Indie authors

It's a tough decision for a writer to make, one of the toughest. All your life you've fantasized about one of the big New York publishers buying your book and its subsequent astronomical launch into the stratosphere. But it hasn't happened yet in spite of your eating, sleeping, and researching the craft of writing for years.  Read more

The Covid-19 pandemic has already had a big impact on independent publishing. Some changes-working at home, employee furloughs, curbside shopping-were thrust upon the industry suddenly. And though they weren't part of a concerted effort to change old and inefficient business practices, they may indeed have that effect.  Read more

Smashwords' Mark Coker is sounding the alarm about indie publishers (those who write and publish their own works-let's get the terminology right-it's INDIE publishers, not the deprecating "self-published") relying too much on Amazon.

I agree with Coker.

The number of books self-published in the U.S. saw more rapid growth in 2018, jumping 40% over 2017, according to Bowker's annual survey of the self-publishing market. In its report, "Self-Publishing in the United States, 2013-2018: Print and E-books," the total number of print and e-books that were self-published in 2018 was 1.68 million, up from 1.19 million in 2017.

"I decided to have a book of poems published at my own expense." It was 1909, a year before William Carlos Williams would open his pediatric practice in his hometown of Rutherford, New Jersey. A friend of his father owned a local print shop, so Williams paid for Poems, his 22-page chapbook, to be produced. Epigraphs from Shakespeare and Keats led the earnest little book.  Read more