Writing Life: Resources for the Beginner Indie

When I decided I wanted to write again, I took six months of research before deciding not to pursue a traditional publisher, or an agent. It wasn’t six months of wondering, though. It was six months of research. I read every blog I could find from as many different people in the publishing and writing industry as I could. I read traditionally published authors, hybrid authors, purely independent authors. I read agents’s blogs, publishers’ blogs, and industry commentators’ blogs. I went through articles on writing, on being published, on scams, on methods, on conventions.

And when I sat down and tallied up the pros and cons, I decided to go independent.

There’s a lot of information out there, so I’m going to narrow it down to four:

• www.kriswrites.com:Kristine Kathryn Rusch blog - 40 year veteran with some good advice and insight into the publishing industry;

• www.deanwesleysmith.com: Dean Wesley Smith - as for KKRusch; 

• http://www.thepassivevoice.com/:an IP attorney whose blog collects information about the publishing industry from a variety of sources - good springboard for further research and resources; and

• http://accrispin.blogspot.com.au/2016/12/small-press-storm-warnings-torquere.html: a place to find alerts and warnings about unscrupulous operators in the publishing world.

In addition to references, you will need to be aware of the different platforms you can publish from. Here are four to get you started:

• https://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html/ref=footer_publishing?ie=UTF8&ld=AZFooterSelfPublish&topic=200260520

• https://www.smashwords.com/

• https://www.allromanceebooks.com/ (or omnilit.com if your books are not romance - same platform, but different specialities)

• https://www.kobo.com/writinglife

And for covers you can use any program, but this one is free:

• https://www.gimp.org/

Hope that helps – and GOOD LUCK