I
started my career as a traditionally published author with Red Sage, Ellora’s
Cave and Samhain Publishing. I’ll forever be grateful that those publishers had
faith in my writing ability, but in today’s publishing world, I believe it’s smart
for an author to protect their career by investigating indie publishing as
well.
A
few years ago, self-publishing was transitioning from “vanity” press into
something a lot less negative, rebranding itself as “indie” publishing. I
belong to several author loops, and I began to hear about writers who had
success self-publishing… both traditional authors who’d gotten their publishing
rights back from older stories, and other writers who had “niche” stories that the big publishers had
rejected because they didn’t think they would sell. I was happy with my
traditional sales, but because I’m a pragmatist, I decided to try this new
publishing avenue.
My
most recent book is a contemporary romance called Fear Of Flying, and it’s my “write
what you know” book. Yes, I’m afraid to fly. And yes, a psychic once told me
I’d never die in a plane crash, just like a psychic tells my heroine at the
beginning of this story. And yes, I was a book publicist for two years just
like Jessie Jordan in the book. I travelled the country helping non-fiction
authors promote their new releases: cookbooks, art books, travel books.
This
thinly-veiled autobiography was easy and fun for me to write, and I thought it
was a good book to experiment with indie publishing.
Frankly,
when I hit the “publish” button for that book, my hope was simply that anyone
Googling Erica Jong might also find my version of Fear Of Flying and be
intrigued enough to buy a copy. But an unexpected thing happened. In September,
Erica Jong released a book called Fear Of Dying. Immediately, my sales of Fear
Of Flying took off, and they’re still pretty good month to month!
So
this was not an objective indie experiment, per se. I was lucky, but if you’re
considering self-publishing, there are a few things you should know:
-Series
sell better than single titles. Romance readers are voracious, and when they
find an author they like, they’ll buy everything you’ve written. If you can
hook them with a series, you’ll have a guaranteed readership.
-
Readers DO NOT CARE if you’re traditionally published or self-published, they
just care that you’ve written a good book. Or let me clarify… a good, grammatically-clean, and copy-edited book.
Self-published authors should have your book edited by an outside person,
because nothing looks more “amateur” than misspellings, bad grammar and
incorrect punctuation. Even if you’re absolutely convinced you’re an English
maven, you as an author are so familiar with your story that you’re likely to
miss obvious errors. And if you’re unsure that your fiction story WORKS… with
Goal, Motivation & Conflict and your basic 3-act or 6-stage plot structure…
you should consider hiring a content editor as well.
-Your
cover and your blurb are (almost) the most important parts of your book. Just
like traditional publishing, the cover is the first thing that will draw a reader’s attention. Number two is the
blurb… if your book doesn’t sound interesting in one or two paragraphs, a
reader isn’t going to buy it. Then, as long as your story is satisfying, you’ll
have a devoted reader. So hire a cover artist. And hire a professional
formatter. You want to have the most professional product you can produce. In
today’s crowded marketplace, you need to take advantage of every opportunity to
stand out.
I’m
sure there are a million other tips indie authors could give, but those are my
top three. And as for me, I plan to keep a foot in both publishing camps
(traditional and indie) because I believe it’s smart not to put all my career
eggs in one basket.
What
do you think of indie publishing? Read any good/bad books?
Leigh
