Indie Authors - Finding an Audience

Many established independent authors attribute at least a part of their success to luck and knowing the right people. What they don’t say is that their dedication to their art is what made all the effort in marketing and finding an audience successful. As writers, it can be difficult to establish a working routine. Finding a way to regularly work on your craft can be tricky, but once you have established realistic goals for yourself, the work becomes easier, and you will find inspiration in your work more frequently.

Many indie authors worry unnecessarily about whether their work will be appealing to a wide range of readers when they’re starting their projects. If you write to please a certain type of reader, you will get lost. Write as if no one will read it, from within. If you come to your writing desk with this attitude, you will take more risks, develop more interesting characters by letting them operate on their own on the page, and allow you to write the story you have wanted to write. The more you worry about appealing to a certain audience, the more you restrict yourself and set yourself up for unnecessary creative blocks. Your audience will find you. They always do and it's usually very surprising to the author. Take JK Rowling as a perfect example. She was writing Harry Potter as a children's novel, yet her biggest audience turned out to be adults!

Michelle von Quilich is an indie writer from San Diego. She is a customer service representative when she’s not writing her stories

Marketing Your Book - Making Sure It’s Ready

As an author, you may have something important to say. Do you want the world to hear your voice and your story? To make your voice heard, you have to make your story the best it can be for the widest audience. In order to successfully market your book as an indie author, you have to make sure it’s a book worth marketing. Any lack of confidence will show through in your marketing effort. Creating the best story takes more than inspiration; it takes hours and days of rewriting, editing, revising, and rethinking. Almost no authors can write anything worth reading on their first try. The product that you see published is the result of countless drafts and hours of honing and crafting the language over and over again.

 

If you choose to publish your work yourself, either in digital form or by printing your own books, hire a professional editor. Traditional publishers usually have their own editing staff for their clients. As an indie author, you don’t have this luxury. Professional editors comb through your book and take out any weak areas, typos, etc. throughout the story. Nothing turns readers off faster than sloppy prose. By hiring a professional editor you can be sure your punctuation, grammar, and spelling will be perfect before you publish your work.

Michelle von Quilich is an indie author from San Diego, CA. Her day job is in customer service and she also enjoys writing. von Quilich has shared her poems and writing at many open mics across the country.