Established Authors Turn to Indies

I've already addressed some of the reasons I decided to go with traditional publishing, instead of self-publishing (see the blog of June 6, 2015). However, many established authors, who were publishing with well-known, large publishing houses, have decided to go the indie route. There are many reasons for this, but I'll give the ones I've heard.

It seems with the larger the publishers and the more perks an author is given, the more control the publishing house expects. A reviewer posted on amazon that she'd read where Karen Kingsbury got upset with the cover design for Learning  and disliked Cody's picture on the front so much that she changed the story so Bailey wouldn't end up with him, as the series was set up to do. This sounds far-fetched to me, because Kingsbury had some upset fans and poor reviews for the series. However,  the author has little to no say in the cover design with most of the better-known publishers.

A local author I know, Brenda Remmes, has gone with a publisher who only does ebooks, instead of sticking with the one that published The Quaker Cafe in both print and ebooks. She said she felt she would make more money this way. In addition, the new publisher didn't expect her to get out and do book signings or other promotions. 

MaryLu Tyndall, who is one of the top names in Christian fiction and is famous for pirate adventures, recently decided to go it on her own and is now publishing indies. She said that her publishing house had begun to pressure her to write prairie romances instead of her swashbuckling adventures, and it wasn't what she wanted to do. Other writers have even been asked to make their books less overtly Christian.

Likewise, Tamara Leigh is now doing indies. Her publishing house had okayed a medieval series for the general market, but canceled them before the second one came out, saying medievals were no longer popular. Tamara felt bad because her fans had been anticipating the other books in the series, and they expressed their frustrations. In the end, Tamara decided to leave the publishing house, so she could publish the other books in the series on her own. In addition, she wanted to be able to express her faith more freely.

At one time, indie authors were regarded as second-rate, but that's changing. I've been happy with my small publisher, but I have a lot of manuscripts, and it's taking them about 6 months to bring out each book. It may be time for me to take a more serious look at doing some indie publishing just to get all my manuscripts into print. I plan to pray about it.

(A special thanks to MaryLu Tyndall and Tamara Leigh for their help and willingness to share.)

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