A Cooperative Press for Indie Authors discussion

Per A.: I think one of the commitments necessary for participation in the cooperative must be the willingness to proof read, and where possible help edit, the work of members. Trying to proof or edit ones own work is generally a fools errand. And "hiring" help is no guarantee that you'll get your monies worth (if you can even afford it). We might be able to use something like Google docs to provide a place where participating authors post chapters as they complete them so that other authors in the coop can proof or offer edits.

As for marketing, by building a nested set of websites, from the parent publishing house to genre imprints to author webpages, all inter-linked, internet presence and search engine activity would be greatly if not exponentially increased. Carefully choosing search terms could result in one or another affiliate within the coop showing up in an incredible number of searches. We could also send each other copies of our books to be used as samples at book fairs, etc. I've set up booths a couple of times with copies of my book for sale. I get the occasional customer. But if I had a table full of books to attract interest, and maybe a computer set up where prospective buyers to go to Amazon or Barnes and Noble to purchase a book they found interesting - it would be almost as effective as the "book signing" promotions the establishment imprints use.

As for advertising, participants could pool resources to buy advertising at the imprint level, making sure that such ads contained an image or reference to each contributing author. Instead of waiting to pay for clicks on a search engine, we could purchase full page ads in industry publication or on industry websites. A $5000 ad campaign wouldn't be so intimidating if 50 authors contributed.

Of course, at the heart of it all must be the real commitment to improving our work. We would need to be as brutally honest with each other as a main stream entity is when it puts your name on that rejection notice. I have discovered that the thing next most important to writing, writing, writing is rewriting, rewriting, rewriting.

In the cooperative environment we would be exchanging services, not dollars, which I think would prove to be the edge many of us need to pursue our literary dreams.

Congrats on the new imprint.

Awesome! I completely agree that one of the main things that the Big 5 have over indie efforts is editing.

The other is the distribution of print. However, I suggested to A. some ways that an Indie Org could have some of the same reach should rge authors involved be interested in that.

Coming off a "weekend" in which I hosted 2 indie author events at the store and neither seemed to get bookstore practices, how to market or even sell their book, much less how to manage distribution or use events for maximum visibility, I'm certainly willing to contribute my knowledge. It's frustrating for me because there is no reason either of them could not have pulled in a real audience. They just tend not to know how.

Nesting websites is great, and it's definitely part of a successful, searchable presence, as would using keywords.

(Amazon and Barnes and Noble? *sobs* Don't forget Independent bookstores! We still exist!

And regarding titles listed there, make certain you check your availability on Ingram. Some places like Createspace "say" they give you national distribution, but what they do is list it as short discount bookstores and have it come from Ingram's midwest warehouses, making the wait time at a store sometimes impractical relative to its usual ease for those of us on the West Coast. Until the Fresno warehouse is live, this is what we have to deal with regarding distribution of indie titles.

But there are ways to manage around this and provide the same 24-48 hour delivery time Ingram usually given our customers and I can expand on those ideas if you like.

I think, knowledge can be made available and people can choose how much they want to participate in any efforts we may engage in to manage distribution of titles--in a co-operative manner--or not.

But I am 100% behind requiring that participants submit/receive and respond/apply edits. I think that making certain everyone has quality work is important, especially if we are using "imprints" and "logo's" to brand the work and make them look professional.

One question about pooling resources: would we wish to do this for ISBNs as well? As they are overall cheaper in a package, but not necessarily cheap individually. (My self-pub background is exclusively a print anthology of short stories. I understand that some of the "services" offer ISBNs and what-not, but I haven't worked with them yet to know if this would be of interest).

And: yay! Fantasy Imprint!

Drea wrote: "Awesome! I completely agree that one of the main things that the Big 5 have over indie efforts is editing.

The other is the distribution of print. However, I suggested to A. some ways that an ..."

Re: ISBNs. I purchased a custom ISBN directly from Browker's for my second edititon of Amagon. It was a 5 ISBN package for my imprint Umazanon Press. We could look into bulk buying bulk ISBNs for the individual imprints, or for IACP. I'm not sure how that will work, but we can begin to find out.

As for marketing, it is my hope that we can wean ourselves from CreateSpace and like entities, and perhaps eventually contract directly with a print on demand company.

I am extremely interested in the independent bookstore market. Almost every author has at least one independent bookstore sufficiently close to have an individual signing/cooperative press promotion event. I think it could help revitalize interest in local bookstores.

So many possibilities....

Back to work.

A.