In my last post, I wondered about the big speculative fiction awards and what it means that their “best novel” awards tilt so heavily to those sold by established publishing companies. Some of the short-listed novels this year were indie-published, though–that is, they were published by very small presses or by the author herself.
In the past, indie-published novels–and especially self-published novels–were sneered at. A writer who self-published a novel would be pitied or scorned as a victim of vanity publishing–taken advantage of by predatory “publishing” companies that printed a book cheaply, charged a fortune to the naive writer, forced the writer to buy a lot of copies, and dumped them on her with no editorial or marketing services.
Scams of this type still exist, along with many other scammy, scummy publishing practices. Have you ever thought of writing your own fantasy or SF? Make sure you get to know this well-respected site that helps writers avoid traps for the unwary: Writer Beware, an invaluable service to writers everywhere, sponsored by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association.
But in the past few decades, many writers have escaped the bounds of traditional publishing. This trend comes as traditional publishing companies have increasingly fallen under the control of conglomerates whose main focus is not books; as these conglomerates have consolidated so that now there are only four or five big traditional publishers, with a corresponding shrinkage of their lists; as the conglomerates have focused increasingly on safe bets like known writers, or writers with big existing platforms (huge numbers of social media followers, for example), and celebrity writers; as the conglomerates have increasingly cut their marketing budgets for all but a few superstar performers. It’s pretty similar to what has happened in the recording industry. As a result, a lot of writers have struck out on their own, with mixed results for most. If the writer is not adept at marketing, her work tends to go unnoticed by readers. And every writer could use an editor! (Well, maybe not Shakespeare. His admirers enthused, “Shakespeare never blotted a line!” To which his colleague Ben Jonson snidely remarked, “Would he had blotted a thousand”–I guess Ben thought even the immortal Will could have used an editor.) All of the tasks of marketing and vetting fall to the writer herself, and that does not work out well for many. On the other hand, many indie-published writers do well, to the great benefit of readers.
FOR YOU, the READER–how do you discover indie-published books you’d like to read? There are ways to do that. Here are just a few speculative fiction indie-published resources:
Blogs by book lovers–a great resource! Here’s a list of one blogger’s top ten indie faves in 2024. Here’s another blogger’s take. And another, this one focusing on fantasy. I should publish my own list!
Commercial sites for book-lovers publish lists of this type. For example, the Amazon-owned site Goodreads publishes this one for SF readers.
Booksellers themselves: My new favorite bookseller platform, Bookshop.org, publishes lists like this, and other sites do as well (Amazon, Barnes&Noble, etc.)
Your friendly librarian. I can’t stress this enough. Librarians know their stuff, and they are trained to find stuff out.
This blog presents a useful list of small presses that publish speculative fiction.
Big review sites like Kirkus Reviews publish lists of indie fantasy and SF. Here’s one.
There are sites helping indie authors promote their books, such as this one for SF.
Finally: more DYI attempts within a short timeframe, such as this SF and fantasy book sale happening right now. Full disclosure, shameless self-promotion: I’m in this one! So are a lot of other people, though, so take a look.
Fantastes 
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