Sramana: Do you maintain blogs as use those as a strategy for promoting your writing? Bella Andre: I do not blog at all. I don’t think I am very good at it and I would rather spend the time interacting on Facebook. Jasinda Wilder: I don’t blog either. Sramana: Let’s talk about the publishing industry
Sramana: Another strategy that I have noticed appears in all of your success stories is the presence of series and interconnected stories. Are there other strategies that we have not discussed yet that you think are good secrets to your success? Hugh Howey: I can throw in a couple of things. First of all there
Sramana: Hugh, in your case is Amazon’s algorithmic promotion driving the bulk of your following? Hugh Howey: I would say that my following has driven Amazon’s algorithms to drive my book to new people. It has to start with a readership which is word of mouth. One person has to read something they love, and
Sramana: Bella, it sounds like your book release schedule is almost like soap opera seasons. Bella Andre: In a way it is. My books don’t have cliffhangers, but I would call them family sagas. That is a pretty good description of what I did with the Sullivans. My readers know there are eight siblings, so
Sramana: Hugh, let’s go over your background. What is your story? Hugh Howey I had one book out with a small publisher and learned about self-publishing by watching a small press publish my book. They were using print-on-demand technology to create space and they were uploading to e-book distributors like KDP. The reason that Jasinda
Sramana: When did you start this self-publishing adventure? Jasinda Wilder: We started writing under this pen name a year ago. We started self-publishing in April of 2012. We started with our poetry collection that my husband and I had just to test the waters and see how easy it would be to get the manuscript
In 2008 I wrote an article for Forbes, How Amazon Could Change Publishing, talking about the drastic need for disruption in the book publishing industry. Since then a growing number of authors have turned to indie publishing platforms such as Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) to launch their businesses. Today indie authors are becoming brands