Creative Self-publishing E-Book

Alliance of Independent Authors

• Herausgeber: Font Publications
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Serie: Complete Publishing Guides for Indie Authors
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 464

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

It has never been easier to publish a book, but publishing a book is never easy.

Creative Self-Publishing is a comprehensive guide to every step in the publishing process, written by the director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), and drawing on the experience of thousands of ALLi members.

The book's focus is how to apply your creativity to publishing, as much as to writing. It takes an individual approach, beginning with you—your passion, mission and sense of purpose as a publisher and creative business owner—then guiding you through the seven processes of publishing, in ways that empower you to reach more readers and sell more books.

In an engaging, easy-to-read format, you’ll learn:

- Which creative practices and business models the most successful authors are using today

- Where you fit in the history of authorship and self-publishing

- How to overcome publishing resistance and block by fostering creative flow.

- Where to find your ideal readers and how to ensure they find your books

- A proven planning method that marries your passion, mission and purpose as writer and publisher

Whether you write fiction, nonfiction, or poetry books, the principles and practices outlined in this book will work for you. You’ll make better books, find more readers, turn them into keener fans, and grow your income, impact and influence as a self-directed and empowered indie author–the creative way.

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR BOOK

For the team, advisors, and members

of the Alliance of Independent Authors

from whom I’ve learned so much.

* * *

CREATIVE SELF-PUBLISHING

ALLi’s Guide to Independent Publishing for Authors & Poets

Copyright © Orna A Ross, Alliance of Independent Authors 2023, 3rd edition.

First edition, 2018.

Second edition, 2021.

EBOOK: 978-1-909888-16-6

PAPERBACK: 978-1-913349-74-5

LARGE PRINT: 978-1-913349-75-2

HB: 978-1-913349-76-9

AUDIO: 978-1-913349-77-6

The author’s moral rights have been asserted. All rights reserved.

Enquiries: [email protected]

CREATIVE SELF-PUBLISHING

ALLI’S GUIDE TO INDEPENDENT PUBLISHING FOR AUTHORS AND POETS

PUBLISHING GUIDES FOR INDIE AUTHORS

BOOK 1

ALLIANCE OF INDEPENDENT AUTHORS

ORNA A. ROSS

CONTENTS

Introduction

A Personal Preface

How to Read this Book

ALLi Supports and Resources

I. The Independent Author

1. What Kind of Self-Publisher Are You?

2. Some Self-Publishing Success Stories

3. Your Definition of Success

II. Going Indie

4. A Quick History of Books and Authors

5. Pathways to Publication

6. Is Self-Publishing Second Best?

7. Independent Author, Independent Mindset

III. Creative Expectations

8. Creative Passion, Creative Process

9. Creative Mission and Values

IV. Publishing Foundations

10. Publishing Values and Publishing Models

11. Publishing Wide

12. Sales Centered Website

13. Readers, Fans, and Superfans

14. Metadata: Categories and Keywords

15. Copyright And Digital Rights Management

V. The Craft of Publishing

16. The Seven Processes of Publishing

17. Book Editorial

18. Book Design

19. Book Production

20. Book Distribution

21. Book Marketing

22. Book Promotion

23. Selective Rights Licensing

VI. Creative Business Planning for Authors

24. Creative Planning for Profit

25. Pay Yourself First

26. Growth, Resistance and Block

27. Finding Creative Flow

VII. Bringing It All Together

28. Becoming a Good Publisher

29. Business Models and Income Streams

30. Your Product Mix

31. The Creative Age

Author’s Note

Other Guides

About the Author

ALLi Supports and Resources

Index

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to self-publishing! Or to considering that you might, some day, perhaps some day soon, publish your very own book. It’s an enthralling creative adventure and I would like to guide you through all I’ve learned, as a novelist, poet, and founder-director of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi).

I started ALLi, with my husband Philip, back in 2012 to encourage and empower authors just like you, and this book summaries everything they have taught me over the years.

In this introduction, I introduce myself and explain how to read this book (warning: it’s a doing, not just a reading, experience!). I also outline the supports and resources ALLi provides to authors at all stages of publishing.

Step on in.

* * *

A PERSONAL PREFACE

This is a book about you. Your writing and publishing ambitions. Your books and your readers. Your income and influence and impact—and how you can grow each of these through self-publishing as an independent (“indie”) author.

It’s also a bit about me. About how self-publishing saved my writing life, not once but twice. About my mistakes and failures as an indie author, and what they’ve taught me. About forming the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) and all that I’ve learned from our members, team and advisors. I share these details in the hope that you can learn from my experience.

Mostly, it’s about the art and craft of publishing books when you’re also the books’ author. The nature of that work poses particular challenges and opportunities, for writers as creators and business owners. In this book, I aim to grapple with those challenges from a personal and creative, as well as practical and commercial, perspective.

I’ve learned much that has surprised me since starting to self-publish over a decade ago, from publishing my own novels and poetry books and guidebooks for authors like this one, and also from working alongside thousands of other indie authors, and the publishing services that support them, at ALLi. But three core beliefs I’ve held from the start have only been reinforced by those experiences.

The first is that, for authors, self-publishing is not just an alternative route to readers, it’s a complete disruptor, changing everything for writers in ways that are mostly positive. The second is that any writer who is willing to work to acquire the necessary writing and publishing skills can now make their living from writing books. The third is that publishing (which includes book marketing, not just book production) is every bit as creative a process as writing. This book is founded on those three beliefs.

Are You Published?

At a party recently, I found myself talking to a stranger who asked me the usual just-met-you question, “What do you do?”

“I’m a writer,” I said. “A novelist and poet.”

“Are you published?”

“Oh yes,” I said, lightly, though I knew what I meant by my answer was not what he meant by his question. I rummaged in my bag and found one of my postcards. It has pictures of my books and links to my author website on one side, and info about the Alliance of Independent Authors on the other. I carry these around and hand one over when the topic of my work comes up.

He looked down at the postcard then back up at me. “You’re self-published?”

“Yes,” I said, with a smile. “And with my husband I run an organization for other indie authors.”

“Wouldn’t you rather be published properly?” I didn’t reply that I consider myself to be very properly published, thank you, having sold many more copies of my books than any of my publishers ever had. Or that my idea of a “properly published” book is one written, produced, distributed, marketed and promoted to publishing standard that generates enough income to properly pay all of those involved—including its author. I said: “No. I much prefer the creative freedom of self-publishing.”

Nobody can argue with that and for me, freedom has been the greatest gain. The freedom to get on with it, rather than waiting for validation. The freedom to publish when I want instead of fitting into somebody else’s schedule. The freedom to choose how to present myself and my books.

I turned the conversation. “What about you?” I asked. “What do youdo?” Off we went into his work as a pediatrician, social awkwardness averted.

I knew he would probably chuck the postcard I’d given him before he got home, but still I was glad to have handed it over, and to have said those words that are so important to me with pride. Novelist. Poet. Indie author. Authors’ organization.

I’ll never get over the wonder of it all. It’s such a good life for an author, the life of the successful self-publisher. You set your own definition of success and choose the people you want to work with. You produce your own books your own way, and have a dizzying level of creative freedom, answerable only to your readers and your own artistic imperatives. You are as autonomous as it is possible to be in this world.

None of this is to say that self-publishing is easy. “We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master,” Ernest Hemingway once wrote about writers. The indie author is a forever apprentice in the craft of publishing and the craft of business, as well as the craft of writing.

To be an author, to be a publisher, to run a creative business: each of these is a complex and challenging ambition. It takes time to learn to do each one of these well, and more time to integrate them all into a way that works for you.

It’s done step by step, book by book, win by small win.

What is Publishing?

Publishing is not the moment when someone presses the “publish” button on a self-publishing platform, or when a third-party publisher in London or New York tells an author they think a manuscript is worth their money. It’s not just printing a book or formatting a digital file, either. So what is it? The answer (as so often) lies in the root of the word: the Latin publicare, meaning “tomake public property” (also, interestingly, “to confiscate”).

Publishing takes a privately penned manuscript or typescript and transforms it into a publicly available and readable book, in one or more formats: ebook, audiobook, print book.

Commercial publishing goes a step further, aiming to sell enough of those books to turn a profit. To do that means putting the manuscript or typescript through seven distinct processes: editorial, design, production, distribution, marketing, promotion, and rights licensing.

These seven processes make up the craft of commercial publishing, for an individual author as for the world’s largest publishing conglomerates. Self-publishing, taking a book from concept to completion to transaction, means mastering creative writing, creative publishing and creative business. Three challenging crafts rolled into the publishing business of one indie author.

Becoming A Writer

For me, as for most of us, my self-publishing story began with the urge to write. It’s almost five decades since I first started penning stories and poems, in an Irish convent boarding school, in my woe-is-me, nobody-understands-anything teenage years.

Writing was both a survival tool and a homage to the storytellers and poets I’d met in my reading: Louisa May Alcott, Susan Coolidge, Charles Dickens, Johanna Spyri, and WB Yeats. I mention only the most influential of those earliest years. Thousands of writers have amused and consoled me across the years, distracted me from pain and delighted me with pleasure, helped me to make sense of life and shown me how it might be well lived.

When I grew up, I wanted to do for others what those writers had done for me. Could any work be more important, or more enjoyable? When I was twenty-four, on a Portuguese boat with the boyfriend who was to become my husband, I howled that I wanted to leave the steady, relatively well-paid job I didn’t love and try to earn my living as a writer. He told me to go for it and I did.

I’ve had many writing-related jobs since then—features journalist, magazine editor, academic, writing school owner, even, for a brief time, literary agent. I became an author—in this book’s definition, a writer who has published a book—at age thirty, with a non-fiction health guidebook for women, but what I reallywanted was to write a novel. So in my thirties, in the background to running a freelance journalism career while caring for two young children, I began to fictionalize a true story about my father’s family that had long fascinated me.

In those days, almost the only way to publish a book was to license your publishing rights to a third-party publisher, under exclusive contract. It was called “getting published” and it was every author’s dream. It was my dream too, through the many years it took me to write the book, and through its rejection by fifty-four agents and publishers. Finally, on the fifty-fifth submission my publishing fairytale came true, and I landed a generous two-book contract with Penguin.

I soon learned that fairytale endings are as rare in publishing as in marriage. For me, as for many authors, my publisher Prince Charming turned out to be a bit of a frog. My title, After the Rising, was rejected as “too Irish”, and I was advised to change my author name for the same reason and when it came to positioning the book, our creative differences were intense.

Where I (and the commissioning editor who had acquired the book), saw a page-turning, multi-generational family drama that shattered silences and explored questions of freedom and belonging, the marketing department saw what was then called “chick lit”. When the book jacket arrived, the cover image was a faceless woman, in a sheer dress, wafting through sand dunes and neon-pink branding. The blurb focused wholly on the contemporary love story, making no mention of the Irish civil war that was key to the book’s themes. It gave no sense that the book even had a historical story, though it had taken me so many years to fictionalize sensitive personal and political issues into a story that would make readers think, while it swept them away.

“It’s not about how you feel, it’s about drawing in readers,” the publishers said, which of course is wholly right, but my objection wasn’t that I didn’t “like” their choices. I was thinking commercially too. How were the right readers for my kind of book—the ones we needed to capture and keep for the next book—going to find it, behind its neon-pinkiness? And wouldn’t those who chose the book based on its chick-lit promise be disappointed by its sexual politics and twisty-plot intrigue?

I asked for a meeting with the marketing department but, though I had a decade of experience in media and publishing as a journalist and literary agent, they actually laughed. How naive! No, no, that never happened.

The strategy worked, took the book to the top of the bestseller charts. Having suffered those fifty-four rejections, I was hyper-aware of how lucky I was, but I also felt bruised and confused. Next time, on my second novel, it was even worse.

Then, while we were preparing to launch, a tornado of change hit: the collapse of the “Celtic Tiger” in Ireland coincided with breast cancer, family and friend fallouts, redundancy and more. It flung our family of four into chaos. I closed my writing school, passed the literary agency to my business partner and, aged almost 50, moved from Dublin to London, where there would be more opportunities for us all.

That’s where I was when digital self-publishing burst onto the scene: recovering from cancer and its treatments, writing poetry and working on a new novel. What should I do next? Where do you go as an author when Penguin hasn’t delivered? Publish yourself? Really?

Enter Self-Publishing

At first, I was skeptical. Despite my creative differences with Penguin, I was still grateful to them for having invested in my work. I valued what they brought to the publishing process, and doing without a publisher altogether for a novel felt unthinkable to me. I’d self-published a book for a women’s group I’d worked with, but that was non-fiction and more of a personal project.

Selling fiction internationally seemed far more daunting. What about editing and cover design? What about marketing?

“We hire those services, just like the publishers do,” said one of my indie author friends, recently converted and understandably starry-eyed, as self-publishing was delivering her a six-figure income and she’d just bought a new house for her parents. However, she was tech savvy and business minded, and I was neither. And while her books were great, I also saw lots of other self-publishers putting their books out before they were ready, or choosing terrible covers, or not bothering with an editor.

Everyone in the industry had an opinion. Self-publishing was only for writers who weren’t good enough to find a publisher. It was a democratizing force in an elitist industry. It was a fad. It was a game-changer. “Self-publishing is devaluing books” was a common cry in those days. One much-quoted publishing executive said, “We’re all going to drown in a tsunami of crap.” “No, no, no. Self-publishing is the best thing to happen to readers and writers since Gutenberg,” replied the increasing number of authors who were publishing ebooks through retailers like Kindle Direct Publishing, Apple and Kobo Writing Life. They were all reaching more readers, earning more money, and having the best publishing experience of their lives.

The only way I was going to know was to do it myself and see.

I started small, with a poetry chapbook in ebook format. Everyone knew poetry didn’t sell, which suited me just fine, as I made my mistakes and found my technical feet, with my new-found editors, designers and other authors to help me. Pressing the “Publish” button was a heady moment and when my little poetry chapbook actually did start to sell, I was astonished.

I hadn’t told any family or friends so some (dearly beloved) strangers had parted with good money for a pamphlet of my poetry. Poetry! And unexpectedly, I had completely enjoyed the publishing process. I wrote on my blog and to my (then quite small) email list to tell readers what I was doing, and made some more sales, this time using a PayPal button on my own website.

Given that 70% of each sale made through the online retailers was coming to me, and more than 90% when I sold directly through PayPal, profit was already in sight, just through the ebooks. Wow! I could also publish print books, using print-on-demand technology and, most excitingly, my readership was global in both formats. Digital publishing knew no boundaries and through the various publishing platforms all the English-speaking countries of the world—and beyond!—were now as open to me as the UK and Ireland. Wow again!

Best of all, I retained all rights. I was the publisher.

All the implications began to sink in. No more “Publish me, pleeeeeease”. No more rejection by gatekeepers. No more “creative differences” with publishing houses. Think of all the energy that would save, energy I could put into writing and my own publishing. Unlike my time with Penguin when we had only a season to see how the book would do before somebody else got their marketing turn, my little book could go on selling for me for as long as I chose to market it.

I was now firmly on the side of best-thing-since-Gutenberg. I saw that self-publishing was much more than just an alternative route to market. Authors could now reach readers while retaining all rights. If we chose to claim it, we could have creative freedom and commercial control. This was going to change everything.

It was time to talk to Penguin.

Going Indie

I got my rights back in 2012, the year I started to call myself an indie author, and the year my husband Philip Lynch and I launched ALLi, the Alliance of Independent Authors, as a non-profit, global authors’ organization. More than a decade later, I am still happily self-publishing and our happy organization has thousands of members all over the world.

Going indie has been the best move of my writing life. My books sell steadily on my own websites and through retailers in more than 100 countries around the world. (Thanks for the info, Kobo map!) Some have hit bestseller lists, some have won awards, and my sales long ago surpassed those made by Penguin. Those sales are now to the right readers, and my reader mailing lists and publishing business continue to build steadily month on month.

I’m telling you all this not to self-congratulate but to point up what’s possible. As writers go, I’m nothing special. I’ve made lots of missteps and mistakes along the way, which I’ll also share with you in this book. I’ve gone down wrong pathways, taken on too much, opened too many projects at once. I’ve hired poor editors and chosen the wrong covers. I once had to unpublish a whole series that I spent years working on.

Nothing special, just lucky. As are you. All authors, all creatives, are blessed to live in these digital days.

Impact of Self-Publishing

Self-published books now span multiple formats, territories, and platforms and their sales are increasing globally at what veteran publishing commentator Mike Shatzkin has described as a “staggering” rate.

Today, hundreds of thousands of book buyers spend real money to buy and read untold pages of books written and uploaded into the cultural bloodstream with no judgement, mediation, review, or pitching by the traditional keepers of the gate. 1

By 2014, within five years of mainstream digital self-publishing taking off in the US, it was accounting for more than 30% of all recorded book sales. On Amazon.com alone, thousands of independent authors were earning more than $50,000 annually for books, audiobooks, and ebooks, with more than 1,000 authors surpassing $100,000.2

This doesn’t count all the books sold on other platforms. Contrary to popular belief, self-publishing is much bigger than Amazon. Millions of books are sold across the world on many other platforms—Apple Books, Google Play, IngramSpark, Kobo Writing Life—and, not least, on authors’ own websites.

A recent ALLi survey into indie author income3 found that self-publishing authors earn more, like for like, than authors with an exclusive trade publisher. More than 9% of our current membership has sold more than 50,000 books in the past two years.

In a few short years, indie authors have irrevocably changed the industry: now accounting for 30-34% of all ebook sales in the largest English-language markets, depending on which source you read (and none of them tell the full story), and making real inroads into the audiobook market too, and into print, through print-on-demand.

Self-publishing sales figures are higher than anyone knows, or can know, as many self-published books sell without an ISBN, on author websites, in special consignments, at weekend markets, back-of-the-room events, and many other ways that go unrecorded. Research by Written Word Media has demonstrated that it is now possible to earn over $100,000 annually as an author without appearing on any bestseller list. In a May 2016 snapshot of 142 such “invisible" authors on Amazon.com, 105 were self-publishers.4

Does any of this come as a surprise to you? You won’t read much that is accurate about self-publishing in mainstream media. Although hundreds of thousands of indie authors around the world are producing work of outstanding literary merit and commercial appeal, although corporate publishers, film and TV buyers, and literary agents scout bestseller lists for successful self-published authors these days, hoping to woo them with a deal, these changes have yet to be widely reflected in the mainstream literary world of newspaper and magazine reviews, bookstores, festivals, and prizes.

As director of ALLi, I see firsthand the achievements of our innovative and hardworking community, the great flowering of creative expression in the literary arts that is being unleashed, and the great variety of ways in which authors can now succeed. That’s what I want to share with you in this book. If you’re just starting out, or haven’t yet seen the success you seek, if you’re struggling to produce your book or not reaching enough readers, if you need to make more sales or don’t know how to move into profit as a publisher, this book points the way.

Publisher’s Block

Everybody knows all about writer’s block, but block and resistance are an integral part of any creative endeavor, including publishing. For a number of years, between 2016 to 2019, I labored under my own publishing block. At ALLi I was productive, but after a strong start as a self-publisher (at one time I had three novels at the top of the literary fiction charts), I’d stopped paying enough attention to marketing my fiction and poetry.

I was always writing—I write every day—and I was still making books, but largely books like the one you’re reading: how-to non-fiction. My fiction and poetry were still selling in respectable numbers, but I wasn’t growing. Yes, I had a busy day job at ALLi, and I had recently hit a personal challenge, a health diagnosis within the family that was having a big impact on my life, but with hand on creative heart, I knew that wasn’t the whole story. I needed to be a better publisher of fiction and poetry. But how? In what ways, precisely?

When I was a creative writing teacher, I used f-r-e-e-writing, a creative flow technique, to clear writer’s block for students. (see the next chapter for more on this method). I now used the same technique to explore my publishing business block. As so often, f-r-e-e-writing delivered some surprises. What emerged as I explored my publishing business on the page was my childhood and my family.

The Ireland where we grew up was full of job insecurity and emigration. My father worked in insurance, we also owned a pub and shop, and my mother later ran a bed-and-breakfast. I had three brothers who worked in insurance, accountancy and engineering. Everyone was agreed on the need to pin down a pensionable position, but I was drawn to books and poetry and adventure.

It took me decades to reconcile my life as a woman and then mother with my life in books, but I had. Only now I wanted to self-publish, and do it well. My f-r-e-e-writing revealed how my desire to be a successful independent author was challenging the binary opposition I’d been carrying around, unconsciously, as I’d done the work first of writing novels and poems, then of becoming a novelist and poet. Living life from that perspective.

If I now wanted to also be a good publisher, if I wanted to see my novels and poetry books recognized and read, I’d have to unpack all that anti-business baggage I was carrying from being on the “other” side in my family. I saw that I wasn’t paying enough attention to money, which meant I wasn’t paying enough attention to everything.

One part of me wanted to sell more books but other parts of me were not adopting the necessary behaviours.

I was publishing across a number of genres but I hadn’t segmented my readers. Fiction, non-fiction and poetry were all mixed up.I had thirteen projects open at once—a severe case of shiny object syndrome, cutting out of projects without finishing, to start something new.I was doing too much overall, too busy with too many sub-optimal tasks.Most of all, beyond running a never-ending to-do list, I was failing to plan. As the business people liked to say, failing to plan is planning to fail.

Sustainable success for my publishing business began on that rainy night. I learned my lessons, and they are embedded in this book in the hope that you can learn from my mistakes.

I’ve also seen lots of other mistakes, in dealing with tens of thousands of ALLi members and hundreds of thousands of ALLi subscribers over the past decade, as well as reading all the self-publishing blogs and books, and having close relationships with owners and directors of publishing houses and self-publishing services. I bring it all together here, zooming across the globe, across time and across the seven processes of publishing, so you can see precisely where you fit in and where you are right now.

Each week on Instagram, I put out a prompt for the poetry lovers who follow my feed. The same prompt produces a unique poem from each writer, as they watermark the idea with their own imagination, artistry and individuality. It’s exactly the same with creative self-publishing. No two indie authors publish in exactly the same way.

That’s why we’re never in competition with each other. There’s always room for another writer and as authors, we turn to each other for advice. The self-publishing community is renowned for collaboration but always, as creative self-publishers, we turn first towards the quiet, creative voice within.

* * *

1Mike Shatzkin. 2019. The Book Business: What Everyone Needs to Know

2https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/100k-author/

3https://www.allianceindependentauthors.org/facts/

4https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/100k-author/

ALLI SUPPORTS AND RESOURCES

This book is first in series from the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)’s Publishing Guides for Authors series. It is the foundational text which outlines the method and mindset that underlie all our services to our members, readers, and subscribers.

Alliance of Independent Authors

ALLi is pronounced “ally” (al-eye not al-ee), and we aim to be an ally to self-publishers everywhere. Our name is spelt with a big ALL and small i because our members are like the three musketeers in Dumas’s eponymous novel: ALL working for each individual “i”, and each for ALL. Our mission is ethics and excellence in self-publishing.

ALLi is headquartered in London and unites thousands of beginner, emerging and experienced indie authors from all over the world behind this mission. Most of our members are in the US and Canada, followed closely by Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa. We are a Community Interest Company (CIC) and all profits are invested back in for the benefit of our members and the wider indie author community.

Our work is fourfold:

ALLi advises, providing best-practice information and education through our online Self-Publishing Advice Center, SelfPublishingAdvice.org,offering a daily blog, a weekly live video and podcast, a bookstore of self-publishing guidebooks, and a quarterly member magazine.ALLi monitors the self-publishing sector through a watchdog desk, alerting authors to bad actors and predatory players and running an approved partner program.ALLi campaigns for the advancement of indie authors in the publishing and literary sectors globally (bookstores, libraries, literary events, prizes, grants, awards, and other author organizations), encouraging the provision of publishing and business skills for authors, speaking out against iniquities and inequities, and furthering the indie author cause wherever possible.ALLi empowers independent authors through community and collaboration—author forums, contract advice, sample agreements, contacts and networking, literary agency representation, and a member care desk.

Whether you’re self-publishing your first book or your fiftieth, ALLi is with you every step of the way, with a suite of member benefits that includes free guidebooks, discounts and deals, member forums, contract consultancy, advisory board, literary agent for eligible members, a community watchdog desk and more.

As well as offering access to ALLi’s supportive, dynamic community and wide range of services, your membership also supports our advocacy work for indie authors globally, from Alaska to New Zealand the long way round, and everywhere in between.

When you join ALLi, you’re not just joining an organization, you’re becoming part of a transformative, self-organizing, global, author movement. If you haven’t yet, I’d like to invite you to join us.

Find out more at: AllianceIndependentAuthors.org

AskALLi: Advice Campaign

In 2013, ALLi launched its #AskALLi campaign, in which we pledged to answer, with evidence-based authority, any self-publishing question any author might have. We continue this work today, through our email support desk, our member forums, and our blog posts and podcasts in the Self-Publishing Advice Center. Key in any search term there to get a best-practice answer to your question.

As an ALLi member, you can also jump onto our closed forum and ask other members, ALLi team, and advisors who are on hand, 24/7, for their advice.

Resource Links

Blog: SelfPublishingAdvice.org/blog: How-to blog posts, analysis and opinion on all seven processes of publishing

Podcast: SelfPublishingAdvice.org/podcast: Advice on Fridays and Inspirations on Sundays

Conference: SelfPublishingAdviceConference.com: The largest annual online gathering of independent authors, each October

Planning: Small group creative planning programs run by Orna Ross: Patreon.com/OrnaRoss

* * *

PARTI

THE INDEPENDENT AUTHOR

In Part I we look at the different kinds of self-publishing writers and the success measures for independent authors who want to make a living from writing and publishing books. As an indie author, you may begin as a writer, but you must also become a publisher. We outline some self-publishing success stories and begin the process of establishing your definition of success as both writer and publisher.

* * *

1

WHAT KIND OF SELF-PUBLISHER ARE YOU?

The first thing you need to know about the self-publishing sector is that it is diverse. It embraces artistic authors who produce experimental books no third-party publisher will touch, and entrepreneurial authors who want to make a killing on Kindle. There are those who are publishing one book for family and friends, and those who want to make writing and publishing their life’s work. There are authors who want to pay a service to do as much as possible for them, and those who are fiercely DIY. Artisans who produce premium books of exceptional design, and minimalists who’ve nailed a super-simple process to facilitate rapid release. Somewhere, in the middle of it all, there’s you.

The only assumption this book makes about you is that you want to be a good publisher as well as a good writer. Depending on where you are in your development as an indie author, you may not think about it in that way. It’s commonplace in our sector to hear people talk about “author careers”, for example, but publishing your own books and selling them to readers is not a career; it’s a business.

An independent author is a business owner, and the business is book publishing and book selling—a confusing sector. Publishers come in many structures and sizes: corporate, medium, and indie; trade, academic and children’s; hybrid, assisted and vanity; and now author-publishers too.

At ALLi, we have identified three kinds of self-publishing authors. Which kind are you?

THREE KINDS OF SELF-PUBLISHERS

1. The One-Book Self-Publisher

This kind of writer is not interested in writing for a living or in publishing lots of books. They want to make a particular book out of their own need, or the needs of a group of people—their grandchildren, their activist group, their local historians, their client base. Whether they are publishing for family or friends, for posterity or self-development, to boost their business or fulfil a long-held dream, the term self-publishing is most appropriate for this group.

For the family, friends, and community writers, it’s about personal storytelling, as an act of self-expression. For the non-fiction author making a book to boost their brand, or business, or expertise, it’s about self-promotion. Generally for one-book publishers, the focus behind the writing and publishing is as much about the author as the reader, and more production than sales driven.

2. The Independent “Indie” Author

Indie authors self-publish commercially. As well as the intrinsic creative rewards of publishing, they also want the extrinsic rewards of income and influence. This is not “vanity publishing,” paying an inflated sum to a service that flatters and deceives the author while posing as a publisher. Neither is it skipping the work of honing writing and publishing craft. This is taking charge of your own team and becoming the creative director of your own writing and publishing business.

In some ways, self-publishing and indie authorship are misnomers for this group of writers. A good book is always a collaborative process and indie authors must put their books through the same processes as any other publisher. They must have production and profit plans, they must work with editors, designers, marketers, aggregators, agents, assistants, sales platforms and more to see their books produced and published to standard.

Independence is a heady word, conjuring up values like freedom, rebellion, and self-reliance. Compared to authors who sign exclusive deals with a single trade publisher or a single self-publishing service, indie authors are relatively independent, yes, but only when they embrace that empowerment.

At ALLi, we define an indie (independent) author as follows:

You have self-published at least one book.You see yourself as the creative director of your books and your own publishing business.You are proud of your indie status and carry that self-respect into all your ventures, negotiations, and collaborations, for the sake of other authors, as well as yourself.You expect your status as rights holder and creative director to be acknowledged in payment, terms and conditions.You see your connection to your readers as your primary publishing relationship.

Until recently, received wisdom assumed that writers “just want to write,” but the self-publishing revolution has revealed this sizeable band of authors who very much want to publish their own books, their own way.

3. The Authorpreneur

Authorpreneurs are indie authors who have mastered the three sets of skills needed to make a good income from publishing. They understand and practice good writing craft, good publishing craft, good business craft. They produce great books and sell plenty of them, not as a one-off sales spike, but again and again. They may also produce premium books and other products. They have built a tribe of readers who value their work and look forward to hearing from them. In many cases, they are licensing rights to publishers and other rights buyers. In some cases, they are publishing other authors too.

In 2019, ALLi changed the name of its top author membership tier from Professional Member to Authorpreneur Member. One member felt so strongly about the move that she left the organization, saying, “I really dislike that made-up word and I really dislike ‘entrepreneur' being linked to 'author' in any way, shape, or form.” We went ahead nonetheless, not just because so many other members felt positive or neutral but because no other term seemed as accurate. It perfectly describes the new breed of author who blends books and business, authorship and entrepreneurship. A new word for new publishing.

When you publish your own books, you become part of a contemporary disruption to the world of work that is much wider than our own sector of writing and publishing. Over the past decade, an abundance of new innovations—social, personal, sexual, spiritual—have arrived into the marketplace, transforming how we work and live together.

A rural farmer in Africa today has more computing power in her pocket than the entire NASA facility had when it launched Apollo 11 in 1969. People now connect through social media groups and digital dating, electronic assistants and voice technology, text messages and memes. Many have job titles that didn’t even exist ten years ago: data scientist, app developer, green-building consultant, internet coach and yes, authorpreneur. It was important for our organization to name the entrepreneurial attitude that distinguishes these authors.

At time of writing, authorpreneur members make up almost 9% of ALLi’s membership. These authors have sold 50,000 books or equivalent in the two years prior to joining. We look forward to seeing that percentage grow as more authors acquire the creative publishing and creative business skills that bring success. But, of course, not all self-publishers want to be indie authors and not all indie authors want to be authorpreneurs.

CONSIDER THIS: What Kind of Self-Publisher are You?

A one-book self-publisher? An indie author, aiming to earn a living from your writing? A fully fledged authorpreneur, creating a high-earning publishing business, perhaps publishing other authors too?

Or perhaps you haven’t even decided whether you will self-publish at all?

While this book, and the Alliance of Independent Authors, provide everything a one-book author needs to publish well, our focus here is mainly on the indie author and authorpreneur. Those who want to make a living from writing and publishing books, or are succeeding in doing so, while creating a body of work, earning a good income, exerting an influence that enriches the world, and leaving a legacy when they’re gone.

If that’s what you want, you can have it. There’s no barrier to entry, beyond your personal abilities and disabilities. There are no gatekeepers, no rejection letters, no pile of manuscripts in the corner labelled “slush”. You don't have to go to the right parties or know the right people. You don't have to have an Oxbridge or Ivy league degree, you don't have to have any degree at all. It sounds hyperbolic, but it’s true: you can just do it.

Of course, there are things that you do