Indie Musings

Call Me Indie

On his blog this week, Nathan Bransford brought up the question: Who should have the Indie Label: Self-Publishers or Small Presses? It’s a good question. As a self-proclaimed Indie author, I thought I would throw in my two cents. I think in order to really look at the term, you have to look at how it’s used in other venues. Like Indie Rock for example. The funny thing is that when I started googling ‘Indie’, I realized that there is some level of controversy surrounding that term in both music and films. No one is sure whether it should be…

A Simple Graph To Show The Logic

If you haven’t been following Joe Konrath and Barry Eisler’s epic dialog on Ebooks and Self-Publishing, you’re missing out. Go read it. Now. I seriously feel like they just put into words exactly what I’ve been talking to my husband and my friends about for months now. You can find the conversation in 2 parts (so far): Here and Here. In part 2, Barry talks about how he crunched the numbers. He says it much better than I can, so I’m going to post a direct quote from Joe’s blog, which is also from an interview Barry did with Daily…

Taking Control

One of the best things about self-publishing is the feeling of control I have over my career and my content. Before I made the decision to self-publish, I was constantly concerned about what agents would think of my stories. Is my opening engaging enough? Are zombies overdone? Would a publisher be interested in what I’ve written? Constant doubts. Constant rewriting my work according to what I’d read on an agent’s blog or heard an editor say at a conference. There was no trust in my own intelligence or talent. And that was all before I even actively pursued an agent…

Falling Short of My Goals

Having goals is one of the single most important things in my life. I understand that some people just aren’t goal-oriented, and that’s fine. But for me, everything fell apart when I didn’t have goals. I went through a depression in my 20’s that saw me systematically sabotaging everything I’d worked so hard for up to that point in my life. Friendships. Health. Career. I gave up my goals, believing that I would never be good enough to actually achieve the things I wanted out of life. I decided to settle for average. I got a solid job, bought a…