New Thread: Adventures in Indie Publishing

I’m going to start posting a new series thread here about my thoughts, questions, and work around Indie Publishing. This means re-issuing some of my old books, the ones I’ve gotten the rights back to, as well as marketing, promoting and advertising them.

Here’s a quick Q&A to get us started.

What is Indie Publishing?

This used to be called self publishing. Now it’s called “Indie Publishing” and may have dropped the taboo. May have. We shall see. Honestly, I’m doing it because it’s the best game in town.

Why are you doing it?

Well, economics.

I honestly don’t see a publisher out there that can help me sell books on the level that I want to. No one is ready to put in the time using the tools and investing the money that will make the Jack Palms Crime Series sell.

I think it can, and I hope you do too. But it’s going to take work. This is where I start doing the work.

What is the story with publishing today?

Well, it was the best of times, it was the worst of times. You know the quote. I’m going to focus on the upside. Here’s a great blog post by Mark Dawson that claims “this is the best time in the history of the world to be a writer.”

Wow! Can you imagine! I’ll let him explain the why of that. Basically, he supports it with his own success story and Kindle! That’s it, the magic of… Kindle!

So? Well, ebooks are selling, people are reading, and the royalty rates I can get by Indie Publishing titles myself is higher than I can get anywhere else–by far! That’s a big part of the economics segment.

There’s also a huge set of tools including Amazon ads, Facebook ads, Bookbub, and more that I can use myself to sell books and get my work out to readers who haven’t heard of me. This is the central reason I think this is a unique time to be writing: we’ve never had access to these channels or affordable advertising before. Any of the tools that former gatekeepers could offer have now been widely democratized. They’re accessible to anyone!

What are the most exciting changes you see?

Publishing is affordable, accessible, freelancers are ready to help at all stages of production, KDP offers favorable rates of return on book sales (70%)… these things have never happened before. It’s like the gatekeepers have given out the keys!

Plus, people can buy books from anywhere, and start reading them instantly on devices!

So, I’ll add these to Mark’s blog post as reasons to be excited about Indie Publishing and being a writer today.

I am excited. And there’s lots to do.

Here’s where I’ll be charting my progress.