Tag: Indie News Beat

Indie Author Newsbreak 7-20-2018

indie author newsGreetings scribblers, scribes, pixel pounders, and ink slingers! The Admins at Indies Unlimited have sojourned across the great expanse of the interwebz to bring you the finest shade-grown, fair trade, organic, non-GMO, gluten-free tidbits for your infotainment pleasure. So, knock the cat off your lap and prepare to be smartified.

  1. Amy Collins shares some excellent thoughts on how to keep your followers engaged without marketing them to death.
  2.  Correct usage of symbols is important. Incorrect usage can undermine the authority of a writer. Mark Nichol provides guidance on the correct usage of raised symbols.
  3. Stay vigilant. As long as there is a dime to be made from a gullible author, predators will continue to flourish. Writer Beware puts out a new Vanity Publisher alert.
  4. One frequently given piece of writerly advice is along the lines of “Learn to write well by reading well-written books.” But we can also learn from mistakes. Dana Sitar posits 4 ways reading bad writing can make your writing better.
  5. And in a long overdue explanation, Jenna Blum illuminates Productive Procrastination.

That’s it for this week. Be sure to tune in next Friday as we tackle the philosophical question of the ages: If a glass spills in the forest, was it half full or half empty?

Indie Author Newsbreak 7-13-2018

indie author newsGreetings authors, writers, novelists, and aspirants! The Admins at Indies Unlimited have walked up and down the length of the information superhighway gathering the freshest and most fragrant information for your infotainment. Prepare your brains for upload and squint a little so the light doesn’t hurt your eyes.

  1. What’s out? Zombies. What’s in? Vikings. Yes, that’s right, Vikings are all the rage as far as you know, and fortunately for you, there is a tremendous likelihood that your work already contains a smattering of Viking words. Daily Writing Tips provides an illuminating list of 30 Viking words in common use in the English language.
  2.  Is there a more maligned and reviled punctuation mark than the poor semicolon? One would think no semicolon has ever survived the brutality of an editor’s critical and uncompromising eye. Yet, the semicolon does have its proper place even today as Adam O’Fallon Price points out.
  3. In recognition that tomorrow is Bastille Day, we turn to the knowledgeable and always-entertaining Grammar Girl to answer the question that is bound to be on everyone’s mind: why do people say “Pardon my French?”
  4. The indefatigable David Gaughran undertakes the task of debunking some common misconceptions about “The Amazon Algorithm.”
  5. Finally, over at the Creative Penn, Damon Suede offers some great thoughts on writing memorable characters through strong language and action.

That’s it for this week. Be sure to tune in each Friday morning for more Indie Author Newsbreak. Next week, we answer the question on everyone’s mind: How can someone be discombobulated without having been combobulated at some point before?

Indie News Beat: Gatekeepers by Default?

One of the more interesting side-effects of the self-publishing revolution is that independently published books are acting as a “testing ground” for mainstream publishers. More and more often we hear in the news of a self-published author who worked hard to shift a few thousand copies, and then along came a mainstream to snap them up and market them as a new discovery.

While this may be good news for the authors concerned, the other side of the coin is the intimation that, if an Independent Author can’t shift thousands of copies on their own efforts, then de-facto they can be deemed somehow to have failed. This article on Authonomy is typical of a mainstream encouraging authors who can’t get off the slushpile to go the self-publishing route. Authonomy is HarperCollins’ pseudo-indie platform, a place where unknown authors can go to showcase their work, so it’s no surprise it takes a mainstream-centred point of view.

The article begins by name-checking the usual suspects who started out self-publishing and then went on to enjoy mainstream success, before, wagging its finger like a parent admonishing a wayward child, pointing out that these authors “knew their market and had taken the time to cultivate it.” Many literary agents now regard self-publishing as an “incubator” for new talent.

Then comes the catch: it may take up to 100,000 sales “before publishers are vying for your signature”, although a few thousand will probably be enough to get the attention of literary agents. In this way, literary agents and mainstream publishers retain their function as gatekeepers by default. Instead of wading through vast slushpiles, agents and publishers can sit back, see what authors and titles are building a market, then step in with an offer.

The only problem is, it’s self-defeating. As Howey and others have shown, if an author can build an audience of thousands without a mainstream behind them, why do they need one afterwards? The only answer is validation: that mainstream publication still has the lure of making an author feel legitimate. Now, however, we move into irony: the Independent Author works hard writing, blogging and promoting for years to build their audience, only for a mainstream to come along and say: “Congratulations, you’ve made it! Now we’ll take your book and instead of the 70% royalties you’ve been earning by your own effort, we’ll let you keep 12%, but that’s a small price to pay for being a ‘real’ author!”

I think it’s clear most writers accept that the days of the JD Salinger, who could find a publisher and retreat to live life completely out of the public eye, are over. Whether independent or mainstream, each author knows that they have to interact with their readers to promote their books and their name. The question, though, is: are you self-publishing for independence or to snag a mainstream? If the answer is to snag a mainstream, then aren’t they and the literary agents maintaining their former role as gatekeepers by default?

 

Indie News Beat: Indie Superstar Hugh Howey and Wool

If you haven’t heard of the novel Wool by Hugh Howey, then it’s likely you will at some point in the near future. It has been hailed as science fiction’s answer to 50 Shades, although only in the way that a self-publishing author has broken out, rather than any similarity in content. Wool began as a short story of just 60 pages, first published in July 2011. By the end of that year, Howey had added a further four parts to bring the story up to the generally-accepted idea of novel length. Momentum kept building throughout last year, to the point where today Howey enjoys all the trappings of a successful, A-list fiction author (Ridley Scott has the film rights, Random House are handling the print editions in most territories, and the book’s Amazon page now boasts over 3,300 reviews).

So how did he do it? Continue reading “Indie News Beat: Indie Superstar Hugh Howey and Wool”