indie writing

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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