Surviving Indie Publishing with Susan Kaye Quinn (IndieRecon Facebook Page Chat)

Watermarks are one of the oldest technologies designed to offer proof of something’s origins. Centuries after their first use on banknotes, stamps, and luxury writing papers, the concept of the watermark has found a valuable place in the digital world, where copying is easy and proof of provenance hard. In the book world, we are most familiar with the watermark concept taking the form of DRM (digital rights management), an additional layer applied to a digital file to prevent copying or manipulation.

On the Self-Publishing with ALLi podcast, Joe Solari warns authors that a big crowdfunding win isn't the same as a payday. He breaks down the three cash traps that sink successful author businesses — the lag trap, frozen cash, and the shrinking slice — and shows how to dodge them with a few practical habits: tracking committed versus paid money, knowing your inventory value, and setting margin floors before you launch.

As indie authors, we might not depend on publishers for our paperwork, but we can be very dependent upon the platforms we use to publish, distribute, and then pay us for our books. And when those platforms run into trouble, it can create a real headache. The most recent time this happened was with the slow-motion car crash that brought Unbound to a halt. Thanks to The Bookseller for drawing my attention to the latest and providing some hope for those affected by it.