustained by a supposedly creative industry has faded. It’s time it ended.

I read Zoe Winter’s blog post over at IndieReader.com about how the term “indie author” is starting to catch on, and how indies with the skills and drive to produce a quality product need to stand up and define what it means to be an indie. I agree with her assertion of what it means – or what it should mean to be an indie author – and I’m committed to playing my part on all counts, but I’m skeptical about one thing, and that’s how far we, as indies, can push the title. I “officially” adopted the title of indie author when I changed my About page recently, but I didn’t do it because I needed to feel like part of a movement, or I was looking for validation, or I was yielding to peer pressure; I did it for the reason anyone running a business should do anything: because the customers asked.

I run Google Analytics on this site, and I monitor what people are searching for when they find me. Know what my most frequent search term is? “indie novel”. I don’t know specifically what these browsers want when they search for indie novels, but I hope they want the same thing I did when I used to search the “contemporary” section of a bookshop: something new, inspiring, raw, alternative, edgy – exactly the kind of books that are struggling to get book deals as publishing pounds are redirected to easier sells. So these readers are searching for something, and they’re finding me, and they’re sticking around to explore the site and download my sample episode (okay, I admit it, I have a data fetish).

So there is an indie movement in books, but it’s the readers who are driving it, not the writers. We have no control over where it goes, other than to do our utmost to give the readers print books and eBooks of the quality they deserve. And as for the title of “indie author”, its your choice whether to adopt it, but given the energy, enthusiasm and acceptance of the indies I’ve met since I published Make a Move and started this blog, it’s one I’m proud to accept.

 

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