The job of the indie author

 I'm currently researching a whole range of skills needed by indie published authors this week.  I've finished writing the second novella in the series I plan to publish, and I have the third one planned out in rather more detail than the second one was.

Right now, I'm letting that second novella sit for a while and get out of my head before I start on the final edit.  Which means I need to fill my time with other stuff.

Cue full-on research into making a success of indie publishing.  Which has been overwhelming, I have to say. The first decision to make is whether to publish exclusively on Amazon, or to publish wide across multiple platforms.  I've already decided to publish wide, which means familiarising myself with the terms of service of several different publishers: Kobo, Barnes and Noble, Google, Apple, and Draft2Digital.  

The benefit of dealing directly with all these ebook publishers is access to promotional opportunities, and control over your account.  But the other benefit is freedom from Amazon's control over your career.  I've read a few Facebook posts this week about Amazon closing authors' accounts with no explanation.  It seems to me that spreading my books wide is a matter of survival.  The same goes for paperbacks.  Printing with both Amazon and Ingram Spark is recommended by the Alliance of Independent Authors.

Then there's getting myself a website.  I did have one a few years back, which someone else set up for me, but this time I want to take control and do it myself.  I've never created a website before, so cue masses of new reading.  I've just bought a book on Wordpress web design, so that will be my next reading binge.

I have a Master of Business Admin degree, so marketing concepts are not completely foreign to me, but applying them to selling books is another matter.  Thankfully, there are some very generous experts out there sharing their wealth of knowledge and experience on the internet for free.

So that's another big pile of reading.  How do I do Facebook ads, and Amazon ads?  How to create marketing funnels, click-through rate, cost-per-click, and several other terms I don't yet fully understand are currently making my head spin.

One thing everybody agrees on is that you should build an email mailing list, as a way to capture your readers which is under your control.  That'll require more reading on email mailing providers in due course.  

I'm going on a writing retreat in mid-May, and I'm planning on writing a couple of short stories set in the world of the novellas I plan to publish,  They will be the freebies which hopefully, will persuade people to sign up for my mailing list.

I have a lot of work ahead of me, but at least I'm not going to be bored any day soon.