This post, by Kait Nolan, originally appeared on her site on 8/19/10.
Indie author Chris Kelly is hosting a blog carnival around the topic of “Why I went indie.” Since it’s a topic that’s really on my mind this week, it seemed an ideal post topic and a sign to participate.
I didn’t plan to go indie in the beginning. I’ve been off and on pursuing traditional publication since I was 15. Still have those first rejection letters somewhere. Of course in the intervening fifteen years, publishing changed a lot.
Having a web presence and a platform became vital. So Forsaken By Shadow started out as a means to start building an audience. Originally it was going to be free. But of course you can’t release things for free on Amazon if you’re not a publisher. So I listed it for a buck. There and everywhere else.
Between making the decision to put something out there on my own and actually GETTING it out there, I got into ebooks myself as a reader. And the publishing industry started going through radical changes, even before the economy tanked. Rather than looking at ebooks as the next phase of publishing, the big houses looked at them as a threat and have done every conceivable thing to sabotage them–delaying release, pricing them ludicrously, giving authors a pittance in terms of royalties. Agents and editors started telling their existing authors, “Keep your day job.”
Read the rest of the post on Kait Nolan‘s site.