INDIE: A Humorous Look At Independent Publishing

ABOUT THIS BOOK... Although I had been writing since the 80’s and self-publishing since the 90’s, I still gave little thought to ever making my living as a writer. I love writing and everything about it, even the rewriting and the editing, and the thought of handing over my book to someone else so that they could slap their cover upon it and make their changes to it always left me with no desire to join a huge publishing house. Not that they would have had me. Most of my work doesn't fit into their nice little niches of genres, and so I doubt my books would ever have seen print if it were up to them. But it wasn’t, it was up to me, and so I self-published for years without any hope of making more than a few dollars. And then, the Kindle came along and the eBook revolution took off with incredible speed, and I and thousands of others went along for the ride. I began making money from the first day and the amount has been increasing over time, and I predict that someday I will be making my living from my writing. Now, another thing that many authors did around the same time that they published their first eBook, was to post thier first blog post. I started a blog and aptly named it—Donald Wells. One thing I noticed about most other blogs is that they were all very similar. They talked about their newest book, or writing craft and the publishing business and after awhile a lot of them just got boring. I didn’t want to be boring. And so week after week, I wrote goofy blog post after goofy blog post and gained a scattering of followers, and the blog was going good. There was just one thing though, other than the blog, I wasn’t writing. As much as I loved writing the blog, it was taking way too much time and energy away from my writing and so I basically walked away from it. However, many of my posts were good, funny, and sometimes even a bit insightful, and it occurred to me recently that they would make an interesting book. And so, here we are. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Donald Wells **************************************** TABLE OF CONTENTS ABOUT THIS BOOK... 9 THINGS YOU SHOULD NEVER SAY AT YOUR WRITING GROUP 11 PUBLISHING TERMS EXPLAINED 12 PUBLISHING MYTHS EXPOSED! 13 PERSPECTIVE 15 I AM NOBODY 16 MY INTERVIEW WITH PUBLISHING EXECUTIVE DEWEY CHEATUM 17 REALLY BAD WRITING ADVICE 20 MORE SUREFIRE TIPS FOR WRITERS 21 YOU KNOW YOU’RE AN INDIE WHEN... 22 THINGS I’LL MISS, THINGS I WON’T 23 I AIN’T WRITIN GOOD NO MORE 24 A DIGITAL WORLD 26 MY INTERVIEW WITH WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE 28 DO YOU SUFFER FROM INDIE-ITIS? 30 WHEN WE NO LONGER WANT TO GET IN, WHAT WILL THEY DO WITH THE GATES? 34 LITTLE READ, WRITING GOOD 36 STEAL MY BOOKS! 40 I AM A WRITER 41 HOW TO BE A PROFESSIONAL WRITER 43 1 STAR REVIEWS 44 WHEN DOES THE SELF IN SELF-PUBLISHING END? 45 NOTHING IS FOREVER 46 AN APOLOGY 48 GUEST POST BY...MY FUTURE SELF? 50 DO WE REALLY NEED READERS? 53 (SHAKESPEARE QUOTES) 57