Indie publishing (also known as self-publishing) has been around for quite a long time, and with the introduction of ebooks and print-on-demand, it is a legitimate and growing industry.
Being an indie means wearing a lot of hats and shifting among different roles, all necessary to the overall job of being an authorpreneur.
Last month, we talked about figuring out what to write and whether to write to market or not. This month, we’re going to tackle some things you can do while you’re working on your first draft.
Indie Pub Journey posts:
- Before You Write
- Deciding What to Write
- Things to Do While You Write (this post)
Pen Name or No Pen Name?
The choice of whether to use a pseudonym is individual, and you should decide whether you want to do this before you publish. There are a number of things you might want to consider.
The genre(s) you’re writing in
If your primary genre is erotica, you might wish to use a pen name. This is not to sex-shame, but only to recognize that there is a lot of sex-shaming out there and you don’t know what your future might hold. Once you publish erotica, your name will be associated with it on the internet forever. If you decide later to teach schoolchildren or go into politics or even date someone for whom this would be an issue, expect that they will find this book attached to your name.
Your day-job and non-writerly life
We all have to face facts: most indie-published writers are not going to be able to support themselves fully on their writing (though it is definitely possible!), at least not at the beginning. If your job has a morality clause, some genres and reader demographics might be problematic. A Catholic school will likely have trouble with an indie author employee who writes positive LGBTQ+ stories, regardless of genre. Some employers might take issues with fantastical settings or elements.
It’s also important to consider these things in terms of your social life, as well. How will the people in your social circle view you writing about that topic or in that genre? How will your family respond?
Now, none of this is meant to discourage you from writing whatever you want. But you should be thinking about these things so that you make decisions that make sense for your life.
Safety
If you live in a small town, own a home, and/or have a unique name, it might be worthwhile to use a pseudonym regardless of what you write. In the age of the internet, it’s not impossible that a fan (or non-fan) can get carried away and try to find you. If you own a home and have noted somewhere, like your bio, that you live in X city, it would take someone very little time to access the county’s assessment rolls and find your home address. That is public information.
Again, these are things to think on before you publish.
Amp Up Your Social Following
Okay, since you’re writing your novel, now is the time to start getting your name (or pen name) out there. I know that can feel intimidating to some folks, but it doesn’t have to be.
Pick a social media site to be active on
Contrary to how it may seem, indie authors don’t have to be active on every social media platform out there. Seriously, we’d never get any books written! So pick whichever one you like the best. If you like two, pick two. Definitely don’t try to do them all! But you’re going to engage more and with more meaning if it’s a platform you already enjoy.
Social media is a long game. You can’t just post links to your books and assume anyone cares. No one does. You need to find communities and become involved. Get into conversations. Make connections.
How do you do that? On Facebook, you can do a search for groups that read the sort of books you write (and, hopefully, also read). Join the groups, get involved. Become a regularly contributing member of the group. Talk about the books you love in that genre, the authors you admire, the worlds that capture your imagination.
On Twitter and Instagram, “conversations” are created with hashtags, which are terms preceded by the # sign. To start finding folks to interact with, you can search on your genre, like #horror or #urbanfantasy and follow people who are involved in those hashtags.
A service like Hashtagify can also be quite useful. Pop in your hashtag and it will give you suggestions for other, related tags. For example, when I plug in “horror” as a hashtag, it tells me that correlating hastags are #paranormal, #ghosts, #ASMSG (Authors’ Social Media Support Group – an indie promo tag), #fantasy, #Kindle, #Halloween, #film, #thriller, #scifi, and #IARTG (Indie Author Retweet Group — another indie promo tag). That gives you ten more hashtags to look into and find interesting people, conversations, etc.
Hashtagify for #horror
Again, engagement is key here. You have to be active in your groups, whether actual groups on a place like Facebook or hashtag threads on other sites. Follow folks you find interesting and engage in the conversation.
Of course, there are other sites like Pinterest, Goodreads, and YouTube, and likely several others I don’t even know about. Whichever ones you prefer are the ones you should be on.
Do all of this now while you’re writing your books. That way, when it comes time to promote, you have a large circle of established friends who like that sort of book. Plus, you are a trusted source rather than just some random author who is spamming their group.
Start Your Mailing List
The idea of a mailing list/newsletter tends to freak authors out a bit. There are always a lot of questions about how to maintain one, how often to write, what to write about, and lots of other things. For those questions, as well as how to set one up, etc., I’ll refer you to Newsletter Ninja by Tammi LaBrecque, which is an excellent resource, especially when just setting a newsletter up.
What I’ll talk about here is how to get people you don’t know to sign up for your list. You do that with what’s generically called a “reader magnet.” This is basically anything that you think your readers would find valuable that you can give to them in exchange for them giving you their email address.
There are a lot of different things you can use, but I think as a new author, your best bet is going to be a free story. This shouldn’t be a book, but a short of perhaps 5000 or 10,000 words that ideally has something to do with your novel’s world. Maybe it’s a prequel to your novel or an interesting slice of your protagonist’s (or antagonist’s!) life. The purpose of this sort of reader magnet is to get people interested in your work and in your world enough sign up for your list. The idea is that when you do let them know your book is out, they’ll be excited about buying it.
Once your book is out, you can offer things to your readers that might include a deleted scene or maybe an experience one of the characters had during the book but that occurred “off page.” You could offer a character sheet or setting sketch. The purpose of this sort of reader magnet is to create active fans from folks who’ve read your book. They’re already invested in the story and in the characters, so if you can give them something special that other folks don’t have, it engages and invests them even more!
There are services that help with the technical side of collecting email addresses and distributing digital media. You can try StoryOrigin, BookFunnel, and Prolific Works. I’ve used both StoryOrigin and BookFunnel with good results. I don’t have experience, personally, with Prolific Works, but know that lots of writers use it as well.
Research Potential Team Members
The term “indie author” and “authorpreneur” might make it seem as if being an indie is a completely solo thing. And while it can be, for most of us it isn’t. We usually have a team, made up of various people who help us get our work ready for publication. Members of my team include:
- Cover artist
- Graphic artist (not for every book, but to design site logos, etc)
- Beta readers
- Proofreader
- Formatter
- ARC readers & launch team
- Audio narrator/production person
Other pros who might be involved:
- Web designer
- Illustrator
- Virtual assistant
- Developmental editor
- Copy editor
- Social media manager
- PR person
As you can see, an indie author never has to be alone.
So now, while you’re writing your book, you can be deciding which of these you want to have on your team and researching people who provide those services. We’ll talk more about what to specifically look for in partners in a later post.
Keep Writing!
Remember that your main job is to write your book, so make sure that the majority of the time, you’re working on that. But making some time to get these things in order too will definitely help you in the long run!
Next month, we’ll talk about what to do once you finish your first draft!
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