Blurring the Lines: Indie Goes Mainstream
Posted by Zoe Winters on July 26th, 2010An interesting phenomenon is starting to happen. Self-publishing is starting to look attractive, not just to those who have never had a NY publisher before, but to those who have. There are an increasing number of midlist authors with established careers who are either breaking away from traditional publishing altogether, or hedging their bets by going indie for some things.
Some of them have been dropped by their publishers mid-series and have decided to take the next books directly to their fans.
One of the most visible of these folks is, Joe Konrath, who publishes as JA Konrath as well as Jack Kilborn. Joe could probably be dubbed the king of book marketing without any exaggerations. For years he’s done his own self-funded book tours, visiting over a thousand bookstores. He’s done huge mailings to libraries. He’s been everywhere. The man is a machine.
He’s sold a lot of books from these efforts and has a strong fan base.
I’m a follower and frequent commenter on Joe’s blog, and I’ve been witness to a very cool success story. Many people still don’t know who the hell Joe is because most people aren’t aware of just how many authors really make up the midlist. But he’s starting to rake in the dough. All from self-publishing on the Kindle. He took books that New York didn’t want, polished them up, got covers designed and put them on the Kindle at a low price.
He started out completely against self-publishing. Then he was for self-publishing, but only for those who had been traditionally published first and had either a few trunk novels (books you put in the bottom of a trunk somewhere because no one ever published them), or work where the rights had reverted back to the author.
After several months, he saw many indie authors were doing well on Kindle even without having published with New York, so the assumption that no one should do it without first having had an agent or publisher has softened.
Joe’s success has created a flurry of talk and activity as many NY-pubbed authors start quietly putting some of their rights reverted backlist up on the Kindle. While some of them are still against “self-publishing” and somehow think only they (as in previously NY-pubbed authors) really have the right to do it, the point is… whether they all want to admit it or not, they are going indie.
Their choice to go indie in part or in whole adds an air of legitimacy to indie authorship that it has struggled to achieve. While many traditionally published authors still hate self-publishing, they’re participating in it. When more and more professionally-vetted work is self-published, the line between who is “really published” starts to really blur.
If readers were confused before (or more likely didn’t care) who someone’s publisher was or if they even had a publisher, it’s going to get more confusing now.
Traditionally published authors who participate in self-publishing are unwittingly helping the indie movement. Because the more a reader has to dig into an author’s background to determine their publishing history and how ‘legit’ they are, the more readers will rely on what they should be relying on to begin with to determine if a book is for them: Sample, good price, good reviews, good cover.
The down side is that it’s going to get more competitive for indies. The up side is that if you’re a good writer, you’ll blend in with the authors who have been professionally vetted, as all the publishing lines continue to blur.
Zoe Winters is an indie author of quirky paranormal romance and a passionate advocate of the indie author movement. Visit her at: http://www.zoewinters.org to try free samples of her fiction.
Tags: indie authors, indie books, publishing industry, self-published books
Great article! Thanks, Zoe. This is very heartening to hear all this since I’ll be releasing my first self-published book soon. Good luck with yours!
Thanks, Michelle! I had previously focused on the bad side of established authors self-pubbing backlist on Kindle and such, such as more competition for lower priced ebooks… but… the flip side is that more GOOD and previously pro-vetted low cost ebooks will be out there which will keep readers from being automatically suspicious of a low-cost e-read. (like: being burned in the past by a self-pub book.) Probably the bad indie books will hurt us all more than the good midlist backlist books.