I’m starting to think so, particularly after reading a rather pig-headed, anti-Indie gang forum the other day.  But don’t get me wrong, as I believe everyone is entitled to their own opinion, unless of course they look to revolt to make Amazon herd Indies into a chamber and gas them next, as was the impression I got in this case.

But I won’t let it get me down.  Because it seems that doing your homework is the best survival kit you can have.  Knowing your obstacles falls under this, and in a way I’m glad it’s not math.

Here’s what I learned so far that can greatly increase your survival chances:

1.  Know that not all Indies are writers fresh out of the box.  This is a very, very bad misconception.  The new ‘kid’ in the class is not always from another planet.  I receive a good dozen review requests a month from traditionally published, successful authors who recently got the rights back to their work and have just started on the Indie route.  To gas all Indies is taking unjust kill-shots at the pros.  (Pros in this case being often authors who have written multiple successful books over a decade or more.)

2.  How others look at you starts with how you look at yourself.  If you sell yourself cheap, then in combination with the latest Indie-stigma going around, you may to be herded into the wrong category.  A lot of people have started going out of their way to ignore Indies entirely, and I feel bad for them.  Yes, there are a lot of bad books (bad in this case being unedited, improperly formatted, etc…) but there are a lot of gems I have had the pleasure of reading, many of which might have remained invisible with the tight-choices that the bigger publishers have to make.  Put on your best clothes, straighten out your hair, pull your sagging pants up and get noticed.  And watch your manners!

3.  Don’t fight with the teachers!  Reviewers are just that, in a way, the eyes on our work that rate us.  Every teacher has their own taste.  Some will like how you work, some will fail you for no legitimate reason, but ultimately what it all comes down to is what they see and it can be an extremely educational way to improve your work to better cater to your audience.  If you don’t like it, go back to the box.  This one drives me nuts every time I hear from a fellow blogger that some jerk just assaulted their Twitter and email accounts because they are incapable of seeing the value of another person’s eyes and appreciate their time.  Bad, but constructive reviews are sometimes great reviews to other people.  I remember reading a 2 star review about a week ago that threw a barrage of darts at some of the book’s not widely-accepted themes, and I was left thinking I had to add such an intriguingly different book to my shelves.  And I did. 

4.  Choose your seat carefully.  Know what genre and age group you are writing in and where to set yourself up.  If you sit with your math book next to the horror section of the class, there’s a good chance you’re gonna get your butt handed to you when they beat you dead with your own book.  It’s a common thing to receive bad reviews from people who just don’t like your genre and can’t connect with your book as a result.  Be mindful of where you sit.

5.  Do your homework!  There is so much information on the web now about publishing and being lazy is no excuse.  If you’re self-publishing, stay up-to-date, as with how the Indie revolution has exploded the rules are changing constantly.  Don’t be carrying last-year’s textbook around with you unless you’re aiming to fail.

6.  Make friends with fellow writers.  They aren’t your competition, they are your buddies and there is so much to be learned from each other.  The internet bookshelf is insanely huge, and has become a share-attention sport to gain the lead.  If you’re fighting with fellow writers to claim your spot, you’ll be fighting for eternity and selling nothing.  Even traditionally published authors are encouraged to hang out with each other and learn something.  Readers are getting pickier, and while there are still impulse-buyers, more often than not your sales will come from people who see you on a few sites and then make the decision to try you out after carefully considering for a while.

7.  Eliminate the bullies before they get their kicks from tormenting you.  Bullies are nothing but bad breath and hot air when you simply hit the ignore button, and its all-too-common that their bad habit smacks them in the face eventually.  Most social sites now have means to erase a bullies’ digital presence from your life.  If you find yourself facing off with an extremist, report them to the police, as online harassment can get them ten years to be a jerk behind bars.  Many sites have policies and means to vaporize them as well.

8.  Stay organized.  Keep your friends, contacts, homework and info in order.  Chaos costs time, and if you’re Indie, you have no time to try and befriend chaos.

9.  Keep an open mind.  With how diverse and multi-cultural and skill-different the web of people is, you need to have an open mind to hear and adapt on the fly.  There aren’t two sides to a fence–but four.  The left, the right, the top and the underground.  All sides are needed to keep the fence upright, and overlooking one of more sides can cause problems or confusion.  An example of this are pirates.  Pirates are bad, yes–but why?  Income levels, accessibility, different country laws are just some of the barriers that make them what they are.  Learn the other sides to the story and adapt so you don’t get raided.

10.  Don’t give up!  Being popular isn’t everything.  Not every book can be a bestseller and more often than not, your first book or even second will get nowhere close.  Don’t get frustrated because your Indie book isn’t keeping up with the New York Times bestsellers.  Being Indie is a marathon.  Traditionally published is a sprint to win.  Practice and determination creates a perfect outcome, and/or the next best thing; doing what you love (and still being able to afford the cake).

Something ancient has awoken. Primordial and wholly evil, a living shadow emerges from a prison made weak by the magical cataclysm called The Black. Now the Sleeper stalks the land in search of its old enemies, leaving a trail of madness and destruction in its wake.

Eric Cross, a Southern Claw warlock, has been sent to find the Woman in the Ice, the only known means to stopping this evil. Aided by a grizzled ranger and a band of wardens and inmates from a sadistic prison, Cross’ mission will bring him into conflict with an array of foes: the barbaric Gorgoloth, vampire shock troops out of the Ebon Cities, and a cadre of mercenary nihilists called the Black Circle.

On a mission that will take him from a lost temple once ruled by insidious wolf sorcerers to the vicious gladiator games of the vampire city-state of Krul to the deadly ruins of an ice city, Cross will play a pivotal role in an ancient conflict whose outcome will determine the future of the world.

Return to the world of Blood Skies in this exciting military fantasy adventure!

The lacy gold mapped her entire body. A finely-wrought filigree of stars, vines, flowers, butterflies, ancient symbols and words ran from her feet, up her legs, over her narrow waist, spanned her chest and finished down her arms to the tips of her fingers.

Born into a life of secrets and service, Chrysabelle’s body bears the telltale marks of a comarré—a special race of humans bred to feed vampire nobility. When her patron is murdered, she becomes the prime suspect, which sends her running into the mortal world…and into the arms of Malkolm, an outcast vampire cursed to kill every being from whom he drinks.

Now Chrysabelle and Malkolm must work together to stop a plot to merge the mortal and supernatural worlds. If they fail, a chaos unlike anything anyone has ever seen will threaten to reign.

On the night of Skye’s seventeenth birthday, she meets two enigmatic strangers. Complete opposites—like fire and ice—Asher is dark and wild, while Devin is fair and aloof. Their sudden appearance sends Skye’s life into a tailspin. She has no idea what they want, or why they seem to follow her every move—only that their presence coincides with a flurry of strange events. Soon she begins to doubt not just the identity of the two boys, but also the truth about her own past.

In the dead of a bitingly cold Colorado winter, Skye finds herself coming to terms with the impossible secret that threatens to shatter her world. Torn between Asher, who she can’t help falling for, and Devin, who she can’t stay away from, the consequences of Skye’s choice will reach further than the three of them could ever imagine.

A Beautiful Dark is the first book in a captivating trilogy by debut author Jocelyn Davies.

The boy who follows death meets the girl who could cause the apocalypse.

Krishani thinks he’s doomed until he meets Kaliel, the one girl on the island of Avristar who isn’t afraid of him. She’s unlike the other girls, she swims with merfolk, talks to trees and blooms flowers with her touch. What he doesn’t know is that she’s a flame, one of nine individually hand crafted weapons, hidden in the body of a seemingly harmless girl.

Nobody has fallen in love with a flame until now. She becomes Krishani’s refuge from the dreams of death and the weather abilities he can’t control. Striking down thousand year old trees with lightning isn’t something he tries to do, it just happens. When the Ferryman dies, Krishani knows that he’s the next and that a lifetime of following death is his destiny.

And Kaliel can’t come with him. The Valtanyana are hunting the flames, the safest place for her is Avristar. Krishani can’t bear to leave her, and one innocent mistake grants the Valtanyana access to their mystical island. They’re coming for Kaliel, and they won’t stop until every last living creature on Avristar is dead. She has to choose, hide, face them, or awaken the flame and potentially destroy herself.

When Fate makes you her bitch, accept it and adapt. Or die.

The Niteclif Evolutions, Book 1

Looking back on the wish she made on Midsummer’s Eve, Maddy Niteclif should have been more specific. She only wanted to escape the shadowy nightmares that plagued her nights, not to be thrust into a completely altered reality.

If a strangely familiar, sexy dragon-shifter named Bahlin, who causes a never-to-be-mentioned-again fainting spell, isn’t enough to make her question her sanity, his insistence she’s the Niteclif ought to do the job. Prophesied super-sleuth of the supernatural world—a world that desperately needs her help—isn’t a job she’s remotely qualified for no matter what her family tree says.

Catapulted into a very different London ruled by dark mythology, mystery and murder, Maddy makes a few startling discoveries. Paranormal creatures exist. Getting shot really sucks. And her body responds remarkably well to dragon magic—in more ways than simple wound healing.

But in this kill-or-be-killed world, reality bites. And Maddy must choose to go back to what she knows…or stay and fight for the man she knows she can’t live without.

Warning: This book contains a shape-shifting dragon with a Scottish accent, modern and archaic weapons, global inter-species politics that make democracy seem mild, some very steamy sex underground, a severed head, murder, and…oh yeah…a woman caught in the middle of it all.

Today I learned a valuable lesson. That lesson being that it is indeed possible to receive bliss in the mail.  Although my mailman thinks I’m a complete and total crazy now (which is justifiable considering the circumstances of me practically stalking and nearly mugging him on several occasions) I have it!  Dragon Aster in the print!  And I might just lose my mind in excitement.

If I don’t kill my iPad camera for doing my excitement zero justice with its inability to see a perfect glossy finish!!!  *insert rage here!*

*breathes*

I’m okay now.  I have a proof to proof.  And so far everything looks in order.  Oh cheese…one of my kiddies has already stolen it!

This could take a while…  @@’

Lesson number two of the day: Just because you authored it, doesn’t mean your kids can’t steal it.

But by cheese can it take forever to squash a couple dozen layers in a huge image file.  I thought I would pin up what stands as the final cover for the print version of Dragon Aster: Book I.  If I stay on track and don’t get energy-zapped from anymore birthday parties powered by sugar, more sugar, and sugar after-effects in kids, I hope to have it available by the end of August.  I might make some last minute touch-ups, but I really have to lock the perfectionist bunny into an iron box…

I’m still upset about having to clip her ‘spiritual’ wing, and my kids already have a riot complete with a picket line set up behind my desk because of it, but I couldn’t make it fit.  And I really, really tried.  Le sigh…

*drops perfectionist bunny into deep Alaskan waters*

Slow down you two-headed freak!  You have a spelling error on you!

What can World of Warcraft teach you about writing?

That you can’t correct any and all spelling errors, everywhere.  And I don’t care if it’s this monster’s name, it’s still spelled wrong.

OUCH!!!

Even when he tries to bat me dead to convince me otherwise…

…until they make you bleed.  You have your warning, as this is a head-to-desk moment.

I’ve had a few people ask who did my cover and well, that be my screenshot here.  Brilliant me, I naturally didn’t count on the ‘bleed’ space needed for my forthcoming print version of Dragon Aster: Book I (that would be all those not-so-cool red lines around it all).  It’s gonna need to be rearranged and stretched which isn’t hard in itself, I just hate math.  Period.  If you ever make your own cover via Photoshop or another program, I leave to go back to drawing with some words of wisdom from someone learning it all from trial and error, also known as scratch.

1.  Always make your cover image insanely big.  Unless your machine is older then 3 years, you can’t make it too big.  If you look at mine in the above picture, you can see that I’m still cutting it way too close to visual pixels in the final work.  Cirrus and Sybl there are big enough in actual size to blanket my 13 inch laptop screen a few times.  The checkered canvas they are all roughly pasted on at the moment is 65 inches wide and 45 high.  Forget the screen–I could blanket my kids with this.

2.  Get the brightness bright right off the bat.  This saves kicking yourself in the future.  A good cover is bright.  If you accidently flatten all your layers permanently and it’s dull, a last-minute brightness touch-up might make glow what you don’t want to.

3.  Big fonts win.  With everything digital these days and online, small fonts mean you’re blindsided by potential customers.  Big fonts for the win.

4.  You can never have too many layers.  Seriously.  One for my dragon, one for her dress, one for Sybl, one for each of the lines of font…okay, you get the idea.

5.  A good scanner is your friend.  An old scanner will see you grow old and die before it.

6.  Have enough memory!  By cheese does my machine do the crawl thing when doing this.  On top of that, my hard drive is screaming at me.  I think it’s time to hand the laptop down to the kiddies and upgrade…

7.  And no, that is not my email beside that email icon.  <.< ‘  *jots down note to clean that out one day and maybe find more memory in doing such…*

For Dragon Aster: Book I

Sybl has endured the first years of being a teenager both unloved and forgotten. When an Awl takes her from Earth to the realm of Aster, she will discover a place where fantasy is the reality. A world of dragons. But that will not be all that she finds.

Still distraught from having lost his best friend, Cirrus has tried to move on with his life. His world is falling apart, and it is a fight the High Guard cannot win. All that remains is a Prophecy from the ghostly memories of those he loved. A Prophecy that a Fay would return to Aster, restoring the balance of life and death. For without her, his kind will side with the forces of war. An onslaught of destruction would follow, and he is a dragon tired of death.

When he finds Sybl, he takes it on himself to become her protector. Within her memories, she holds one from the friend he lost. She may be the last hope that the Prophecy has yet to come about. But he will have to outfly the shadows from his past first, for the demon who is after them does not fear a death it can weave.

Wake to a world tangled in the Threads of Fate.

Dream back the memories that can save it.

This one gives me a grey hair every time.  It’s the email I get that says “review my awesome book now!” but has no links.  No summary.  No cover.  No nothin.

I’m cool with getting Tweeted at (it’s in my guidelines) to get my attention, but my email is not my Twitter screen.  And if you Tweet at my personal Twitter name and not at Fantasy Cookie (@CookieFeeder) you’re doing it wrong and haven’t read my guidelines.  If you are not a first-time stranger, I don’t mind however.  If you refer to me as a male and/or make zero reference to Fantasy Cookie my first thought is SPAM.  Did I mention the grey hairs?  I’m not an agent and I can’t promise you fame, but help me out here by giving me some indication that you in the absolute least visited the site.

I also know then that you likely read one of my reviews and like my style.  That in turn allows me to give you my opinion without the fear of offending/doing it wrong in your eyes.  A lot of indies are super-sensitive to reviews, often because they are just starting out.  I respect that because I am one myself, though I have a thick skin from writing for ages and value the harshest of constructive reviews alongside the cheerier ones.  Let me see that you aren’t scared of me so I can connect better with you and your book.

BAD  Not responding in a timely manner.

I like my book blog to be fresh and although I’m still assembling future interviews and possible books tours, I like to be in contact with real people.  Spam doesn’t cut it.  Emailing me back after 2 months doesn’t work either.  I have a lot of other people who will happily reply to my emails “that’s cool with me” within a minute and that will always get you to the front of my attention.  Not a bot?  Your book just moved higher on my list.

REALLY BAD  A summary that makes my spellchecker crash.

Okay so you’re a little too-human and I can forgive you for that.  But your spelling just scared the cheese out of me and your book officially has me shaking.  I’m a writer as well and heaven knows I blindside a ton too, so sit on it and check it again in a while. I will often do this with my reviews as well and it helps to catch typos.

GOOD  “When you get around to it” requests.

I’m alright with you sending me your book and adding to your email “when you get the time.”  I actually love these requests, because it’s these ones I add to the shuffle of scifi/fantasy/romance/poetry/male/female/artist …okay you get the idea.  It is the perfect way to help me assemble variety.  But I’m also a bit of a webmaster and can identify a virus and then hunt you into a grave for trying to make me into your zombie.  Many book bloggers are not keen on codes.  Again, read their guidelines.  If it’s not mentioned, assume they don’t want your attachment.

GOOD  Prey on their weaknesses.

Every book blogger is a reader and every reader has a certain taste.  Find it.  Use it to your advantage.  I like dragons.  I like fantasy romance.  I like classy, stylish, never done…  Okay so I like most fantasy and science fiction by default.  Many book bloggers aren’t the same, however.  Don’t send them your dragons when they only read vampires.  It doesn’t end pretty.

GOOD  Help me hype you.

Blogging is a small business for many people.  Hype creates traffic.  Traffic creates customers and readers.  Customers and readers then spread like a wildfire through word of mouth and you then have yourself on a ton of shelves and rss feeds.  Bloggers often take an affiliate cut from the sellers.  Authors obviously get paid and you can see the money happening soon after.  There is one word to help you here: confidence.  Be proud of your work.  Understand that there are readers out there who will love your work.  Love yourself so that they can love you.  Help your book blogger by being a strong base of confidence that they can build on.

GOOD  A nudge/tweet/dm/email of a reminder.

Send me another email if you don’t get a timely response (within a week).  Sometimes I will mistake you for generalized spam or a bot and sometimes I just get a flood of emails that drown out everything.  Nudging me tells me you’re a real person and I will respond then.  But be mindful of doing this with other book bloggers.  Some are very picky and just don’t have any interest your book or wish to correspond.  Some have even less time.  Tweak your requests and improve your chances.

fridafantastic.wordpress.com and www.smreine.com have great lists as well, and you can see that every book blogger is different.  It’s a simple trick of learning what they like, what they don’t and working with it.  If you’re hunting down an agent or publishing deal, it’s also great practice.

Happy writing, reading and blogging!  ^ ^