Celebrating Independent Authors
One of the biggest and most frustrating challenges authors face is marketing our books.
Part of the reason for this is that we deal with incomplete or misleading data. That means we’re guessing.
We respond to anecdotes. If someone reports great success with KDP select, we try it. If it falls flat for us, we scratch our heads. Continue reading “Missing Data”
[Indies Unlimited is brought to you in part by Harper’s Radio Knob Polish]
“Bob was asking about joining the car pool again.”
“Ugh! Have you seen his radio knobs? How can he not know about Harper’s?”
Does that conversation seem familiar to you? It should. People don’t like to look at a radio with dull, lackluster knobs.
Have bad things been happening to you lately? Maybe you were passed over for that promotion or a neighbor snubbed you. It just may be your radio knobs. Our own independent studies show that 37% of all social maladies, from littering to parking violations, can probably be traced back to neglected radio knobs.
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We are the worst judges of our own work.
The author of a work is biased in so many ways it boggles the mind. Whether one is burdened with chronic overconfidence or chronic self-doubt, any self-assessment will be skewed.
Because it is impossible for the author to see the story with fresh eyes, the opportunities for distortion are abundant. The end product is the final version of multiple versions. It becomes easy to mentally merge the multiple versions of what we wrote into a single, coherent version that is only what we think we are reading and not actually what we wrote. Continue reading “Does This Story Make Me Look Fat?”
A short story
by Stephen Hise
Earl had not slept through the night since Maxine died. That was three years ago now. Conchita woke him every hour or so with her bouts of incessant meowling. She had started doing it shortly after Maxine took ill.
Maxine had called it singing. She laughed at it. Earl did not see the humor. He needed his rest to take care of Maxine and Maxine needed her rest to get well. But Maxine did not get well. She had died just as the doctors had said. Earl thought perhaps the lack of rest had made the difference. Continue reading “Earl and Conchita”