Heather Robyn As an indie author, everything is on you. Finding your editor, illustrator, book formatter, marketing, design, print runs. Everything
and boy does it cost a lot! And since you don’t have a team covering costs for your book, then you have to figure out how to save some money.
So you get creative on the things you can control. You spend days upon days and hours upon hours figuring out website management with wordpress so you can update your site yourself and avoid paying a website designer to constantly update your author website when changes need to be made. Money saved!
author website
Then you learn the ins and outs of the process to create a kindle version of your book and how to upload it to Amazon. Added in the learning of html code to properly post a book description. Money saved!
Then you figure out how to record a read aloud through a program like Camtasia and iMovie, and get those uploaded to your YouTube for easy sharing when you reach out to organization and programs, because paying someone is expensive. Money saved!
Then you figure out the beast called Kickstarter to help manage the cost of a print run, illustrations, and editing instead of paying out of pocket. Money saved!
And in between all that, you’re learning marketing, promo, signing up for farmers market and offering classroom reads to help spread the work and get your name out there.
Canva becomes your best friend. Amazon ads becomes your worst enemy.
No team is doing it for you. You’re rolling solo. But it’s worth the extra hours you put in after you’re day job if over and the entire weekend filled with book launch planning.
Why? Because kids and families like your stories. They help some laugh, and others cry, but all relate in some way or another and that makes the process worth it.
So yes, being an indie author is really tough…but if you’re willing to do the work, the outcome is as magnificent as you can imagine.
