Celebrating Independent Authors
Making a superficial scan of the thousands of bloggers, promoters, DIYers and wannabe gurus on the web, we find tons of tried-and-true wisdom about how to be a writer. Even how to make money at it. Some of that advice needs to be taken with a grain of salt. Some of it with a huge, horse-pasture-sized block of salt. Especially if we have illusions about making money at writing.
What Does Everyone Tell Us?
What we want to hear, of course: Continue reading “4 Bits of Bad Advice for Writers”
We get lots of email here at IU. Sometimes we get kudos (we like those a lot!). Sometimes we get questions we can answer. We love those, because we are here to help people achieve their dreams of being published.
But sometimes we get questions that would take hours to answer, and honestly, folks, we work for free and just don’t have that kind of bandwidth. Often they go something like this:
Hi Indies Unlimited,
I’ve written a major groundbreaking book and I need help finding a publisher. Can you help me? Who would you recommend? Continue reading “How Indies Unlimited Will Help You Find a Publisher”
A couple of major and somewhat jarring events took place in our self-publishing community recently. An author had her books banned because Amazon detected a one day increase of her page-views from a couple of hundred to 25,000. They’re investigating the situation, but the author’s books have been withdrawn for sale and her agreement with KDP has been terminated.
In other news, Pixel of Ink, one of the major eBook promotion sites, shut its virtual doors. Many of the promotion sites we use have been in contravention of Amazon’s terms of service for some time. Amazon is now taking measures to make them comply or they’ll cease doing affiliate business with them.
Tons of bandwidth has been devoted to discussing these two topics. Authors, readers, and promoters all have opinions. I’ve put together a list of things you should be doing to deal with these situations. Continue reading “Amazon Suspends Authors! Promo Sites Closing Down! How to Deal With These Calamities”
That’s a loaded question, isn’t it? Because first, we need to determine what makes a successful author, and that is an entirely personal question. More importantly, the answer is likely to evolve over time. It certainly did for me — it took me five-and-a-half years to write my first book, so on many levels, I felt successful just being able to type “The End” after 80,000 words. A few months later, that seminal author moment when I held a copy of my own book in my hands definitely felt like a success.
Comparative analysis is not a great way to judge success. As an indie, there’s always someone who is doing worse and someone who is doing better. I have writer friends who had sales I used to dwarf who have zoomed past me now. Feeling smug when I was ahead of them or depressed now that I trail them isn’t the path to creative equilibrium. Continue reading “What does it take to be a successful Indie writer?”