For this week’s blog entry I thought I’d share my personal adventures searching out other new or want-to-be ‘Indie authors’. My grand thoughts were that I’d connect with them, we’d get introduced to each other and eventually we’d start down a path of cross promoting each other’s work and exchanging experiences, ideas, and even our stories. It was going to be great – I was going to take a lead role in promoting my fellow new authors!
First step, find some new authors. I could do this by reaching out to the writing group that I am loosely affiliated with. Or, I could ask my successful author friends if they knew a ‘want-to-be’ or two that I could connect with. But I wanted to try this alone and see what I would find through the internet. Seemed logical to me; after all, most of us writers are introverts and prefer to avoid human interaction, right?
Turns out, this was not as easy as I thought it would be. It didn’t take long before I was overwhelmed with the amount of advertising, marketing ploys and rabbit holes I could get sucked into. Was it a mere coincidence that the majority of the scrolling advertisements were trying to sell me some kind of “marketing your book” or “masterclass on writing” or “aging well over 50 products?” Damn those algorithms! I can’t wait until I research the statistics on the child suicide rate for my next book… I can only imagine what the advertisers will try to sell me!
Anyhow back to the task at hand, “stay focused Tamara” – what did I tell you about my ability to ramble and get side tracked!
So, I did the obvious, I Googled ‘debut authors 2018’…what did my top search find? A British newspaper article that ran in the Independent titled “The emerging authors to look out for in 2018 – Sarah Bradbury picks 10 new novelists set to tell a different story next year”. A quick scan of this article told me this was not what I was seeking. The list of titles and authors included those that were either nominated, a finalist, or award winners for some kind of literacy award – and all were traditionally published. I refined my search. ‘debut indie authors 2018’. This time, I got indie author news.com. Well now at least I felt like I was talking the same language. Finally, after a few hours, I Googled ‘canadian indie authors’, and the search revealed a list of sites that included The Canadian Writers Union, a CBC site highlighting award winning Canadian authors, a submission site for the Canadian author awards and a few others. However, much to my chagrin, none brought me any closer to my quest – I just wanted to find some beginner authors like me!
I finally concluded that my best source for help, advice and information would be on one of the many Facebook groups set up for ‘want-to-be’ and accomplished authors and writers. There are also a multitude of courses you can sign up for that also include private Facebook groups for the students. Knowing which courses are legitimate and which ones are rip offs – now that’s whole other story and one I’m certainly not qualified to judge.
With this adventure behind me, I’m now continuing to work on my writing, listening to podcasts, reading a lot and asking questions in my writing group and from my successful author friends.
If you’re an indie author and reading my blog, I’d love to connect with you. Use the contact me page to send me a message. I look forward to connecting with you! In the meantime here’s my quote for this week,
“No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader.”
–Robert Frost
Have a good week!
Tamara
Tamara Mercer 