Amateur or Indie?

Over the last two years, I’ve been working under the self-imposed label of amateur writer. I did this as a sign of respect to professional writers, and to help people understand that I don’t yet feel like I’m ready for writing at a professional level.

I have no problems releasing my experiments, and I respectfully disagree with writers who shove all of their early work in a drawer. That was the common practice of the last generation of writers, but this is a new era, the information age, and many creative amateurs are finding fans by putting out ALL of their efforts. Musicians, artists and photographers are posting everything they do, good, bad and mundane. They do so to learn from their peers, inviting both criticism and praise. I wouldn’t go so far, since I’ve written some real dogs over the last two years. But when I read something and think, Yes, this is good, then I’m going to share it for free. I do it to invite critiques, and those comments have helped me to become a better writer than when I first started taking this hobby of mine seriously.

Very recently, within the last few months, people have started to write to me and suggest that it’s time to lose the amateur label. I wasn’t sure about this at first, but I decided to float a theory by posting Blood Relations to Amazon’s Kindle store. (This came before the kerfluffle over Amazon’s poorly thought out tag filtering policy. I’m still miffed at them, but getting over it slowly.) I posted a review that said the book was free on my web site, and I left directions on how to get it. And yet, people still started buying copies. As of this writing, my rank is 30,752. I’d like to get in the top ten…thousand, but that may be hoping for too much. =^P

It’s not a lot of money coming in, but there is money coming in, and the number of downloads of Blood Relations keeps climbing. The traffic to my site is creeping up. A baseline number of unique IPs for most of last year was 10-19 addresses per day, with the bulk of the days being 10. Now it’s 19-41 per day, with a mid-line average of 30. That’s not too shabby given my status as the world’s worst marketer, and I have the feeling that it’s going to keep climbing if I just keep plugging away at this trusty keyboard. I learn from my mistakes, and each story gets a little bit better. And slowly, more and more people come around to check out my stuff.

It’s still not enough to qualify me as a professional writer, but I think that perhaps I have outgrown my amateur label. So, I’ve been thinking of going to the label “indie writer.” This denotes that while I make some money on my writing, I do not make nearly enough to be considered a professional yet. It still establishes that I’m not fully vetted, and again, it’s meant to show respect to the writers who have been through the submissions gauntlet.

This title swap would bring about minor changes on my site. There would be a new e-books section opening up, and as time goes by I’ll slowly add stories through that page instead of posting them weekly as serials. The first few are older works, and I feel like I’ve learned a lot since I first wrote them. At the same time, I don’t think I can sell them.

This is what I think separates me still from the professional writers. The professionals develop a sense of the best place to start a story to hook an editor, an agent, or a reader. Despite everything I’ve learned, I still prefer a slow start for my stories, something akin to the first hill of a roller coaster. So most times, my first chapters aren’t the “right” place to start the story.

Then there are other style factors, like story pacing and the likability of the main characters. A lot of professionals go with a protagonist who is easy to identify with, and their stories try not to drag too much through slow scenes.

I think there are a lot of talented writers doing a fine job of covering the mainstream market. But, I also think that there ought to be more books with a slower pace, or with characters who aren’t so easy to identify with. At the same time, I don’t expect these changes to be embraced by a lot of readers. Casual readers want their expectations to be met, and if I can’t do that, then I shouldn’t be surprised that nobody wants to buy my stuff.

For the longest time, I wanted to hope that maybe I could find a publisher willing to take a risk on this experimental style of starting the story “wrong,” going up the side of a hill slowly, and with characters who make Jobe McKenzie and Vicky the vampire look like pillars of their respective communities. But the fact is, the publishers don’t sell books like mine, and they can’t see their readers wanting to get into these kinds of stories.

In the olden days, there used to be people who wrote transgressive fiction, with horrible people who were almost impossible to relate to. The writers of those books insisted that you weren’t meant to agree with the characters. You were just reading to follow along on their story. And these books sold huge numbers to a different market, one willing to read about both heroes and villains.

I don’t write about characters that bad, but I think the market still exists. I’m just not sure who to go to to try and tap into it. And while I have the utmost respect for publishers, they don’t exactly make it easy to see if a story is a good fit for them. Publisher X is listed on Ralan as a purveyor of horror, fantasy, sci-fi, and speculative fiction.They show up on P&E as a company with no reputation dings, and after buying a few titles or reading the free previews, I think I’ve found a potential market. So I send out a query, and…nothing.

It’s the same with agents too, and I’m willing to admit, the problem here is with me, for not punching up the intros, and for not making nicer characters who are easier to identify with. I give out free samples for my books, and lots of people download the previews. Not nearly as many people decide to pick up the books. That first hill isn’t what they want to see, so they decide not to buy.

I’m cool with that, and I think I’ve probably spared myself a ton of lousy reviews with those free previews. I mean, if the readers had to buy the book off of Lulu, and then read the slow introduction, they would have thrown the book away and written up an angry one star review. Instead, they read the free previews, say, “Nah,” and quietly wander away. So the only people who post a review are those that were interested enough to finish. It’s brilliant!

It’s a tough job to find a market among people who don’t mind a slow start, and who are willing to go along with unsympathetic characters. I realize that, and I realize that if I want publishers to buy my stuff, then I need to give them something they feel comfortable selling. I’m trying to find a story that will work for them, but in the meantime, I’ll keep trying to hunt for that hidden market online. I know I’ve located a few regular readers who think my writing is entertaining, and maybe by the time that I’ve sold my first novel or novella, I’ll already have a small audience of readers who will pick up the book and help encourage my publisher to let me take bigger risks.

Or, that’s the plan, anyway. I’m talking about all of this, because I want your opinion. Should I make the move to the label indie writer, or just stick with amateur until I make my first sale? And, as a second possible point of discussion, do you agree that there is still a viable market for slow transgressive fiction; or do you feel that all books should try to pick up the pace and avoid challenging readers with morally icky issues?