Indie Publishing

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For the longest time, ‘indie publishing’ had a bad reputation.

It was most often associated with ‘vanity publishing,’ which essentially meant you wrote a book and then paid to have it published yourself. The derogatory nature of moniker stemmed from the idea that if a book hadn’t gone through the gauntlet of traditional publishing, it probably wasn’t worth very much.

And in most cases, the books did seem quite sub-par, even if they were well-written. The paper quality was off. The design was laughable. Details we’ve come to expect from published work — like ISBN numbers, copyright pages, and bastard title pages — weren’t evident, and their lack made us question what the author was trying to achieve by converting their hard-earned money into pseudo-published work.

Independent publishing today is quite a different creature.

Today there are small presses operating on models similar to those of larger publishing companies (though generally with more favorable contracts for the authors) putting out work that rivals or beats that of the Big Six.

There are independent authors doing the same, and with the same level of quality and success. In the last year, even authors who make advances in the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars are leaving their publishers to operate solo. They learn the ropes of the industry themselves, or (more commonly) hire independent editors, designers, marketers, publicists, website designers, and anyone else they need to make their book a success on bookshelves.

In short, we live in a time where traditional publishing finally has a legitimate rival, and that rival is each and every author with a computer and WiFi signal.

We don’t say this to hate on traditional publishing — they have long done good work, and still do — but we are giddily excited about the potential that things like ebooks, on-demand publishing, and the interconnectivity of social media have brought to the forefront. This is a time of great uncertainty, but uncertain times are when new normals are born.
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• Authors as Businesspeople
• Remove Hurdles, Build Trampolines
• Indie Publishing
• Learning & Teaching
• Vehicles & Stories
• Business Models

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