Perceptions

Good morning, Self!
This morning I would like to address the public's perceptions of Indie authors. As a culture, we have grown demanding in the quality of the things we consume in our lives, and our reading material is no exception. We have become accustomed to the publishing industry's control over everything that falls under our eyes and while that could be a good thing, it's not. The Bigtime Publishers have so molded the minds of America that unless something we read has that stamp of approval from a publishing house, we aren't interested.

I admit that it's nice to know that what we pick up to read will be relatively free of typos, and that it will follow the path of the novels we have read in the past. But that can be stifling for a writer. How many times can a writer receive a folder from his publisher, demanding changes in a manuscript, before the story he wrote no longer resembles the story that formed in his mind. After some bored, overworked worker-bee in a cubicle has finished with the writer's work, it comes to look, smell and taste like every other book that sits on the shelves of innumerable bookstores across the country.

The publishing houses are interested in books that can turn a profit for them right away. I admit that if they don't show a profit, they can't continue to exist, but how many times have you picked up a book and begun to read it, only to find that the premise, the characters, the storyline and the situations are exactly like the book you read last week by another author? Publishers produce what sells at the time. If a book about a mentally crippled detective sells this week, another in the same vein will sell next week. That's the way they look at publishing.

The award winning authors who break the mold and are publicly promoted by big publishing houses have mostly spent their time in the hellish limbo of writing what the publisher wants for several years until they have become popular enough to demand and receive a free hand in what they write. Only then do they become the authors that the public recognizes as innovators who can, and do, deliver stories that the public finds intriguing.

Enter the Indie author. He, or she, doesn't have the constraints of the publishing houses hanging over his head and he writes what he wants. The work produced by Indie authors may not be as polished, though we try very hard, as that produced by a publishing house, but in it, you will find all the ideas, characters and storylines that big publishers won't take a chance on.

Having said all that, I will only add that I urge you all to take a chance on an Indie author. You might be pleasantly surprised.

Derek A. Murphy
Author of Gulf of the Plains and others.
Available on Kindle