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Olivia Michaels's avatar

From a successful indie author, I want to say: thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

I'm also an 'overnight success' 20 years in the making. I just published my 20th novel. The last 14 were within the past 3 1/2 years. I could not have done this successfully within the traditional publishing system, where I banged my head against the gate for almost two decades, told I needed a platform before I could get a publisher to look at my books. But I needed to be published in order to get a platform. So I did the work myself and now I have enough wonderful fans to earn enough to support a family of four on one paycheck. I'm not special -- I'm a midlister at best in my genre -- but every book outsells the last one and the only way I see right now is up.

So I get cognitive dissonance every time I read an article about how people aren't reading, aren't buying books, etc., and that authors are making nothing and publishers are dying off. The media and trad publishers choose to put on blinders and stick with the 'hollow system' of bureaucracy while us indies are killing it -- and it's a joy because we get to interact with our fans the way it sounds like J.J. Abrams et al want to. I wouldn't trade my 'system' for anything!

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CansaFis Foote's avatar

...the only thing i can't get over in the new paradigm is how many of the new systems for creators are gatekept similar to the old forms but just by new owners...want an audience for your videos head to tiktok/youtube/twitter...for your writing how about substack/beehiv...your music...pray those platforms (spotify/bandcamp/pandora/god) put you into an algorithm any algorithm...we have more options to democratize the advertising of the personal, and more tools to cheapen the capability to look "pro", but nothing about these platforms scream "creator power" to me...i appreciate your optimism though, and hope that the next iteration of distribution is ease of community construction...substack is somewhat there but we need more discovery tools so that we can be closer to where folks might want to see us, not just where an algorithm thinks we fit...

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