The Indie Path (Part 2)
The second half of my conversation with two self-published authors
When I talk publishing, I usually talk about my experiences along the trade pub route, but I wanted to highlight a different path to publication: self-pub. So, I chatted with two indie (self-published) authors about their experience. Thea Verdone writes romantic stories about imperfect people haunted by inner demons and dark histories. S. Jean is a queer sci-fi & fantasy author writing whatever strikes their fancy at any given moment. This is part 2 of our talk, so if you haven’t already, go check out part 1!
The full original conversation I had with these authors was recorded and you can watch/listen over on my YouTube channel for both Part 1 and Part 2. What’s included in the post below is our conversation transcribed to the best of my ability, with minor edits for clarity or conciseness.
Brianna: In Part 1 of the talk, we discussed what made you decide to go this route and what it's looked like for you. So now that you've done it, looking back on your experience, what do you feel have been your biggest wins or the biggest advantages for you and it were the biggest challenges?
Thea: The biggest wins have been all the readers that I've connected with. I never expected to be making friendships and it's really cool to see, you know, what they love about my writing, and them being there for me as I'm trying to write the next one.
But the single biggest thing I feel like would be, I made like a group with all of us starting around the same time, like indie authors in our sub genre. And we've become so close, helping each other figure it all out and just supporting each other. It's been really special.
And then for challenges, for me, I've been sick a lot of the year and I can't write very well. So I feel like I'm getting lapped, I guess, by all my friends are like releasing like two or three books since and I'm still like, I've literally been working on this manuscript for just over a year and it's kind of soul crushing to say the year thing, but someday I will finish it.
Ronove: Aw, you're doing fine. I believe in you.
Thea: Thank you.
Ronove: For my biggest win, I think it's basically just making a lot of friends because when I was querying, I didn't actually make a lot of friends until towards the end. I have like three people that I still talk to after going through all the querying. Now, after self-publishing, I've made a lot more friends, because I just happen to be there and they're there too. And we're friends because we're both self-publishing and it's really nice. And of course, my biggest challenge is hoping people, you know… just this little voice in my head that thinks everybody thinks I'm annoying because I keep trying to sell my books and I just have to squash that every so often.
Thea: Yeah, that's hard to get over. Someone who does PR told me that they have to see it at least three to five times before they retain it and want to buy it. I don't know if that helps at all.
Ronove: Exactly. That's what I keep telling myself. A part of my brain is like, no, they're going to find you annoying because, you know, it's there all the time. No, no, that's just what I have to do.
Thea: Yeah, I felt that way too.
Brianna: I see all of your posts for both of you, and I think they're fun every time. You put something else up like here's a snippet or here's even just details about when it's coming out or any of that. I don't find them annoying. I think it's fun. And if you think about it, when you look at your own page, you just see like how many times you've posted, but anyone else, I'm seeing you along with a bunch of other authors. And so I'm like, oh, I recognize that one and I like seeing things I recognize pop up again. So just on like the other side of that, I don't think other people perceive that as super annoying unless you're doing like 50 posts a day and like spamming their feed kind of thing.
Thea: Yeah, then the algo is going to punish you anyways so you can't annoy anyone.
***
Brianna: The idea of success is something that varies a lot from different author to author. When you started out, did you have this benchmark or this vision of what success looked like? And did that change once you got started or once you were in the middle of it?
Ronove: Before I did all the book stuff, I made little indie video games. And from there, the success would be, obviously, people coming back for the next game and being really excited when I do something else. And so I basically just applied that to books, which I've had, because I've noticed a lot of return names who like to read my ARCs or people who have ordered signed copies from me.
I figured that part's the success, because I have readers that keep returning to me, even though my genre is not as… I write a lot at different sci-fi and fantasy instead of just picking one, and I don't even write any series. So, it's nice that they keep coming back no matter what I'm writing, and I think that's a really nice a successful feeling.
Thea: Yeah, that's really cool for sure to have repeat readers, you know, that they're not putting it down.
For me, the theme of my book, Never Leave, Never Lie, it's kind of about overcoming really dark depression and learning to love and forgive yourself. The reason I even queried was I just wanted people to see it and feel seen by it and less alone. So, I always tell my readers from day one, I feel like I achieved that, because I feel like a lot of people have felt comforted by my super sad story that does eventually have a happy ending.
Everything else is just extra. I guess I don't make bigger goals. I had one. I wanted to have a certain amount of page reads by 1 year. That's kind of it. That was just more for fun.
Ronove: I like tiny goals. They're more achievable, and you feel more successful.
Thea: Exactly.
***
Brianna: I am always in awe of the amount of work that self-pub/indie authors do for their books. What is something that you think many people don't realize about self-publishing?
Ronove: That it's a lot of hard work. I don't think a lot of people realize how much hard work it will be when they first start out. They're like, “Look, I wrote a novel. That's all I have to do, right?”
And it's like, no, there's a lot of other things you can do too. You could just throw it up on a storefront and let it be that, but it might not do very well. So I think a lot of people sometimes don't understand just how much work it is, and sometimes they can't or they don't want to apply themselves. You just have to understand it's a lot of work, but the more you put into it, the more readers are going to find you, especially if you keep at it.
Thea: I think that's great advice. For me, I feel like I struggled to start, because it seems so scary. Like once you self-publish, then you're never going to get a traditional book deal with that. You have to commit. Are you really going to throw this book away? And maybe I feel like there's a lot of voices kind of making me feel that way. But it's actually not as scary as it seemed. It's worth it. If you are okay with taking that risk and indie is your goal, I say go for it. It's been rewarding. But yeah, it's a ton of work. That's true.
Editorial note here: What Thea describes is the pretty common/conventional advice that if you self-publish, it will be harder to ever traditionally publish in the future. However, recently, it has become more common than before for publishers to pick up and re-publish previously self-published work that has been successful in the indie space. While the conventional wisdom probably still applies to the vast majority of indie books, I wanted to make a note that it isn’t ALWAYS the case.
Brianna: I feel like a lot of people think self-publishing is the easy route and like… have you talked to an indie author?? I do not think it is the easy route. It is a different kind of work, but it's definitely still a lot of stuff that you are doing.
Ronove: Yeah, unless their goal is literally just to put it up on a storefront and then walk away, then it is incredibly easy.
Brianna: Yeah, that's true. Yeah, my great-uncle does his like own little thing in his corner. Very few people read those books, but he's happy with it. That works for him. But I think if you are looking to have a broader reader base, you have to find them somewhere.
Ronove: Yeah. Somewhere. Maybe they're under a rock somewhere. You don't know.
Thea: Yeah, totally. I will say I think it's all hard, I guess, because even traditional authors have to do, like you said, more and more marketing, and then dealing with all the collaboration with other people.
Brianna: I have not gotten used to this idea of other people setting timelines for me. Which I think is something that indie authors have a little bit more flexibility or more control over?
Ronove: Sometimes. If you want an editor who has a very specific timeline, you still have to work your schedule around them and vice versa.
Thea: Yeah. I think there's a cliche of the author artist who's precious about their work. I feel like I do struggle with that too sometimes. I'm very happy with all my special editions, and we're working on an audiobook coming out. But it's so hard for me to, you know, just pass off that many words.
Ronove: Yeah, it makes sense because they're your words. You're like, no, they're mine. That makes sense to me.
Brianna: I mean, you pour so much of yourself into the writing process to then be like, all right, now this book kind of belongs to more people than just me.
***
Brianna: What is something that you wish you knew before you started self-publishing?
Thea: I guess it would have been cool to know coming in that it would have worked out okay. That'll take the stress off. I don't know. That's a hard one. Maybe Ronove should answer, and I'll think of something else—Oh, I have one! I do. A really good one. Do not read your reviews. Do not.
Ronove: Oh, yeah, don't. Just don't. Nope. Don't do it.
Thea: Yes. People struggle with it so much. And it's like, yes, okay, you could read [reviews from] your ARCs, sure. If you can tell already though it's going to be a mean-spirited one, you should just not even continue to read.
Ronove: You should just stop.
Thea: I feel like we all go through this like phase of like hurting your own feelings all the time by going and reading them and then...
Ronove: You don't need to do that to yourself! On Goodreads, I put a filter on my ad blocker to basically block any ratings or reviews under a certain threshold because I'm like, no, I'm going to read them and feel bad about myself, but I shouldn't do that because it doesn't matter. I should just not even be there. Reading your own reviews is just not good for you.
Thea: Right. And that piggybacks to another thing if you're just starting out. When it comes to reviews and how people consume your book, if people hate it that doesn't mean it's bad. It means they're not your reader. So, you just need to find your reader who will love it, you know?
Ronove: Yeah, exactly. And you shouldn't read all the bad reviews just looking for your ideal reader. Just get off the review site and find them by just talking about your book. They will find you.
Thea: Totally!
Brianna: This also makes me think of querying where we spend all our time thinking about rejections and that that’s a determinant of the quality of books, but querying is… I mean, there is an element of book quality in there, but there's so much luck involved. There's so much just “right eyes, right time.” And I feel like it's really easy to have that mental health crash of “all of my writing is terrible” or “there's nothing good in here,” but it's the same thing as reading only the negative reviews. Okay, that person is not your audience. That agent is not your audience either.
Ronove: Exactly.
Thea: Yeah, it gets better with time. You get used to it.
Ronove: Eventually at some point you'll feel confident enough. You're like, I don't need to read those anymore. We're good.
Brianna: I guess that rolls into my last question, which maybe is really the same question reworded: if there's an author who is considering self-publishing and going the indie route, what advice do you have for them?
Ronove: I think my main advice, because I see this around all the time, is if you're the kind of person that talks yourself down, you have to get yourself out of the habit because it doesn't help your brain, it doesn't help you find readers, and it definitely doesn't help you sell books.
You just have to try to do your best to fake confidence or have actual real confidence in yourself because it will help a lot.
Brianna: Fake it ‘til you make it.
Thea: Imposter syndrome is so lame.
Ronove: Yeah, we should just beat it up.
Thea: For me, I would say put yourself out there and connect with other indie authors. They're so welcoming. It's not really a competitive thing, for the most part. I haven't met anyone who's trying to gatekeep information. So complimenting other authors in an organic, genuine way and just building those connections and you're not just taking from other people too. You're giving advice to other people as well and answering their questions and whatnot. It makes it a lot easier.
Ronove: Building off that too, you don't have to be friends with everybody, but you can still be friendly with everybody. There's no reason to be mean to your other self-published authors.
Thea: Totally. There's plenty of room to go around. It's not like with querying, I guess. We're not, you know, all fighting for spots. Even then, it didn't feel like we were fighting each other though.
Brianna: I do think it's really easy, especially starting out though, for authors to get in that mindset of like, I'm in competition with everyone else instead of other people are my potential allies who will help me in this, and we can help each other rather than competing. Which is also how I feel about the trad pub/self-pub divide. It doesn't have to be like an either/or. You can read books by both types of authors. You can find your readers wherever.
So, I don't love that competitive mindset that some people starting out get. I think it does kind of wear off sometimes after a while.
Thea: Yeah, it may be more on the trad pub side. I do remember seeing that discourse on Twitter every once in a while. But on the indie side, I don't know if I'm like so enmeshed with indies, but even then, I don't hear them complaining about trad pub, really. I think if you find like-minded people, everyone can recognize that it's difficult for the other person in different ways and
Brianna: Yeah, I don't think that I could self-publish. I don't think I could do that much work.
Ronove: Aww.
Brianna: I'm sure if I tried I would figure it out eventually, but I think I have that same, what you were saying, Thea, of starting out where you're like, it would be nice to know from the start that it was going to succeed and I don't know about that.
Thea: Yeah, it's totally such a big time sink for sure. And like you said, if it doesn't work out then… [shrugs] But I think it's worth the attempt.
Brianna: You both have books out there. To me, someone reading your book, who you don't know and who like just saw it and was like, “this looks interesting!” I feel like that's a metric of success.
Ronove: I worked at a library and I, of course, give my books to my library because, you know, of course I'm going to. And I think the happiest moment I had with somebody who saw my book was this teenager who saw my book and was really excited and said, “oh my god, I've been waiting for this one!” And I'm like, excuse me? So, that was really nice to feel.
Thea: Aww.
On that super sweet note, that’s a wrap for part 2 of our talk. I hope you enjoyed hearing these two perspectives (I definitely did!). I’m including some links below of where you can check out more about Thea and Ronove (who writes as S. Jean) and their books:
Thea can be found at theaverdone.com. She is @theaverdone on all socials (except the place formerly known as Twitter), and she’s most active on Instagram. She is working on a new modern gothic M/M romance, which she describes as “hurt, comfort, angst, and a happy ending,” titled What Death Forgets. You can add it on Goodreads now to know when it comes out.
Ronove can be found at earlronove.itch.io or sjean.carrd.co. They can be found as @earlronove on socials (except, also, Twitter), and they’re most active on BlueSky. Their latest fantasy novel, Errant Wings, will be coming out TOMORROW on April 22nd, about a guy who grows angel wings and how he goes through figuring out what to do with his life after getting them. (Purchase links here!)
