In honor of the first ever national Indie Author Day, the Clara B. Mounce Public Library joined 300 libraries across the U.S. to celebrate and inform the public on indie writing.
This event allowed indie writers to get their books out and for the public to understand what indie writing is, how it is published and where to find them.
“Indie authors publish their own work instead of going through a traditional publishing process,” freelance editor and president elect of Brazos Writers, Sharon Roe, said. “As future president of Brazos Writers, it’s important to build relationships with the community and find opportunities for our published authors to sell their work.”
The Clara B. Mounce Public Library hosted indie published writers and editors with the help of the local organization Brazos Writers. This allowed the library to host local authors who got the chance to sell their books to the community and to meet other authors in the area.
“[Organizing this program] was a long process,” program organizer and librarian of the Mounce Library, Peggy Noynaert said. “I started off by talking to the local Brazos Writers organization and then from there we did some advertising and by word of mouth.This is the first time we did a program with [Brazos Writers]. They have been in our community for a very long time. This was a chance to connect with a national event. It was a logical place to start.”
This program allowed local authors got to talk to the community about the process of publishing indie books, to one another and the library to build connections and discuss having local books on the shelves.
“The public library, being a branch of the city of Bryan, means that our budget is limited to purchasing from what is called a jobber,” Noynaert said. “Indie authors don’t always get to be there, so it’s hard to find them.I wanted the readers to understand that bookstores and libraries, to a great extent, are at the mercy of what we call the ‘big 5’ – the 5 major book publishers in the US who don’t carry indie books.”
According to Roe, the freelance editing panel featured herself and two others who talked about finding editors, what the process is like and prices. Some of the authors do everything on their own, while others go through hybrid publishing houses which can either format the book with no promotions or do both.
“Indie writing is me being responsible for the entire project from writing, to finding someone to edit and making the book cover, to marketing, to formatting and publishing,” Brazos Writers Treasurer and future President-elect Greg Sparks said. “I can’t blame anyone else when something doesn’t go right, or I don’t have any sales. It is all on me. I enjoy writing and hope I can entertain people with a good story.”
Since these authors are not published by a large print houses, it can be difficult to find indie books according to Noynaert.
“We would like to get the public interested in meeting our local authors and finding some real gems out there that just don’t happen to be published by [the large print houses],” said Noynaert. “We did not have any representatives of graphic novels authors, so i’m certainly looking for anyone who has been published as a graphic novelist.”
This program allowed the local writers to come under the spotlight to display their works and meet new people that share the same interests.
“I took the opportunity at the library for exposure.I have published four books–three fiction books and one non-fiction book. I released my fourth book on Saturday the 8th to correspond with National Indie Author Day,” Sparks said. “[The event] was well represented by several authors with different genres. It was a pleasure to meet the people coming in to look around as well as the authors. It was fun. I have several stories in my head now that are waiting to get out.”