Should You Become an Independent Author?
Why Traditional Publishing Doesn’t Work for Most Writers
When you decided to strike out into the wild, woolly world and “become a writer,” you probably did it the traditional way. Maybe you began the adventure by writing short stories (you probably just happened to have a few lying around anyway) and sending them to magazines, keeping your fingers crossed that the magazines would publish them, and launch you toward your dream of literary fame and fortune.
If you were particularly ambitious, you might have even dared to hope for pay.
At some point you probably wrote a book and began querying agents. Maybe you were one of those lucky writers who get requests for additional chapters right away; or maybe you queried agents for months or even years without a single bite.
Even exceptional writers can experience these discouraging droughts, by the way. There are at least a couple of those in my writers’ group who are going through a lack of agent interest, and have been for years. These are writers who continuously craft good, solid, interesting, evocative stories, yet don’t fit into any of the boxes agents have created for the types of writing they wish to represent. I can’t help but feel plenty of people would love a chance to read their stories. Yet, so far, they haven’t been granted permission to place them in front of those readers.
If you are successful at nabbing an agent, it will then be time for that agent to query publishers. There are about 15 publishers that American agents will query. If those 15 decline the novel, the agent will most likely drop you. From the very beginning of the process, this is an industry focused on fast results.
Let’s say, however, that you do land a publishing contract. It doesn’t mean you are out of the woods. Publishers will only spend their valuable promotion dollars on their stars, while the great majority of writers in their stables are left to fend for themselves. That’s right – you will have to market your own books. And you may even do well. A friend of mine who publishes with Simon & Schuster is a marketing ace. She has to be, or no one will know about her work. However, without the luxury of a solid marketing budget, it is slow going. And the publisher gets the lion’s share of the money her work brings in.
To put it bluntly, the traditional publishing arrangement is all about the publisher selling a commodity. In many cases, they aren’t even particularly concerned about quality. They are in the business to sell a product, and sell it quickly. No one can fault them for that. It’s what they do. It’s what they’re for. But it isn’t a good fit for every writer. In fact, it isn’t a good fit for most writers, because there simply isn’t enough room for them there – and there certainly isn’t enough promotion money to go around.
What an Independent Author Is – And Isn’t
How do you tell if you should quit hoping Prince Publisher will come along and rescue you from obscurity, and take the bull by the horns to become an Independent Author? Well, one thing you may want to consider is whether the “querying and waiting” approach has worked for you so far.
Now, let me pause for a moment and say that traditional publishing works well for some authors. If a publisher likes an author and an author likes a publisher and they can reach terms that are agreeable to everyone, there is absolutely nothing wrong with an author taking advantage of such an arrangement. It isn’t “selling out” to make money off your own work. In fact, for most authors, that is the ultimate goal.
The trick is to take advantage of the publisher instead of the other way around.
If, however, you have been sending out queries for years without much interest from the publishing industry, and you are a quality writer, then your work may not be a good fit for the industry for some reason. Maybe the situation can be fixed. Maybe, for instance, your erotica novels don’t have the right sex scene-to-page ratio. If so, you can change that. But what if changing that would damage the story you are trying to tell?
In that case, you have a decision to make. Write your stories so that they fit into the neat little slots the marketers have created for them, and essentially look like everyone else’s, or become an Independent Author and give yourself a chance to create something new and exciting – then put that experiment “out there” and give it a chance to become a success.
An Independent Author is someone who does it herself. She takes responsibility for every aspect of getting her work to her readers – production, marketing and distribution, as well as story creation. She has a pioneering spirit. She is creative and resourceful and is willing to try new things. She isn’t afraid of failing, or at least doesn’t let that fear stop her. Most importantly, she thinks outside the box. In some cases, way outside.
I can hear some of you worrying that you don’t have a budget of tens of thousands of dollars for creating and promoting a book. That’s what some self-published authors I’ve run across have paid to have their work printed and distributed. But that is only one business model. That is one person doing it the same way publishing companies do it. Publishing companies – especially the large ones – can afford to spend the money to do it like that.
But that isn’t the only way to get your work out to the public. Some authors choose to sell PDF files of their work, and get rid of printing costs altogether. Others use print-on-demand companies, which have gotten a lot better over the last few years, in order to avoid the risk and cost of keeping inventory. Those like myself choose to give away their work for free via a website and make their money from advertising.
I’ll pause so that those of you who have passed out from the mere thought of “giving away work” will have a chance to regain consciousness and fan yourselves a moment. Maybe you should put some water on your face or have a good, stiff drink.
There. Feel better now? Now let me tell you something that will make you feel even better. Giving away writing in order to sell advertising isn’t a new idea. Free newspapers like the one I used to work for do it all the time. It doesn’t mean you are actually giving your work away for free – it just means that the money is coming from a different place – the advertiser instead of the reader.
If that sounds a little too scary for you to even consider just yet, it could be that you still harbor hopes of hitting that publishing lottery and making it to the big time. If that’s the case, I wish you luck. You could, after all, be right. If it doesn’t work out, however, there is still a place for you to make your own way as an Independent Author. There always will be.
If that sounds like an exciting proposition, then chances are you have the kind of pioneering spirit it takes to strike out on your own and survive or die by your own merits. Just typing that gives me butterflies of the best kind.
What Types of Writers Make Good Independent Authors?
Good ones, for a start. It would be wrong and stupid of me to come out and tell you that anybody can make money from his writing simply because he decided to go his own way. The publishing marketers are right about one thing: To be successful as a writer (i.e., to make money at it) you have to write what people want to read. Of course, how many people we’re talking about is a matter of opinion. Maybe you need a billion readers to make your dreams come true; maybe a hundred will do. But in order to make money from your writing, you will need readers, and to get readers, you do have to write something interesting and you do have to write it reasonably well.
Aside from being a good writer, you have to be willing and able to figure out the systems that you will need to get your work to the public, whether that means hiring printers and distributors, or building and maintaining a website. Or both. Or something else altogether. You have to be intelligent enough to make the thing fly, and you have to be able to use tools like stat counters and social bookmarking sites to tell you what you are doing wrong – and what you are doing right. You have to know something about Internet marketing, or be very capable of learning it quickly.
You also have to be courageous enough to look at how the sausage is made. The fantasy is, when we make a deal with a publisher, we write the books and they handle everything else. Some authors even refuse to read reviews of their work because they can’t deal with the uncertainty that goes along with the possibility that someone doesn’t like their work and has the power to say so in print. When you become an Independent Author, you will know everything that happens behind the scenes. You will know when your stats are down in a given week and you have to be able to react to that in a way that will help keep you successful.
In short, the best Independent Authors are good writers, intelligent people and courageous entrepreneurs who are tired of waiting to be noticed by the publishing industry – or who want to avoid that process altogether. If you have those qualities and a good dose of adrenaline right now that makes you want to get started immediately, then you probably have what it takes to be a successful Independent Author.
Isn’t it time you got started?
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