Do your readers W
Are You their Favorite Author or Just their Favorite Indie Author?
By Tamara Cribley
take you seriously?
ith a few rare exceptions, authors who write with the intent to publish their books, either tradi-
tionally or through self-publishing, want to be taken seriously. When a reader says that your book is good, for an indie author, it’s a bit of a letdown. The book is either good, or it’s not. Classifying the praise minimizes it. It’s a bit like saying “this is a great salad, for homegrown produce.” Now, I don’t know about you, but the quality of homegrown produce, at least in my neck of the woods, is a whole lot better than anything you can find in the grocery store. The same can be true for indie authors. Self-published books can be just as good as, if not better than, traditionally published books. So why the classifier? Self-publishing is a rapidly evolving landscape. Over the last several decades, it has become a very different industry than one an author from 1999 would recognize. Like so many creative industries, technology has made self-publishing accessible. It can be inexpensive and relatively easy, depending on your publishing platform and your intentions. Sometimes, it’s even free. Bring AI into the mix, and you might not even have to write the book. Like anything that’s cheap and easy, the dabblers jump on board.
Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash
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