The Alliance of Independent Authors is a global non-profit association for self publishing writers. Website: allianceindependentauthors.org Blog: selfpublishingadvice.org Opening Up To Indie Authors Debbie Young & Dan Holloway Series editor: Orna Ross An Alliance of Independent Authors’ Guide www.allianceindependentauthors.org Opening Up To Indie Authors. Font Publications London UK. ISBN EBOOK: 978-1-909888-14-2 ISBN PRINT: 987-1-909888-13-5 ISBN AUDIOBOOK: 978-1-909888-15-9 Copyright © 2014 Dan Holloway, Debbie Young, Orna Ross, The Alliance of Independent Authors. All rights reserved. Category: Writing, Publishing Printed by IngramSpark Ltd Contents Introduction: Launch Speech at The London Book Fair 2014 by Orna Ross Director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) viii PART ONE Twenty-first Century Publishing 1 I. Self-Publishing Today 3 2. How to Find Great Self-published Books 13 3. About The #PublishingOpenUp Campaign 23 PART TWO Equal Opportunities For All Books 29 4. Book Retailers 31 5. Reviews, Reviewers & Book Blogs 53 6. Libraries 64 7. Festivals & Events 75 8. Awards & Prizes 90 9. Associations & Societies 100 VI | OPENING UP TO INDIE AUTHORS PART THREE Towards An Open Future 109 10. Opening Up 111 Appendix One: ALLi Code for Author Collaborations 114 Appendix Two: Note re Terms of Reference 117 About The Authors 119 More ALLi Guidebooks 122 Review Request 123 Introduction: Launch Speech at The London Book Fair 2014 by Orna Ross Director of The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) You’ve written a book, hired a crack editor, encased it in a jacket that is a work of art and formatted the interior with lustrous font and arresting headings. You’ve put it out there, and lo! – you’ve gained some readers. A fantastic achievement. Now you’d like to see your book in a bookstore or library. You’d like to attend one of the literary events that are mushrooming up near you. You’d like to join the appropriate association for your genre. Except you can’t. According to the bookshop or library or event or association, you’re not really published. Though you might be selling more books and have received more great reviews than the writers they’re headlining, you don’t really qualify -- because you self-published. This is wrong and it has to change. This guidebook is part of an Alliance of Independent Authors’s campaign that aims to foster that change: ALLi’s Open Up To Indie Authors campaign (hashtag #PublishingOpenUp). Our organisation represents self-publishers all over the world, and this book is addressed to them — but also to the book fairs and VIII | OPENING UP TO INDIE AUTHORS conferences, award bodies and libraries, festival and event organ- isers, retailers and reviewers who now need to accommodate them into their work. In short, if you’re someone who acts as a conduit between writer and reader, we’re calling on you to open up. Open up to what? To the most exciting and expansive movement in the books business for centuries: author publishing. And if you’re a self-published writer, we’re calling on you to read this book and come to understand that often it isn’t an anti-indie conspiracy that sees you out in the cold, but various constraints that the industry and its offshoots must operate within. There is lots you can do to help your cause, if you start to understand better how the book business works and approach the task with a spirit of co-operation and mutual benefit. Publishing is changing, and rapidly. Today, half or more of the books on Amazon and other ebook bestseller lists are self-published. ALLi has many members who have sold more than 100,000 copies of their books, some who have sold millions. Many are producing work of outstanding literary merit. And corporate publishers and agents are watching all this and scouting for successful self-published authors, hoping to woo them with a trade publishing contract. Author-Publishing There is no denying that publishing times are a-changing — and that those changes have yet to be reflected throughout the literary infrastructure of libraries, reviews, bookstores, festivals and prizes. This book, and the associated campaign, hopes to change that. At ALLi, ‘independent authors’ come in many forms, but are united by a mindset: they see themselves as the creative director of their books, from inspiration to publication. Our members may take a DIY self-publishing route, they may hire an assisted-publishing service, they may use a trade publisher for some of their projects, but all understand that we are living in INTRODUCTION | IX a golden age for writers and readers. We enjoy the freedom, and accept the responsibility, of running our own show. The terms ‘self-publishing’ and ‘indie author’ are misnomers, really, in what is a highly collaborative business. Nobody who produces a good book does so alone, and publishing means partnership, often with a variety of individuals and organisations. To go indie is less about going alone than becoming a team leader. This guide is all about how to foster and develop good partnerships and teamwork between self-publishing writers and the rest of the literary world. #PublishingOpenUp ALLi’s Open Up To Indie Authors (#PublishingOpenUp) campaign includes a petition, lobbying of the industry, education seminars and now this guidebook by Debbie Young, ALLi’s blog editor and Dan Holloway, an ALLi ambassador. Debbie and Dan demonstrate through education and example how authors and various personnel in the industry — librarians, book- sellers, reviewers, festival organisers and prize-giving committees — can successfully work together. The aims of the book are threefold: • to equip self-published authors with the information and atti- tude they need to collaborate successfully with other players in the book trade and literary environment; • to tackle the challenges of incorporating self-published books into literary organisations and events; • to raise awareness of the high quality and professional standards offered by the best self-publishing authors and encourage their inclusion. Our campaign urges the book trade and all parts of the literary infrastructure to incorporate more self-published books into their X | OPENING UP TO INDIE AUTHORS programmes. We know there are challenges in doing this and we have discussed them in detail throughout this book. Here I’d just like to address the challenges that traditional books people most often lament: the size and exponential growth of the book market, now that anyone can publish, and the consequent perceived diffi- culty of discovering good books among the bad. The key to unlocking this challenge is very simple, as simple as a change of mindset. From scarcity thinking to abundance thinking; from commercial imperatives to creative. Traditionally, publishing has worked from a scarcity model, grounded in commercial principles. It selected a very few books to be published and protected their value with copyright. Now we are working from an abundance model, grounded in creative principles. In an abundance model, excess and redundancy are no causes for concern. This is how nature, the fundamental model for all creativ- ity, works. An oak tree throws a lot of acorns to get one baby oak. A lot of sperm miss out on the egg. But what about what one publishing executive recently referred to as ‘the mountains of crap’? Yes, self-publishing is enabling more poor-quality books to be published than ever before, but, in an abundance model, what’s important is not how many bad books are enabled — they quickly fall into invisibility as nobody reads them — but how many good books are enabled. Throughout cultural history, in Italy during the Renaissance, in Elizabethan England, in transcendentalist America, in Literary Revival Ireland, whenever new creative forms and formats flourish, an opening up occurs. The means of expression becomes available to more people, and while this facilitates more tyro and aspirant work — our exec’s ‘mountains of crap’ — it also results in more accomplished and virtuoso work at the top. More masterpieces emerge, the expanded tip of that enlarged mountain. The problem of book discoverability in the new publishing eco- system is a fear created by an emotional or financial investment in INTRODUCTION | XI the old order. It is not a problem for readers. Online algorithms are actually very effective — and getting better. From the reader’s perspective, there’s a book description, independent reader reviews, and a sample they can read before they buy. And book search through categories and keywords is far more effective as a discovery tool, if not always as pleasant an experience, as the old method of bookstore browsing. So good books are actually easier to find than they’ve ever been, including good self-published books, as Debbie and Dan so ably demonstrate in this guidebook. The unprecedented wave of literary expression that self-publishing is facilitating is, actually, a beautiful thing when viewed through a creative, and not a critical or commercial, lens. Creativity is never orderly and neat; it’s colourful and chaotic and kaleidoscopic, and we need a publishing scene that acknowledges, and is prepared to be more reflective of, that truth. To renege on that challenge because we don’t like change — change in general, or the particular changes that are occurring in the indus- try — is to fail to serve the reading and writing community, to cut off great writing from the readership it deserves. XII | OPENING UP TO INDIE AUTHORS Sign Our Petition ALLi’s Open Up To Indie Authors campaign has a very simple aim: to remove discrimination against self-published books. If you support the aims of this campaign, please sign our petition on Change.org: http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/ open-up-to-indie-authors/ All of us at ALLi look forward to the day when this campaign, and this guide, will no longer be necessary.