Value Added - Tools for Alternative Publishing
by Cindy Layton
I came across a blog post written by Emily Wenstrom, an author who had just published with a small press. She analyzed the risk/reward and researched the publisher to her satisfaction before agreeing to terms. Now she’s ready to give advice to other would-be small press authors.
“the biggest lesson I have to share is that there is no better way to learn for yourself than to get out there and try things.
Write. Publish. Promote. Experiment. Do it all over again.”
Her take away is, basically, nobody knows what they’re doing, they just go out and do it. They figure it out. That includes the gamut of publishing tasks: marketing, design, editing, promotion, etc. There’s been a whole industry developed to cater to alternative publishing, and the technology has dramatically improved the ease of use and affordability factors.
On the other hand, negativity associated with alternative publishing persists. It’s still the wild west or the next galaxy on the horizon, depending on your genre preference. There are risks associated with aligning yourself with entities that are not vetted and have little to no history. Plus, the stigma’s been a hard thing to erase. Although genre fiction has done well, others have had a tougher time breaking the barrier.
But anyone who knows anything about publishing will tell aspiring authors that mainstream publishers offer fewer support services in house and push more of the tasks on to the author, decreasing the payoff of giving control to them.
So, if you’re considering self-publishing or going with an independent or small press, aside from the obvious vetting and research, the tools listed below have gotten good user reviews and may help with the process. Some even have a value-added feature that may protect your interests and assets:
The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) –The Alliance provides advice to self-publishing authors and their Watch Dog Desk acts as a monitoring service to its members. Here you’ll find a ratings list of the Best and Worst Self-Publishing Services plus a handy Rating of Awards and Contests.
According to the website, “Ratings are based on careful appraisals of multiple criteria, including pricing and value, quality of service, contract terms and rights, transparency, accountability, and customer satisfaction.”
reedsy brings authors together with editors, designers and marketers. Their value-added feature requires freelancers who want to list their service on the reedsy platform to be vetted and approved through an application and must be qualified to meet the reedsy standards. The site is also chock full of writing tools including free online classes and webinars and this extensive list of book marketing ideas.
Derek Haines wrote this blog post featuring links to seven free tools for self-publishing authors, including: GIMP, an alternative to the very expensive Photoshop software, Canva, software that provides templates, images, and other creative tools to design blogs, book covers, and social media posts, to name a few, and a Google Keyword Suggest tool. Did I mention these are all free?
And, finally, PickFU is a software tool that provides instant feedback on any variety of choice-driven options. For $20 an author could have fifty respondents choose between two versions of a book cover. The added value here is that respondents are required to give insight into their choices. Other, higher priced options, exist for a larger sample size and target driven polling.
So many of these resources look promising enough to go on my list for future reference but, like anything, they’ll all require a bit of hands on testing to prove their worth.
