Battles of an Indie Book
So I was scrolling through Twitter earlier and came across a poll by Duncan Ralston here. Basically it asked "what most prevents an indie book from selling?" The four possible answers he gave in his poll were - bad/cheap looking covers, dull descriptions, lack of visibility, and poor editing/writing.
Three of those answers are damn near tied. Go check out the poll for yourself through the link above. I wanted to voice my own thoughts on some of this.
1. Cover art is the first thing that draws a reader in, before a description or even name recognition. If the art looks like it was hobbled together by a three year old, that's detrimental. Don't just get your cousin who liked to draw in high school to do your cover. Literally, the last three days were spend on a cover for an upcoming book that I'm still not happy with - and I've been using hundreds of dollars of graphic design tech with an arts degree to back it. Your cover needs to be quality. It's the one thing most everyone in the community can agree on.
2. Dull descriptions can definitely be problematic. You need to find that middle ground between teasing the reader into wanting to know more and giving away the whole story. Sometimes it's a matter of word choices. The synopsis doesn't necessarily have to be a straight accounting of what's to be found inside, like a book report. It needs to read more dynamic, the reader needs to feel the hyperbole. I don't see this problem all too often in horror, but I don't doubt it can be an issue.
3. Lack of visibility is, in my opinion, the biggest problem indie books face. You can be on point in every other area, but still not reach an audience. There are millions of books and even more readers, with marketing being outrageously expensive. You can spam on social media, hope a few book reviewers actually read your work, drop way too much money at BookBub or do giveaways at Goodreads, exhaust way too much effort with promotion on TikTok, pay third party advertisers, go on podcasts or attend conventions that no longer exists in this pandemic era. I've done all of those except for one. My eleventh book came out last month, and I've worked with multiple publishers/cover artists/editors, usually receiving decent reviews when I've actually got them. It's visibility.
4. Poor editing/writing is no doubt a factor for some. However, I feel like these books get weened out pretty fast, these authors quickly ignored. Bad writing is one thing, they obviously need more time to perfect their craft. Editing is something different. You can't always blame the author, because that can sometimes fall on the publisher. Readers don't always fully grasp this. Especially the ones that nitpick minor grammatical error that a computer program likely glossed over. If it looks like an eighth grade writing assignment, that's bad, but if it's only missing one apostrophe, no one needs to worry.
In the case of the indie horror community, everyone needs to try harder and be more supportive. There's been too much negativity lately. I said it to Steve Stred a while back, "I'm two steps away from going full Ligotti." We can all be better, to ourselves and each other.
