How do we measure success?

This week I went to lunch in Southampton, on the south coast of England, with members of the Romantic  Novelists' Association.  Over lunch I got involved in a discussion about the future of the organisation, and talked over the question of admitting indie-published authors.

There was a great deal of discussion of quality control relating to indie published books, and it was suggested that there might be some minimum sales requirements imposed before membership is issued.  But this would disadvantage new indie authors greatly.  Unless they're the next Hugh Howey, and sell a million downloads of a book, most indie authors take time and several books to build sales.

The publishing models of traditional and indie publishing are different.  Traditional publishing is about fast launches, all the sound and fury occurring at the time of the book hitting the bookshops.  In many cases, it's live fast, die young,  if the book doesn't take off straight away it's pulled from the bookseller's shelves, sometimes after as short a period as three weeks.  And, of course, bookshops don't buy stocks of traditionally-published books.  They take them on a sale or return basis, and often send them back to the publisher, who bears all the financial risk.  

The indie publishing game is different,  it's  slow-burn, long tail marketing,  it's about building a presence and getting noticed because you have several works out there.  And that could take up to five years.  My short story collection Otherlives had been up on Kindle for eighteen months before anyone noticed it. Now most months see a trickle of people buying it.

So setting organisation entry requirements for indie authors on the basis of how many we sell in the first year doesn't work.  We might only start selling in year three.  But our books aren't sale or return.  They're permanently in the bookstore until we withdraw them.  Indie books are never remaindered.  Which makes defining success as an indie author challenging.  I'm sure it's a discussion that has a lot further to run before a satisfactory answer is found,

Wendy Metcalfe is the author of Panthera : Death Spiral, Panthera : Death Plain and the short story collection Otherlives.  Find out more at www.wendymetcalfe.com