Hi Murdoc,
I'll admit it's been an interesting experience and one I wish I had done years ago.
I'm trying to avoid writing a novel about the ins & outs here (I think I failed in that attempt)… But it basically all came about 7 years ago when I moved from Oz to Ireland. With a lot of time up my sleeve until I started working here & my wife joined me, I finally started writing properly. Something I'd been doing on and off since high school. In a matter of 6 months or so I'd written my first book (still not published) and then spent the last 7 years refining, polishing, expanding, splitting it into 2, etc… and then it all came to a head last year when I was getting sick of not having anything out there and constantly trying to polish what I'd done and never being happy with it.
My original intention had always been to try and get a book deal, hence refining the works that had by then become 3.5 very large books (circa 150,000-180,000 words each). After being too busy with work to keep up with changes in the publishing world until the middle of last year, I realised the game had changed and the balance of power shifted from the Big 6 publishers to the Indies with companies like Amazon & Smash making it easier for the average person to get their works out there in ebook format. Sure, quality, grammar, editing varies by a long mile, but as I'm finding, it's another learning curve which helps in your writing and each book (hopefully) is getting better - but I'm biased on that point
The upshot is that near the end of last year I focused on writing something new which might serve as a lead-in to my writing style, the universe, and the big sagas waiting in the wings to finally be polished (fingers crossed for late this year). But I'm having so much fun writing these smaller novels that the original books I planned in this lead-in series are expanding out to a few more so I can refine my style, setting and play with the key characters some more.
As for success, it's still early days. I'm certainly no Randolph Lalonde or Evan Currie, etc… with their levels of success or following; but the downloads I'm getting are better than I ever imagined. Best case I thought might be for a dozen to friends, family or work colleagues, but across the 2 novels out there now I'm seeing downloads to date of around 200 (I'm not afraid to share the figure). Again, other Indies out there do that number in a day or hour thanks to marketing efforts or the sheer number of books they've written, but for me it's unbelievable & a tremendous motivator to keep doing it. The hardest challenge is discoverability amongst so many other authors… I'm not doing any marketing (except for the mention here & to friends) so it's only word of mouth getting these out there. But at the moment, I just want to focus on the writing instead of marketing… once I have half a dozen books out there I might take a rest and do some above the line marketing… but at the moment it's all about the writing.
Why go Indie and not hold out for a deal? I guess after spending a lot of time on some of the blogs (Dean Wesley Smith and his wife Kris Rusch, or 'The Passive Voice' it helped push me over the edge & take a chance. Be careful… spend time on Dean's blog reading through some of his posts and it might push you over the edge too
My advice if you're thinking of testing the water & publishing Indie, is to go for it! If you're not sure if you want to use your real name, both 'Zon, Smash, and the others let you use a pseudonym instead so you don't spoil your chance of going traditional later.
One thing I keep hearing in different formats is that for a new writer to get known out there, it's like a new band/musician. Until people have heard of you, read/listened to your work and develop a trust/happiness with your style it can be an uphill battle to grow a following. For some people, the stars align and Hivers intervene so everything happens in perfect harmony and they become instant top of the list authors with traditional publishers begging for their rights... or it takes them a few years before that happens after writing + publishing, in a rinse/repeat cycle.
In the meantime, I'm having a lot of fun doing this and dip into Traveller to flesh out my characters for stats, skills and background which is then adapted for the books. I read today that quite a few Indie fantasy writers do something simlar using AD&D for their book characters.
((Apologies if this has put you to sleep! ))
Brad
