Independent (indie) writing and publishing is growing leaps and bounds. I or you can publish and sell a book without using an agent or traditional publisher, and without spending money to print a hard copy run. It is amazing how the industry is changing at such a rapid pace. And you can do it yourself if you have the proper skills!
Many people love the model of retaining control and being an indie publisher. But don’t ignore the capabilities required to write and publish your own work. It is not just writing your best selling novel in the first place, but editing, book cover design, formatting, publicity and promotion, etc required to make it a success. New skills including SEO (Search Engine Optimization), POD (Print On Demand) are required. And if you want to do it yourself, learning the skills the publisher used to provide such as graphic design and promotion are also required to some degree.
Regardless if you want to publish yourself or use a traditional publisher, the knowledge involved to navigate and survive as an author continues to increase and you need to keep pace. I have invested significantlyin myself (about 250 hours in training in 2013 alone) to obtain the skills to survive and hopefully flourish in the future. It started with wanting to have a little more control over the ePub formatting, so I picked up a little HTML and CSS. Then I wanted to have the option to avoid spending several hundred dollars for book cover design and layout if I knew the book may only attract a smaller audience. Then I became more interested and desirous to learn and be able to do everything myself. So I invested in training and my skill development.
I subscribe to Lynda.com which provides access to 2,300 courses from book cover design to laying out an eBook, training across the Adobe Creative Suite of products, HTML/CSS training, to using a DSLR camera and on and on. You pay by the month or year and can take as much training as you have time for.
The other model I use is to buy ‘by the course’ and do so from Udemy. I have purchased about eight courses from them on similar topics. Some courses are free and have been quite useful also. The also run a number of large discounts where you can pick up courses for $10 or 50% off for example. I once purchased $1,100 of courseware for $50!
There are a few other similar providers getting into the field, but all offer great value in terms of providing skill development for all aspects of the authoring and publishing process.
Another growing model is to use Coursera which provides access to a number of higher educational institutions courses with complete content and exercises for free. You can get the equivalent of an MIT or Harvard education free online!
Using crowdsourcing, you can also outsource services inexpensively and may feel you do not need to invest in yourself other than to improve your writing. But I find having invested in my skill development has minimally made me smarter about when to do it myself or pay someone else to do it for me and to do be able to completely publish a book of quality without paying others. This can be critical for the novice and maturing author to survive and hopefully be in a position to prosper!
You may not feel you have the time, but this would be a mistake. You will be left behind. To make time for my skill development, I combined my skill training with my physical training to save time while getting smarter and fitter – both helping my writing.
Steve Shipley, author of Wine Sense, due out early 2014
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Still Stupid at Sixty (published under my writing pseudonym Blake Stevens)
