Independent

Evolution of an Indie: Equipped Inspiration

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Evolution of an IndieEntering my third year as an indie, it is my responsibility to impart sage wisdom to the world. (Don’t blink, or you might miss it.) See the series introduction post for more on my saga. But for now, lesson #4 for 2012:

Be an inspired artist. But study what people are reading.

Okay. Straight up, this is a big, fat compromise. Live with it. If your goal as an Indie is to make money, penny-roll money, the shiny stuff, then you simply have to be a student of the market. What does this mean?

Being a student of what people are reading means more than reading a lot. It means more than browsing bookstores aimlessly while drinking a latte (although this can help). My favorite way to study the market includes a few blogs I follow combined with scouring the top 100 lists on the Amazon/Kindle store.

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Evolution of an Indie: Competitoring

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Evolution of an IndieEntering my third year as an indie, it is my responsibility to impart sage wisdom to the world. (Don’t blink, or you might miss it.) See the series introduction post for more on my saga. But for now, lesson #3 for 2012:

You are not competing with other indies. You are competing with the big six.

Here is another mantra for you as you work. Repeat it, live it, remember it. Launching an indie career in the current Wild West of publishing is a double-edged sword.

The pluses include speed and flexibility of product to market. The distance and intermediaries between reader and writer are greatly reduced. So, as an indie novelist I can not only squirt out a new baby every four months (from outline to Kindle), but I can also incorporate reader feedback and adapt on the fly (sometimes as quickly as 24 hours).

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Evolution of an Indie: Assume You Suck

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Evolution of an IndieEntering my third year as an indie, it is my responsibility to impart sage wisdom to the world. (Don’t blink, or you might miss it.) See the series introduction post for more on my saga. But for now, lesson #2 for 2012:

In the beginning, assume you can’t do anything well.

A depressing bit of realism, I know. But I’m going somewhere with this. Indie publishing requires skills not just in writing, but in art, formatting, design, marketing, sales and social media. The fact might be that you are pretty dang good at most everything you do. If you are expressing indie art, then it’s a garunteed certainty you think you are. And that is exactly the problem.

Artists are renown for lofty passions detached from a cruel reality. We think everything we do is art, while everything else is cunning drivel at best. Unfortunately, we are wrong, most of the time. (Or at least this is often true in the beginning.)

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