What Readers Don’t See: The Emotional Life of an Indie Author

Have you ever been reading a book and paused to think about what it was like to write it? To edit it? To have it published? If you had to take a guess as to how many hours it took the author to get this book into your hands, how many would you guess? Writing a book and reading a book are two very different things. Reading is a beautifully wonderful pastime. It can allow your mind to escape into realms filled with knights and castles, pirates and vikings, futuristic cities and cars. But it can also expand your mind, challenging you to wrestle with foreign ideas and concepts, teaching you talents and skills that can change your life. Writing is an entirely different ballgame. You see, when writing a story, you have to connect all the dots. You have to create everything! Every character, description, location, the entire world in which these characters live. And then, the story beneath the story. The themes, morals, life lessons, things that are happening in the background, or “off the page”, away from the reader's attention. But what does the art of writing actually cost the indie author? It’s probably a lot more than the average reader realizes, but it's also a system that makes reading independent, self published authors more worthwhile.

Counting the Costs

The first thing it costs an indie author is time. LOTS of time. The indie author has to create an entire world and spread it across a blank canvas, and connect it all together in a way that feels cohesive but also tells a story, and goes in an expected (or unexpected) direction. But writing it isn’t all. There’s editing, proofreading, revisions, marketing, cover design, book blurbs, social media promos, and so much more. And each of these things costs either time or money. And in some cases, it requires both of these things. Some indie authors chose to tackle the expenses themselves, bringing down the overall budget. This means they have to put in extra time to do all these things. Some authors will outsource some of this. It still takes time, just not their time. These options have their own price tags and they’re typically pretty expensive. What’s more? Indie authors are usually not full time writers. They usually have full time jobs elsewhere, with spouses and children or other obligations and responsibilities. Writing happens in the background for most of these authors.

But time isn’t the only cost. It also costs a lot of heart. Indie authors (and all writers in general) pour so much of themselves into their work. It’s a combination of the media they’ve been inspired by (artwork, books, music, gaming, films, poetry, etc) , real life experiences (hard times they’ve overcome, difficult things they’ve gone through, experiences that make us all human) , deep dive studies, and so much more! The characters authors create often “come to life” and do things they never expected to write in the first place. I’ve had this happen, and I’ve spoken to dozens of indie authors who have similar stories.

Then there’s the decision to self publish vs. traditionally publish. Most readers probably assume it’s all about control. I’m not writing this to argue against that. It’s an important factor in the decision making process. But it's equally difficult to decide to turn over your creation that you’ve worked so hard on and spent so much time with to a person who is bound to chop it up and change it. It leaves most authors wondering “Will this be the same book?” Self publishing gives us that freedom, yes, but it also leads us into deeper waters that often leaves us isolated.

The brutality of discovery is real and heartbreaking! There’s a system built against us. We enter into an oversaturated market riddled with AI generated content. We face challenges such as reviews being removed for reasons unknown, algorithms that push us to the bottom and favor bigger, traditionally published works, and worse: Readers who toss accusations your way (You wrote this using AI!) even when you didn’t. The decision to hit publish often comes with several deep layers of fear. Most of that fear can be found in this very paragraph.

Why it's worth it

If you’re reading this as an Indie author, this is your silver lining! And if you’re reading this as an avid reader, then here’s the list of reasons why us Indie authors pour so much into our stories.

● The stories get told!

● Connections are made: even if they are small in number

● Networking happens naturally

● We keep the freedom of creative control

● Our book's quality is as good as we make it: the more we study the craft, the more well read we become, the more we write, the better it all becomes.

And this is what makes Hidden Voices so special. Hidden Voices gives us Indie authors a place to share our stories. A place to be seen, to be heard, to communicate with one another. It’s a place of encouragement for authors, and a great resource for readers looking for the next exciting read.