People Want To Know

First off, I’ve written and deleted about 9 posts on what happened here in Boston on Monday and my love and disgust for different reactions from my fellow writers. For me, it became important to just delete those drafts and get back to the week as “normal” even as continued reports roll in.

Thanks to everyone who sent their best wishes.

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NOW, back to our regular scheduled blog post!

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People are starving for information about entry-level Indie publishing. They’re looking for help and opinions and a calm head. They’re looking for people other than the Cult Figures to maybe give a bit of a more rounded view. They’re looking for people at their same level to tell them what’s going on down here.

How do I know this? I know it through my hits and blog follows and retweets and the occasional “I don’t read romance, but your blog/tweets ABCd for me so I bought it. Thank you.”

No. Thank you!

Let’s be honest. I’m nobody important. I’ve written a couple shorts the do fairly well. I have a category length coming out this summer. I have a Super Secret 3-Book Project I’m amazingly excited to share about. But, really – that’s nothing. Not in the world of Indie publishing.

People aren’t coming to my blog/tweets/etc because of my books. They’re coming (lately) because I’ve been posting about what I’m seeing and what I’m learning. They’re coming because they’re looking for like-minded writers who aren’t trying to sell them a process or a gimmick or an idea. They’re coming because the NOISE out there is getting to be too much.

People want to know not what to think, but what to think about.

They want more than the “publish a lot, price low” or whatever your specific mantra is. They want to know about the business of publishing and what it means to them.

It’s great what it means to the Cult Figures… or even what it means to me. But people need the info to know to be able to stop and think, “What does this mean to me? How should I think about putting my books out? What are other people at my level doing?”

Honestly, let’s say I did make it to CF levels? By the time I get there, EVERYTHING will have changed anyway. To say, this is how it’s done in such a fast-moving environment is insane.

To say: This is how I did it this time makes far more sense.

Yes, it’s hard. Yes, research is ongoing. But, luckily, we also live in a world where it’s easier to get information.

And that’s were all these hits and tweets and emails come in —  People want it. They want to know more than what’s going on at the Best Selling Level. They want to know how to get there now, not what worked 2 years ago to get people there now.

So, share your thoughts! What’s your personal best practice? What’s the top 1 or 2 things a first timer should be doing now?

~~Caitie~~