When I first finished LEGACY OF THE EMPRESS, there were only two options: Query agents in the hopes of getting a traditional publishing deal, or go to one of the vanity presses and pay thousands for a pile of books no one would ever buy. The choice was simple, so I honed my query and dove in with both feet.
I received tons of requests and great feedback, but didn’t seal the deal. I had more agents to query, but then, the recession hit.
Agents began closing their doors to new authors who would land squarely in the humble midlist, i.e. genre authors like me. If I wasn’t going to be a breakaway hit, then I was too risky to take on. After all, most traditionally published genre authors are struggling to make ends meet–how is an agent going to do with 15% of that? Not well.
I knew that I had to either wait for the market to change or do something different, so I waited. In the meantime, the world was shifting around me. J.A. Konrath was making great money self publishing and sharing information on this new option for authors on his blog, and others were following suit. When I heard about Amanda Hocking’s success, I realized that I’d almost purchased her book a couple of times because I kept seeing it on Amazon. I then looked through my kindle and learned that I’d unknowingly bought dozens of independantly published books! I was intrigued.
As I researched, I found this blog post by publisher/author Robin Sullivan that drove my decision home:http://write2publish.blogspot.com/2011/04/midlist-authors-traditional-or-self.html. In it, she compares two midlist fantasy authors with similar backlists and looks at their sales side by side over the coarse of a year. One had a traditional deal and one self published. However, one was barely scraping by, and the other was living the author’s dream and making $12k/month just from writing alone!
My goal all along has been to be able to make a living doing what I love: being a full time writer. Indie publishing seemed to be the best route to go to make that goal happen. The readers are the only gate keepers in this new world, so I’m able to place my novel before them and see how it goes.
So far I’ve gotten great reviews on short stories that had previously been gathering e-dust on my harddrive, and now I’ve put LEGACY OF THE EMPRESS out there. Instead of putting my career on hold waiting for a market shift that may never come, I’m taking my destiny into my own hands. I’m gambling on myself, and it feels great!
-Rebecca Knight
http://rebeccaknightbooks.blogspot.com
Rebecca’s book Legacy of the Empress can be purchased here:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00538YPR8
Hi Rebecca,
I made much the same choice. My book doesn’t fit into existing genre definitions easily, and agents simply didn’t get back to me. One of the things you give up by going indie is the possibility of the big win, the contract with the advance that leaves you breathless. Not going to happen with us. We have to take our success in little pieces over time. I’ve had a good month, but that consists of winning a minor award and getting a couple of good reviews. It isn’t breathless, but it still feels good. The traffic on the web site creeps up, the number of people expressing interest on Goodreads increases a little faster. It’s nice to be in the game as the world changes.