What is an Indie Author?

Indie authors are independent writers who choose to be an Indie author. Their work as an author is characterized by:

Controlling the content of their work,
Controlling their cover designs,
Assigning the title to their work,
Controlling the Copyright of their work,
Determining the sales price for their work, even if it means giving it away for free,
Controlling the typesetting, design and formatting,
Hiring, firing or contracting with editors, cover designers or printers,
Selecting their own sales and distribution channels, and
Controlling the marketing of their work.

As you can see from the list above, unless they are already a mega-author, an independent writer who wants to control and manage their work from beginning to end only has one choice – self-publishing. Some Indie authors may choose to work with a small press publisher instead of self-publishing. Indie authors control and manage their work which is in stark contrast to a maintain publisher who takes over the writer’s work as soon as the manuscript is accepted.

New authors may start out as Indie authors out of financial necessity or choice. However, not all Indie authors are new writers. There are many mainstream published authors who have gone the way of Indie writing and publishing for any of the reasons listed above.

There is some element of misconception that Indie authors are “bad” writers or someone who cannot find a publisher for their work. This is not the case at all. There are many Indie authors who have excellent reviews, won awards or received accolades for their work. Sales volumes for some of the major publishers or booksellers, such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble or elsewhere show that readers do like Indie author books.

Another misconception is that Indie author books are low-priced. Yes, there are Indie authors who are not yet widely known that are offering 99-cent ebooks in order to get some traction in the market. It’s unfortunate as these authors may be missing out on higher sales or income for their books. But, over time the market will likely regulate fair prices for books.

The final misconception is that Indie authors have no quality control and that the books are poorly written, error-ridden or of poor quality. Unfortunately, there is some truth to this but the market is starting to regulate itself and call for better regulation and quality control. Generally there is less rumbling about the content and focused more on typesetting, poor editing, bad or lack of good research for non-fiction books, etc. Overall, we want to trust that Indie authors can trust that their peers are releasing high quality work that has received the proper quality control attention it deserves.

If you like to read fresh new content then check out self-published works from Indie authors around the world.