We Named the Blog "Indie"

I'm not sure when the rebrand took place, probably in the lean decade and a half between my own publishing attempts, but "self-published" became "indie publishing" (and "vanity presses" often became "hybrid.") No matter the branding, it's living DIY mindset and aesthetic and knowing and avoiding pitfalls.

In 2012, when I first tried, the book landscape was very different. Amazon was still dominant, of course, but Barnes & Noble was a competitor, and truly indie distribution options were limited. It's been a while, but I think I chose B&N and Smashwords for an eBook, and CreateSpace for the print editions. I remember being of the "anything but Amazon" mindset, which now feels quaintly progressive. They were always the 500 pound gorilla in the middle of the living room, but it was easier to pretend to ignore them.

Here in 2026, Amazon has swept up CreateSpace, Draft2Digital long-since absorbed Smashwords, and Barnes and Noble is, somehow, still hanging on. Indie book stores exist, though the avenues to populate them are the same as the other major print distributors (Ingram.) I'm still rooting for the indies, but the gorilla thumps on the walls with regularity these days. It's absolutely impossible to ignore, or even pretend to ignore. I'll be co-lecturing this fall on indie publishing and the DIY approach, and as much as I want to take a moral stance and say "you can avoid Amazon," they have done a fine job making it possible for anyone to publish anything. By comparison, B&N's online tools are... fine... and Ingram's make me want to slam my hand in a drawer because of their opaqueness and rough edges. Draft2Digital's tool are very good, and they distribute to many other stores, but even they won't fling over the fence to Amazon any more, and they get a little scold-y about trying to not include their branding in your content (no, I don't want your custom backmatter, no, I want my full cover.)

The lecture is going to be, in a nutshell: if you're starting out, start at Amazon and fan out, in time. Maybe. The cost in my time is not to be ignored.

I wish it wasn't this way. I wish we had a better ecosystem for artists to create and share. It's ironic, in an era when "content" (and now tagged content) is so valuable that we have so few channels to distribute through, and those channels are clogged with a mix of human and AI-created stuff. This should be a time of more pathways, not fewer. And yet.

So, on this Independence Day, I'm thinking about what it means to be truly independent. I'm deep in DIY territory, but still beholden to a billionaire for putting it out in the world. Companies like Draft2Digital still get my support, because some choice is better than none. I'm running a sale now on Smashwords just to try and throw some support at the little guy.

Popular posts from this blog

On Draft2Digital, and Bookspam

Turmoil, upset, and no shortage of sturm und drang this week among the indie publishing community (i.e., self-pubbers like yr humble rhino.) Draft2Digital announced they they were no longer going to be allowing purely free signup and support: new accounts will be charged $20 setup, and sales must meet or exceed $100 annually or else the account is charged $12. Barnes & Noble has a similar, albeit less spelled out policy that accounts not meeting standards could be knifed. Amazon, as of this writing, has been mum, but Amazon also has incredibly deep pockets. They can--and I suspect do--lose money on their self-publishing platform, and it's barely a mote in their financial eye. But boy, it was like D2D announced they'd be puppy-stomping, and indie authors would be funding it. What happened? I'm speculating that it's the general issue of scale . When books took a while to produce, D2D naturally did not get as many uploaded to their service to distribute, and they bot...
Read more

Cuts and Adds

Because of course I don't have enough going on right now, I'm looping way back to a craft that I dabbled in around the time my very first book came out: linocut carving. I've never outgrown my childhood fascination with print and type (as the many typewriters can attest) and linocut occupies a weird liminal space of creative endeavor, printing, and noodling around with sharp things. I dug out the old cutting tool and the erasers I'd used way-back-when, and I've been haunting the relevant section of my local art store. I've very much got a DIY aesthetic going on, too, and I've been trying to shunt my tiny social media presence over to things creative and not things time-sucky. These all landed in a perfect storm of "I should find a secondhand hobby die cutting machine and do my own printing." Enter the local secondhand craft store and a lucky find, and now I'm one "Cuttlebug" richer for a very low outlay, preventing me from taking on...
Read more

Creativity Under Fire

There's nothing my Muse ( she/her ) likes better than stillness. Over the years of our partnership, we've agreed on the terms of our relationship: namely, that I show up, hoping to write, and if she's in the neighborhood, will deign to drop by and leave me some raw material. It's a dysfunctional partnership, but it's ours. What matters (for her) is that I'm showing up, pen poised, mine relatively clear, ready to go. This... is not easy. "Relatively clear" is not my state of mind most days, before the whole stare-of-the-world gets factored in. Honestly, some days, the Muse could pull up in her ride, ready to toss an institutional brick through my proverbial mental plate-glass window, but I'm too preoccupied to hear her show up. And she doesn't accept being ignored. She gets sulky. Withdrawn. Reluctant. And ultimately: erratic, maybe the worst thing for a Muse to be when she's tethered to someone with a full life. Why do all the good ideas co...
Read more