Easy to Be Negative…

Really Hard to be Positive…

But I am going to try…

Two days ago I did the two five list of the dumbest things indie writers and publishers do. Stunningly easy to come up with five, could have been ten, and then writers sent me even more.

Not so easy to try to define what indie writers do well. And I finally figured out why. Asimov’s Rule. “9 Good things, one bad, you focus on the bad.”

Human nature and especially the nature of writers.

Indie writers, at least the successful ones, do so many things correctly, it is impossible to single out just a few. Sot let me give you some general things indie writers do well in my opinion.

Maybe FIVE areas… (grin)

1… Successful indie writers are productive, consistent, get books and stories to readers, have decent web sites, have direct sale stores, do Kickstarters, and build fan bases though email lists and other ways.

2… Successful indie writers know how to brand their name, brand their books to genre, write decent sales copy, and write books that grab the reader to start and end with the reader loving the read and looking for more of the author’s work.

3… Successful indie writers make it easy for readers to find more of their work with good back matter in books, good web sites and direct-sale store, and very wide distribution in electronic, paper, hardback, and audio, not counting big print and other forms.

4… Successful indie writers know copyright and trademark and know how to license their work to make even more money in other mediums with their stories.

5… Successful indie writers love to tell stories, often write across many genres, do the best they can with everything they produce, love to keep learning and working on being a better publisher and storyteller, and never quit when things get tough. (They do whine a great deal, however.)

So for me, it might be fun to do a book on the dumbest things indie writers do, to teach by giving examples of what not to do, but such a book or series of blogs would have to be balanced with how to do things correctly, to find more readers, to make more money.

But alas, listening to how something is done correctly by successful writers and actually wanting to learn a skill are two different things completely as I have discovered.

I was going to limit a mentorship I offered to writers to fix all the problems in #2 above. You know, help writers get out of their own way with selling to make more money. I limited the mentorship to five, thinking it would fill instantly. I got two writers, both driven to be successful indie writers. But just two.

As Heinlein said when he published his five business rules almost 80 years ago, there is a reason why there are so few professional writers and so many aspirants.