I’m so glad you asked. (Literally no one has asked). I did promise to make this independent author journey transparent, though. So you are about to get the update you might not have wanted, but will be interested in anyway. Onward! As indie author SE White I released my novella, Beneath Me, in August of 2021. You will be pleased and proud to know that Draft 2 Digital already had to send me two royalty payments. Yep! A whole $3.20…
I’ve written posts…not complaining exactly, more…wistfully acknowledging the necessity of social media, marketing, and promotion nowadays. It’s a fact of author life. Social media is everywhere, has its squirmy little tentacles in everything, and you either learn to swim with it and truly enjoy tentacles or you get left on the beach. Yes I sound like an elder talking about whippersnappers and lawns. I admit it. This post isn’t to rehash those points. They’ve been hashed more than corned beef…
We’re starting out with the first, basic baby-steps to independent authoring. Well, no. The actual first step is to finish a book. Truly finish not just hit 60K, write “the end”, and shove that sucker out of the nest all bare-assed without even pinfeathers. Your book must hatch: cheep loudly demanding brainworms until you think you may well lose your mind: require hand-fed edits and critiques to grow: regurgitate some re-writes: and get a few more edits just to be…
Agent querying has been what I would humbly term an “Epic Fail”. A solid year of querying the latest finished manuscript has netted exactly zero interested replies. And each publisher accepting un-agented manuscripts replied to my submission with an email which basically said “not for us, but if you do write something else—something, y’know, better—we would love to see it. Take care. Bye.” I’m still not willing to give up, though. This manuscript made it to the finals of an…