

The Truth about Online Self-Publishing

Copyright © 2014 by Monique L. Miller

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in other fictional work.

**What a difference a year and a half makes. Since I wrote and uploaded this back in 2014, I have learned a great deal about indie publishing as well as even more about traditional publishing—it has all been a real eye-opener for me. Some of the things that are written here and that people read when I first published this have changed, while others have more or less stayed the same. I will upload another version of this on Smashwords in June of this year (2016), if I'm able, and hopefully it will help those of you who want help with self-publishing your work. As for those who added the old version of this to their Kindles, I will also post the additional segments that I intend to write in May on my Blogger account. At the end of this booklet, there is another short note explaining a few things.**

INTRODUCTION

If you are wondering what a self-publishing guide (of sorts) is doing under the nonfiction "entertainment" category on Smashwords, whether you think so or not, a writer is an entertainer. Actors, singers, and dancers entertain in the spotlight in front of audiences and cameras, but writers are simply entertainers of a different sort. Writers put the words in your favorite actors' mouths, and not every singer writes their own lyrics. The Brothers Grimm wrote stories that have been told and re-told decade after decade. Shakespeare wrote plays that are still acted out today, and continue to influence other writers time after time. Alice Walker wrote The Color Purple, Gregory Maguire wrote Wicked—both are books that have been rewritten as Broadway shows that people travel from around the world to see performed. There are too many TV shows and movies based on books and adapted to screen to name. Writers entertain with their words, with the worlds they create on page, with the characters they bring to life that speak to one another, and to you, in short stories, novellas, novels and plays. Writers are the foundation of the entertainment world, whether you ever lay eyes on them or not.

The reason this particular online booklet is free is that I want to help other writers, if they wish to take my advice. I want them to do better than I did if they choose to be online indie authors, or if they want a book deal. I don't know what the other online advice booklets by other indie authors offer on Smashwords that they feel a need to charge people for, but my own personal feelings when it comes to advice is if it's truly coming from your heart, and you want to spare someone else of a headache or heartache, you should either give it away freely or give the money earned from that particular title to charity.

What are those people telling you in those "advice" booklets in 10,000 words (or less) that you need to pay them $0.99, $3.00, or more that you can't find browsing the internet search engine? Are they charging you money just to encourage you to spend more money on something that may not help you? Are they speaking from experience, working for a company, or trying to promote their own novel? I can tell you right now it's more than likely a big load of BS. There is nothing another indie author can tell you about online self-publishing that you can't learn on your own by browsing through blogs or trial and error, and it's certainly not anything you should be charged money for. A lot of people, sadly, are using the self-publishing format just to be greedy and they charge (or overcharge) people for information or writing simply because they can. And I can tell you that most of their "advice" will include hiring a professional editor as if that will solve all of your problems (it wouldn't).

I'm being honest every step of the way. If you don't like it, all I can tell you is to delete it from your Kindle and pretend you never saw it. I've had enough experience with people online to realize that instead of taking or leaving information, they'd rather bash you.

The Truth about Online Self-Publishing

After the online self-publishing indie author portion of this article is finished, I will give you tips on how to go about getting your work published with reputable publishing companies if that is what you wish to do under the section titled "The Big Bad Publishing Companies". I will tell you step-by-step how to go about getting your short stories and novels published from the beginning of the process to how you can (possibly) get it into the hands of a major publisher. There are no guarantees, and there are plenty of stipulations, but if you're serious about being a legitimately respected writer and you're not sure how to get started, I can help you.

This is NOT a booklet dedicated to offering new indie authors advice on ways to expand their exposure and selling more books, however, there are references to that particular subject. This is also NOT a booklet geared toward encouraging writers to self-publish; however, all the advice I offer is based on my own personal experiences as an indie self-published author in order that you don't make the same mistakes that I did if you do choose to enter the online self-publishing market. If you do not wish to read advice where I include myself and my work in its context, I'd rather you delete this from your Kindle right now than to read the entire thing and then make negative comments. This is my story of what it's been like for me; this doesn't represent any other online self-published author.

I want to make it clear that many other indie authors who have posted articles online absolutely detest indie authors like me who talk about their awful experiences with self-publishing. Any time an indie author speaks out on a less than positive experience, they proceed to respond by collectively bashing any indie author with an opinion that opposes theirs unintelligibly with no basis except that they don't like the fact that someone said anything about any of the companies that allow you to upload and post your work for "free" and you should be grateful for the opportunity. First of all, only a handful of these websites allow you to upload your work for free, and Amazon is not one of them. Amazon charges a percentage for everything you post on their website, unless you enter their KDP Select program and use their free promotion option that can be activated for only a few days (3 at the most), which makes it mutually rewarding for both parties involved if your work is already selling well and you wish to gain more readers. Technically, $0.99 is the minimal amount you can set to any of your titles on Amazon going by the US currency rate, and you receive 35% of that for every purchase made on their website; starting at $2.99, the percentage you receive goes up to 70%. For every $0.99 book (or other work) you sell on Amazon you receive $0.35 while Amazon receives $0.64 of that profit. For every work sold at the price of $2.99 you receive $2.09, while Amazon receives $0.90. That is fair. That is called entering into a business relationship, and it's an exchange of services for payment. That is not "free". You are paying Amazon to host your work and they are sending you a percentage of the profits when, or if, it sells. If you run across any "advice" page that claims anything otherwise, I'd advise you to steer clear of anything else they have to say because what I am telling you is not a secret and is basic fact, and beyond that I doubt they would steer you in the right direction as far as saying anything helpful.

If you decide to self-publish online there are a few things you need know beforehand that I, regretfully, had to find out on my own. First of all, whether your story is good or bad, there aren't many people in the publishing industry or the public who will respect you or your work for the simple fact that you are an online self-published indie author. A lot of the time, regardless of the merit of a person's work, the only way you will gain even a marginal amount respect is if you are a part of the Kindle Million Club or at the very least sold thousands of copies of your book and ended up with a publishing contract with a reputable publishing company (that has happened). There are people that will NOT read your fiction for entertainment or pleasure as they would published authors' work, but if they see that you are an indie author they will add your work to their Kindle if it's free or purchase it or seek it out on hosting websites scanning through your sample pages in an attempt to find any faults they can in order to give you a low rating and a poor review. There are people who will lie about the content of your work simply because they don't like what you wrote (or they could be frustrated writers themselves who have a chip on their shoulder because you wrote anything at all and they can't). I thought that the only bad reviews that I would have to face would be people who didn't like my story and would rate my work because of that. Instead I, as well as others, received typed reviews by people who feel that because you are an indie author they can pull information out of thin air and claim things about your work that aren't true in order to make their one and two star reviews sound valid. You should know those things up front.

Many people don't know what an "indie author" is and they believe it is synonymous with "hack writer"; that's not true. Indie stands for independent. That means an author is published independently from a major publishing company. And that means that the author in question is not bound by a contract to a publishing company, did not receive a monetary advance for his or her work, did not have a marketing team being paid to promote and distribute their work to their intended reading audience, and any marketing or editing that was done to, or with, that particular author's work was either done by that author or they paid out of their own pocket to have their marketing and/or editing done. Being an indie author boils down to a person not having a contract or being paid by a publishing company. It has nothing to do with the quality of the story. It all depends on the person who wrote the book. However, when most people pick up an indie author's book, they don't expect it to be good, which is sad. I had a review early on that started off showering me with compliments accompanying a five-star rating, and then the person added at the end of their review, "It was a good book...for an indie." If I was not an "indie" author it could have possibly been just a good story, but because I'm not represented by a publishing company my work generally doesn't qualify for that same respect.

Not all self-published authors are indie authors, which is why I use different terms at times. There are authors who hold publishing contracts with publishing houses, but choose which of their works they wish to self-publish, or upload onto Amazon. If a publishing company wants to cash in on certain indie authors' success they have to be willing to be flexible because a lot of indie authors make just as much, or more, money being self-published than they do under contract with a publishing company.

There are a lot of people who see the online self-publishing community as a bane on the existence of the publishing industry as a whole, presumably because there were early indie self-published authors who blatantly copied plots from published authors' books and plenty of poorly written novels were put on the market (I know because I bought one in particular) and not only that but went on to make millions of dollars from it. Or it could be that they're just jealous that they worked hard for many years to get published only to see newbie writers leap to the top of the charts with overnight successes and become more famous than they'll ever be. I call it the American Idol Syndrome of the publishing industry. Plenty of singers strived for years just to be signed artists, and then one little (HUGE) TV show came along and catapulted people to fame in just a few short weeks when otherwise we never would've known who they were. That's how a lot of older authors feel about the first rash of indie authors making it big. I don't necessarily sympathize with them. While I don't condone, nor would I do what I saw some of the early indie authors do in the online self-publishing industry, I don't begrudge their success. I may not agree with the way they went about doing certain things, but I'm not jealous of the fact that they made money or sold a ton of books. I'd rather write the way that I do and sell three copies of a novel than rise to the top as a fraud for the sake of money. I know that sounds like a load of BS, but if I weren't telling the truth, I would have followed in their footsteps when I understood what they were doing. I believe in the integrity of literature, and what it used to be, in spite of what takes place now. I'm sorry that so many have ruined what could have been a wonderful opportunity for a lot of people, but it won't change the face of real publishing companies (hopefully) that still believe in quality fiction and nonfiction literature.

I will offer writing advice later in this booklet as well. If you only accept writing advice from famous writers and/or published authors, or English professors, exit now instead of bashing me for attempting to help you. Besides, you can take my advice or leave it, as you do with any advice. I will also mention Stephen King probably ad nauseam. Be prepared for that as well.

Any claim I make about a company I have proof for and I probably have it documented by way of email in my inbox. Furthermore, I am NOT bashing any company, I am simply telling the truth from my own personal experience.

KDP SELECT

This program is geared more toward indie authors who have established a solid base audience of readers, not newly self-published indie authors. The worst possible thing you can do, from my perspective, is enter your book into the Select program and release it under the free promotions category. There are people who troll Amazon's website and add free books to their Kindles without reading the description or its sample pages beforehand. Once it is added onto their Kindle, however, and it's not what they expected or wanted (though they shouldn't have had any expectations at all since they didn't read the description) they will then use that opportunity to go back to Amazon's website and make a review. A lot of them don't take you as a real writer and they feel as if they know your story better than you do and they know how it _should_ end, unlike the way they accept stories and endings from published authors represented by companies.

Here is how that particular behavior differs under other circumstances: When most normal human beings walk through a bookstore, or the books and magazine section of a department store, and are browsing through the different selections of books, picking them up and reading through the first couple of pages, that is called sampling the product. During this process plenty of people pick up books they wouldn't normally read, look over the first few pages and the description on the book jacket, and if it's not something they wish to delve further into, they put it back down. Usually, they don't immediately use that opportunity to go onto Amazon or another site to give that book a one or two star review based on the fact that they only glimpsed less than a handful of pages in the store. Most individuals wouldn't think that it would be fair to that published author if they did that. However, they believe it is perfectly suitable to behave that way toward an indie author. Hence, my very first review under my novella, Karma, on Amazon's website:

" OMG, August 26, 2013

By Rene - See all my reviewsVerified Purchase(What's this?)This review is from: Karma (Kindle Edition)Was trying out free books, I guess if I was paying for it, I would have tried the sample and not bothered to go any further ..."

This person admits in their review that they neglected to read the sample pages I offered, and instead of simply deleting it from his or her Kindle after reading the first couple of pages, they decided go on Amazon and give me my very first rating and review. What they did was the equivalent of what I described a person doing if they were browsing through a department store, picked up a book they decided they didn't like from reading the first couple of pages, taking their phone out hurriedly composing a poor review based on nothing at all. These people don't care about you, your story, or how their review could potentially effect what could have been an opportunity for you. They don't care about the fact that you're trying to build a readership for your work, which is important when you're an indie author.

That first review came after days of my book having no reviews at all, but right after that initial one star review, others became eager to post their own one and two star reviews. I think, either by later that same day, or the very next day, I had at least two or three more negative reviews that I will touch on once I get to my section labeled "Bad Reviews", and what they could mean to an indie author as opposed to a published author. My novella was number one in its genre for days, but it wasn't long before it dropped from the top ten into the hundreds and then was dropped from its extended free promotional stint on Amazon's website because of such poor ratings. Over 4500 people added it to their Kindle devices, but only a handful rated and reviewed it with their complaints ranging from "it ended too quickly" to "it had no ending" to some claiming they didn't know it was a short story to others claiming they felt gypped because I added a preview for my full novel at the end of the novella. To be quite honest I couldn't believe the sort of reviews I got on that website, and it was all because I offered my novella for free.

Regardless of the reason you offer your work for free, it's best NEVER to do that on Amazon's website. When you charge at least $0.99 for your work, people will be more inclined to read your story's description and preview before purchasing and adding it to their Kindle devices. It's sad that this even has to be said. Charging for your work makes people more conscientious of whom you are and what you wrote instead of simply handing them something to kick around for the simple pleasure of giving you a poor rating and review.

Another reason you shouldn't enroll in the KDP Select program is that as a newly self-published author you're limiting yourself to only one market and although Amazon has a wide customer range on its own, uploading your work to other websites showcases your titles to different types of people around the world who may not see your writing the same way as the readers on Amazon. For instance, consumers on Smashwords generally tend to understand more about word count and differentiating between short stories, novellas, and novels than Amazon. Also to take into account, you can possibly sell more books on Amazon, but you get a higher percentage paid out to you on Smashwords. There is also KOBO and other websites that allow you to upload your work. Reviews are important; don't let anyone tell you otherwise. While you may receive mixed reviews on Amazon, on another site your reviews could be either much more positive or more negative, and ultimately the more positive reviews will result in your books selling a lot more steadily.

Also, mistakes can be made, and I'll tell you about a major mishap that started my indie author downward spiral. This is what made me enter my work in the KDP Select program in the first place even though I hadn't wanted to.

During the first month and a half of self-publishing my novels, novellas, and short stories, I uploaded them onto every host website I could. The most telltale exposure I seemed to have gotten was on Smashwords, which tracks how many people download the sample pages of your work onto their Kindles. Downloads does not mean that the people definitely will read anything or will buy anything, but presumably the people who downloaded those sample pages or added them to their libraries found what you wrote under your description interesting enough to check out at a later date. When it comes to free work, it also is labeled as a "download" on Smashwords though the person is receiving an entire story instead of merely a sample at that time. Once I saw how many downloads my work started getting I got excited, especially since I'd already gotten a five star review on Smashwords on one of my novellas only hours after I uploaded it to their website. It was for free and it had already gotten over a hundred downloads by then. I saw that as a good sign, that my work would probably be received well.

Amazon states up front on its website that you cannot offer your work for any amount less than $0.99 USD unless you enroll in their Select program and its set up under the promotional deal...BUT...I'd seen other writers who used to be regular old indie authors (but have since gotten book deals with a publisher) have certain titles of theirs distributed for free on both Amazon and Smashwords. It wasn't my imagination because not only were they still available on both sites for free, I'd downloaded them onto my own Kindle and as far as I know, they are still, to this day, available on both sites for free. I'd even bought a book from Amazon's site whose price was set at a penny and yes, I have the receipt e-mail in my inbox that would prove it, and that person's book was not published by a company, just a regular indie author. In my naiveté, I thought if you sent a personal e-mail to them, or phoned them, explaining the situation exceptions could be made. I read under other posts on Amazon's author discussion boards that other people wanted to do the same thing, and if you've had good results from other websites that hosted your work Amazon would do something call "price match" it if you uploaded a book on another site and its price was set for free and it did well. Although this person's comment wasn't based on any concrete information, it made sense, and that was what I put into my message when I sent them my e-mail. All I received were cookie cutter responses that claimed the ONLY books available for free on Amazon's website are a part of the Select program. After a few back and forth correspondence I gave in and unpublished or "hid" my novellas on the other websites that I intended to enter into the Select program, held my breath, and then enrolled three of them: Milk and Honey, Decadence, and Karma. I was happy at first, seeing the number of people downloading my work onto their Kindles because of the free promotion: Milk and Honey and Decadence were in the hundreds almost before I could blink, but it was Karma that moved over a thousand copies within the first two days or so.

Before the bad reviews came rushing in, the first stumbling block that would cause a domino effect occurred. Amazon informed me that because one of my titles was available on another website, that particular book was being dropped from the Select program altogether. I panicked because I knew I did everything by the book and removed the titles that I'd entered from every website they'd been hosted on, but of course I checked all of them to be sure Amazon was mistaken so that I could call it to their attention. Amazon was not mistaken. Although Milk and Honey and Karma had both been successfully removed, my novella, Decadence, was still available for purchase on KOBO's website despite the fact that I'd gone through all the necessary steps to remove it. I thought maybe I missed something, that I did something wrong, but that wasn't the case. When I went into my account it, in fact, showed that my novella was supposed to be unavailable on their site, even though it wasn't. I called their support team who apologized for their error and as far as I was told (over more than one phone call), they'd done everything to try and correct the problem. Regardless, the damage had been done.

One of the first lessons you learn when you're an adult is, most of the time even if it technically wasn't your fault, it's still your fault. This was not a situation where I could send an e-mail and all would be forgiven (though that was the first thing I did). Amazon felt as if I had slighted them and they'd given me their first warning.

Apparently, KOBO had, or has, a glitch in their system because after their mistake, I removed all of my titles from their website and closed out my account, and yet, to this day, if you search their website for a few of my earlier titles, they're still posted on their website. I don't know if they're purchasable or not, but I do know that if they have gotten any payments from those titles (though I doubt it) I haven't received anything because I deleted my account with them nearly a year ago.

This simply illustrates that if you have work available on other websites before you sign up for KDP Select, things can happen beyond your control, but you will ultimately suffer the consequences because of them. That was just one of the reasons I didn't want to enroll them in the Select program, and I'd made that clear through e-mail, and whenever I talked to someone over the phone at Amazon. The program came with too many stipulations that left plenty of room for mistakes.

Oh, and I made plenty more miscalculations...

I gave away nearly 5,000 copies of Karma. Total, I got a scant 15 reviews over a six-month period or so, most of them I wish I hadn't gotten at all. Out of 4,500+ copies, I have no idea how many people even bothered to read the novella, but there are a pretty good number of people who got the story and it completely went over their heads. Milk and Honey got over 300 downloads, no reviews, and again, I'm not even sure if anyone bothered to read it, but I'm also sure that if I ever got a review on Amazon it wouldn't be a positive one considering how everything has worked out for me on that front in the past. Decadence got 825 people that added it to their Kindles, and one review, but it hasn't been available on Amazon's website for months, and I'll explain the reason why right now...

After I saw the unbelievably ignorant reviews I got under Karma of people complaining mostly that they received a novella instead of a full novel, and that I (silly me) added a portion of my full novel at the end of the story in promotion for it, and the fact that having them in the Select program was minimizing my works' exposure—not to mention I surmised that the people who added Milk and Honey and Decadence to their Kindles were making no moves to review the stories, and therefore no one was being enticed to buy them—I got upset with myself for enrolling them in the Select problem in the first place against my better judgment. Though this is no excuse for what I did, I was going through a lot in my personal life and with the whole indie self-publishing thing having turned into an absolute debacle I wanted my books out of the Select program immediately. I'd previously sent more than one e-mail to Amazon concerning something else and they'd gone unanswered and presumably ignored. Since there was nothing I could press to get my books out of the Select program when I wanted at that moment, and I figured it would be a waste of my time to send another e-mail to their team even politely asking them to remove my titles from the program, in haste, and frustration, I did the only thing I could think to do to get what I wanted at the time: I reposted the other two titles on my Smashwords account on purpose hoping to have them removed from the Select program.

I thought things couldn't get any worse. I was wrong (as usual).

I was sent an e-mail saying that it was my second time violating the Select rules (the first time having been with KOBO's website issues) and my other two titles would be kicked out of the program. I sent an e-mail back stating that I'd wanted them removed from the program early (it wasn't going to do me or my work any good continuing in that program) and since previous e-mails from me had been ignored I sought drastic measures, apologized again, and wondered what could possibly happen next. Surprisingly and annoyingly, I might add, I got an e-mail from one of the higher-ups at Amazon stating that since I failed to reply to any of their previous messages ALL of my titles were being completely removed from their website, my author page deleted, effective immediately. I was stunned for a few seconds, but after it wore off, I have to admit I wasn't completely shocked. As with most websites, they let you know up front that they can and will remove any of your work (or _you_ , for that matter) from their site for any reason they deem appropriate, which you cannot balk about. It's their right; and truly, it is. However, what stunned me was the fact that they were taking the time out to remove my books from their site, but they hadn't taken the time out to check for, or read for that matter, any of my previous e-mail responses that they claimed I never gave them. Before they completely removed me from their website, they'd actually locked me out of my Bookshelf from within their company and I'd had no access to it anyway; just so you know, it can happen to you for any violation under their website's rules—both the locking and the book removal.

I sent a few e-mails to them, and I'd made a call about something (I can't recall exactly what it was referring to; that was around September of last year), but all-in-all I'd given up at that point and had accepted all that had happened. Then, a few weeks later on a whim I checked Amazon's website and was shocked to have discovered that they'd reinstated most of my titles and my author page. After I'd e-mailed and gotten no response (which I'd expected) and I'd called, I'd honestly had expected no result at all, but nearly everything was back as it had been without being locked out of my Bookshelf either. However...my novella, Decadence, was, and still is, nowhere to be found on Amazon's website. When I e-mailed them about it I (miraculously) got a response and a link that supposedly led to my novella, but it was a "dead" link, and it's still not available. However, its status is "Live" under my Bookshelf.

Here's my suggestion if you decide to enroll in the Select program: Build up an audience of readers before you enroll. And when I say build an audience, I'm not talking about one hundred people or less bought your book and you have between one and twenty reviews. Your work needs FANS. Readers! Supporters! And more than a handful of them. I would say wait until you have at least one hundred positive ratings (in the four and five star category) and have sold a minimum of two thousand copies of your book(s). And no, I'm not saying those numbers are easy to come by, but that's what you'll probably need. Also, if you decide to go the Select route, be sure you have at least five titles available and are sure the one you enter into the Select program is a brand new upload and not one you've posted previously that already has ratings and reviews under it. Specify in your description the title's word count and story classification (short story, novella, or novel).

I'd also like to point out that the only site that I have NEVER had a single problem with is Smashwords. It's the ONLY site that I recommend anyone self-publish with without any qualms if they really want to upload any work onto a site.

GOODREADS

Stay away from this website at all costs. I mean it. Don't sign up for an author account as a means of promotion, as I (moronically) did, and don't you dare look under your reviews on this site. Your book can get added to Goodreads whether you do it on your own or not; the bad—not to mention unfair—part is that if you want it removed it's out of your power to do so. You can delete your author account, but your book(s) will remain on their website as long as they are available in some form of another.

This website is a hotbed of negative/condescending reviews, and people have an opportunity to say any and every disparaging thing about your work they can think of—all for sport. If you're an indie author, people can make up absolutely any lie they want about your work and there is absolutely nothing you'll be able to do about it.

I've noticed that these particular reviewers try to be as creative as they can with their bad reviews to gain their own followers and get fans of their own. It's not about stating what they liked or didn't like, it's about them trying to get people to "enjoy" their comment. And since it seems Amazon now owns or partly owns Goodreads, it'll probably only get worse based on what I've experienced from the comments on their website.

There is a person that originally made a review on my website that was absolutely condescending and a little disrespectful towards me, as a writer, in my opinion. I didn't respond to them directly, but instead vented my frustration on my Livejournal account. Presumably this person saw what I wrote, didn't like the fact that ultimately I was defending my work, and went back to Goodreads and not only extended their review, but made up every lie they could think of to make my novella sound as unappealing to the public as possible (they did a good job, too) and encouraged people not to buy it because of a sentence I wrote in the book pertaining to what my fictional character thought. It's their right to not like anything I write, but there is a line that the public cross when they not only lie about a book's content, but also when they don't bother to hide spoilers, especially when they're misleading. I sent Goodreads a message a few weeks ago detailing the specifics of what the person was lying about and the fact that they didn't bother to hide their spoilers, but not only was there no action taken, they didn't bother responding to me. I don't know if they treat every author that way on their site or if that is the treatment I get for being a "nobody" indie author, but I do know that there's really nothing more I can do but just sit there and watch my work being torn apart. All I can say is that if you don't have the time to bother with the little authors on your site and their issues, then you shouldn't host their work, and I don't think I'm out of line by saying that. If you don't respect a certain group of writers and you wouldn't entertain any problems they have on your website, then you shouldn't keep them, by way of their work, tethered to your website beyond their control.

Let me make this clear: I am against any author—published by a company or indie—who encourages their fans to down vote a person's review because the person didn't like your book, which is what one published author actually did. That's childish. It's also childish when that particular author tries to call the person out because their name under Goodreads is a pseudonym. There's nothing wrong with having an alias on a website. I have an alias under Goodreads that is a part of my real life contacts, and I also have my author page which is completely separate. People have a right to their opinions. The thing that I'm against is when people lie about the content of someone's work just because they didn't like it and they know they can get away with it because the person is a self-published indie author. I find that unacceptable and deplorable behavior.

For the sake of your own sanity, just stay away from Goodreads. If you see that you have built up a number of good reviews on Amazon and/or Smashwords, however, brace yourself and feel free to check it out since you need to know, eventually, what people are saying about what you wrote.

WRITING FOR ONLINE WEBSITES AS A MEANS OF PROMOTION

I will get into the specifics of which website(s) I'm talking about on my Livejournal account in the future, but I would advise against wasting your time doing work for sites regardless if they agree to pay you money or offer to promote your work. Most of these websites are designed only to help the makers and integral faces of that particular website, NOT YOU, no matter what they claim. Unless you are desperate for a few bucks, there is no real incentive for you to go down this road. No matter how big the circulation of the articles on their websites get it does not mean that your books will sell or that you will reach your target audience by dealing with them.

Having your work reach your target audience is crucial, even as an indie author. There are a lot of indie authors who don't believe there is any such thing as bad promotion; any promotion is good promotion in their eyes. It's the same reasoning as any reputation is better than none, or any publicity is good publicity, and we all know that's not true. Reaching your target audience isn't strictly relegated to published authors no matter what you believe or what some other indie authors would suggest. For example, if it's an online joke site run mostly by men with articles geared toward male topics and you're trying to promote your romance novel, it doesn't matter that over a million people read your article; you're sending your book out to the wrong crowd. Think of it this way: If Candace Bushnell or Lauren Conrad had a new book coming out and their marketing team tried to urge biker gangs and nursing home inhabitants to buy their novels instead of women between the ages of eighteen and fifty, that isn't going to end well. That is what I would call a botched job of advertising. The bottom line is, as a self-published indie author it still matters who notices your book.

Any sale is not necessarily a good or smart sale. There were a lot of people who were introduced to my work by way of my novella Karma that never would've been interested in anything I wrote from the beginning. That was a hard lesson to learn, but I learned it.

Any time you spend trying to perfect an article for any of these websites offering to promote your already written work, you could spend it either editing existing work or using that time to work on your own stories—shorts and otherwise.

Most importantly, their sometimes uncouth rejection of you, and what you attempt to do for them, can chip away at your (writer's) ego. I didn't even know such a thing existed until I started putting myself and my writing out there in public view, but it's fragile, no matter how much you think you can take criticism. Trust me when I say, I thought I was prepared for rejection and bad reviews, but I wasn't, not the way that a lot of people on these websites dole it out. I found myself not even wanting to go back and check the status of my own pitches. It's not just me they do it to either, and that's why I'm telling you what I am so that you don't go through what I did. They behave the way that they do to everyone and that doesn't make it right, it just means they're equal opportunity a-holes who don't think twice about insulting you. What they do is try to "creatively" reject you instead of trying to respond to you politely as would from professionals like literary agents, etc.

What you have to remember about those sorts of sites is they tell YOU to behave professionally, but they rarely do. Just because someone runs a website or they're a part of that team, doesn't mean they're educated or will behave well, nor does it mean they're especially bright, and that's the problem. You immediately believe if someone is giving you certain opportunities they will be respectful toward you and that they're intelligent, but that's not the case. And above all, they don't appreciate your time. Do yourself a favor, and respect your own time.

My advice to you would be the same as the one I gave about Goodreads—steer clear of these people completely. However, I also want to add that just because I had a very bad experience with those sites and I've seen other people have similarly bad experiences, does not absolutely mean that you will have a bad experience as well. You could go on those sites and be the exception. I can't predict those things; all I can do is try and tell you what I think is best based on what I went through.

THE (TRICKY) ART OF PROMOTING YOUR WORK

No one cares that you wrote a book. Perhaps a couple of people care in your personal life, and maybe a handful of people online, but the reality is that as a self-published indie author you won't be able to give your work away; that's not speaking figuratively, that's literal. I speak from firsthand experience when I say that. I have free work posted on Smashwords right now that no one is interested in. You can sign up for an account with every social media site from Twitter to Tumblr to Facebook or even a throwback like MySpace specifically in order to promote your work, but it's not necessarily going to get anyone read your stories. (Although, now that I think about it, if you do a video of yourself parodying the show Jackass on YouTube and say the name of your book at the beginning wearing a cape, and then at the end naked with a leaf over your private parts, it just might work.)

In my early days of self-publishing, I contacted a couple of people, from women who wrote up reviews on chick lit websites to people who promoted particular genres on Twitter. To one I sent a very polite message asking if she would consider reading my book and giving me a review on her website. I offered to send it to her for free, not knowing if she charged a fee along with a free copy as well for any time she would spend reading it, thinking that perhaps she would send me her conditions if she chose to. She never bothered to respond at all, which, in hindsight, should have been expected. It would have been nice to have at least a courtesy e-mail with a "no thank you, I don't do that" , or something to that extent, since she claimed (rather cheerfully) that she tries to answer all of her messages on her website, but I suppose when it's coming from a nameless faceless _anybody_ , who is basically _nobody_ , it's just to easier to ignore the message altogether.

If you're determined to go into the online self-publishing market, before you upload anything, you need to work out a promotional strategy. And you will need money. And I'm not talking about two hundred dollars either; you'll need close to a thousand or more. Seek out websites that get a lot of traffic, and would get your book(s) into your target audience's hands. If you wrote a regular adult romance, a YA paranormal romance, or a chick lit book, I would suggest you contact WEheartIt.com and ask about their rates for advertising. They'll give you a price for the ad based on the size you want. I'm not guaranteeing that it will work, but it would be a logical step if you have the money.

Promotion is time consuming and it's hard to keep your head up when most people are rolling their eyes when they see you coming. But you have to do research before embarking on this, and you shouldn't just upload your book without a plan.

My plan was to upload work in different genres thinking that not only would I broaden my audience, but I would also get maximum exposure because I uploaded multiple titles. That was a miscalculation of epic proportion. I was browsing articles online and came across someone who suggested this method as a promotional tactic, but obviously hadn't tried it. I'd always written stories in various genres and I thought it was a fantastic idea. I have 13 titles posted at the moment that could fit in several different fiction categories: contemporary family drama, erotica, romance/fantasy, African American urban drama, horror, chick lit, YA paranormal. I have them available as full novels, novellas, short stories, and poetry. I don't stick with just white or black characters, and sometimes I don't mention race at all in my books, I just go with the flow and the story. Sometimes I do mention race and make it a part of my story in some way. Sometimes my stories are told in first person POV, other times it's in third person. I didn't write my YA paranormal book to "cash in"; I wrote it because I just wanted to write a supernatural book. I like to write different kinds of stories and characters to see how far I can stretch myself and I'd never tried a paranormal concept before then. Same for horror. I'd always loved horror movies and novels and TV shows and I wanted to try my hand at it.

I had an idea for how I wanted to write my YA paranormal book, but I couldn't get my head around vampires being figures of romance. When I was growing up, vampires were monsters, terrifying creatures, not heartthrobs. I watched Twilight, and while I'll admit that I liked the first movie, it didn't help much because I thought it was a little corny. I watched True Blood, and while I ended up loving the show, it definitely didn't help me merge the idea of romance with vampires. Then I came across The Vampire Diaries in 2011 and the gong went off, and all I could think was, "Jackpot!" I didn't copy the plot and I already had witches as one of my elements in my own original outline for what was going to be my vamp book, but to me, that show was genius. It became my escape and my obsession at that time. When your personal life is going to crap it's pretty easy to slip inside a TV show or a book and find comfort at times, and that's what TVD was for me back then. My book was influenced by a lot of things—even Anne Rice which I'd read years ago—but mostly by TVD. I say that without shame or in fear that someone will think I copied it, because I didn't. I admire what they did on the show, but I also respect their work. If you respect someone's work, you're not going to copy it chapter by chapter and every character along with physical and personality traits. I read a parts of L.J. Smith's novels, but they didn't interest me like the TV show did. I had a six-book saga planned, completely outlined, but when I saw that there was no interest in my book (it's probably sold about 20 copies to date, maybe less) because there were so many vampire books on the market and I didn't even have a flashy cover to go with mine, I just put it on the backburner. I first uploaded it in 2011 under the name "Nikkola Walsh" and then when I started publishing my other work I just uploaded it again under "Monique L. Miller". It's there just to be there. I have no reason to write the second book when hardly anybody read the first one, and I don't even know if anyone who bought it even bothered to read it or even liked the first one at all.

The same thing goes for my other stories. If someone liked my poetry or my novella, Decadence, it doesn't mean they would like my novella, Milk and Honey, because it's a completely different type of message and story altogether. If someone is interested in Bound by Blood, it doesn't mean they'll enjoy reading my short story One Winter Night. I don't write the same stories over and over again, that would bore me to death, but that's not what the public wants. Most people want genre writers who won't deviate from what they know them to be. Every now and again, they'll accept authors that write in romance and separately in crime dramas, or something of that nature, but mostly they don't like to think of things out of their own comfort zones and you can't change that.

I was in the middle of revising a set of novellas and short stories in a collection I was going to call Magical Kisses that I wanted uploaded at the beginning of July. I was stressing myself out trying to finish them in time, trying to be sure I'd tied up all the loose ends, happy because I could see how much my writing had grown over time (at least in my eyes it has), and then I stopped myself. Why was I rushing? Who was I uploading these stories for? I couldn't help but ask these questions. I don't really have a solid crowd of even 10 people reading my work online, and even if they like one thing I have posted on Amazon or Smashwords, doesn't mean they would like these five stories in particular. One True Kiss, Love Spell, Dream Lover, Wishing Well, and The Enchantress were all inspired by a combination of Constance M. Burge's creation, Charmed, and Practical Magic, a story that I love in both its book and movie form. These stories are about a family of women and these tales chronicle their modern-day history over about a twenty-five year period as their lives are interwoven with other people around them. In the last installment, The Enchantress, it was going to be a combination of an actual fairy tale (an original one that I created) alternating with a story told by one of the characters in first person POV. They're different than anything I've ever written before and I don't know if that's a good thing anymore. Like I said, just because someone likes one thing I wrote, definitely doesn't mean they'll like something else when it's in a whole other genre.

I have 13 titles posted, but it didn't help my readership. I think I sold something like 50 to 60 of them, which is not a lot for the ones that I charge money for, and definitely not a lot for the amount of titles I have uploaded. I'm not ashamed of it; it's just what happened. I've seen other indie authors who seem bright and funny and they also have multiple titles posted, and they don't have a lot of reviews—the median number they have is around 15—but I couldn't tell you how many books they've sold unless I look under their account.

From my own experience, I wouldn't exactly encourage writing in a host of different genres. Choose a genre, maybe two, that don't stray too far from one another, and write at least five stories—it could be a combination of novels, novellas, and/or short stories—and then upload them all on the same day. If that sounds like too much, then you probably shouldn't enter the indie market because one book in the indie environment, with the way it is now, more than likely isn't going to get you noticed unless you write something truly unique and the right person, or people, see it, and that is truly a long shot that I wouldn't bank on.

Take your time before you publish anything and research thoroughly. Don't just jump into something like self-publishing just because a handful of people made it sound good. If you value your work, you'll be careful before putting it out for public consumption and review.

PROFESSIONAL EDITING

Let's liken your book to starting a business, and in this case, that business is a restaurant. Also, let's keep it very simple. When someone is opening a restaurant they scout a location, they get a building, and hire a head chef. All of what you're building is to bring in clientele that will not only enjoy the atmosphere of your restaurant, but also your food, and the goal is that the word will spread, and the next thing you know, your business is booming. Think of the hosting website as your location, the exterior and interior of the building as your book cover, the head chef you hire as the editor, and the food—which is, of course, the heart of the matter—is your actual story. But here's the catch: In this instance it's not only your job to provide all of the ingredients, but the chef is strictly going to be working from your recipes alone. His job is to cook it properly and present it on a plate. He's a good chef, but the only thing he has to work with is what you supply. The exterior of your building can be neat with a beautifully hung sign against a red brick wall and elegant awning over your entrance; your décor can be absolutely eye catching and inviting with unique art on the walls, linen tablecloths, and lovely centerpieces on your tables. But if your food tastes like absolute crap because your recipes were no good and not only were some of the ingredients you provided spoiled, but they gave more than half of your customers food poisoning, don't be shocked when your place ends up closed in less than a month.

Every single indie author that I've seen offering advice to other people suggested that you hire a professional editor to edit your work as if the concept of self-editing is absolutely positively beyond comprehension. Actually, when you choose to self-edit it makes you a better writer overall.

Here's the first reason why I suggest self-editing: You could potentially lose hundreds or thousands of dollars having your book professionally edited when all you had to do was not be lazy and read over your own work a minimum of three times to find and correct your mistakes. That sounds so unbelievably hard, doesn't it? Does forking over $800-$1500 (or more) sound easier than simply reading over your own work? The major problem with people is once they finish their book they have that euphoric sensation after just having completed their novel and they're immediately ready to hand it over to a spouse, or a friend, or a neighbor, arrogantly believing that if they made any mistakes, they were minimal because they're such a good writer. Trust me buddy, you made more than a few mistakes within those 200+ pages. You're human and therefore you're not infallible. That is the first problem with a lot of writers: They're much too eager to be done with the story and get another pair of eyes on it. Not just indie writers, but writers in general. When you look over your work, you're going to find punctuation mistakes, misused words, a couple of (or maybe even a few) mangled sentences that don't even make sense, and probably a few sentences that should be deleted altogether. I assure you, this applies to EVERYBODY, not just you. I think most people would be surprised if they saw some of those books by published authors they love so much in draft form before they were edited. Just because a person has a book deal, and maybe some success, does not mean that their book was next to perfect upon its completion. If someone hands you a copy of something, it's rife with mistakes, and they claim to have "edited" it, don't believe them, because they didn't—especially if it's their first book. Every writer HATES editing...until they get comfortable with their own writing. It's as simple as that. And even then, editing is not going to be their favorite thing. I only started _not_ to hate editing after I wrote my fourth book; that was also when I started to gain more confidence as a writer in general. Hell, I didn't even want to read over this little online booklet.

No one takes into account that these companies who offer to professionally edit your book for a price don't care about the quality of your story, all of the elements of your plot, your character development, or the tone of your story, they just want to correct grammar and punctuation and send you on your way. Here's a trend I've long-since noticed in the indie community, and it's heartbreaking that any form of literature has come to this: It's filled with people who have read a few YA paranormal books in the past few years and simply decided to write one of their own. There is no actual respect for literature, no real background where the person has a love for the actual craft. All I see are mostly people who desperately want to be "famous" authors.

Everyone wants to be able to make money from what they've written, and if we didn't we wouldn't ever charge anything, but money seems to be the only motivation at this point. Nearly every advice post by an indie author give strategies on how to maximize your exposure, telling you that bad reviews don't matter, and the aim of the game is to sell Sell SELL! I've never seen ONE of them mention education or any tools as a writer that you can and should use to help you during the process of writing to bring your story to life. They seem to take self-publishing seriously, but being a quality writer seems to be a nonentity to them.

I personally think it's strange when a person who considers him or herself to be a writer encourages you to spend hundreds of dollars (or more) to edit one book, probably the first book you've ever written, and yet gives you no real writing advice, doesn't have any suggestions that would improve your writing, and doesn't know of any better ways to recommend you spend such a large sum of money. Perhaps those people do have two thousand dollars extra just lying around and they can possibly afford to lose it on a self-publishing venture, but most of us don't.

First of all, having an education is important, even if you're _just_ an indie author. If you've never taken a college level English course of any kind and you're writing books, I would advise you to use that money you have set aside to pay for editing and enroll yourself in a nearby community college. I am serious. There has been no research done to try and figure out how many indie authors have anything beyond a high school education, and I'm not going to try to guess. I'm not saying get a degree, but most of those individual classes—along with the purchase of the book(s) for the course—are about half, or less than half of what you would pay for editing. After you've taken entry-level English courses, if they offer them, enroll in a creative writing course, but you need base level English FIRST. English literature is the foundation of what you're undertaking and you should respect it and understand it. It's how you understand how to edit yourself in the first place. You need to have patience. Learning to write does not happen overnight, and if you're serious about being a real writer, a real honest-to-goodness author, then you should be willing to take the time to learn how instead of just doing.

Secondly, I would suggest that you read Stephen King's nonfiction book On Writing. Unlike a lot of established authors when it comes to giving people advice he gets to the point and tells you plenty of useful things. I don't agree with every single thing he says— _Gasp! I disagreed with a veteran bestselling world renowned author! How dare I_?—but I do agree with most of it. I'd say I agree with about 98.9% of it. I don't agree with what he said in regards to watching television, but I think that was about it. If you're a writer and you've never read that particular book, it could definitely be worth it for you to check it out. Either buy it online, from a bookstore at the mall, or check it out from your local library. I already knew most of the things he said, but some of it served as a bit of a refresher for me and a couple of things he brought up I hadn't realized. In the name of editing, there is one piece of advice he gives that I agree with wholeheartedly and that is to let your book "sit" for a while—a couple of weeks, maybe a few weeks, perhaps even a few months—and then go back to it with "fresh eyes", so to speak. I've done that more than once and it has served me well. One downfall of the self-publishing industry is the feel of immediacy to upload your work for public consumption, which can work against you.

Most authors will also suggest that you have a copy of Elements of Style on hand. I don't have one. However, I do have my old _Keys for Writers_ handbook by Ann Raimes that I'm comfortable with and that I've had in my possession for a little over thirteen years now. I also don't sit at a computer or laptop typing everything, and my handy dandy Webster's Dictionary is a constant companion of mine. I've had that bad boy for over fifteen years now (I'm not that old though) and you can bet it's missing both its front and back covers at this point. I also have a few other books that I either go back and reference or use for pleasure reading or literature research when I'm writing like: Literature: An Introduction to Reading and Writing by Edgar V. Roberts and Henry E. Jacobs; Literature & Language: English and World Literature by Richard Craig Goheen (1992 edition, Purple level); and Literature & Language by Robert S. Boone (1992 edition, Blue level) to name a few. Those two books from 1992 were actually given to me by a teacher in high school. I was about to graduate and they'd had those practically ancient books in the back of the classroom for years and they were about to throw them away, but my teacher knew how much I loved to read and he'd often seen me grab those books to read short stories from them after I finished my class work. Most people wouldn't think of that as any gift or favor he did, but I've treasured those books ever since.

I've found that, for me, writing my original draft with regular old pen and paper aides in the editing process tremendously. You have no idea how much your story can change (in a good way) when you begin your story the old-fashioned way. It takes a longer time if you're not a fast writer, but for me, it's worth it. It's a part of my own personal rhythm when I'm mapping out a story. I ALWAYS write my outlines by hand, there has never been any deviation in that, but every now and again, I do end up starting a story on a computer. I've thrown out sections of my chapters, I've thrown out whole chapters, and I've completely changed characters, all for the better, simply because writing it out made me see things in a different light. When I use the term "throw out" I don't mean literally; I wouldn't advise you ever to throw your stories away, I don't care how bad you think they are. Have a folder set aside that you keep specifically for your writing and I guarantee that if you go back after a while and look over what you did you, you will probably see that it's either not so bad, there could be material that you can use, or you can see how much you've grown as a writer. If you write your story out, by the time you start typing it you'll already have started the editing process and it just makes your life easier. That doesn't mean you shouldn't go back and read over it at least twice (maybe even three times), but you should feel better about what you're reading both those times.

One thing you should keep in mind is that just because a person who's sold millions of copies of a book has a little ritual they do or a little quirk and they suggest you do it, doesn't necessarily mean it will work for you. And just because some of their methods don't work for you does not mean that you're a bad writer. A lot of successful authors see their methods as foolproof because of their success, because they have confirmation by enough people that they are good writers, and because of that they often believe what they do as an absolute surefire method. The key is to be flexible in your rules and suggestions and remember that people are different, no matter how many similarities we may have as writers.

To reiterate something I said a few paragraphs ago because I really hope it sinks in, and that is having your book professionally edited doesn't mean that you have a good story that you're presenting to the world. The companies that you pay to edit your work don't care if you have a good story or a bad story; they care about being paid for their services, which include correcting the technical aspect of your book. I am fed up with indie authors who act as if sending your book off to be professionally edited is like pushing a magic button that needs to be pressed in order to have any success. The truth is, before the indie market became saturated with books and authors, the earliest successes took off without being professionally editing. Even now, a book can sell without professionally editing, and a book can fail to sell with professional editing. It's a toss-up.

No one talks about this, and everyone likes to pretend it doesn't happen, but there are a lot of people who troll indie books, buy them and look for mistakes. No one's book is perfect. I've just finished reading two published books by respected authors, one of whom has been on the NY Times Bestseller List more than once, both books were wonderful, and I also found a small handful of errors in both of them. It wasn't a big deal. Not at all. However, if the same thing happens in an indie book people will mention them in their review. Some people will just say it just to warn people that there are typos and that's fine, but other people will go on rampages screaming the person needs to pay an editor as if seeing a misused word or a grammatical error ruined the entire story for them. I've gone back to my work and saw simple silly mistakes that I made, like instead of using the word "shudder" as I was meant to, I had the word "shutter". Sometimes I'll notice I have "then" instead of "there" or even more embarrassingly, "there" instead of "their". It happens. It doesn't mean the person is necessarily an idiot, it can just mean that they made a mistake and then they missed it when they were looking their work back over again. A lot of the time, the same person screaming about the writer needing their work professionally edited paid $0.99 for it. In exchange for their $0.99 they expect this person to spend hundreds of dollars that they'd have to sell thousands of books to make up for; meanwhile, that same person who ranted will spend $1.25 on a soda, drink half of it and throw it away, or they'll spend $6.99 on a John Grisham paperback, read up to page twenty, and give it to someone else. When you're buying an indie book you're taking a gamble not only on the quality of the story itself, but on the technical aspects of it, which is one of the reasons why a lot of indie writers offer their books for such low prices. Let's be honest and let's be adults here; unless the person's book is beyond comprehension because of all the mistakes, you didn't mortgage your house by buying a $0.99 e-book and you didn't skip a meal because of it. It was money you could probably afford to lose if you used it to buy a book by a virtually unknown author. I'm not saying your money doesn't matter, of course it does, same as when I purchase e-books I don't want to waste money, but I'm also buying it in the interest of the story more than the technical aspects. Don't get me wrong, the technical aspects are important, but when I run across a mistake, I'm not going to harp on it if the story is good and the technical low points aren't so bad that I can still read it.

And last in this section, you should know when your book needs editing and you should know how much editing needs to be done. The only novel—the only title, as a matter of fact—that I uploaded and it needs a major overhaul in the technical aspect is Sweet Surrender. I'm not being lazy or arrogant with that book, it's simply hard for me to go back and read over that particular story because of the subject matter. I've vowed to go back and edit it, and I will, but not now. It's not in a popular genre or dealing with a hot topic that people were going to be hopping over themselves to check out and I knew it probably wouldn't sell, and it didn't, but selling wasn't what mattered to me about that. It's still not what matters to me. I only have it available on Smashwords with a warning in its description that it's not edited, but it's only displayed because of how I feel about it and what they book represents for me. Not everything is about selling a book, sometimes it's about the story and what it truly means for you.

As I said for everything else, you can take my advice or not, it's up to you. Having your work professionally edited could end up being better for you. In the end, I can say whatever I want, but it's your call ultimately.

BAD REVIEWS

Unlike the belief of some indie authors, as well as others in the publishing industry would suggest, you do not have to kiss anyone's feet for giving you a bad review. I am debunking the ridiculous myth that the people who give you one and two star ratings and negative reviews are your customers and consequently among your supporters. I assure you, they are not. However, your reaction to these one and two star reviews can potentially turn off prospective readers.

The people that give you four and five star ratings and positive reviews are your readers and your customers, and they are the audience that matters.

When a published author goes on a book tour to sign autographs and meet their fans, they're meeting the people who give their books the high ratings, who pre-order copies of their new releases months in advance, and who pay the big bucks for their hardbacks. Those people are willing to stand in long lines just to get their books signed by that author and get a hello. They're probably not doling out poor ratings and poor reviews to those authors.

Plenty of people don't even bother with rating and reviewing. There are those who, if they bought your work and they love it, they will probably keep it and buy more; if they didn't like it, they probably won't finish it and they probably won't purchase anything else by you.

For the writers who get an advance of thousands or millions of dollars, who have deadlines to worry about and royalty checks to cash, and when you go online they have over a thousand 4-and-5 star ratings and reviews and maybe thirty-five or so one-and-two star ratings and reviews combined, it would seem pretty petty of them to seek out the people who didn't like their book and scold them for it.

My point is, those contract holding published authors can afford to ignore bad reviews. You, the indie author, do not have that luxury. We have to take the bad with the good, and for some of us, it's mostly bad.

There is no right way to respond to someone who is obviously bashing your story unjustly. It doesn't matter if he's being disrespectful to you as a writer or your stories; a lot of people believe that the reader/customer is well within their rights to say anything under the sun about your work that they please. I don't agree. And this goes for my work as well as anyone else's. If someone doesn't like your book, you have to live with it, but they should stick to the information that's actually in the story. I've given good reviews and bad reviews, some on this website, but I also know that I don't disrespect the author or the book, even if I absolutely hate it. I've had a person on Goodreads ADMIT that she "skimmed" through my book and then gave me a 2-star rating because she didn't understand certain things. If you skipped through the story (presumably to get to the racy parts), how are you going to blame the author because you didn't read what they wrote? I explained what she said she didn't understand. Some people may still say that I was wrong for that. I rarely go under published authors' work and read a bad review where someone admits to skimming through their book. Again, for a published author, that would be considered in poor form for a person to do, or "unfair"...for indie authors that is apparently not the case.

I also find it ironic that you're told to be "professional" as an indie author and not respond to negative reviewers when they don't regard you as a professional, or even a real writer, at all. Simply because you're not signed to a publishing company. It's fine if you don't like something in a book, but to go so far as to act as if you're making suggestions as to how the person should write is beyond my comprehension. I don't like plenty of things writers have done in their books, but I say that I don't like it, I don't say things like, "She could have explained things better..." as I've gotten under one of my novellas and it just blew my mind. It's not your story! How dare you?! Some of these people are so condescending they act as if your stories were supposed to be tailored to them individually instead of to an entire audience of people as they do the work of published authors'.

Aspiring indie authors need to know that most people will not read their novel for pleasure as they do other writers' work, or to be more frank, a published author's fiction. Because you are not represented by a company, you are not considered a candidate for fair treatment in that way. They will pick up books by Barbara Taylor Bradford, Jackie Collins, Anne Rivers Siddons, and Sarah Dessen to be entertained. They will pick up your book with the intentions of criticism.

As I said at the beginning of this booklet, I didn't expect people to lie about the content of my work nor did I expect the absolute ignorance of some people who got their hands on my stories. Because I'm an indie author I've been subjected to seeing people twist my plots inside out, claiming that my books contained elements that they did not. Because I'm an indie author and didn't have any reviews at all under my work people felt free to fabricate and spoil as much of my stories as possible since they didn't like the story.

I used to think it was unethical when indie authors clearly got their friends and relatives to give them their first handful of reviews, but now I think differently. It's not just under my work. I have noticed that under self-published authors' work who want honest reviews and are willing to wait for the public's assessment of our work because we wanted to value their honest opinion, but instead we got a lot of people that were simply anxious to give negative reviews.

If you're an indie author, those first one or two reviews you receive will set the precedent for those that follow. As I realized from personal experience a lot of people will simply parrot what another person says whether their claims are true or not. The majority of the public will not take your work seriously when you're an indie author no matter how much effort you put into it.

There are people who will give authors (I'm definitely not the only one) one and two star ratings and bad reviews because they claim that they didn't know an author had a short story or a novella for sale instead of a novel. Amazon has a policy that reprimands any author that puts an indication of whether they are trying to sell a short story, novella, or novel in their title on their website if it isn't on their cover, which totally works against the author. Usually when you put certain things on a cover it ends up looking tacky so you don't want to do it. So you're left with putting it in your description. The bad part about that is you can indicate word count and approximate page length in your description all day long and there will still be some people who will claim that you didn't let them know that and you will end up paying for their negligence. It's not fair, but that's the way it is.

There is a review under my novella Karma, on Amazon, where a person says that my grammar was so bad she couldn't continue reading it. If you read that, you would think that I was just a bad writer in general and didn't edit my work, when in fact, the grammar she was talking about was used specifically for my characters in their dialogue. Plenty of authors do that to represent the region the people live in and the grammar they use as a part of their story. Kathryn Stockett has done it, Zora Neale Hurston...there are hundreds of books that use the same method that I did, but because I am an indie author I'm not allowed to do it apparently. I have a 5-star review under my novella Thanksgiving with the Ex where the person said my book was "odd"; at least I know what she's talking about. All I did was skip the cliché part of what's in most stories where someone always takes a family member aside and gives them the old ultimatum, "Either you tell them the truth, or I will..." type of speech. I come from the south were secrets in families are practically a way of life. I also have siblings, and I know for a fact that most brothers will protect their sisters before they do anything else, younger and older brothers. I went by what would more than likely happen in real life in that story, rather than what you usually see on TV. That was what she viewed as "odd".

Amazon also deletes my five star reviews. Unlike with popular authors where they delete their one and two star ratings and reviews, they have continuously deleted five star ratings and reviews from under my books and completely leave the negative ratings alone no matter how unfair or unwarranted they were. A few days ago I had four 5-star ratings under one of my books for months, but when I pointed out that there was a man that gave me a negative review under one of my other titles that clearly targets indie and erotica books with the purpose of giving them bad reviews, what I saw when I looked under my work earlier today was that they kept his review up and took down one of my positive ratings. How sweet of them. Over a year ago, I gave a one star rating and review to one of their beloved former indie authors. I didn't use profanity and I didn't make up anything that didn't happen in the book just to give it a bad rating. It was my opinion. They deleted it just because they wanted to, as is their right, to protect that author's ratings. You, as an indie author, will not get that same protection from them.

Under my book Bed of Thorns, on Amazon, the first rating I got was a 3-star rating, but...the reviewer took that opportunity to bash my book to smithereens. When I first read it, I was heartbroken, and subsequently unpublished my book from Amazon's website for a few days. All I could think was, "All that hard work I put into it and that's all people will see when they read my book? They didn't note the dialogue between the characters or the character development or the relationships between friends and sisters? All they saw was sex?" Then I mustered up the courage, published the book again, and re-read his review of my book again. This was his review:

"By Uncle John Format:Kindle Edition An unlikely story of a selected group of co-eds who pose for the University calendar and one of them is selected for sexual adventures with the sons of the University president.

Completely unrealist I could not finish the book whcih started well but I| ghot so confused by the twisted unreal plot I could not finish it."

I couldn't help but think that for such an awful review it was quite vague. The review was also changed from its original state on Amazon (as I've noticed a few of my reviews under my books have been). Everything he mentioned could have been found within the description of the book on the website. Not only that, but there's no indication that his was a verified Amazon purchase of the book either, and since my book can only be purchased from either Amazon or Smashwords, that begs the question of whether he actually read it or not. As I've mentioned, my books aren't available under lots of websites or in libraries so if you're reviewing my book after it hasn't sold one copy in months (and even then it didn't sell more than 30 copies) I have to wonder if you actually did read it. When I clicked his name to see other books he'd reviewed I was surprised to see that this man gets away with not only nonsense reviews on Amazon, but the fact that out of 42 votes only 12 were found to be helpful that should tell you something. Under a book about incest, he reviewed:

"0 of 7 people found this review helpful Excellent Review of mathmatics hisstory August 17, 2011

Very good histroy of the development of maths but requires a good understanding of arithmatic. Not for those who are not numerate."

Based on what I've seen of his reviews, he HATES erotica, but finds it amusing to go under fictional erotica and make terrible reviews (3-star ratings don't matter if the review is absolutely horrendous). I'm not really questioning whether or not he read my book because I don't think he did. But is there anything I can do about it? Not at all. Amazon doesn't care about me because I don't make them a lot of money and that's enough of an incentive to look the other way. They don't care what anyone says under my books.

There's more I can and should say, but I'm not going to. I doubt anyone will read this anyway. When you step back and look at your bad reviews, you have to see them the way other members of the public see them. The reviews I have now turn off any potential readers I might have had. These people don't give you a chance to find an audience who can appreciate your work when you're an indie author because they're too busy trying to rip you apart.

There's no point in me trying to upload anything else. There is zero interest in my work, and the people who seem to hate what I uploaded far outnumber the people who liked it. Content of your stories don't matter. Covers do.

I've already unpublished most of my work on Amazon. They weren't selling. All Amazon was doing was keeping my negative (and sometimes untrue) reviews available for public viewing and I took the only action I could.

THE BIG BAD PUBLISHING COMPANIES

You're always hearing about the big bad publishing companies, so let's talk about them for once. First of all, they're big, but they're not so bad; and as in bad I mean they're not the enemy. At least you should try not to think of them that way.

Every single indie author that claimed early success when they started making millions as self-published authors online a few years ago stated that their work was rejected by publishers; the work that the public took to so well. If you went by their sales and claims alone, the major publishing companies not only come across as idiots for passing them over, but also rather villainous. Major publishing companies have always come across as the heartless villains over the years because even most celebrated bestselling authors have their tales of woe and their drawer of rejection slips, but they come out with their stories of triumph and to the public their persistence paid off for the best of everyone. I have no doubt that most former indie authors that found their own success followed suit mainly because it sounds good to the public. We always love it when the little guy emerges victoriously over a big company regardless if the story is a complete fabrication. The reason I don't believe it when those former indie authors said that their books were rejected by publishers is because I doubt they ever had a literary agent to get their manuscripts in the hands of anyone in a publishing company in the first place. Most publishers don't accept unsolicited manuscripts, meaning if an agent doesn't bring it to them, they wouldn't read it in the first place (for legal reasons mainly). How can you say that someone rejected you when they probably never even read a word of it because you didn't go by the proper protocol to have your work read in the first place? I've never heard one of them say that they were rejected by a literary agent, I've only heard "publisher". A literary agent and a publisher are two totally different things. And don't say, "Oh, you know what they meant." No, if they weren't lying then they should've said exactly what they meant. I especially hate that smug question that all journalists have asked them and that would be, "If you could say anything right now to those publishers who rejected you, what would it be?" Dollars to donuts that journalist probably didn't read a word of that author's book, all they know is that they've sold a lot of copies and that person was practically a millionaire overnight. They don't know about the quality of the writer's work or anything beyond the fact the person has now not only been made famous, but set an example for a different type of industry.

Why do I care that they lied? Probably not for the reasons you think. Whether or not you're looking up to them as role models or not is your prerogative, my only concern is that their influence causes a lot of people to doubt their own chance at being published by a major company before they give themselves a fair shot, and they end up jumping into the self-publishing market and striking out badly all because they didn't understand how the publishing industry works. Instead of building their writing skills, confidence, and a decent body of work, and then submitting their query letter to an agent, a lot of people who possibly have potential are writing flimsy flash-in-the-pan YA supernatural eBooks and spending most of their time promoting a book all on their own when they may not have to spend their own money at all and could have a legitimate publishing deal. There are a lot of good writers out there that aren't published. I know, because I've read some of their work.

Which brings me to the main question: What if you want to be a published author, but you simply don't know where to start? That's easy enough, and the answer is literary magazines.

One thing every writer should have is access to Writer's Digest magazine. There are all sorts of helpful tools by way of interviews and articles that can give you more knowledge of the writing industry itself and in doing so offers you the titles of various publications that will pay you to publish your short stories. There are sci-fi magazines, mystery magazines, etc. that run their ads in Writer's Digest for you to pitch a story to them to be published. There are other literary magazines such as Barrelhousemag.com, kenyonreview.org, tinhouse.com, thesouthernreview.org, and Matter Journal at wolverinefarm.org. If they allow you to submit your work online you will most likely have to have a submittable.com account, which does charge a few hundred dollars for a year's subscription, but it's worth it if you're trying to get your foot through the door of the more respectable side of the publishing industry. Instead of spending your money on a professional editor, this is something else that would be a lot more worthy of investing in. Having a submittable.com account and using it is about your possible future as an author beyond the indie world, not just trying to sell some copies of one book that never makes it anywhere past online self-published community.

Having your short story or poetry published in a literary magazine usually means that someone either thinks you're a very good writer, or they believe you have the potential to be one. Think of having your short stories published as the building blocks of your résumé—your writing résumé. These aren't just random people on earth who may not have a clue what good writing is giving you feedback that may or may not be on point; these are the people who literary agents sometimes contact when they're looking for new writers who they could potentially take on as clients. In other words, the people who you are trying to impress straightaway are those who can publish your shorts. In order to impress them your goal should be to come up with a good story that you don't end up stumping yourself on, editing it properly, but FIRST you should bone up on their guidelines. You should know and understand the types of stories they publish. If it's a men's magazine that you're writing a story for, like Playboy or a similar publication, they're not going to publish a short story about you and your grandma gardening and sipping iced tea as she tells you what a lovely child you were and a beautiful young woman you've grown up to be, no matter how good the story is. You have to tailor your writing to their tastes, preferably without compromising your own integrity as a writer. If you cannot tailor to suit them, you're better off finding another magazine to submit to that you can tailor your writing to. When most people think Playboy, they immediately think the short story is supposed to be erotica, and that isn't a wise assumption. If you read more than one issue of Playboy you'll see that's not the case. Even if your story doesn't get chosen to be featured in the magazine, consider it a lesson in the art of writing. I don't consider any story a waste of time. All of them are your babies in a way.

And then there's word count. That's easy enough. Some say don't go over 5,000 words, others have a limit of 7,500, but some go as high as 10,000. Don't be arrogant. Don't assume that you are so amazing and your story is so brilliant and you send in a story with a 6,000-word count to a magazine that clearly states they have a limit of 5,000 words. They've probably made exceptions in the past, but don't expect to be the exception. If you're a "nobody" in the publishing/writing world and you're being pompous, you're shooting yourself in the foot before you start your journey. In short, don't be a prick. If they tell you that they want to make a few changes to your story before they publish it in their magazine don't whine about it, be grateful. They are giving you an opportunity, possibly of a lifetime.

Not everyone can write short stories and not everyone knows how to write one. It could take anywhere from a few weeks to a year to a few years before you learn how to write a short story if you don't already know how. If you're not sure you have the technique down, but you want to learn, I would suggest you find start with educational literature books like the ones I named before and read and study the shorts by William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, etc. Then move up to ones by Stephen King, etc. Very few people release books of short stories anymore and Stephen King is one of the only authors I know of that actually has great shorts that you can learn from. The "trick" with short stories is that you have to use a very limited amount of wording to not only develop your plot, but also multiple characters. In other words, what some people do in 300-400 pages, you have to do in 10-20 pages or so. That's not easy. You have to engage people from the first page to the last, and make every sentence count. Maybe it's not easy, but the outcome tends to worth it.

Hopefully, next you will head to a literary agent...

A literary agent's job is to scout talent and try to sell that person's work to a publishing company. Here's where the dreaded query letter comes in.

There are a lot of writers who are at a loss as to what literary agents are looking for in their query letter. They're looking for two main things: the first thing is your body of writing work that you've compiled for them and the second thing is a college degree. Do not fool yourself into thinking that a literary agent isn't looking for you to have a degree of some kind. You could possibly impress them with your body of work so much and a novel you've written, but chances are you will get passed over if you've never obtained a degree at some point. I'm not saying they absolutely will not under any circumstances represent anyone without a college degree because I'm sure it happens every now and then, but I'm telling you that you have a very slim chance of being taken on as a client without one.

But don't think your writing credentials don't matter at all. You could be rejected by ten agents, but there could be one willing to give you a shot; he or she may not be in one of the bigger offices, but they could possibly get someone at a smaller publishing company to look at your work.

You should treat your query letter to a literary agent with the same care and professionalism you do any other job résumé. Although some people do add the almost obligatory line of hobbies that mean nothing in the bigger picture (mostly it gives a potential employer something to say to you if they decide to give you an in-person interview with other careers), when it comes to query letters there are literary agents who have been vocal online about writers who make their personal life habits the main focus of their queries instead of their body of writing. A literary agent does not care what your favorite TV shows are, or that you love rainy days and fly-fishing. A query letter is NOT JDate. The person you're sending your query to is doing their JOB. The first thing they're looking for is professionalism and if you're emphasizing meaningless things that have nothing to do with your writing you're more than likely going to get tossed. Not necessarily always, but most of the time, the professionally detailed writing résumé is going to come from the person with a degree. There are a lot of behind the scenes things that go on that some people probably won't understand if they're not properly educated. Some people think it's just about signing a contract, being paid, and handing their work over to the magic editor and ignoring bad reviews. There's a lot more to it than that. As with any profession there are politics that go on behind closed doors that you won't know about until you're ushered into a certain area of the business. A literary agent isn't just trying to gauge knowledge about your work from your query, but they also would want to talk to you if they're interested in what you presented to them to see if you're capable of handling the pressures of deadlines, the division of your funds, the importance of contract negotiations, etc. If an agent continuously presents people to publishers who have a difficult time processing what is expected of them and what being a published author entails, or being difficult in general they won't have a decent reputation in the industry and they could lose their job. It's the same with any other career—if you consistently fail to deliver you will get fired.

Agents can only read so many query letters and so many first chapters in a year. They are trying to hit the jackpot as well, and their job is seeking, finding, and trying to sell their clients' work. Acquiring an agent is probably the easy part, and they're not easy to get.

The next part is the waiting game. Nothing happens instantly when it comes to being signed to a publishing company. You can have an agent for months and nothing will happen, and if it does, it may not be good. It is a possibility that every publishing company your work is sent to will reject you. When your work is presented to a publishing company all of your competitors have agents. There's not room in the publishing industry for everyone and your manuscript may not get chosen. You could get dumped by your agent and end up back at the starting point, or your agent could get fired for whatever reason and no one in their company takes you on as a client; and again, you find yourself back to the drawing board. You need to understand that while having an agent is great, it's not guaranteed. But chances are if you were able to get one in the first place you have a greater chance of finding another one.

Indie authors make published authors sound like mystical unicorns that are elevated beyond any and all common folk who deign to call themselves writers. The truth is they need to stop pretending that every book—even if it's published by a big company—is absolutely amazing or even good or even mediocre. I've read (or tried to read) some books in the past that were by published authors and they were downright awful. A lot of books by contract holding published authors fail every year; you just don't hear about it because...well...they failed. There are small advances, medium advances, and huge advances given to new writers throughout the year and the amount of your advance signifies that company's faith in your ability to produce something that will not only pay back your advance in full, but give them a decent profit to go along with it. Let's put them in three categories as an example: a small advance is going to be $5,000; a medium advance would $40,000; and a "huge" advance would be something like $150,000. Perhaps with your advance you signed a contract for a two-book deal with that publishing company. Every company hopes that when they dish out any money they will get their initial investment back with a profit, but they also know that's not realistic. In truth, they're rolling the dice with all three newbies, but the one that shows the most promise in their eyes is the one they gave the biggest advance to. Let's say in one marketing period those three separate authors have their books released. The author who was given the $5,000 advance only brought in $2,500 so they have a loss of $2,500 for the company. The author with the $40,000 advance was only able to bring in a $10,000, so they have a loss of $30,000 on that end for the company. But let's say the author who was given the $150,000 advance ended up having a terrific season and brought in millions of dollars, ended up on the NY Times Bestseller List and there are studios that want to buy it for film rights. The other two books cost the company $32,500, but they made over a million from the other author and the gain was a lot more significant than the losses during that period. However, that doesn't mean that those authors who received those advances are let off completely scot-free. If you fail to pay the company back in earnings you could be asked to pay them back out of your own pocket even if you've already spent the advance. They're not giving away free money or free rides. They expect to be compensated for what their marketing team and editors did and whoever else worked to bring your book to life and present it to the public. That's where the pricing comes in for the books of published authors and why a lot of indie authors not only look naïve, but greedy, when they set their prices just as high as published authors'. You also have to figure how much taxes are taken out of those authors' advances, and also if their book fails miserably they could be dropped from their publishing deal altogether. Not every author is asked to pay back their advance if their book fails, but don't think it's an impossibility.

The marketing team for a published author sends out the book to various newspapers and magazines right away to get reviews that they can place in the book to praise that author's work upon release. They also make sure that the book gets into the hands of the target audience and not just anyone on earth who can read, because they know that getting it to the wrong people could prove to be detrimental with that book's sales. They work on trying to get a suitable cover for your novel as well. The staff of the publishing company has to be paid and that's why they set the prices the way that they do for the hardcover novel. It's not just the author getting money (although the company is probably trying to earn back millions of dollars depending on who that author is), the head of the publishing company has to get his or her cut, the assistants, and whoever else are paid a salary, and a portion of that author's sales make that possible. When I see indie authors who set their prices at $7.99, $8.99, and as high as $10.99 because "they're worth it", it honestly disgusts me; that's why indie authors are looked as a joke. I don't personally set the prices of my novels for anything over $2.99 because I edited my own work and there is no one else to pay but Amazon and Smashwords, and I get the remainder after their portion is deducted. As far as fees go, I think that's fair for the public, fair for me and fair for Amazon and Smashwords.

Also, the thing you have to remember is that not every writer who gets a publishing deal actually delivers their book. It's not just that they fail to deliver a decent manuscript, some fail to deliver anything at all. Just because you have a book deal doesn't mean anything; it's what you do with it and the overall outcome after your book is published the thing that truly matters. There are people who get book deals and they haven't written a book at all; that's _most_ people, in fact. I've written books, but that doesn't mean anything. A lot of people have written books now. A reality TV star has a better chance of getting a book deal than me (and they have) and be touted as an author; all they have to do is hire somebody to actually write (or "assist") their book for them. I'm not knocking it because that's how the game works. Their name alone can sell a book, they have a built-in fan base, and it can be anything from them talking about their childhood to a cookbook to hiring someone to help them write their own fictional novel. The same goes for those indie authors who became overnight writing sensations. The publishers who signed them knew that they were relative newbies, but they'd already gained a mega fan base and they were going to sell a ton of books and make them a lot of money. The publishing companies cut deals with those authors that didn't infringe on the royalties they would receive from Amazon, and in turn those indie authors got at least $2 million in advance from the publishing companies they signed with and those companies were almost guaranteed a double in profits. Therefore, those authors had both Amazon and Smashwords owing them money along with the publishing company they signed to, and that's even including the millions in advance they received. That's bloody friggin' brilliant if you ask me. Those authors don't care if you don't like their books; the people who know them and like what they wrote far outweigh those who don't. Not only that, but they have enough money at this point where they likely don't have to work another day in their lives if they choose not to.

But let's briefly talk about those who _don't_ deliver. Joan Collins was paid a million dollars a few years ago to write a book, couldn't deliver, and ended up being sued. She won. Today, Joan Collins got the biggest advance in publishing history that failed to deliver the goods.

A lot of other indie authors make comments as if to say just because they couldn't, or can't, get a publishing deal they don't think anyone else will be able to (especially not another indie author who they have no qualms about talking down to). I don't think that way. There are a lot of good writers, and would-be writers, out there who are in the indie market and who haven't published anything in any way, yet but have a manuscript (or shorts) at home on their computer or written and it is sitting in their desk. You shouldn't count other people out just because you aren't able to achieve certain things.

My entire point of this section is that it's better to know this publishing market and at least attempt to get a legitimate deal rather than self-publishing right away. It's better to have a company that believes in you to a certain degree and is standing by you than to have to stand all on your own if you are able to get that.

_ME, MYSELF AND I_ **(MONIQUE L. MILLER)**

I was doomed from the beginning. No one is going to buy stories like mine or take them seriously mainly due to the fact that I don't have a publishing contract and my stories aren't backed by a company. Having representation does matter when you're writing certain types of stories.

Let me repeat this: There is NOT enough room in the publishing industry for everyone and I'm sick of hearing people perpetuate that lie. If there was room enough for everyone there wouldn't be a top ten bestsellers list that everyone dotes upon, agents would be able to take on any and everyone who could write a book as clients, and publishing companies would have an unlimited budget to give out to their writers, new and old, and they'd always have room for more. It's true that anyone can upload their work onto hosting websites and if you have money to pay an editor that option is always available, but that doesn't mean there's room for you. You're entering a market with millions of books and the odds are stacked against you; if you call that "room enough", tell the same thing to the last kid that gets on an already packed school bus where there are already three people to every seat, you can hardly walk along the aisle, and they have to crouch on the floor to have any space at all. That's what the indie self-publishing industry is at this point. Your book is nearly buried as soon as you upload it. Do you call that "room for everybody"?

I wouldn't be surprised if I went onto my author page on Amazon and found it deleted (again) even though all I said was the truth and I in no way defamed their website. I won't be surprised if I get comments under this from people who try to pick apart everything I've said to try to make it negative. I'm not jealous of anyone and I'm not trying to make anyone look bad, I'm just telling it as I see it. Maybe I seem a little bitter, but I have PMS, so that's to be expected. I've said this once and I'll say it again, this was just to help someone avoid the mistakes I've made and to encourage them to try to get their work published before entering into the self-publishing world.

I've attended college in the past, but I don't have a degree. I don't have a body of writing work to incorporate in a query letter, because I've never sent any stories to a literary magazine to be published. That doesn't make me a hypocrite since I didn't do or don't have those things, I told you what I knew to give you a better chance than I did at being published in case you didn't know the score. I knew that when I queried literary agents with my book, Bed of Thorns, I hardly had a slim chance of being taken on as a client. One of the things you're supposed to do when you are querying a specific book is compare it to another book already out on the market so they have an idea of what they're working with. Because of the explicit sexual nature of that particular book I had to say Fifty Shades of Grey because that was the only book that I knew of that it could be compared to, but I also knew that wasn't going to work out in my favor because of all the other wannabe writers just like me who were querying with similar work. You have to know when the odds are stacked against you, and even with my other books, my novellas, and my short stories I knew that since I hadn't been previously published anywhere it was highly unlikely that I would be a solid person to invest time in from their perspective. Any of the authors who came out with similar plots and characters as Fifty Shades of Grey had sort of an unfair advantage over the rest of us. More than likely, they already had publishing contracts and they were romance authors, like Sylvia Day, who used that opportunity to broaden her audience. A number of them had been writing for years, copied someone else's story without any reservations, and the public loved it. My book actually isn't a blatant copy of the plot in any way. The only thing my book really has in common with Fifty Shades is the fact that there is sex described in an explicit nature, and that's as far as it goes. But no one gave it a chance and I guess I can't blame them for that.

I didn't set out to be a "famous" author or being a part of the Kindle Million Club. I wanted to write good fiction that people could enjoy even if it was only a small circle. I love to write and I wanted to share what I wrote even if I wasn't going to be backed by a publishing company. I thought being able to self-publish was a wonderful opportunity for people like me who didn't have a degree, who didn't have an impressive writing portfolio of published shorts, but who could still release their work to the public. I wasn't trying to be the next so-and-so, the way some writers want to be the next J.K. Rowling, Nora Roberts, or Suzanne Collins. I just wanted to be the next ME—Monique L. Miller—and hopefully that would be enough. As writers, we all look up to someone at the beginning of our careers even if we're eleven years old and dreaming, but there comes a point where you should find your own writing style, have your own stories, and create your own plots and characters. You should get comfortable enough where you're not striving to be like any other author and you should be content with the work you produce.

Sarah Fain & Elizabeth Craft, Ben Edlund, Alison Schapker & Monica Breen, Mere Smith, Raelle Tucker, Rob Wright. Do you recognize any of those people's names? They were some of my teachers. They wrote some of my favorite episodes on some of my favorite TV shows in the past. It got to the point where I could almost tell it was one of them writing an episode. I said _almost_ ...I wasn't that big of a nerd. I remember the first time I saw Pulp Fiction when I was a teenager; I was in awe. All I could think was, "I wish I'd written that movie..." Yes, my first thought was a nerd thought. I studied Quentin Tarantino's work like some people study Algebra. Gregory Maguire, Cassandra Clare, and Lauren Oliver all created worlds that drew me in, held me, and made me fall in love with not only their stories, but their characters as well. But the two authors that I trust the most when I pick up their books are Alice Hoffman and Stephen King. Hoffman is hands down one of the best authors of her generation, in my opinion. I couldn't begin to imagine weaving a story together the way she does. Those were the people who taught me the art of dialogue as well as character and plot evolution. Did I mention Joss Whedon? Yes, he belongs there as well. I learned from (good and intricately plotted) television shows and movies as well as other authors. I've always loved to read and write and being a writer is something I've wanted since I was ten years old. I wrote my first book at fourteen and even though it was a terrible one-hundred-and-twenty page story, I felt proud of myself for having done it. The first thought I had was, "I wish I could do this for a living." Although, I also knew that I would probably never get to do it. I was just a little girl living in a place down south where people's dreams aren't realized. I grew up in a part of the world where the most you could do was be a teacher and that's what I'd wanted to do anyway. I decided that I would teach and write my stories privately and tuck them away somewhere in a drawer never to be seen by any other eyes besides my own. That's why I thought self-publishing was an opportunity, but it only turned out to be a nightmare and a major disappointment.

Do I regret doing it? I don't regret it. At least I tried. I started to slink away like some other writers who did after online self-publishing turned out to be an awful experience for them, but I wanted to tell my story first and that's why I wrote this. I'll be honest, I wish there was a certain standard in the indie publishing world where the people who are serious could be differentiated from the people who are just playing around because they have a computer and can put a few sentences together and want to make money, but we're all lumped in together and we all have to accept that.

This is a new generation now. It broke my heart the other day when my twelve-year-old niece told me she judges a book by its cover. When I was growing up we were told NEVER to do that, metaphorically or literally. And it's not just twelve year olds who think that way; there are twenty and thirty-something year old people who do the same thing. We're witnessing a regression in literature and no one seems to be panicked but me. They're not going to pick up a book by Alexandre Dumas because all there is on the front of the book is a title. They'll pass over The Three Musketeers and reach for the one with the sparkly unicorn and the hot blond girl riding it regardless of the fact that the story may not even make any sense. The only reason they might pick up The Great Gatsby is because it's a movie with Leonardo DiCaprio in it instead of the fact that it's a great book.

There is a line on the show _Dexter_ that I love from, I think, its third season that went, "Most actors toil in obscurity their whole lives, never stepping into the spotlight; but if you hone your craft, you could find yourself cast in the role of a lifetime." I used to think that way of writing in the indie industry. If you tried your best, and your stories were good, there would be a group of people that would find you. When you're a writer you are in the entertainment industry, but you're not an actor or singer, and I always thought that was a good thing. An actor can be talented, but simply lose out on parts because someone better comes along or someone with a bigger name. A singer can have a beautiful voice, but they may not be marketable for a record company because of their looks or because they sound too similar to someone else or for whatever reason. Writing is different. My stories maybe similar to someone else's, but no one else can write them the way that I do, and not everyone can write novels. I'm not being pompous, that's just the truth. A lot of people say they want to be a writer, but it's just talk until you actually produce something. I used to think that in the indie industry, there was room for everybody, but that's a myth. You can work till your fingers fall off and you may never make it. It's depressing, but at the same time, it's liberating in a way. Yes, I failed, but it wasn't from lack of trying.

If the only thing you took from this is that I'm upset that nobody bought my books, then you missed the entire point of it. Maybe my books and short stories just aren't appealing to the mass public. Maybe it's the fact that the protagonist in Bed of Thorns was racially mixed (African American and Chinese), and was in a relationship with a person who was white bothered people, and that's what made them shy away from that particular book. BOT couldn't be squarely put into the African American category when I uploaded it, and I let it go as a mainstream novel. The most popular erotic novels still feature Caucasian couples—Ana Steele and Christian Grey; Gideon Cross and Eva Tramell. The public, no matter how progressive they try to come across, still has issues with romances between couples that are anything but white. Name one extremely popular and accepted romance novel or movie like Fifty Shades of Grey or _The Notebook_ or _Say Anything_ or _Bridget Jones's Diary_ or _Ghost_ or _Serendipity_ that features an African American couple or an interracial couple. They exist (the ones featuring African American couples or racially mixed couples), plenty of them do, it's just that the only ones that will sell and will get people to really read or watch them have to be featuring a Caucasian couple. Plenty of good movies and books out there feature minority races that exclude Tyler Perry plays and films, and came along before he ever started making movies. Unfortunately they're seen as "black movies" or books and since most white people feel as if they can't relate or understand those stories simply because they're not minorities, they don't (and won't) get watched or read. On Goodreads I have one person who made a comment under my novella Karma that seems rather racist to me, and since he believes that because he is not African American he couldn't judge the story properly. A couple of people were able to understand the message of my story on Amazon, but he definitely wasn't one of them. He didn't understand the message of the story, and he just wanted to bash my work, and it's rather obvious. It also goes to show that even though I thought that people were ready for different kinds of work, especially in the indie market, I was really off the mark. There could be a number of reasons why none of my work sold, but I'm not going to dwell on the fact they didn't and they won't, but I don't want other people to go through what I did and have their time and energy and their hard work wasted, just sitting on a website with no readers at all. I would have been better off just keeping my work in a bedside drawer catching dust. There are some stories that the public will accept from online indie authors and those are paranormal romances with cool covers and crime/thriller novels with cool covers. I purposely made my covers plain because I wanted to attract people to my work that would actually be interested in the story; some were interested in the stories and poetry, others were not and just added things to their Kindle because it's free. I refuse to be a "cover author". It's also sad that the only online advice that people are willing to take from self-published authors are those that give some of the most ignorant advice on earth. Other indie authors ENCOURAGE you to focus on a glittery fantastic cover when they should be annoyed that a cover is the only appeal to indie book buyers. They don't care. Their "advice" posts are loaded with expletives and all the people who love them egg them on. You're supposed to be a _writer,_ not a rock star, but that's what most indie authors are now since the first wave of self-published authors made it big; they don't see themselves as people who are supposed to be intelligent, the backbone of the entertainment industry; they want to be the Mick Jagger and Steven Tylers of the self-publishing world. They're dying to be interviewed for selling millions of books instead of producing quality work, and that's just so terribly sad. But that's how things are now.

Take it from me. Try to be published by a reputable publishing company before you enter the indie market. Make indie self-publishing your last resort, not your first choice.

**I deleted the portion about pricing that was included in one of the original versions of this booklet on February 8, 2016 and uploaded this particular version. I have another portion to add to this later—most likely in May of this year at the earliest—of more things I've learned about this industry and I will expound on pricing issues. Had I known then what I know now, I could have been saved plenty of headaches dealing with publishing my work as a whole, and I'll be happy to share them with anyone willing to read about them. Until then, hold tight, keep writing, and if you're a fellow indie writer, try to ignore all the bashing you receive from the traditional publishing industry as well as from some members of the public. Just know that I'm with you in mind and heart, even if you think you're all alone; trust me, I've been there and I'm still there, but the more you understand, the easier it gets.**

