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Indie authors and indie bookstores can be a match made in heaven when they share goals of authentic community-building and support for local arts and culture. Small book shops can provide unique curations, personal recommendations, and intoxicating aesthetics that generate real inspiration for authors and other creatives who frequent them. In turn, indie authors can amplify the vibe by creating unique, personal, and aesthetically intoxicating works of hyper-local literature and create sales events that draw in curious crowds of new shoppers. As an indie author with zero interest in turning my hobby into a relentless hustle--but who did wish to recoup the costs involved with researching, writing, editing, designing, and publishing artistically ambitious novels, I collaborated with my community's independent booksellers to help beat the psychological and economic languishing of the pandemic years and keep the spark alive for readers and other writers of my favorite kind of literature, "barbaric books for sophisticated readers." That is not a traditional publishing category, but as an independent author, I don't have to care!
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Plot twist! I'm not here to tell you that the above is a fantasy that isn't accessible to a regular person, because all of the above accurately describes my experience writing and releasing my own books. Best of all, I had the pleasure of indulging in a shareable passion while supporting my local bookstores through the pandemic by holding raucous, attention-grabbing, laughter-filled author events outdoors that intrigued passersby from the streets and tempted them to not only buy my books but continue shopping at the stores that hosted my events. And! I was able to finagle my wares onto some coveted shelves where I didn't even give a talk, because my books happened to fit just right within a few of Michigan's many specialized-bookstore niches. And even more heartwarming!! I was contacted by the owners of three local shops about stocking my books before I reached out to a single business, as soon as I announced the publication of my first book on my personal social media profiles, simply based on their knowledge of me as a local book shopper of taste, a skilled professional writer, and a committed member of the creative community.
The Cottage Book Shop in Glen Arbor
Everybody Reads in Lansing
The Robin Books (inside The Robin Theatre) in Lansing's REO Town
What a dream, right? But you know that's not the whole story. If you would be shocked to hear that many years of hard, disciplined work went into the creation and sales of my books, then get outta here, you goober. Anyone who knows anything about historical novels has some idea of how much grueling labor, frustration, intellectual wrestling, and tedious task management are required along the way--just as with most projects of great worth accomplished by those truly called to them, like running a business or raising a family.
And of course, my pack-a-suitcase-with-doorstopper-sized-books-and-perform-as-a-literary-busker strategy did not get me rich. But it sure was a lot more fun than fussing with algorithms and digital advertising campaigns. I do that kind of stuff at my day job, and for me, creative writing is a break from the grind, a hobby that I don't want to turn into a hustle. It's an important artistic outlet for all that I am outside of my professional life, and those parts of me are not inspired by thoughts about target markets. When I'm creating my own art on behalf of nobody but myself, I like blowing people's minds rather than serving them more of what they already know they like. Instead of catering to a demand, I want to launch something into the world that will surprise and delight those who didn't even know how much they needed it. I want to revel in the lusty exultation of creating the kind of stuff I'm into, which is not always popular and often too challenging for the general public to chew on.
But that doesn't mean that I simply don't care what others think! I certainly wanted to find readers who would enjoy my creations, and at first, I was terribly anxious about disappointing people whose opinions and feelings matter to me. My greatest fear was not a lack of sales, but that those who invested in my work would regret it. To my great relief and delight, my books have been thoroughly appreciated by those who have read, bought, sold, and lent them. They earned significant profits for my local bookselling community and promptly paid me back for the expenses I incurred in creating them. The vast majority of independent authors lose money trying to "break in" and never recover it, profiting nobody except the cover designer and copyeditor they paid as gig workers (and sometimes the various online scam artists who make a lot of money preying upon aspiring authors with get-rich-quick schemes). So because my personal goals and accomplishments aligned well, my journey as an indie author has given me a great sense of accomplishment, built my confidence, and enhanced my love of the arts. All of that is largely thanks to friendly and celebratory collaborations with indie bookstores. I hope that other passionate writers can use my story to feel free to pursue their own publishing and bookselling dreams in collaboration with their own local literary scenes.
How to Release Books that Benefit Old School Literary Lovers and Local Bookstores
There are as many definitions of "success" and as many unique paths to it as there are authors. But if you're the kind of writer who values artistic freedom over popularity and authentic connection over status and stats, you may be interested in my literary love story.
1. I voraciously consumed literature from preschool through the maturity of adulthood. If you're not starting here, it's not too late, but you have some catching up to do. You can create a good work of art once you know what "good" means to you. Appreciate and study the works that have inspired you most.
2. I studied the craft of writing for years. I served as TA for my AP English class in high school, took creative writing classes at a prestigious college, and attended years of conferences, workshops, and intensive writing groups afterward. Knowing how to identify and appreciate what's good to you isn't enough. You have to learn the structure and the process of what goes into the craft. You don't need to earn an MFA, but you do need to maintain the attitude of an earnest, long-term scholar. If you can't access formal workshops, conferences, or classes, identify local mentors who create work that you admire. Learn how to identify and implement constructive criticism in a writing group.
3. I researched deeply and hungrily over the course of ten years. I felt drawn to a medieval setting, so I began by doing a little bit of light research online and at the library. As I am not a historian, initially I felt that I couldn't possibly write historical fiction of any great quality, so I decided to "cheat" by writing historically-inspired fantasy that didn't need to adhere rigidly to historical accuracy. I looked for a few basic facts about the time range and geographic area that I wished to use for inspiration and then started writing my story, first conceived as a fun and light-hearted adult twist on familiar fairy tales.
As I went along, though, the more I learned about the literary and oral origins of folk and fairy tales and the history of the interconnected cultures that they arose from, I kept learning again and again that whatever wild detail I imagined I might add to my story, if I poked around for any evidence of whether such a thing ever really happened or appeared in an old tale, I would discover a vein of obscure history--from literature, archaeology, linguistics, sociology, etc.--rich with facts weirder and more fascinating than my own wildest imaginings.
And I am fairly proud of my own personal wild imaginings.
But not too proud to shove them aside to make space for wilder truths.
As I wrote The Grove of Thorismud, it got bigger and beastier and more complex as I enriched the story with the wondrous facts I found. Instead of simply packing the text with factoids to show my work (boring!), I also drew upon poetry, legend, and humor written in ancient and medieval times to infuse the narrative with the mingled flavors of Norse epic, embodied mysticism, and classical dick jokes. As it became more historically serious, The Grove also got twistier and thornier and hornier and bloodthirstier and more poetic and even, in ways that I especially appreciate, funnier. It started to feel like a way of restoring the lifeblood to a lustrous set of literary and oral traditions that have been deadened and dried and poorly taxidermized by the domineering overwrites of late medieval Christian church leaders and oppressive politicians and prim bourgeoisie capitalists from the Brothers Grimm to the Disney Corporation.
Awaken, Sleeping Beauty!
On accident, just by following my curiosity through translated archaeological papers and sociological studies and documentaries and historical works of art and literature, I became so fired up on knowledge and insight about high medieval Eurasia that I eventually felt capable of writing historical fiction without any fantasy "cheats." A weirdly specific thought occurred to me and took root: What if The Grove of Thorismud were a story written by an expert bullshitter who lived somewhere along the Danube in the 11th century? What if The Grove were a real document written as self-serving propaganda? Who might have done that, in what language, and why? And then, without definitively answering that line of questioning to myself, I wrote Leirah and the Wild Man as if there were actual answers to those questions that could be discovered. And because that is a seriously weird writing prompt, Leirah's story became deliciously bizarre.
4. I practiced and practiced until I could regularly and easily enter a flow state. This is when you feel possessed by the old gods and the spirits of your ancestors, and words that you never thought of writing come surging out of your body, from chest to arms to fingers, like a two-hour-long multiple orgasm made of Zeus' thunderbolt. This sounds (and feels) mystical, but it's a neurological state accessible to anyone who simply bangs out enough nonsense and sticks to a routine that works for them. It's something like the "second wind" experienced by long-distance runners.
In addition to figuring out your routine (what time of day works best for you, for example), finding your best writing environment is important too. Some writers need silence, others background noise such as that in a coffee shop. My own favorite times and environments for writing shifted somewhat based on my mood and what was going on in my stories and my life, but some favorites included setting up shop next to my own fireplace before the sun rose and the baby woke; meeting up with other writers to share the lonely work of noveling at a lively coffee shop; and spreading out research materials over a big table by the soaring windows with majestic views of the woods at my beautiful neighborhood library. If you seek, you shall find options, and if you try them, you will discover which ones best suit your own productivity and creative flow.
A side note: If you stop right here, you win! Accessing a state of flow in any endeavor has enormous benefits for your mental and physical health and your functioning in all areas of life.
5. I used my own professional writing, editing, and graphic design skills.
There is no easy, truly free way to self-publish a quality book. However, if you're a serious writer, there's a good chance you already have a solid set of DIY skills and connections to others in your life who might be able to help out too. Copyediting, page layout, and cover design alone can easily run into the thousands of dollars, and getting any of those terribly wrong is almost certain to sink the whole ship.
I write and edit copy at my day job, which helps with the basics of writing a solid sentence and paragraph. That's a small but essential part of what it takes to write a novel.
For years, I participated in local writing organizations that gave me access to conferences, workshops, and free or inexpensive one-on-one time with industry professionals such as bestselling authors, literary agents, and editors. I learned as much as I could from formal classes and workshops, and I paid for little bits of professional help such as a $40 one-hour phone consultation with a developmental editor. This editor read the first few pages and a synopsis of a work-in-progress and was able to help me with things like pacing, tone, voice, style, and sentence structure that I was able to apply to the whole text later, on my own. This saved me thousands of dollars on producing novels that are edited as well as or better than many books released through traditional publishers.
Later, I got away with using IngramSpark's free book-building tool to quickly format a simple, elegant book in both print and ebook editions. I didn't fuss with any notions about trying to make my book stand out with a complicated design; instead, I started by choosing safe standards in terms of basic technical stuff like page layout, trim size, and font, and then I went for bold cover design choices that were about content rather than technical bells and whistles.
I come from a family of artists and a background with a lot of arts education, and my day job involves communications with graphic design. I'm not a professional graphic designer and don't have access to sophisticated graphic design software through my budget-conscious nonprofit employer, so I've become really good at "cheats" like having a vast knowledge base of public domain images and fonts and how plug-and-play elements can be plopped together for maximum impact.
One bold cover design choice I made, which doesn't require any technical skill to execute, was simply leaving off the blurbs. Aesthetically, I abhor the gag-inducing advertisements for a book splashed all over its own cover. I fully understand that this preference of mine is at odds with selling my books, particularly using a traditional marketing model, because even annoying and ugly ads can be effective at what they are supposed to do. Admittedly, I have taken books home from the library after reading a convincing dust jacket blurb.
But as the queen of my own publishing domain, I gave myself permission to skip everything about the business of bookselling that felt yuck to me. Leaving off the blurbs gave me more time and cover space to play with design elements that felt fun.
For Leirah and the Wild Man, I chose a couple of works in the public domain by Victorian-era fairy tale illustrator Sir Arthur Rackham, and I stitched them together with a spine crafted from the title font and two colors plucked from the front cover image. I sized and positioned the letters of my name to make it look as though the cover girl is stepping through them, creating a cute and easy illusion of movement and depth.
I know that I succeeded because I heard the frequent question, "Who designed your cover?" and the frequent comment, "You're lucky you got a good cover." Ha!
Leirah and the Wild Man: A Tale of Obsession and Survival on the Edges of the Byzantine World
Miernik, Jean, Michelle
When I released The Grove of Thorismud, I took my technical minimalism even further by using just one public domain image, an old decorative painting of apple blossoms, and filling the back with the book's cryptic and irreverent subtitle in a monumental font size. In a time of trending neon book covers scribbled with breathless gushings about the book's importance in our time, I figured I'd craft something confusing and mysterious, a whisper to those who might actually appreciate The Grove. A book like The Grove is not insensible to important moral or political issues, but it operates on a different wavelength than explaining a position or demonstrating right and wrong choices by the characters. It is dreamlike and somewhat Lynchian, the kind of thing easily spoiled by attempts to describe it, so I didn't even want to place the usual back cover copy where one would expect to find it. This book speaks for itself; you can open it to any page for an idea of what you're in for; it is so interwoven with schemes and subplots that you can hardly spoil it by reading it out of order, only by forming preconceived notions of what it's "about" before you dive in.
6. I published my novels exclusively through IngramSpark and flipped the bird to Amazon. Getting your book into Ingram's distribution system is one of the only ways for self-published authors to access free global distribution of print books and see their books displayed on bricks-and-mortar shelves. Most bookstores will not consider the risk of ordering and stocking books that are not returnable. To learn more about the pros and cons of using IngramSpark, see this award-winning fantasy author's comprehensive review of her experiences with IngramSpark.
Authors whose main goals include profitability will often publish through multiple platforms to receive the particular benefits of each. I am so morally and aesthetically opposed to Amazon's very existence that I'd rather eat a book than release one through Amazon, so although my books appear for sale on Amazon's marketplace (it is extremely difficult to prevent this), my books are not favored by the algorithm (they'll never rank on any bestseller lists there), not easily searchable or properly listed, and sometimes priced under $3 for a new hardcover as part of Amazon's loss-leader and bookstore-destroying-monopoly plots.
But here's why that's fun!!
Because I've never signed a contract with Amazon, if they want to lose money shipping out my thicc and weighty, high quality hardcover books for next to nothing, they have to swallow the loss and still pay me my full cut of the sale no matter what (which is less than $3 for a U.S. copy, but still!). They can't charge me for returns through their own stupid system, ever, which has ruined the careers of many self-published authors who were lured into publishing through Amazon for various perks and then stabbed in the back with negative account balances.
So for me, this means...
I realized this was happening before I finished my little book talk tour, so instead of paying around $12 or $15 per book wholesale for inventory to bring to my last book talk, I ordered my own books from Amazon for $3 each, signed and sold them at an event for $30 (Grove) and $35 (Leirah), and later got reimbursed for most of my $3 per book investment when Amazon had to pay me their cut of the sales on my own purchases. Neener neener.
I would like to note here that I did not keep this a secret from my devoted readers who purchased full-price copies at my signing event. The darlings who attended my last talk willingly paid a fair market price for their hand-signed copies as keepsakes, to show appreciation and patronize my art, even though my books are available to read free through the library and available dirt cheap on Amazon.
Meanwhile, I love that I can point friends to my Amazon "giveaway" listings so that I don't have to bother with setting up and releasing a cheap paperback edition to make ownership of my print books accessible to those who don't have fancy-home-library budgets or ebook devices.
Thanks, billionaire bud!
7. I gave spirited book talks at select local storefronts. Living in Lansing, Michigan helps! Lansing may not be an ideal location for schmoozing trad pub insiders, but it is one of the best cities for selling indie novels. You can't sling a James Patterson paperback out a window anywhere in Lansing without hitting an independent bookstore. This city loves its cozy, iconic book shops, and many of them specialize in niche readerships, so you can really target an audience without traveling out of town.
I did a small, two-book tour of local shops after releasing both of my books into the abyss of the Covid pandemic.
I chose a medium-sized, popular, sweet, and personality-rich bookstore for my initial double-book-release event. It was an exceptionally warm spring day, and Covid transmission was raging locally, so the bookstore owner set up a ring of chairs outside, between the parking lot and the most heavily trafficked entrance door, for a two-hour event. I was giddy with the exciting juxtaposition of a fairly apocalyptic scenario with such a perfect day, and a bunch of my friends and acquaintances showed up with so much positive energy that it immediately felt like a trippy end-of-the-world party. We were laughing and having such a lively conversation that random passersby and shoppers kept dropping in to take a seat and find out what all the glee was about.
I ended up taking home hundreds of dollars in cash from my signing sales that day (and making hundreds for the bookstore too), and word about my books traveled organically and helped them sell so well that the shop kept my books on the top tier of their central display for over a year!
My next two events, that summer and fall, were smaller but nevertheless enjoyable and financially worthwhile for both myself and the stores that hosted me. There is something thrilling about drawing in people from the street with a handheld mic and a juicy snippet from a book you wrote--people who don't just stop to hear about that book but stay long enough to notice the enticing shelves at the shop hosting you and have a look around. There is a special kind of rush from the power of seeing someone in the audience check their watch and stand up to leave, then dropping a whiplash of a plot twist and seeing that person fall back into their chair as if they had been tased. There is nothing like generating a good story and then using it to connect with strangers.
Since my little tour, I've experienced the almost-parental pride of learning that my books have been offered for sale not only at those three stores but on the shelves of at least five bricks-and-mortar Michigan stores, and that people have checked my books out from the library and ordered them online from multiple countries.
What a joy for a storyteller!
I've created proud works of art, benefited my local literary arts communities, changed the daily lives and nightly dreams of passionate readers across the country and abroad, and received many therapeutic personal benefits of a creative practice.
What an adventure! I feel the satisfaction of a deep desire followed through, and I hope that sharing my process can inspire and helpfully inform others who wish to write and release books for similar reasons.
Ready to get started? Check out these resources:
🔖Green Leaf Book Group's guide on "How to Support Indie Booksellers" as an author
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