Indipenned News

Writer, Beta Reader, Editor, Publisher, Supplier

A Year of Independence

14th February 2019
(Newsletter)

2018 saw the first anniversary of the launch of Indipenned. For those who are unaware of it, and there may be many, Indipenned is an online community of those involved in the publication of independently-written literature. It has been created to help authors, poets and publishers compete in an industry that has historically been dominated by the large publishing companies. We believe there are some great books being written outside the mass-marketed mainstream and want to let book lovers know about them.

Join the publishing revolution To an extent, Indipenned is a disrupter. It is working to transform the publishing industry to benefit those who are not creating literature on the basis of a preconceived notion of what will sell. We’re not saying the big publishing companies are doing anything wrong. Readers buy the books that they publish and many titles they buy are extremely popular. We believe there is also a place for those who see literature as more of an art form. We want to help those writers and publishers who are pushing the boundaries. In doing so, we hope to affect a change that turns the publishing industry into more of a meritocracy in which the prominence of literature correlates more to its cultural contribution and the emotion it generates.

This first year has been a journey. It has contained a few surprises. The first of these was probably the reluctance we encountered from some of those we asked to join us. Our proposition is simple. Authors and publishers list their books in our online bookshop and we promote them. We ask for nothing more than a little of their time. Indipenned only generates a fee when a book is sold and this fee is a lot lower than is charged elsewhere across the internet. The problem appeared to be one of trust. The internet is littered with stories of authors who have encountered unscrupulous services that prey on their passion to get their work noticed. Consequently, we set about convincing people this we do not operate in this way and that indeed we are the ‘good guys’. We are extremely grateful for those authors who joined us in the early days, as we believe this was instrumental in convincing others that we were in no way trying to scam them and building a greatcommunity of independent authors, We’re also grateful to all those who have followed us on social media and for every like, retweet and share they have given us.

Going forward, we would love more interactions with our website. The Indipenned platform allows its members to share their experiences by posting blogs and knowledge articles. We think this provides authors and others involved in publishing to help each other by building an online resource of what works along the publishing lifecycle, from the writing process to publishing and promoting.

More than anything we’d like to sell more books. We have had some success in this area in terms of both selling books through our online bookshop, which is exclusive to independent literature, and by referrals through to Amazon. It would be great if we could sell more books through our own bookshop, as this enhances our income, thus allowing us to make greater reinvestment in the promotion of our authors’ works.

The main learning point of the last year has not been a surprise. If Indipenned is to release its ambitions and make a real impact on the publishing industry, it requires greater investment. There has been reasonable organic growth in the period since our launch, however if we are honest with ourselves, we need to accelerate this. To this end, we recently set up a page on Patreon to allow those who believe in our vision to provide some financial support. In addition to this we have pulled together a business case to seek vendor funding. This is currently being refined before it is pitched to investors in the near future. Some of the most interesting information in this document is the size of the market for independent literature, which is estimated at GBP 5.5 billion per year worldwide. Hopefully, some savvy investors will take note of this and help us to make a real impact.

Happy new year. Let’s hope it’s one of real change.