Rage against indie writers

by

Stella Deleuze

One bigmouth with an even bigger rage against Indies

I love a good poke. Did it work? Please say yes, because that would make me happy. Relax, I'm only kidding. But I meant it when I said I have a rage against Indies. Just to clarify, it's not all of them, that would be stupid; after all I'm self-published, too, but many of them. Why? Well, you may want to sit down and pour yourself a chamomile tea, just to be on the safe side; I don't want you to fall off your chair or hurt yourself jumping up in order to throttle me.

Amazon.com
Amazon.UK

Sitting comfortably? Good. Now, listen, I'm not a bitch. Okay, maybe I am, but only a bit. What are you on about? you wonder. Well, let's put it this way: I've probably made a few enemies by publishing my massive rant about self-published authors. Not because I hate them so much, but because I hate what they're doing, or not doing. The trigger for my writing Rage Against The Indie in the first place was that I experienced something I've never experienced before: deleting book, after book, after book on my Kindle. Self-published books, that is. And as you can imagine, I wasn't a happy camper. You see, I only read thirty to fifty minutes in bed, just before I close my eyes and drift off into wonderful dreams. I've counted on a few occasions: I read about ten pages of a normal paperback in an hour. That's roughly 3000 words. I know, very slow, but I'm thorough and read every single word. 

That's probably one reason for my being so picky about what I read, the other two hundred and fifty-seven reasons are that I'm an editor and know a thing or two about writing. Once you gain access to that knowledge, there's no way back; you can't flick a switch and . . .  boom . . . be a pure reader again. It's impossible, and that means you have some sort of expectations. Don't get me wrong. I love my light, easy-to-read chick lit, and I also like young adult fiction, nothing fancy. Something nice to relax to, but light and easy doesn't mean it needs to lack quality. Even chick lit fares better if the characters are well developed and the author knows how to craft a decent story. I hate to see a good premise being destroyed by awful and repetitive writing. Good storytellers aren't necessarily good writers, but at least they have the basics: a good story to start with. Some might blossom into decent writers, some won't.

And then you have people who think they're good storytellers, or writers, but aren't. Those who go and invent the most hideous, far-fetched, and unbelievable stories, broadly announcing they're sure they've written a bestseller, no, even worse: they're convinced. And because they get rejection after rejection, they want to prove to the world that they're worth it, that their writing is brilliant, mostly without success.

I personally lost count on how many books I've deleted. Most of the authors were too lazy to learn the basic skills a writer needs to know: character and story-development, show/tell, natural sounding dialogue, plus the attributes (punctuation and tags), apostrophes, etc. 

The Relationship Between the Internet, Technology and Books

by 

Sara Dawkins 

The addition of the internet and technology into the world of books has been a strange one. On the one hand you are able to bring multiple books with you wherever you go with minimal bulk thanks to e-readers and tablets. You can access any book anywhere with a few clicks of a button due to the prevalence of the internet. And buying books has become as easy as just clicking “purchase” and waiting a mere 10 seconds for it to download. However as beneficial as this relationship may seem there are some worrisome downsides to this burgeoning relationship.

1. E-Books are everywhere. You can go to just about any website these days and they likely will have a link where you can download their e-book, whether it’s a free download or being sold for a nominal price. This doesn’t mean that the book is good by any means, but that hasn’t stopped people from downloading them at alarming rates. Most e-readers also have a section of cheap or free e-books that you can download that are being sold for next to nothing just so the author can get a little name recognition, not because the book is actually good. The novelty and value of a book being something worthwhile is wearing thin with e-books being so readily available.
2. Anyone can be an author. Everyone is an author these days. Bloggers who have never had any formal training in writing or editing are approached for book deals on a regular basis because of large followings, politicians have books out, and any actor or actress who qualifies as a celebrity can write a book, all without any type of background in writing. This poses a problem for those people who are actually trained in writing because it doesn’t take much to be considered worthy of being a published author anymore, and actually picking an author from the talent pool is becoming overrated, with the focus instead being on who can sell books based on name recognition.
3. Writing is a by-product of publishing. The internet has produced a mindset of “publish now, publish first!” in regard to any and all avenues of writing. Because of this new mindset the focus has shifted from who wrote something of quality on a particular subject to who wrote about the topic fastest and got it published first. This has caused writing to become a by-product of publishing, instead of being the focal point of getting something published. As a result, a shocking number of poorly edited material is being published, with spelling errors, grammatical inconsistencies and storylines that don’t flow becoming acceptable and even normal. 
4. Editing is a lost art. When it comes to self-publishing, a lot of aspects of traditional publishing are lost. The author is largely responsible for the editing and proof-reading of the material and, in an effort to produce content quickly, a lot of editing and proof-reading is skipped.However, since it’s unlikely that any professional editor will look over the book before it’s published, poor editing doesn’t seem to matter, which means that low-quality books are becoming a regular, expected occurrence. 

Now that the relationship between the internet, technology, and books has been formed it’s unlikely that we’ll ever revert back to the days of high quality print publishing and hard copy books, newspapers, and magazines. But hopefully, over time, the novelty of being able to allow anyone to be an author will wear off, and we’ll start to put some stock in the type of material that we’re reading, focusing on high quality instead of ready availability. 

Sara Dawkins is an active nanny as well as an active freelance writer. She is a frequent contributor of http://www.nannypro.com/.

Is Amazon’s KDP Select The Right Choice for You?

by

L.Leander

KDP changed my life and has made my road to publishing manageable. Although many of us are writers, only a select few have actually taken the plunge and become Indie Authors via publishing our own manuscripts.

Don’t worry when the day to publish arrives.  It’s normal to be apprehensive, but the KDP program is very friendly and allows novices to walk slowly through the steps needed.  Anyone can do it.

Amazon.UK
Amazon.com

It’s good to research other self-publishing venues before choosing KDP.  The traditional route is the one most people think of when getting ready to offer their book to the world but there are many other options available today.  Indie groups on Facebook and Yahoo! offer a wealth of information.  People are friendly, share their knowledge and help make the road to publishing easier for newbies.

Amazon’s KDP Select offers authors free promotion days and advertising that most struggling writers can’t afford.  Yes, the idea is to offer the book for free, but the exposure gained is priceless.  Although it seems that many authors have problems with the exclusive 90-day contract, there are benefits to be had.  Here are my stats on the first two-day promotion I held:

• Day one I had moderate success.  I decided I’d be happy if I got 500 downloads.  My book had been published for two months and was selling about one copy a day.  The count rose and by the end of day one the book had 5,551 downloads! 

• Day two was even better and by the end of the promotion there were over 10,000 downloads – far more than I ever expected.  The book reached number three in Kindle Free Books in both listing categories.  Afterwards actual book sales soared to four or five a day.  There they stayed until a move made me have to take two weeks off from promoting. 

• Since the promotion, Amazon Prime Members have been borrowing the book, for which I receive a separate stipend. 

KDP has been good to me.  The results are solid.   If you want to sell books.  Amazon, in my opinion is the leader in the market and will continue to be.

KDP Select - Amazon wants exclusivity.

What's the deal with Kindle? They want exclusivity with our books, is this goodbye to Smashwords and other e-outlets? Will this 90 days exclusivity become indefinite?  

They only want our E version, our paperbacks can be available anywhere we desire (can't help wondering for how long). But we won't be able to sell our books ourselves from our own websites any more. 


This, of course, isn't conditional with Kindle Amazon. We can opt in or out.

Check out: https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/KDPSelect

This is a decision most of us have been mulling over this week.

So, questions we need to ask:

• How would it work?
• What would we get out of being exclusive to Kindle?
• Is it easy to opt out once we opt in?
• Is copyright still ours?

Who's decided already? Who's still thinking? What are your worries about this venture?


Check out Linda Rae's post who seems very opposed to the idea: http://lindaraeblairauthor.wordpress.com/blogs/new-to-be-or-not-to-be-indie-the-amazon-lending-library-program/


Writers' Beware: http://accrispin.blogspot.com/


The Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/nov/16/amazon-kindle-lending-library-contract-authors


So many people are talking about it, and so far no one has anything good to say about it. But in all honesty, no one knows how it's all going to work out. And if you've an ebook gathering cyber dust I say go for it.