Indie publishing, all around you
Books look professional and read well. It's all the readers care about.
Nobody cares about your imprint. Most readers don't even know what an imprint is; the term is something that authors, editors, reviewers, and publishers bandy about. My wife reads plenty, across lots of fiction genres. "What's an imprint?" she asked the other day. All of that stuff is inside baseball, as we used to say about the details only a player or manager needs to know.
Amazon doesn't care about your imprint, either. If your publisher shows up with money to invest in advertising, then the world's biggest bookseller will care if the check clears. Amazon sells rider mowers and pool thermometers, too. Whatever helps a book sell is what Amazon pays cares about. It can help, for a price.
The owner of the coffee shop where your reading unfolded doesn't care about your imprint, either. Here in Austin one shop had a sign on the counter. Buy this paperback ($20) and you can have any drink for free. Daniel Cohen's DragonDao, from 2022, is ranked at Amazon at number 2,109 in Metaphysical Fantasy Fiction. The leader in that Amazon category is Steven Aitchison, whose Witches of Scotland is free to Kindle Unlimited readers. In fact, all eight Witches books are free to KU readers.
Like Cohen, Aitchison is a Kindle Unlimited author-publisher. You might suspect this was true when you saw the coffee shop sign for a $20 book. But you'd never guess it when you see Aitchison's Amazon page, or Cohen’s sales pages at Kobo or Barnes & Noble. It's professional-grade work that is producing a popular product. You don't need an imprint, or even a publisher, to get there if you enjoy publishing.
And if you're selling books through a coffee shop, good for you. People read in those places, and it only takes one reader to start a recommendation chain.
To be clear, Aitchison enjoys being a writer. You get to believing that when you see the tag line for his series.
It’s one thing to read about witches; it’s another thing to discover you are one.
Could the books be better-written? They could, but that doesn't matter as much as you'd think. The important thing is there are eight books in this series. As it turns out, that's the same kind of thing that an imprint, an arm of a publisher, cares about. Quantity triggers commerce.
You do you, and your stories
Being an indie author-publisher is not for everybody. There's a lot to experiment with and invest in, both at first and all along the way. (Experiments at first; investment always.) Although publishing yourself, by creating your own imprint, might seem less of an achievement, it's no less legit. Done well, author-publishing is not less of a challenge. In fact, it's harder at first while you build your team of creators and your reader tribe.
You will also want a sense of confidence while you are your running own imprint. When reviews include phrases like "the only thing I didn’t like was the grammatical errors that careful proofing will fix," you have to look aside. Focus on the ones that say "Beautiful rich story, and many layers you will love the more you read it. On my third re-reading already." These things were said about the very same author-published book.
Author-publishers are everywhere, releasing books in one way or another. Whether you're commanding the top of the Amazon bestseller Kindle list, or selling books along with a coffee, you're not waiting on an imprint to say you can do your stories.
Aitchison's habits might keep some publishers away. His careful readers say the books are short, under 200 pages, and seem built to sell upon each book's revelations. It's almost like they're built to be a boxed set This is sound publishing in our modern world. Shorter books fit some attention spans better. Being Number 1 in a category is worth something to that author-publisher, as well as to Amazon.
One phrase from a guidebook on writing and publishing sits with me, whenever the talk turns to publishing yourself. "It's important to be honest about your expectations," says the Poets & Writers Complete Guide to Being a Writer. "Choose a path to publishing accordingly."
Debra Englander contributed to the self-publishing ideas in the book. Its Chapter 15 says "One needn't have any evidence of literary merit, or really anything in particular except one important thing: money."
Yes, you bring the money that a publisher would bring. You'll be an author who can count on your choices becoming parts of your book.
The 2020 Guide adds that despite the benefits of speed to market, more control, and higher profits, "most authors prefer traditional publishing over self-publishing." And yet, here we are, four years later with the author-published books dominating bestseller lists on Amazon.
At the finale, you'll only need to look around at the success that the author-publishers have earned. Go ahead, compare it to traditional publishing's promises. A brag about being one of 400 finalists in an indie contest, or the National Book Award? A review in a well-read blog, or appearing on the cover of the New York Times Book Review? You get a shot at the Times and the NBA if you're traditionally published. Except now it turns out the NBA has a category for smaller publishers of many varieties. Author-publishers are everywhere now, selling books that look professional and satisfy readers. For plenty of authors, those two things alone make them feel legit.
One last note: that book being sold in the coffee shop? Its author got a contract for his books, author-published and as yet written, from a traditional publisher.
We learned how publishing needs money while working for publishers, then founding our own company. There's not much you can create, and make it last, that doesn't need money. Getting value for money is the real issue. Author-publishing looks easy, doesn't it? Ask someone who has, and has money. Also, ask somebody who has, and doesn't.
Great insights as always, Ron! Money has always talked, and likely always will.