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The INDIE FILES: Measuring Your Success As an Author

By Steven Radecki During the more than a decade that I have been involved in indie publishing, I have worked with more than three hundred authors. One thing I have discovered is that, just as publishing is not a one-size-fits-all process, neither is how individual writers conceive of their success. Managing your own goals and […]

The Indie Files: Wide For The Win 2 – Retail Promotions

By John Wilker In my previous post on going Wide for the Win, I gave an overview of an author’s options when self-publishing wide, which means offering your books beyond Amazon. In this article, we’ll delve into how you can best leverage each of those outlets for promotions. Kobo Kobo offers a wide array of […]

The INDIE FILES: Making Use of Genre and Categories

By Anthony W. Eichenlaub Genre: A marketing construct. Its only purpose is to get books into the hands of people who will enjoy them. There are other definitions, of course. People debate endlessly about the essential nature of cyberpunk or whether certain stories qualify as science fiction or fantasy. These conversations are fascinating, fun, and […]

The INDIE FILES: Book Descriptions

By Scott King Writing book descriptions sucks, but it doesn’t have to be hard. If you can write a whole dang novel, you have it in you to write a quick, simple description for a back cover, a pitch, or online stores. Book descriptions are a marketing tool to sell your books and establish reader […]

THE INDIE FILES: Author tips and tricks for selling on Amazon

By William C. Tracy Congrats! You’re an indie author! You’ve written a book, (hopefully) had critiques and edited it, put it all together, and thrown it up on Amazon. Time to watch the money roll in, right? Well, not exactly. Amazon books don’t sell themselves. Especially in these waning years of the golden indie author […]

THE INDIE FILES: Bringing Back the Weird to Indie Publishing

by Rachel A. Rosen It’s a good time to be Weird. There’s a plethora of new titles and an explosion of microgenres targeted to specific tastes. Looking for post-capitalist solarpunk utopias? Poetic meditations on fungi? They’re out there. And the traditional publishing industry is—agonizingly slowly—platforming BIPOC, queer, and trans creators with unique lenses on our […]

THE INDIE FILES: Writing Through Trauma

by J. Scott Coatsworth In the middle of 2022, I broke my arm. And not just a simple fracture—my orthopedic surgeon said it looked like it had exploded. Thus began a difficult (and still in progress) recovery. I won’t go into the gory details—suffice it to say that for about six weeks, I was unable […]

THE INDIE FILES: Balancing the Indie Workload

By Anthony W. Eichenlaub Your time has value. That’s it. That’s the lesson. If you’re looking to save a few minutes, you can skip the rest of this article and just keep that one thought in mind. Your minutes have worth, and how you spend them is as important as how you spend your money. […]

THE INDIE FILES: Yes, You Do Need An Editor

By Colin Alexander Almost by definition, writers love to write. We also tend to fall in love with our words. What we put on the page paints the exact picture of the idea we have in our minds, and all of our readers will see the same.  It could not be done any better. This […]