Defining Indie Books

As a newbie to book publishing, a few terms can be pretty confusing. One of those terms I hear tossed around a lot is “indie” books. Now depending on who you speak to you may find a completely different definition of what constitutes an indie novel.

Indie books can be defined as novels that have been published outside of the major publishing houses. It may be small to mid-sized presses or publishers that work exclusively with ebooks. Smaller houses mean smaller budgets which mean it can be challenging building readership.

I also hear the term indie applied to independent authors who decided to self-publish their novels. With the rise of ebooks and print on demand services, more and more independent authors are dusting off their manuscripts and getting their books out there.

Whether the novel is published by the author or a small press, it looks as though more and more readers are giving indie books a shot. Reasons indie novels seem to be succeeding:

• They are topping bestseller lists. Look at the most popular book out now. Fifty Shades of Grey went from fan fiction to publication though a small Australian indie press to a reported seven figure deal through Vintage Books.


• Indie books do not have to be edited to appeal to a mainstream audience. Do you get sick of reading about the same typical heroines and heroes? Indie books can explore more taboo areas and feature characters from all walks of life.


• The price tag! Call me a broke ass if you may, but it sort of kills me to hand over more than ten bucks for a digital copy of a book. For instance, I’ve been dying to read the Mortal Instruments series and was all set to download City of Bones onto my Kindle. Current price for the ebook on Amazon: $10.99! For a book published three years ago? It’s kind of hard to swallow the price when I can probably download five indie books for the same price.


• Blog love. More and more blogs are accepting review requests for indie novels. There are also high traffic blogs that specifically only review indie books.

How would you define an indie book? Do you buy indie novels? Or do you prefer to stick with the majors when deciding on your reading list?

Book Covers-DIY Version

Well, one of the responsibilities of self-publishing is submitting your own book cover. To be honest, I'm actually not freaking out over this if I decide to put my book out there myself. Unfortunately, some of the amateurish looking covers from smaller publishers have been bit of a turnoff. Not saying this is the case with all small presses, some of them have fabulous looking cover art.

You have a few choices for submitting your own book cover:

You can go the DIY route. What you can do is take a few photos of whatever you feel could represent your book and upload them through your digital camera software. Upload a few faves into Photoshop or Adobe Illustrator. . Play around with the tools in the software to add text onto the photos. There's an endless number of font, color and size possibilities. If you're not overly impressed with your own photos, try a stock photo website. On a side note, I downloaded Illustrator and it's fabulous. Came with a free 30 day trial, not sure if I'm willing to spring for the hundreds of dollars it costs to buy the software

You can also use templates provided through e-book and print publishers. CreateSpace offers up a free template for authors to build their own print covers. All artwork and text you place in their templates are formatted to fit on the book cover. There are also ebook cover building software online that are both free and paid (I have yet to find a good one that I like, so please comment me with any recommendations).

A new recommendation I've received is you can purchase book covers and artwork through DeviantArt. Really amazing images on the site, I was duly impressed.

Here's the cover I did myself that was my second choice for the book (I'll wait until my publishing details have been ironed out to make the big reveal for the actual cover). I used a stock photo and Illustrator.

Small Press or Self-Publishing?

As I go through the submission process for my novel Second Sight, I find myself facing a possible quandary: small independent publication or self-publishing?

The obvious plus for going with an independent press is that I can say my novel has been traditionally published. However, the publishers that have been interested in distributing my book of course have their own suggested changes to the work. Although some of the edits are helpful, none of the suggestions have been clear across the board. It's such a subjective business, I'm uncertain whether the content edits would improve the story. Not sure if I want to give up creative control in order to say that I've been traditionally published.

There's also the issue of royalties. Obviously, self-publishing your book earns you a bigger cut than going with a small press. However, when compared to major book publishers, your royalty cut will be most likely higher when publishing with a small press.

Another point to consider is marketing. Whether or not you publish your book on your own, you need a marketing plan. Most literary agents and publishing houses will request one as part of the submission process. Although a publisher may do some of the marketing, you're still responsible for promoting your book.

Not ready to make up my mind definitely either way yet. I've send out partials and fulls to several literary agents. I'm planning to wait to hear back before deciding what route to go.