Quote:
Originally Posted by Justin Nemo
I wasn't saying it was stupid, just that it would take a long time with just a website alone, before you could generate the sales you could with Amazon and Smashwords etc. You must know this yourself.
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Just as it would take a long time to sell widgets if you opened a shop in your front yard. So instead you distribute to other retailers (who all have their own conditions and requirements before they will sell your widgets).
Before anyone can really call themselves an independent producer of widgets (in my eyes) they really need to do something about making sure they are likely to sell (in fact most distributors are likely to require this of you). So you make the widgets as shiny and attractive as they can be, you market widely so that people know they exist, and you create sales material (posters etc) to aid the distributor in the sale of your widgets. If, instead, you dump yourself down in the mall with your basket of widgets and wait for people to give you money for them (or to give them away) then you are not (what I would consider) an independent producer of widgets, you are merely exercising a hobby.
The parallels between this scenario and writing seem clear to me. An independently publishing author is one who does the work beyond just writing; the work that tries to get the product actually in front of readers. (The work that I find really really hard to even think about, so it usually goes in the too hard basket ... which sometimes overflows, so I pick it up and look at it again once in a while before balancing back on the top again.
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