indie author

AJ Borowsky

/ Kris Wampler / 1 Comment

Writer AJ Borowsky likes to think of his first book as a practice run.  Since publishing his second book, What Next: A Proactive Approach to Success, he’s learned more about the work that indies must devote to moving their books.  AJ shares that information here.

1. Tell me briefly about your books – what are they about and what motivated you to write them?

I’ve written two books but the first was just a rehearsal.  I wrote that one, a personal finance book, under a pseudonym and I’m glad I did.  That book really had some good ideas but the execution wasn’t there.  I may re-release it in the future.  I wrote it because I was tired of reading personal finance books that purported to know the “secret” to building wealth or getting rich when the reality is there is no secret.

My latest book, What Next: A Proactive Approach to Success, was written for two reasons.  The first was that I was shocked to get a royalty check for the first book.  It was for only six dollars but if someone (or two or three people) bought it, then maybe I could do better with a well-written, researched, and marketed book.  The second reason I wrote What Next was because I realized that the most successful people I know shared several traits: they were curious, adventurous, and were willing to take risk.

Those traits can also be used to describe independent authors.  We are curious or creative enough to write, adventurous enough to share our writing, and willing to take the risk, and expense, of publishing our work.

2. How have your sales been?

It’s very early in the process but let’s say I’m thankful for friends and family.  What’s most important to me is the feedback I’ve gotten.  It’s one thing for friends and family to buy the book but quite another when they read it and buy several more as gifts or recommend it to their friends.  I’ve been encouraged by that.  Unlike fiction, the number of people who are looking to read a non-fiction book are a bit limited.  Although I don’t like the label self-help that really is the genre of my book and that market is even more limited.  But I feel I approach the material a bit differently.

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Doug Simpson

/ Kris Wampler / 1 Comment

Doug Simpson published his first novel, Soul Awakening, in October.  Though a new author, Doug is not new to writing: he has had numerous articles published throughout the world.  He’s already learning self-publishing and wanted to share his experience.

1. Tell me briefly about your book – what is it about and what motivated you to write it?

Soul Awakening is a spiritual mystery that delves into reincarnation, past lifetimes, and the attraction of strangers in this lifetime to each other as a result of having shared previous lifetimes together.

I spent a number of years researching the life and reincarnation readings of the legendary American mystic, Edgar Cayce.  Some 2500 of Edgar’s over 15,000 readings, obtained while he was in a deep, self-induced, trance-like state, are reincarnation readings.  These readings reveal details of a person’s past lives, but not all of their past lives.  Only incarnations which were relevant to the reasons why an individual’s soul chose the individual’s body as its residence in this lifetime, were revealed.  To put that in different terms – a soul selects its next residence to achieve progress in its development so it can return to its original God-like state with no further need to reincarnate.  The knowledge which I obtained while researching the Edgar Cayce readings nurtured the seed that became Soul Awakening.

2. How have your sales been?

I have no idea.  I decided that I did not want the hassle of personal selling, so I set it up for all sales to go through brick-and-mortar and internet bookstores.  It is too soon to get much feedback.

3. What has been your experience with traditional publishing?

After a series of form letters like “We are not currently accepting …” from traditional publishers and agents, I implemented Plan B.

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Jennifer Oberth

/ Kris Wampler / 4 Comments

Jennifer Oberth writes mystery with a touch of humor.  Her love of writing as an art is evident both in her novels and her approach to her craft.  In this interview she discusses her books and explains what new indie authors should do from day one.

1. Tell me briefly about your book – what is it about and what motivated you to write it?

Married To Murder is a short story mystery set on the wedding day of Ella Westin.

Ella doesn’t recall adding ‘solve a murder’ to her bridal to-do list but when she stumbles over the body of her matron of honor, she has no choice; her groom is the only suspect.  Throw in a deaf hairdresser, a ruined wedding cake and a not so retired pirate and Ella wants to throttle everyone in sight.  Can she catch the killer before the wedding is called off?  Or will she be Married To Murder?

I wrote this for a short story contest.  I’d already done the background work – Ella & Joe are the grandparents of the Westins in my upcoming novel series, The Masked Rider.  They’re a lot of fun to write.

2. How have your sales been?

Pretty steady and growing with pockets of nothing.  I’m focusing on the writing aspect and getting more books published. (I have several in the editing process right now.)  It’s interesting, I view my writing as a business but then I get disheartened by various factors
such as sales or reviews or forum comments.  If I look at it as a hobby, it’s a wonderful addition to my life and setbacks and cost of professional editing are in line with the leisurely pursuit of publishing books.  But it’s not a hobby, it’s how I want to eventually make my living.

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Robert Lamb

/ Kris Wampler / 6 Comments

Robert Lamb has taught writing at the University of South Carolina since 1991, when his first novel was published.  He is now an adjunct professor in the university’s journalism school.  Not only is he an experienced writer, but he’s a publisher who years ago recognized self-publishing as the wave of the future.

1. Tell me briefly about your books – what are they about and what motivated you to write them?

My first novel, Striking Out, is a coming-of-age story set in the South of the 1950s.  It was nominated for the PEN/Hemingway Award and, though published in 1991, is still in print.  My second, Atlanta Blues, is about the search for a missing coed by a newspaper reporter and two cops.  The search leads through the underbelly of urban Atlanta to murder and heartbreak.  The book was a Southern Critics Circle Selection and cited in one newspaper’s year-end roundup as “one of the best novels of 2004 by a Southern writer – and maybe the best.”

My third, A Majority of One, came out this past September and is about a high school English teacher who gets into deep trouble when she resists an effort by local preachers to ban some classic American novels from the classroom, foremost among them The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  Six of One, Half Dozen of Another (Stories & Poems), also only recently published, represents my writing life (thus far), with stories and poems virtually from yesteryear and yesterday, with an afterword on their origins.

I am motivated in everything I write by the glimmer somewhere in my mind of a good story that wants to be told.  I will never live long enough to write all that petition for a hearing – which is strange because until I was about 40 I had not a single idea for a good novel, and no idea how to write it if I did.  I’ve often said that I knew how to write long before I knew how to write a novel.  Novel-writing does require some know-how, which means it is a craft.  Get good enough at the craft and you might elevate what you write to the rarefied level of art.

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Melissa Bowersock

/ Kris Wampler

Melissa Bowersock has written a variety of books across different genres.  As someone who has both self-published and been traditionally published, she has an interesting approach to marketing that can help all writers.

1. Tell me briefly about your books – what are they about and what motivated you to write them?

I have 4 romance novels, 2 that are Westerns (The Rare Breed, Superstition Gold) and 2 that are contemporary (Remember Me, Lightning Strikes).  I like to think that my romances are more for thinking readers rather than the formulaic sexual tension novels.  I believe my characters grow a lot during the course of finding love.  The Blue Crystal is a fantasy sword-and-sorcery novel, much like Lord of the Rings.  I have 2 action-adventure novels.  Queen’s Gold is based on a past-life regression where a man tries to find ancient Aztec gold he hid in a previous incarnation.  The Appaloosa Connection is a western in which a horse rancher and a sullen teenager go after horse thieves that are in cahoots with the Mexican army.  Goddess Rising is a spiritual fantasy, inspired by a dream about a future when the world has been decimated by a geologic holocaust and the few people await a female savior to return them to greatness.  The Pits of Passion (by Amber Flame) is a romance satire that lampoons every cliche ever written.  It is a literal bodice-ripper, and not for the faint of heart.  My last book, Marcia Gates: Angel of Bataan, is the biography of an Army nurse who was captured on Corregidor and spent 3 years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp in the Philippines.

Although my books are inspired by various means, my motivation is that all the stories moved me and interested me and I felt like they were worthy of putting down on paper. I write what I like to read, paying no attention to current fads or commercial formulas.

2. How have your sales been?

Sales have been by fits and starts.  When I do a marketing push, I see more, but then they fall off.  The sales on my non-fiction have been surprisingly good, so it must be word of mouth.

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Lance Leuven

/ Kris Wampler / 1 Comment

It’s not every day that someone decides to take a cross-country journey, blog about it, then turn that blog into a book.  But British author Lance Leuven has done just, and as a new writer he shares what he’s already learned.

1. Tell me briefly about your book – what is it about and what motivated you to write it?

Well it all started with a rash decision after the pub, really.  I was at home pondering my upcoming 30th birthday when I concluded that there wasn’t really anything stopping me from doing something I’d been thinking about for a while.  So the next day I walked into work, quit my job, and then handed in notice on my flat.  My plan was to spend the summer traveling the length and breadth of the UK. I compiled a list of things to see and do and lastly decided to write a blog of my experiences for my friends to follow.  With my long list of tasks to complete my trip became quite a rip-roaring gallivant across the nation encompassing a vast amount of what the UK has to offer.  This, combined with the inevitable bad luck, misadventures and disasters, led me to think that maybe others might enjoy sharing my story, so I decided to publish the blog.

2. How have your sales been?

Well I only published a couple of weeks ago so fairly slow so far.  Due to the nature of the book my first task is to reach the right audience.  Being not simply a genre-specific novel or travel guide or anything straightforward means that reaching the people who’d be interested in its “niche” nature is my first and biggest challenge!

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Jonathan Lister and Kevin Fuhrman

/ Kris Wampler / 2 Comments

Authors Jonathan Lister and Kevin Fuhrman are set to release a self-published urban fantasy, Welcome to Demos, in January.  I recently corresponded with Jonathan to learn more about the book and how he and Kevin are building buzz around it.

1. Tell me briefly about your book – what is it about and what motivated you to write it?

“Welcome to Demos” is in that urban fantasy vein.  It’s a story about family interactions in a supernatural world where werewolves have lived openly with humans since before recorded history. Basically, we’re looking at the real-life implications of supernatural beings without the “coming out party.”  Everybody’s here, everyone knows it, to the next scene we go.

This story came about from what we saw as a lack of strong male leads in the market.  Our characters aren’t bemoaning their existences, they’re living them and struggling to achieve goals – with some police corruption, gun shot wounds, mysticism and coffee thrown in.

2. How have your sales been?

We recently announced our release date of January 1, 2012.  Kevin’s joked that the interest we’ve generated so far is kind of shocking to him.  In his words: “The Urban Fantasy genre is full of talented and prolific authors and the idea of something we’ve created standing out enough to get this kind of response is a shock to my normally pessimistic nature.”

3. Describe your experience with traditional publishers and how it compares to self-publishing.

From my perspective publishing with a traditional house and then going independent, it’s completely different – 100 percent control is scary, exciting, tiresome and really rewarding all at the same time.  We shopped “Welcome to Demos” to agents at first and we’d get requests for pages only to be turned away without much feedback.  If anything, this teaches us an agent isn’t a mandatory part of the process.

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Gini Graham Scott

/ Kris Wampler

Gini Graham Scott, Ph.D., owner of Changemakers Productions, has vast experience in writing, publishing, and film, as well as consulting and marketing work.  I decided to talk with her about her background in these areas and how indie authors can market themselves and their brands.

1. You’ve written over 50 books. Tell me briefly about some of them.

My books range in subject matter based on what I have been interested in at the time. Some of my earlier books deal with social issues and lifestyles, then with marketing and sales, after that creativity, success, resolving conflict, and personal and professional development, improving relationships in the workplace, and most recently with promotion, using the social media, and writing and producing indie films.

The most recent, coming out Nov. 29, is The Complete Guide to Writing, Producing, and Directing a Low-Budget Short Film, based on my experience in writing, producing, and sometimes directing over four dozen of these.  I also started my own publishing company, Changemakers Publishing, which features mostly self-help and popular business books.  The two most popular ones are The Complete Guide to Using LinkedIn to Promote Your Business or Yourself and The Truth About Lying.

2. How have your sales been?

Some of my most popular books have sold 10,000-20,000 copies, such as Mind Power: Picture Your Way To Success; The Empowered Mind: How to Harness the Creative Force Within You; and Success in MLM, Network Marketing, and Personal Selling.

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Osayi Osar-Emokpae

/ Kris Wampler / 9 Comments

I was surprised recently to learn that I was not the only person where I work to recently self-publish a book.  That’s when I met Osayi Osar-Emokpae through a mutual friend.  I decided to find out more about Osayi’s book, Impossible is Stupid, and her experience with self-publishing.  So what better way than one of my interviews?

1. Tell me briefly about your book – what is it about and what motivated you to write it?

It’s Thanksgiving Day as I sit here responding to this interview question. The plan was to go to the gym in my apartment, then come back and respond to this email, but my plan didn’t quite work out that way.  On the way from the gym I was stopped by a random woman in my apartment. She asked me to escort her and her boyfriend to her apartment because she was nervous that he was violent. He seemed harmless, and I didn’t want to get involved, but I asked God, and felt Him telling me to go with her.

When we got to her apartment he kept talking about how peaceful he was, and I could see the tears streaming down his face, and all I could think was how did I get myself into this mess?  If anything, at least I would be a witness for him to prove that he did not hurt her. So one minute he is telling her that he can’t believe she brought me into their situation, and the next minute I hear her screaming and he had her in a grip hold and was punching her in the face, pummeling her as hard as he could.  I could see blood, arms flailing and things getting knocked around. And all I heard was screaming and more screaming.

I did the only thing I could, I quickly walked away and called 911 as fast as my fingers would allow me.

While talking to the police I found out that she was 40 years old, she had started dating the man in August of this year, and they started living together not long after that.  Not only was he unemployed, but he had a record…for assault!

And it is for women like these that I wrote this book.  There are women out there who are dating men just because they feel like they need to have a man.  There are women out there dating men who leave them stranded after they become pregnant (another story for another day).  There are women out there married and miserable because they felt they absolutely had to marry the first thing that came along.

So I wrote this book, and I keep writing because women need to know that they are valuable, and that living a fulfilled life without a man is not impossible.  I wrote this book to show that beating loneliness and depression as a single woman is not impossible.  As a matter of fact, Impossible is Stupid!

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Amy Cross

/ Kris Wampler / 3 Comments

British author Amy Cross stays busy these days, churning out new books and constantly generating story ideas.  In this interview she discusses her projects and explains her straightforward approach to marketing.

1. Tell me briefly about your books – what are they about and what motivated you to write them?

The Dark Season books are about a girl, Sophie, who meets a boy, Patrick.  The boy turns out to be the last vampire on Earth, and he’s completely mute, and he’s the last vampire because he killed all the other vampires.  So that’s the starting point.  I’ve never been a big fan of vampire novels in general, but I wanted to see if I could come up with an interesting central relationship that I can explore over multiple volumes.  I’d like to publish 22 volumes a year, as if it’s a network TV series.  But I suspect exhaustion will limit it to 13 a year, as if it’s on cable.

Apart from Dark Season, I’m also working on other books.  I self-published a collection of erotic short stories titled Love Stories?, and a comic family drama titled At War With the Hamptons.  The latter was a chance to experiment, so I pulled together some stuff I’d written over the years and I beat it into a semi-coherent narrative about a family who, collectively, spend 50 years grieving over the death of one person.  Some parts of it are quite experimental.  I like playing with form and structure, but it’s still a comedy, honest!

2. How have your sales been?

The vampire books have been averaging 1 or 2 sales a day, and the book of erotic short stories has been doing slightly better.  I expected to sell maybe one a week, so I’m ahead of where I thought I’d be.  I don’t know how that compares to other beginners, but I’m happy for now.  At War With the Hamptons has only been up for a short time and so far no one’s given it a shot, but I hope it’ll sell at least one copy in the next week.

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