I’ve been thinking a lot this past year and a half. Last year, I spent a lot of time writing and editing Love Immortal, and a few other novels. I wasn’t very productive in terms of ebook releases, so apologies for that, but I’ll make up for it now. I’ve tried my hand at agents, but with a book that is 150,000 words long, and needs to be that length, I haven’t had much hope. I was going to try again with another novel, Ascension, a witch/demon romance that is only 90,000 words long, but then realised that I’m writing longer novels these days. My normal word count for a novel is now in the 125,000 word area. That’s far too long for most publishers at the moment. I think I’m better off sticking with ebooks and going full indie.
I sat down and considered why I wanted an agent. I guess it’s a matter of feeling validated. But then I started looking at all the great reviews, the wonderful emails and messages from readers, and how well my books sell, and I realised that I don’t really need an agent to feel validated. I’m an author. I write independently, but I still write, and I still take pride in my stories and do my best, and readers see that and enjoy my stories. When it comes down to it, that’s the most important thing to me—readers enjoying my stories. I want to reach as many as possible and share my stories with them.
So rather than spending time chasing agents, I’m going to spend time where it counts for more—chasing readers. I want to reach more of them and build my readership, and this is something that I can do as an indie author. I love being indie, and I was always torn between indie and contracted when I was submitting to agents. I think the larger part of me wanted to remain indie. I’m not just saying that because of the rejections. I really mean it. I love being hands-on with my stories, with readers, and with where I market and distribute my ebooks.
Right now, there’s a sort of indie revolution happening. It’s the revolution that myself and my friend, Maria, have been awaiting for four years, and it seems a bit silly to go switching sides now.
I’ve been a part of the indie author cooperative, Alinar Publishing, for those four years. We created the cooperative because in 2006, indie authors couldn’t get the distribution as freely as they can now thanks to Amazon, Smashwords, and other outlets. Now that I can distribute easily myself, I’m going to leave the haven of Alinar Publishing and strike out on my own. I want the world to see that I’m indie to the core and that isn’t going to happen whilst I have an umbrella company name attached to me. I love Alinar, but it’s time for me to fly the nest.
Of course, the transition isn’t that easy. I have to completely re-do my website as I want to sell my ebooks direct from there in HTML and PDF formats. This is tricky, and very time consuming, but since I built the Alinar Publishing website, most of the difficult code for checking out, basket, signing up for an account, etc is already at my disposal. Believe me, that’s a great thing since it took me around 4 months to initially build the Alinar website and all it entails.
I have a new design for my website, and I’ve been working hard on it these past few weeks, spending a lot of my weekend time coding it and testing. I’ve even managed to stave off my hunger for playing Final Fantasy XIII, which I foolishly started playing whilst near the middle of the grand re-design of my website. Silly. I’ve still managed to clock up a good 25+ hours on the game though. Where there’s a will, there’s always a way.
I’m almost done with my website, and it will launch soon. The first book released on my new website, and completely independently, will be Her Dark Angel. I have many more exciting releases lined up though, so it will be a big time for my website and for me, and also a busy time as I’ll need to arrange various blog appearances, interviews, reviews, etc.
Here’s to being a fully fledged indie author!
