Chandra Clarke on the Importance of Not Giving Up in the Face of Big, Intractable Problems

Everyone says that indie publishing is the wave of the future. Avoiding gatekeepers, who are often prejudiced against particular ideas or demographics, and putting your work out there to see if it will sink or swim on its own, puts the power (and the money) back in the hands of the writers. I had an unusual idea and format that I realized would have difficulty finding a home because of its experimental nature, so I though I would give it a try.

Here’s the problem: It’s not free.

Amazon and others try to make you believe it’s free, but only if you want to give away a significant royalty chunk, and only if you don’t hire an editor (bad,) don’t hire a cover designer (worse,) don’t hire a formatter (fine if you have lots of time on your hands and are handy with computer programs; awful if not,) and don’t do any marketing or ever buy a copy to sell to your friends or at cons. If you do decide to go for it without any resources, people will dismiss your cover as tacky, your prose as terrible, and no one is ever going to see it in the sea of newly available titles anyway.

Not to mention there’s still the whiff of vanity publishing about it, so no matter how good you are, or how well you do, some people will never take you seriously.

If you want to succeed at indie publishing, you have to be seen in the vast herd of new titles appearing every day. It takes money. That’s fine if you can afford it, but I found it daunting. So I asked myself, “How can I publish a book without defeating the purpose? How can I find capital that doesn’t eliminate my bottom line?”

I launched a Kickstarter to bring my Wyrd West stories to print. I budgeted for cover design, formatting, editing, marketing and stock purchase. And I asked my readers to contribute.

The response was better than I could have hoped. The Kickstarter was successful. The end result was a beautiful, professional book I had every right to be proud of, many of which were going directly to the readers that funded them.

But can this said to be truly self-published? I don’t think it can. This is a new way of doing things, in which readers choose to fund what they want to read. It puts the power directly in their hands. As it should be.

Even the backing of the Big 5 doesn’t guarantee a book’s success. It has to find an audience. It has to have resonance with the people who read it. Readers aren’t going to fund bad ideas, and if you’re a bad writer, they’re not going to support you more than once. So rather than being vetted by small groups of people on the top of a big pyramid of status and business acumen, Crowdpublished projects are vetted directly by the public.

As a writer, here’s a look at the differences I’ve found between being traditionally, independently, or Crowdpublished:

I realize that Crowdpublishing is a bit like being PBS instead of MSNBC. You know that you have an audience. Although it might not be as easy for you to reach them as it is for corporations, that audience is dedicated enough to supporting your work that they are willing to ante up, sight-unseen. It’s “Funded in part by readers like you.”

It’s a godsend for SFF story markets. Many respected pro- and semi-pro markets use the Crowdpublishing model, including Clarkesworld, Uncanny, Strange Horizons, the entire EscapePod family, Third Flatiron, and more. And most SFF writers I know use the Crowdpublishing model, at least as far as setting up a Patreon, whether they’re just starting out or just shy of the New York Times bestseller list. I think this should be a point of pride.

I don’t believe that indie-publishing deserves its “lesser” reputation, because garbage gets published in all fields, and a big imprint is by no means a guarantee of quality. But I think when we’re asked if our project was self-published, we should smile and say, “No, it was Crowdpublished.” I think it’s a selling point.

I believe that any path a writer takes to success is a good one. Some people are really successful in the traditional or indie-publishing models, and regardless of which path they’ve taken, it’s hard. These are accomplishments worth taking pride in. But I think we should start thinking of Crowdpublishing as a third path within the literary market. There’s traditional publishing, and indie-publishing, and Crowdpublishing.

If you’re a writer who produces your own books, or a magazine editor, and you have a Kickstarter, GoFundMe or Patreon for the purpose, your work isn’t indie-published; it’s Crowdpublished. It’s not self-funded, or funded by shareholders; it’s funded by the public. And I think we should start talking about it that way.

Diane Morrison in an emerging neo-pro writer who just successfully ran a Kickstarter to publish her book, Once Upon a Time in the Wyrd West, available this month. She’s also appearing in Third Flatiron’s Terra! Tara! Terror!. This fall she will be offering a class through the Rambo Academy on finding time to write when you have none. Under her pen name Sable Aradia, she is a traditionally-published non-fiction author and blogger. She lives in Vernon, BC, Canada and she manages the SFWA YouTube channel. Right now, she’s doing a giveaway to support her Patreon membership drive. You can catch her on Twitter as @SableAradia, which means she’s not writing when she should be.

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.

I do my writing in between the cracks of a fulltime job, four dogs, two horses, and the renovation of our house, in which a lot of the work is done by my husband and myself. So yes, my writing time is precious. Very much so. However, most evenings, at least one hour of my time, and sometimes more, is not spent drafting, revising, or editing. Not exclusively. That time is spent in an online writing community, where I am one of the founding members.

For some people who, like me, live in a part of the world where English is not a prevalent language, where cons are few and far between and writing groups even more of an oddity, these online groups are pretty much the only opportunity we have to interact with other writers on a regular basis.

When we first started out, our community had a whopping ten members, give or take, and already we spanned the globe. We had several members living in the US and a strong contingent of at least four people in Europe and Asia, jokingly called the night shift.

But as we built a website, ventured onto Twitter and Reddit, and started promoting our community, our ranks grew and our modest little Discord server sprouted channels left and right. And one thing we always agreed on is that we want to be welcoming to new members.

We want no one to feel unseen, unheard, or unimportant.

I think we’re doing something right, as our membership continues to expand. As of now, eighteen months into our collective journey, we have just over two hundred members. And what I love the most about them is that they are so so wonderfully diverse, and they feel absolutely comfortable talking about their similarities and differences.

We are a home away from home for members of the PoC community, for those who identify as LGBTQIA+, people for whom English is a second language, neurodivergent folks…

If you write, or if you want to write but are struggling to find the courage, then you have a place with us.

As a group, we have a large number of activities going on all the time. We trade critiques, but we also brainstorm when one of us needs help, and we have word sprints to help you get that draft out on the page. Sometimes, it’s as simple as listening to music together in one of our voice channels while you’re writing. Experienced rejectomancers are always at hand to engage in this fine and honorable art. We commiserate when a rejection comes in and cheer for every acceptance.

We laugh together, cry together, and most of all, we are there for each other, constantly pushing each other onwards and upwards.

Nothing makes me prouder than to have stood at the cradle of the INKubator, and to be at hand when a moderator is needed, though that is rarely the case. Nothing brings me more joy than to see a 15-year-old writer’s happiness over an accepted drabble, or to see one of our members adopting the pronoun roles we implemented on the server to avoid misgendering and show that we actively work at being allies.

And so, the writing time I sacrifice doesn’t feel like a sacrifice at all. It’s a joy and a treasure that I hope to have for a long time to come. If you’re considering starting up a similar initiative, I can only advise you to give it a try. It enriches you and your writing in more ways than you thought possible.

If that thought overwhelms you, why not join an existing community? Not every group is the same, and neither is every writer. Gods know we can play and banter as hard as we work and some may find that a bit overwhelming.

There’s only one way to find out whether the water is too hot, too cold, or just right, and that’s by dipping your toes in.

If you’d like to learn more about the INKubator, you could have a look at our website, but the best way to get to know us is by stopping by for a visit.

BIO: Writer, poet, and narrator Jasmine Arch lives in the Belgian countryside with two horses, four dogs, and a husband who knows better than to distract her when she’s writing.

She grew up devouring her brother’s collection of sci-fi and fantasy novels, and her love of the written word in all its incarnations goes back further than her memories and knows no rivals, except the long-suffering husband, though coffee and shoes come pretty close.

Her work has appeared in Illumen Magazine, The Other Stories, and Quatrain Fish, among other places. Find out more about her at jasminearch.com, or connect with her on Twitter @Jaye_Arch.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines. Or if you’re looking for community from other F&SF writers, sign up for the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers Critclub!