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Alliance of Independent Authors

Self-Publishing and The Midlist.

Guest Post by  By Catherine Czerkawska

There has been a great deal of talk in publishing circles about the ‘midlist slump’. A couple of years ago, I even read reports confidently predicting the ‘death of the midlist’. With the rise in indie publishing, these appear to have been exaggerated.

If I were to define midlist, I suppose it would be that huge, fertile, centre ground of well-written fiction which doesn’t slot neatly into any particular genre. It might be written by authors who like to experiment with crossing the boundaries and don’t see why they should always have to change their names to do so, especially when the ‘voice’ remains much the same.

I write historical and contemporary fiction, but the style is undoubtedly mine. Midlist readers are often, but by no means exclusively, female, often middle aged or older. They seem to be voracious readers.

The midlist used to be the seed bed from which the occasional (almost always unpredictable) blockbuster would spring. Screenwriter William Goldman’s much quoted dictum that ‘nobody knows anything’ applies just as much to fiction as to film. If the publisher got lucky, it might be an author's first or second book that made the breakthrough. More frequently it would be their fifth, sixth or seventh book. And if a book did become a bestseller or spawn a number of sequels, some of those profits would be ploughed back into nurturing other seedlings. Broadly speaking, that’s how it used to be, before the big corporations ate the smaller companies and changed the whole ethos of publishing in the process.

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How Indie Authors Can Work With Trade Publishers

Jackie Collins Independent Author

Jackie Collins now successfully combining self-publishing and trade-publishing

Today, in the fifth and final part of our ‘Which Distributor’ series, Orna Ross explains how independent authors can successfully work with trade publishers to distribute some of their books.

At a writers conference, an agent and writer are putting out tentative feelers towards each other. The agent is from a venerable company, with a long list of illustrious clients. The writer is an independent author, who has earned her indie spurs by successfully self-publishing two ebook thriller titles (with more on the way) and building a vibrant and growing fanbase, both for her books and her writing advice website.

The agent wants to sign this author, who is young, hardworking, full of ideas, with many books ahead of her. The author is actively seeking a trade publisher, because she wants a third party to handle print.  For her, print takes too long and requires the sort of activities that don't interest her. It's the one thing trade publishing can do better than she can do for herself, she believes.

The two talk, they seem to understand each other. Back home, the agent sends over an  Author Representation Agreement but before she's read too far, the writer is concerned. A clause states that the agent will

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Lightning Source Best for Self-Publishers?

 

Ben Galley

Today, in the third part of our ‘Which Distributor' series where Alliance members share the experiences they've enjoyed with distributors, author Ben Galley gives us his take on Print on Demand (POD) company Lightning Source:

If your book were a delicious pie, distributors would be the ones who put it in the hands of the supermarkets.

It's a very simple analogy, but it rings true. Distribution is the supply link between our printers and the bookstores, and without it, our books would simply never reach our readers' hands. That's a painful vision. And to me, so is keeping a veritable mountain of books in your garage, shipping one at a time, staring at the big hole in your bank account.

No, thank you, I want a different road.

With the advent of the digital revolution came Print on Demand, and with it came distribution relationships. Now, POD companies have forged relationships with the wholesaler distributors to allow us indies access to

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An Indie Author Is Not An Island

International rights agent for self-publishersOur decision here at The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) to hire a rights agent to represent our members' books in translation markets has raised the hackles of those who think an indie author is not allowed to make publishing partnerships.

Snarky comments emerging across the Internet, of the indies-admit-they-are-not-so-indie-after-all variety, show that there is still fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to be an indie author or self-publisher.

Here at ALLi, our definition of an indie is one who recognises the writer as the primary driver of the book, not just in getting it written but also in

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Guest Post: Independent Authors and Visibility by Linda Gillard

Linda knows how to be seen!

 

In an over-crowded marketplace, we assume it’s reviews that sell books and, predictably, it’s now possible to buy “honest reviews”. Could paid-for reviews be a good investment? Possibly, but I think we should be asking ourselves a different question—how do books find their readers? Or, to put it another way, what makes a book visible in the marketplace?

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Self-Publishers Promote Each Other

We value each other's work

We've been having a debate about self-promotion on our Alliance of Independent Authors' member-only Facebook group.  And one of our members, Richard Bunning, came up with a great idea to get around this  perennial problem for self-publishers and the forums they hang out on.

Like most great ideas, it's simple. Naturally, as writers, we want to share news of our books and other writings but

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Definition Of Indie Author

What Is An Indie Author?

We're ‘indies', right? Indie authors?Definition of Indie Author

Most of us have embraced the term and have some idea what we mean by the concept. But there's a lot of confusion out there, with people using the term ‘indie' interchangeably with ‘self-publisher', and people meaning wildly different things when they use those words.

Here at The Alliance of Independent Authors we gave great thought to terminology when we were setting up. Were we going to be an alliance of self-publishers or independent authors? What was the difference, anyway?

Here are the conclusions we came to:

  • Indie authorship and self-publishing are not quite synonymous but an independent author will have self-published at least one book.
  • Going ‘indie' is, more than anything, an
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The Alliance Of Independent Authors Logo

Why Self-Publishing ?

Welcome! 

You've found your way to the very first post by the Alliance of Independent Authors, here on our brand new self-publishing advice blog.

A lot of people ask us why are so many authors going indie and self-publishing these days? The short answer is: because we can.

Self-publication served only a tiny number of writers before digital technology enabled print-on-demand and the direct distribution of ebooks. This technology simultaneously does four things that are very good for writers.

  1. It gives us a global readership, instead of confining us to specific territories.
  2. Our books are continually
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