Why I Decided to Indie Publish My Novel
If you follow me on social media, you may have seen a little while back that I officially decided to become an indie author and am releasing my debut women’s fiction novel early next year! This was a huge decision for me, and one that took a long time to make. Even though I’d been considering this option for a while, it was one that came with a lot of practical and emotional considerations, and I wanted to be certain before taking the leap.
With that in mind, I thought it might be useful to go through my own thought process when it came to this decision. To be clear, I’m fully supportive of traditional and indie publishing options—each have their own pros and cons, and the only person who knows which path is right for you is you. This is simply my own experience and my own thoughts. But as I was making this decision, I found it helpful to get the input of other authors who’d traveled both paths, so this is me putting my own experience out there for others.
The women’s fiction novel I’m publishing, The Serendipity of Catastrophe, started as my NaNo project in 2015. I set it aside for a little while after that to finish up the manuscript I’d been working on before that, but then came back to it, fleshed out the story, and put it through multiple rounds of critique partners, workshops, and my own revisions. I queried traditional agents in 2019 and 2020, but after three full requests that ultimately passed, I decided to pause querying and hired my own developmental editor to help me strengthen the story further. After working through her suggestions, I began querying again. But the post-pandemic querying world seemed to be even tougher than pre-pandemic, and I just didn’t gain the traction I’d hoped for even though I was confident in the story. The harsh truth about traditional publishing is that sometimes it’s simply about querying the right agent/publisher at the right time, and even if your story and writing are strong, if it’s not what traditional publishers think the market is looking for in that moment, they won’t bite.
Even as I started sending out my second round of queries, I was beginning to consider indie publishing. In my work as an editor and book coach, I’ve worked with and connected with a lot of amazing indie authors, and I love the creative control that publishing their books themselves gave them. I’ve seen indie books that are just as high quality both in terms of writing and packaging as traditionally published books. But I decided to follow through with my querying and keep chewing on my options in the back of my mind.
At the beginning of 2023, I sat down to make my goals for the year, and one of those was to decide on a direction for The Serendipity of Catastrophe and take action. I realized even back in January that my inaction was likely a symptom of fear. Deep down, I think I knew that I wanted to stop querying and indie publish. But querying felt safer. Yes, there was a lot of rejection or simply no responses. But I’d learned to accept the rejection. This wasn’t the first manuscript I’d queried—the one I queried previously just simply wasn’t ready, and I knew that. But despite the rejection, the querying process felt like a tried-and-true method to shield me from my ultimate fear: failure as an author. If an agent didn’t feel my manuscript was yet worthy of publishing, then clearly it wasn’t. But if an agent happened to offer representation, then I imagined that moment would feel like the most encouraging and validating experience for my writer self.
But remember what I just said about traditional publishing involving a large element of “right time, right place?” Exactly. Just because an agent didn’t offer representation, that didn’t mean that my story wasn’t good or worthy of becoming a published book. And on the flip side, just because an agent offered representation didn’t automatically mean my book would even be published—we’d still need to go through this entire process again to submit to actual publishers. (If you don’t already know yet, traditional publishing is slow.)
And the other piece, the piece that really tipped the scale for me, was that I’d been hearing so many traditionally published authors sharing their own experience that signing with an agent or even signing with a publishing house didn’t bring the validation in themselves as a writer they’d expected or hoped for. That they still suffered with imposter syndrome. They still doubted their abilities. Signing with an agent didn’t change that.
Of course, with my background in mental health counseling, that shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. I know that validation isn’t external. If you don’t feel validated as a writer, if you don’t have faith in your own abilities, then no matter who else might tell you you’re good, it won’t make a difference in how you feel about yourself. And as a book coach, this is exactly the type of thing I help my clients work through. But knowing that didn’t change the fact that I’d still been holding out some hope that an agent and publisher would come along and tell me, yes, you’re a good writer, and we fully believe your book is worthy of the cost to publish it.
Ultimately, this decision came down to finally believing in myself and jumping in despite my fear. It came down to recognizing that whichever path to publishing I pursued, it was going to be hard. The success of my book was still going to fall largely on my shoulders—even with traditional publishers these days, authors are expected to do a lot of their own marketing. Even with traditional publishers, it’s rare for a debut novel to earn out its advance. If I didn’t have enough faith in my manuscript and myself as a writer to believe it was worthy of publication, why did it matter if anyone else did? I had to come to terms with the fact that no matter how my book is published, it’s still going to feel scary. It’s still going to feel like I’m putting a giant piece of myself out there for the world to judge and hoping for more positive reviews than negative. I had to redefine my version of success and recognize that while I’d been dreaming of a traditional publishing deal, publishing has changed significantly in the last 20+ years and it’s possible that indie publishing can actually offer me more of what feels like success to me than traditional publishing can.
The second biggest factor in my decision came down to creative control. With traditional publishing, I would give up a lot of the control over the publication of my story. My cover would ultimately be the cover my publisher thought would be the best fit. The title of my story could be changed. I might work with an editor who had a different vision for my story than I did. And here’s the thing: publishing houses have the final say in a lot of these things because they are pros at selling books. They have a good idea of what will sell and what likely won’t. This is not to diminish their expertise at all or try to say I know better. But thanks to the internet and amazing freelance publishing professionals, I have the ability to create a team of professionals who I know understand my vision for my book and who can help me create that. With indie publishing, I know the book I put out will be one I’m proud of and the one I envisioned rather than holding a book with a cover or title or anything else that doesn’t feel authentic to me.
At the end of the day, my reason for writing and wanting to publish a book goes beyond simply making money. Of course I want to sell books, but it’s more important to me that I write a story I’m proud of and believe in and that I have the opportunity to share that story with others. I write because I love writing and I can’t imagine not writing. I’m beyond excited to finally be publishing my debut novel, but I would be lying if I said I’m not also incredibly scared. But here’s the thing about fear: it only has as much power over us as we give it. I could continue to keep this story in a file on my computer, or I could jump in despite the fear and finally make my dream of publishing a book a reality.
If this resonated with you or you have your own publishing journey to share, I’d love to hear about it! Comment below or email me.
