It’s my one year anniversary as an indie writer. November 14, 2011 was the day I put The Unofficial Zack Warren Fan Club online for the world to see. It was on a whim, and I didn’t think anything would come of it. I wasn’t one of the people who set out to be an indie writer. I had no hopes for any kind of career, and to be honest, I had no idea people did this for a living.

The only thing I knew: I had a book, I thought it was good, and other people might like it. 

I was in for a wild ride over the next twelve months that I never, ever, in my wildest dreams would have imagined.

My mother has a friend. He told my mom to tell me I should try self-publishing. So, I put Zack Warren up and forgot about it. I just left it. It was on Amazon with it’s little blue and pink cover. I made that sucker on PowerPoint, and I thought I’d be lucky if one person read it. 

Fast forward a couple months later….

I was at home, surfing the Internet. I read an article about a girl that was now making a good living putting her books up on Amazon, and I remembered I had a book, and maybe I should check on it. I may have sold a couple copies. So after trying to remember the password to KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing), I hadn’t logged in since I put up the book, I eventually found my way to the page detailing how many books I’d sold.

Over 500.

I was in shock.

I stared at the computer screen for a few minutes, trying to make sense of things.

“Oh, that must be views….my page has been viewed that many times….”

After convincing myself that I was seeing things, dreaming, or that I somehow had magically logged into another person’s KDP with my email–I mean, what are the odds of that?–I realized that I’d actually sold 500 copies of a book that I thought would never get any kind of recognition whatsoever.

So I screamed, scared the dog poo out of the cat, called my mother at work, who thought I was having some sort of crisis, and then proceeded to call and message anyone willing to listen. I’m not sure who was on the receiving end of my excitement, but no one was safe. Not even the mailman.

At one point I remember staring at my phone,  bummed that I’d run out of people to call.

And my journey as an indie author started. I had no plan. No formula. Nothing. This wasn’t something I set out to do. I still thought the only way to have a career as a writer was to get an agent and muddle through it like the rest of them. After all, I wanted to be legit. I thought that I wasn’t a real novelist or author until there was a publisher who told me I was.

Hell, I was half sure there was a ceremony with a little diploma stating you are a real author!

But no.

No one can tell you if you are an author or not. I think it’s something you earn as people buy your books.

If you’ve penned anything at all that resembles a book, you’re an author, just not a professional one.

(I could argue the professional side too. Most of the time I’m writing in my jammies, not a suit and heels. I don’t go to board meetings or young professionals groups, and I’ve never been late to my job as an author. Yeah, I could argue both sides till I was blue in the face, but we’d be here all day.)

Knowing that I had potentially stumbled onto something, since my book was selling, but not quite sure what it was, I held on for dear life, hoping the choices I made were the right ones. But there really is no right or wrong, just what works. If it works, great! If it doesn’t, you hop on the next idea train.

The only idea I had at that point was Google.

I read blogs and articles and kindle books, all about indie writing and self-publishing. I was like a newborn. I had no idea what I was doing. No marketing, no twitter. NOTHING. All I knew how to do was sit at the computer and make up fun stories.

I’m going to tell you right now, half of everything I ended up with, I got from sheer dumb luck. That’s all. I’ve put work into it, yes. In the beginning though, I had no business plan. I had no idea what I was doing. I just thought something looked good and went with it! There are authors who have gone into what I do with research and planning, carefully, meticulously. they have marketing plans and ideas to gain readers….I had none of that, and I’m doing okay. So if can do it, I think anyone can.

The key is being able to write.

If you can do that, and keep writing things people like to read, then I don’t see how you could fail.

So that’s it for this blog post. In my next, I’ll talk about something a little more meaty.

Like steak!

Just kidding.

In my next one I’ll delve a little deeper into life as an indie author, and exactly what I do.