Indie Author From a Part-time Point of View

Writing has always been a hobby for me, even from the time I was very, very young. Coming up with a fiction tale of nonsense has always been both fun and easy for me. Writing, for me at least, is a form of de-stressing.

For as long as I can remember, I've always come up with sometimes absurd storylines in my own mind simply to amuse myself, especially when bored. It wasn't until I started taking time to actually write them down and type them up that I realized just how much it helped me to let go of stress, even if only for a little while. I had been putting my plots down on paper for years before I talked to my mom and sister and we took the leap to start self publishing. At the time, I thought, oh, this will be easy. I've already got a stock pile of stories already written. Sandy is an amazing artist/graphic designer, and Mama understands finances in a way I never will. Foolishly enough, I honestly believed that would make it all too easy to indie author as a part time job.

Let's be honest. There is no way to function part time when you're an indie author. It takes a lot of work, a lot of work that I had not anticipated. There's the hurtle of building a social platform. This takes time, consistency, and commitment. For someone who did not participate in any form of social media before, it has been a shock to the system to say the least.

Obviously, I blog now on a weekly basis. Sometimes I wake up on Saturday mornings and still have no earthly clue what I'm going to blog about. I'm not someone who openly shares, or I wasn't until I started blogging. Coming up with something new to talk about on a weekly basis that somehow relates back to your writing is hard. How many times can you tell someone about the same book? Eventually I learned that the blogs didn't strictly have to relate back to my writing. You want to as often as possible, but if you have to branch out, it won't be the end of the world.

Pinterest is another time consuming one. It isn't hard, by any means, but it takes time to fill a board. You want to have as many pertinent boards as you can. This isn't my personal Pinterest account (Yarbrough House Publishing Inc.), so it's not somewhere I would put recipes I'd like to try. There needs to be a relevancy to what is added. I do think it could be very useful for parents and teachers, though. We have a board labeled Book Activities. This is a board where I have pinned activities I have run across that would pair nicely with one of our children's books or could be adapted easily to accompany them. I took this one step further by creating sections within the board for each of our children's books that have come out or will come out next. You've got the name of the book and a myriad of activities to choose from. This is work already done for you, and with a teacher's busy schedule, that is always a welcome thing.

Facebook, wow. What can I say about Facebook? I know there is nothing new about Facebook, but when you've never used it before, it is a bit overwhelming. Yes, I'm thirty-seven and never used Facebook. Don't judge. There are lots of teachers who have followed the same abstinence. Sometimes having that distance is the best approach for a teacher to remain professional. An indie author, on the other hand, needs that social presence big time. My mother, sister, and I all have lives, jobs, clubs we're involved in, responsibilities, and other expectations on our time. It isn't easy to keep Facebook up to date with recent posts. We are going to try to do better with this in the coming year. We will highlight a book of the month, and once a week I will post something about the featured book. You may learn something you never knew about us or the books, so be sure to check us out on Facebook. (Elizabeth Lee Sorrell Author)

We've recently picked up LinkedIn as well. This too is under my name Elizabeth Lee Sorrell, yet I'm still not sure exactly what I'm doing or rather what I'm supposed to be doing. Make connections. Check. Now what? For those of you who don't know me, I am extremely shy (something else that makes self publishing difficult). Because I'm so shy, I'm not a real social person. I have two very dear friends at work who because I was so quiet my first year, one thought I was stuck up and the other thought I hated her. We can look back on it now and laugh, but through first impressions, I came across as someone very different from who I really am.

I want to sidetrack on the shyness a minute if you'll allow it. Can you imagine a shy self promoter? Exactly, I'm still working on trying to become that person. You're either a stranger, and it takes unimaginable courage for me just to say hello, or you're a friend except bragging still goes against the grain for me. Yes, I said bragging, because no matter how hard I try, that is still what self promotion feels like to me. Are you beginning to get the picture why I went into education and not business?

Then there's the newsletter. I know; I know. It's only once a quarter. Complain much? However, since it is done less frequently, it is a routine that is sometimes hard to remember. If you're not on the list for our newsletter, you can go to our website to sign up. (www.ElizabethLeeSorrell.com) The newsletter isn't hard. You write very short articles on what you've done over the last quarter and what you plan to do over the coming quarter.

That's when you realized you probably aren't doing enough, but it is hard when this was supposed to be a part-time job for all of you. I am a teacher, which crosses visiting schools off my list, and it's hard to visit libraries for the same reason. Participating in craft fairs takes a lot of planning and preparation. Sandy homeschools, and Mama serves as secretary for several different organizations. There is just a lot going on, so when do you find time to build a social platform and get your books out there?

Finding reviews isn't any easier. Have you ever looked around to see how much people want to charge to do a book review? I saw one site where $97 was the cheapest, and my jaw dropped. Really? These people get a free book and write a review like the ones you did all the way through school. How long can a review actually take? Personally, I love reading, so a free book would be incentive enough for me. It makes you wonder. If these people don't love reading, what kind of professional review can they possibly give?

All this is a very drawn out way to say that self publishing is a full time job. It doesn't matter that you already have a full time job or why you got into it in the first place. Until it becomes a full time job for you, you're basically at a stand still.