Is Self-Publishing The New Slush Pile?
ALLi's founder Orna Ross, named by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in publishing, explains…
ALLi's founder Orna Ross, named by The Bookseller magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in publishing, explains…
Every so often, we like to offer a quick recap on what's happening with one of our major campaigns of…
As he launches "No Exit", a dark novelette about suicide and murder, indie author and campaigner Dan Holloway considers the…
When I left my publisher for the creative freedom of going it alone, I was delighted to find a community…
It's final call time for what is shaping up to be a wonderful global launch of our forthcoming Opening Up…
The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and I have been quoted and, yes, even misquoted, about the removal of author-published…
Every Wednesday ALLi will tell the world about our members' latest book launches, news, awards, freebies, workshops and updates on…
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
We're ‘indies', right? Indie authors?
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: