Friday, July 5, 2013

Who are the rapidly evolving Indie Author's?


I first read this word on a Google+ community post, being new to the jargon's of the publishing world I imagined it to mean an author from India LOL, ......truly my ignorance! 

Not convinced and secretly convinced about the bizarreness of my definition I finally hit Google search and wow the new world was reveled!

Image From The Net.
I researched and stumbled upon few very interesting facts about the so called "Indie Author".

I am sure there are people out there wondering like I did, hence sharing my insights, maybe it will help the beginners like me!

Know the world of the new and rapidly evolving Indies through my eyes!

Author's, many of us would eventually anyways fall in this category.

Who are the Indie Authors?
 Indie is a short-form of "independence" or "independent"; it may refer to the fields of literature, Art etc., however for the sake of this post let us talk only about "The Indie Author", in my opinion it can mean any of the following categories of writers:

Debut writers who take the self publishing route, and manage all the activities associated with publishing on their own like Editing, proofreading, cover design, buying/owning the ISBN, Printing, Sales and Marketing, Book Promotions, Book Distribution etc.They have the option to hire experts to do some of these activities, but they are independent -  Indie and choose their own course!

Image from the Net.

- Writers/Authors who choose the vanity publishing houses to publish their books. Since these are small independent publishing houses they are Indie.


- Authors/Writers who are published by the traditional top six Publishing Houses, but their books are now out of print choose this course to make the content available on Kindle/Nook etc. E-book formats.


- Authors who have published one or two books through the traditional publishers, and later choose to go the independent route. (This is done since the indies get to keep better profit margin from their book sales, also since they manage most of the publishing activities on their own they cut on costs, their are no middle men to eat up on the margin cost.) quite a few advantages in contrast to the traditional path.

There is quite a bit of debate all over the publishing world about "who the Indie is?", the above is my gathering from researching, It would be great to hear, what you think about the 'Indie Author'?.


Few interesting recent facts about the Indie Publishing arena:



This discovery genuinely amazed me, I wondered: why would Penguin want to do this? It sounded crazy, but then I realized that the paradigm shift from Traditional to the Indie route is immensely evident in the publishing world. The Indie advantages seem to be overtaking the traditional publishing good charms. It in a way is a question of survival in the digital world, this I feel is where the Indie writer dominates.

In my research one aspect that was evident is the fact that as an Independent Author we do not have all the doors open for us. Sad but true many writing organisations do not consider you to be a true Author if you are only self published. 
We cannot be nominated for an Edgar and many other such literary honors!

This can be debated hence, I would be glad to hear what you think?

My bottom line after this research is that it ultimately boils down to your aspirations as a writer, if you want the awards and do not care about other things like freedom of expression etc. then Indie route is not for you.

There are authors who simply want to write good books and get them out there for people to read they do not really care much about the literary credits. 
They are content, being truly Indies!

It is an authors pick ultimately!

An Author's Hope....
"When I am dead, I hope it may be said:
'His sins were scarlet, but his books were read.'- Hilaire Belloc

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