Room To Grow!

It's a great big world for indie authors! 

According to Fast Company Magazine (May 2011), Amazon sells more ebooks than paper books.  Since arriving on the scene in November 2007, Kindle book sales have surpassed hardcover books sales, six months later, Kindle books then outsold paperback books. 

As mentioned in an Amazon annoucement, for every 100 print and paper books Amazon has sold, it has also sold 105 ebooks.  As stated by Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, Amazon customers are "choosing Kindle books more often than print books. We had high hopes that this would happen eventually, but we never imagined that it would happen this quickly".

Amazon buyers are buying Kindle books at a rate three times faster than paper books during the same period, representing a huge change in reading habits. 

Make sure you're putting your works out there, put yourself among the number of authors being read electronically!

Become a fear-less writer!

Self Publishing Superstar, Seth Godin, published an amazing blog entry today titled “Waiting for the fear to subside”.  Seth Godin has written 12 bestsellers that have been translated into 33 languages including “Poke the Box” and “Linchpin-Are You Indispensible”. 

According to Seth, there are two problems with the strategy of waiting for the fear to subside.  He states, “by the time the fear subsides, it will be too late. By the time you're not afraid of what you were planning to start/say/do, someone else will have already done it, it will already be said or it will be irrelevant”.  

Haven’t you ever read an article or release about an upcoming title and said to yourself “Hey, that was my idea!” or thought that you could have done a better job with the subject?  Well, why don’t you just do it?  Now?  Are we afraid, as Seth says that something might happen?  Something good? 

Seth states that the “fear certainly helps you do it better. The fear-less one might sleep better, but sleeping well doesn't always lead to your best work. The fear can be your compass; it can set you on the right path and actually improve the quality of what you do”.  Fear can serve as a catalyst to the independent writer.  A motivator to move us in the right direction, fear as a motivator can force us to make our own publishing dream an independently published reality.

Lastly, Seth urges us to listen to our fear but do not obey it.  I say we go one better, we kick fear to the curb.  Oh, believe me, it will stick its head up repeatedly, but we will have to fight it back every time.

That is the “blessing” in being an independent writer, as we are willing to “go it on our own”, we give the boot to the fear of “oh, no one will like it, “ or “there’s no market for this type of work” or the whole mess of negativity that has previously kept us from publishing our life’s work. 

Become a fear-less writer! Fearlessly send your work out into the world! Stay Independent!