Category: self publishing news

This week in the world of self-publishing:

• Yuk! Self published?

“There was a time when a small, independent movie studio was looked down upon by the industry,” writes Bud Simpson in this June 10th article for the Logan Daily News.  “Because it was produced with a small budget and, most of the time, unknown actors, it was considered an inferior product.”  He goes on to draw comparisons between the indie film engine and self-publishing, noting that while indie film has reached critical acclaim and a kind of legitimacy within the larger movie industry, self-publishing has not achieved the same thing within the world of traditional publishing.  “It still ‘don’t get no respect!'” he declares, quoting American stand-up comedian Rodney Dangerfield.  What follows is a litany of self-publishing successes as well as a list of blockbuster successes (in traditional publishing, at least) which began with plentiful rejection slips.  Simpson makes a convincing case for self-publishing as a tool worth considering; check out his complete article here.

• 5 Ways Independent Authors Can Advocate for Themselves

As a presenting panelist for the Bay Area Book Festival, Brooke Warner was recently confronted with the question: “A question surfaced from the audience: Do some people avoid self-publishing because they don’t qualify for awards?” as she recounts in this June 10 piece for HuffPost Books.  One of her fellow presenters, with the best intentions, responded with a statement that awards are open to self-published works–and what follows shows just how much misinformation is out there.  “I almost felt bad to have to inform him of his industry’s bias,” writes Warner: “that no, you can’t just submit, and that countless awards programs bar self-published authors (and any author, in fact, who’s invested in their own work) from entering.”  As founder of an author-subsidized publishing model, Warner serves as a lightning rod for those looking to define their work as something more than a less-respectable ripoff of traditional publishing.  She writes:

As independent authors and publishers, we need to repair a broken system, and we can’t do that by trying to “pass” as traditionally published authors in order to benefit only ourselves. When one indie author rises, we all rise. When one awards program or review outlet lifts their ban on self-published authors, others take notice, and eventually the measure of author-subsidization as a way to determine which books are worthy will fall. To me, this is the goal, to level the playing field in an industry that is hellbent on keeping self-published authors contained and separate.

To that end, she presents a list of five ways authors can better advocate for themselves.  I won’t repeat them here, as they really shine in full context.  You can catch Warner’s full article by following the link!

• OpenVote launches a publishing platform, crowd-voting tool for political debate

In this current political climate–in America at least–the battle lines are so clearly drawn and the arguments so rife with strong emotion that you can well imagine people are on the hunt for new ways to express their (very strong) opinions.  As Kim-Mai Cutler details in this June 9 article for Tech Crunch, that demand is soon to be filled by at least one new entry into the increasingly crowded–and specialized!–self-publishing world.  You may already have heard of OpenVote, a political startup from software powerhouses Bobby Goodlatte and Sean McCann.  Now OpenVote is “unveiling a larger publishing platform where people can debate policies and pledge their votes,” as Cutler puts it: “OpenVote comes out of the concern that political communication hasn’t really evolved or been fully translated into online or social networking mediums. People see news stories, they get enraged, but that doesn’t exactly translate into votes or political commitments.”  In other words, OpenVote is looking to boost voter turnout amongst undervoting groups, particularly the tech-savvy “Millennials.”  How are they going to do this?  Says Cutler, “Think Medium, but centered around politics and with widgets that let you pledge and recruit votes. Goodlatte brought on different political bloggers to do hot takes on issues like marijuana legalization or the 2016 presidential race.”  The hope is to to use the controversial issues to draw users in, and then present them with more curated, more neutral content to promote actual conversation and long-term engagement.  For now it looks as though the material published will mostly be in thinkpiece essay formats, but watch this space!  As a startup, OpenVote may eventually diversify into publishing longer formats.  If you write politically-charged or reflective material, this might provide an opportunity for you in the future.

As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.

This week in the world of self-publishing:

• Stealing Books in the Age of Self-Publishing

“Many authors who sell their work directly on platforms like Amazon are having their stories plagiarized, which can take an emotional and financial toll,” writes Joy Lanzendorfer in this June 5th article for the Atlantic.  Lanzendorfer recounts the story of self-publishing author Rachel Ann Nunes, whose work was plagiarized by one ‘Sam Taylor Mullens’ (an alias), who took her novel (A Bid for Love), repackaged it under a new title (The Auction Deal), and distributed it under his own name with only superficial changes.  This trend is becoming all too common, writes Lanzendorfer, who adds: “The offending books often stay up for weeks or even months at a time before they’re detected, usually by an astute reader.”  This is no joke for self-publishing authors, who operate without much of the safety net enjoyed by traditionally published authors, with the might and heft of corporate lawyers at their backs.  For other authors, like Opal Carew, “finding out their book has been plagiarized can be traumatic.”  And this is, quite literally, just the tip of the iceberg!  Lanzendorfer’s marathon of an article weighs the various factors at play, including Amazon’s various ranking logarithms.  To read more, follow the link!

• Archive Dive: Self-Publishing a Century Ago

Self-publishing has been around awhile, it would seem–far longer than most readers even know, according to this June 3rd piece for Publisher’s Weekly.  The article, which serves as a digital summary of a printed piece in the June 6th edition of the magazine, alleges: “Self-publishing is hardly a new idea, as evidenced by an editorial we published 100 years ago.”  The editorial in question went to print on June 3rd, 1916, and detailed the advantages and disadvantages of midlist authors finding alternative ways to market.  “‘The practice of allowing the author to pay in whole or in part for the publication of his manuscript is by no means confined to certain of the smaller and less-known publishing houses,'” the original 1916 article states: “‘These books are not of such a nature as to make a wide appeal, and consequently, however worthy they may be, we cannot afford to publish them without the author’s assistance.'”  Worthy, albeit niche works–this is indeed the heart and soul of indie publishing!  To catch a taste of 100 years of self-publishing progress, check up on the modern Publisher’s Weekly piece here.

• Self-published authors may be no worse off than the rest of us

Self-publishing authors who publish outside of a select number of companies and are not counted in traditional e-publishing surveys “exist in this near-invisible economy,” writes Russell Smith for The Globe & Mail, according to this June 1st article.  A pretty turn of phrase for a not-so-pleasant experience, as it turns out: says Smith, the challenge these authors face is most plain in the matter of promotion.  How to market a book that flies under the radar of the traditional bait-and-reward system?  “The answer,” he writes, “is in niches.”  But this type of approach is exhausting–or as Smith puts it: “Ah, engagement – a concept dreaded by writers of my generation. It means we have to have a personality that readers think they are interacting with; it means we have to seem like their friend.”  This kind of labor may be easier for some than others, he writes, but it’s still work–especially to those who do not have an easy niche market to identify, much less sell books to.  But the challenge is as much one of personality as it is substance, as Smith makes clear in his self-comparison to another indie author (Tudor Robins), whose boundless optimism leaves Smith questioning his own experience.  Could he do more?  Should he do more?  To find out his conclusions, tap into the original article at the link!

As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.

This week in the world of self-publishing:

• Six Things All Self-Publishers Should Know

I can’t think of a better way to launch you into the week to come than with this piece, courtesy of Kylie Dunn for the HuffPost Books blog on June 29th.  Here Dunn, author of Do Share Inspire and Write to Launch, recounts her experiences self-publishing and lists her top six lessons learned.  And they’re good lessons!  “You need a professional editor,” she says to start, because “You will experience a full range of doubts and fears when you put your creation into the world [and] having a trusted professional on your side helps.”  Her other points range from “Done is better than good”–quoting Elizabeth Gilbert–to “It’s not a short game” to “It’s scary and exciting,” with one final admonition to “Make sure you have good support mechanisms around you to cater for the days you think you should give up.”  Says Dunn, “This is also why you need a marketing and launch plan, so you aren’t making emotional decisions on the fly.”  Solid advice from one self-publishing author to another, I think.  To read the rest of Dunn’s excellent article, follow the link!

• Rana Ayyub’s act of resistance

Whoever claims literature is somehow above or beyond the reach of politics hasn’t read the news in India lately, where self-publishing author Rana Ayyub has broken with the powers that be in order to expose systemic corruption.  As chronicled by Arif Hussain for TwoCircles.net in this May 29th article, Ayyub’s story is one that places her firmly in the context of a Ghandi or a Rosa Parks:

A journalist in her twenties decides to go undercover to find the facts about the handling of 2002 Gujarat riots, a series of fake encounters and the murder of ex-home minister Haren Pandya. Over the eight months of subterfuge, she gains trust, breaks trust, comes hairbreadth close to getting caught, goes through phases of self-doubt and anxiety but in the end comes out with a lot of potentially explosive first hand accounts. So much so that her otherwise supportive editors develop cold feet about publishing it and pull the plug on the sting operation.

She then does the logical thing and tries to publish her account as a book. But no publisher worth its name would touch it, no TV news channel would talk about it and very few newspapers would talk to her. In the India of 21st century CE the reigning context of fear is so absolute and the risk of state reprisal so imminent that a mere act of publishing a book can ruin your business.

But of course, self-publishing offers a route free of “gatekeepers,” so Ayyub’s work found a natural home there.  By self-publishing, Hussain notes, “Ayyub also shows a path to people who want to go it alone or just don’t want to toe the “mainstream line.”  We’re all about that here at Self-Publishing Advisor!  To read more of Hussain’s article on Ayyub’s revolutionary work, check out the original piece here.

• It’s a Writer’s Market: Digital platforms have emerged to serve midlist authors.

“The array of [self-publishing] offerings is spurring some writers to leave their publishing houses,” writes Karen Angel for Bloomberg Businessweek in this May 26th article: “particularly midlist authors whose books receive scant marketing support.”  It has long been true that these authors, the ones whose books are accepted for publication by the Big Five publishing houses but whose works aren’t deemed “blockbuster-worthy,” often suffer from poor marketing services and even poorer authorial support.  But there are too many options on the horizon for authors to despair, Angel writes, including self-publishing websites like Pronoun, Reedsy, Leanpub, and Amazon Kindle Direct.  More importantly, she uses the stories of authors themselves as a compass to navigate the complicated world of self-publishing–authors like Janice Graham (of NYT-bestselling Firebird fame) and erotica author Meredith Wild.  She also recounts the story of Greg White, an author whose “last straw came when his publisher forgot to ship copies of his book to the launch party last October.”  And so: self-publishing!  “‘Five years ago,'” Angel quotes White as saying, “‘self-publishing was a scar. Now it’s a tattoo.'”  That’s about as rousing an endorsement as we could ask for.  To read the rest of Angel’s article, click here.

As a self-publishing author, you may find it helpful to stay up-to-date on the trends and news related to the self-publishing industry.This will help you make informed decisions before, during and after the self-publishing process, which will lead to a greater self-publishing experience. To help you stay current on self-publishing topics, simply visit our blog every Monday to find out the hottest news. If you have other big news to share, please comment below.

ABOUT KELLY SCHUKNECHT: Kelly Schuknecht is the Executive Vice President of Outskirts Press. In addition to her contributions to the Outskirts Press blog at blog.outskirtspress.com, Kelly and a group of talented marketing experts offer book marketing services, support, and products to not only published Outskirts Press authors, but to all authors and professionals who are interested in marketing their books and/or careers. Learn more about Kelly on her blog, kellyschuknecht.com.