Respecting your Writerly Life, Part III: What It Really Means to Go Indie

“The beauty of being an indie author is you get to decide what it means, not anyone else.”

Cat Webling, Laterpress 

Until relatively recently in the history of the industry, self-publishing was considered what writers did when they couldn’t get a contract from a traditional house. It meant:

• “You’re not good enough to get a real gig.”
• “You just want to see your name in print. Even if nobody else wants to see it.”
• “You can’t call yourself an author unless you’ve been trade-published.”
• “If you have to pay somebody to publish your stuff, what does that tell you?”

It was actually called “vanity publishing”—probably by people who were totally vain about their “validly published” books.

True confession: I used to be one of those people.

To be fair to myself, it was far easier to be traditionally published 25 years ago. If you wrote a really good book, you’d probably find a home for it. It may have been true that if no publisher picked it up, it needed more work. 

But that was then. This is now…

That is not depressing news!

Just because the odds of being published by Harper Collins or Random House or whoever are about as good as winning the Powerball lottery, that doesn’t mean we aren’t good writers.

Great writers.

Gifted writers.

What it does mean isn’t our point right now. It’s what we do with that which counts. It has never been easier to get our work out there. There are so many services and platforms to support us, so many professionals willing to show us the tools and teach us how to use them.

We get to do whatever we want! We aren’t simply “self-published writers.” We are “Indie Authors.” Yes. With capital letters. 

It isn’t just about having control over what’s in our books, what’s on our covers, what the interior design looks like. That’s heady enough. 

But wait… there’s more!

We are in charge of our own writerly lives.

• Our deadlines
• The role writing plays in the rest of living
• Our creative rhythm
• What we do to fill our wells, seek inspiration, dream
• Our throughlines, the themes we choose to develop with our work
• How we exhibit those throughlines in our social media presence (or not!), in our in-person connections, in the way we are in the world

We have the freedom to:

• Create trends, rather than follow what’s current
• Choose the professionals we want to work with 
• Maintain our rights as creators, as makers, as AUTHORS

Being an Indie Author goes far beyond simply publishing our work ourselves. I’m not just talking about having to be marketing director, sales manager, bookkeeper, and IT consultant—all of which is involved. I’m talking about the essentials of respecting our writerly lives that are more difficult to do when we’re under contract with a publisher. Not impossible. Just harder.

The intangible essentials: 

• We can be completely authentic.
• We can honor our whole selves by taking care of our energy levels.
• We can surround ourselves with people of integrity who share our vision, who have no dog in this fight except to support us (and keep us from making complete fools of ourselves!) 
• We can decide for ourselves what role money plays in our writing lives.
• We can eliminate the comparison and competition that comes into play when everyone is vying for those big-house publishing slots and see ourselves as a writing community. 

Is it hard work? Oh, heck yeah. We have to be all the things. 

Would it be nice to have someone else worry about distribution? It would. I’ve had 125 books traditionally published and never gave a thought to how many bookstores were carrying them. (Maybe I should have!) 

Does it feel good to get that advance? See those royalty checks? See your book on a shelf at Barnes and Noble? It does. 

But in my experience, it feels even better to hold my work and my writerly life in high regard simply because I know it deserves that. Not because someone else has paid me. 

Bottom line?

The bottom line is not “the bottom line.” We want to see some financial rewards for all our efforts. What is essentially rewarding, however, is doing exactly what is ours to do, the way we are meant to do it.

I’m not bad-mouthing the publishing industry. It was good to me in the first 35 years of my life as a writer. I love being able to pre-order Louise Penny’s and Laurie King’s next books because their houses make that possible. 

It is merely that in this time when so much that is creative is being attacked by people of power, the respect we have for our own creativity is absolutely vital. 

Let’s keep that in mind as we scribble on.

Nancy Rue