Timescales and Indie Authors - Guest post by Clare Davidson

There are lots of reasons why writers decide to take the indie route, instead of the traditional one. One reason I’ve heard several times is related to time scales: it’s much faster to release a book as an indie author; you can get consecutive books in a series out quickly, rather than making readers wait for a year or more.
This is absolutely true, but just because we can get books out faster than traditionally published authors can, should we?
When I set the release date for Trinity, it was pretty much a spur of the moment decision. The book was “ready to go”. It had been edited, proofread, formatted and had a gorgeous cover. There was no reason not to release it, so I threw it out into the world a couple of weeks later (the time needed to arrange a meal with friends and family to celebrate).
The problem was, I didn’t think about what would happen next. I suddenly had a book out there, which wasn’t going to find readers unless I promoted it. I did a bit of tweeting (I hate sales tweets, so hardly ever do them) and scrambled to get a blog tour sorted out (which didn’t happen until a few weeks later). I told my friends and family (over a lovely meal in a local Chinese restaurant) and they told their friends too. It was hardly an organised book launch and I’ll freely admit it showed in the sales figures.
Promoting was my short cut. Some indie authors take short cuts on other aspects – they don’t hire an editor or do the proofreading themselves, for example. I wouldn’t recommend taking ANY shortcuts.
Authors (of either variety) rely on readers to be successful. Obviously, you need to get those readers to notice you and your book(s) in the first place. Once you have readers, you don’t want to alienate them because of sloppy editing or an abundance of grammatical or spelling errors.
Yes, it’s good to get the next book in a series out as quickly as possible, but I’m pretty sure most readers would rather wait for a quality product, even if that does mean waiting a year (it’s still a lot less time than a George R.R. Martin fan has to wait!).
This is just my opinion. I want to hear yours. Do you think indie authors should get their books out as quickly as possible, even if it means taking short cuts? Or are you happy to wait?

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Clare Davidson is an independent writer, based in Lancaster. Clare is a high school teacher, mother and character-driven fantasy writer. Check out the cover for Clare's latest novel, REAPER'S RHYTHM, right here. You can get your copy in these places:


USA - Kindle or paperback 
UK - Kindle or Amazon paperback or Waterstones paperback 
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