Celebrating Independent Authors
Authors are known for talking to themselves – and now, yes, even interviewing themselves. Martin Crosbie interviews Martin Crosbie on self-publishing, Amazon, and the evolution of indie author books.
Martin,
Yes, Martin?
You self-published your first book in 2011. What’s been the most significant change in Indie publishing since then? Continue reading “An Interview with Indie Author Martin Crosbie”
I’m a farmer and author. Hubby, however, expressly forbids me to have a milk cow despite the amount of milk we use. What does milk have to do with self-publishing anyway? Metaphorically speaking, a lot. When you milk a cow, that lovely milk hits the bucket and is all stirred up. Think of that milk as the publishing industry. Right now it’s a mixed bucket of Indie and traditionally published authors all out to win your hard-earned dollar. Everyone wants to sell books. And with so many books being published, the market has become diluted. I’ve watched my sales drop off sharply the last few months when they should be increasing due to the holidays. They’ve never done that — not in the five years I’ve been published. Continue reading “Will the Self-Publishing Cream Rise to the Top?”
Guest Post
by Marie Marshall
Last week I read Martin Crosbie’s article entitled 5 Reasons Why You Should STILL Be Self-Publishing.So far, I have held back from self-publishing. I currently have five books published by the traditional route (three novels, two of which are for YA/older children, and two collections of poetry). From my point of view, getting someone else engaged in publishing my writing was part of the endeavour and the achievement.
Now, as an intro, that may sound as though I’m assuming a position of superiority. Not at all. I don’t mean to belittle anyone else’s high quality writing (I know that is a difficult thing to define anyway), but whether we like it or not, there IS a hell of a lot of rubbish (also not easy to define) out there on Planet Self-Publish, and it is amongst the generality of that overcrowded planet’s population that good self-published writers have chosen to walk. The rubbish will proliferate, and it will probably proliferate at a faster rate than the good stuff. The way I see it, it is necessary to introduce voluntary ‘best practices’ in order to raise at least the quality of presentation. I’m sure this has been said many times before, but I am going to say it anyway. Continue reading “If you really must walk on Planet Self-Publish…”
You’ve heard the snide comments. Self-published books are crap. They aren’t edited. They are amateur. They are not worth our notice. Many such comments were deserved. They still are in some cases.
Most of these slurs came out of a time when the majority of so-called self-published books were put out by vanity presses that preyed on the desire of the unwary to have a book with their name on it. Often these books were written to share with friends and family, never intended for a wider readership. Continue reading “Changing Attitudes Toward Self-Publishing”