So, as part of my master’s, I delved into the world of Post-Apocalyptic indie authors. As you probably guessed from the title, the results weren’t exactly glowing for current industry trends. This essay did okay, not as great as the Romanticism one, only getting a 2.
If you’ve an interest in writing a Post-Apocalyptic indie novel, and want to learn about the current state of the market, read on.
Uniform Independence – How Indie Authors Toe the Line
Publishing has changed drastically in the past decade, with independent authors able to break away from the big publishing houses to write the stories they want while interacting with and selling directly to their audiences. But, as with any period of rapid change, the bad must be taken with the good, and the unintended consequences of these rapid changes are often late to reveal themselves. Due to the hyperconnectivity in the age of social media, indie-authors are able to directly interact with their fans, as well as with one another, in real time, allowing indie-authors to learn and adapt to feedback from their readers. Through tens of thousands of indie-authors exploring the process together through trial and error, a streamlined path to success has been discovered. Over a decade in, and the corners of the self-publishing world have all been mapped out, and those wide-open vistas of creative freedom and potential now have a super-highway carved straight through them. Whether it is the stories within the books, the covers on the books, or the marketing done around the books, the entirety of the self-publishing process has been codified and formalized to a formulaic degree. While exploring the standardized self-publishing scene in the age of social-media, this essay will focus on post-apocalyptic narratives published by indie-authors.
1. The Indie-Author Scene
Traditionally, the big publishing houses were the ones who decided which books were published and which ones were not. Authors would write their manuscripts before mailing them off to a publisher, sometimes waiting months or even years to find out if they had been accepted or rejected. More often than not, most traditionally published authors would receive little to no money for their efforts, their only reward being the joy of having been chosen (Morrissey 52). Those authors who gained enough success would get a literary agent, who would do all the backend work for them, leaving the author to focus on the art of writing. That all changed in 2008, when the publishing of e-book content took off with the development of e-readers like the Kindle, Nook and Kobo (Cutler 87). Through the combined rise of electronic formats as well as electronic distribution networks, the book production pipeline that was traditionally the domain of the old publishing houses was deconstructed and reassembled online. Layers of approval, control and wait times were dissolved as the gatekeepers were removed and authors were given access to a digital distribution pipeline (Bankhead 10). Though some, having previously seen the gatekeeping publishing houses as a form of quality assurance, feared that this direct access to consumers would result in the market being flooded with low-cost, low-quality books, the opposite resulted – it was a golden age for consumers (Waldfogel 196). Self-published books, long decried as the worst-of-the-worst dregs, scraped from the bottom of the publishing barrel, started to attract reputable titles that began to shift public opinion (Landgraf 44) This sounds like a great time to be a writer, but a golden age for consumers does not always carry over to the creators of the content they are consuming.
There are many ways of being an indie-author, as there are multiple sources from which the value of a literary work can be generated. For some, selling millions of books will legitimate their work, others want to generate cultural capital while others are simply happy to appear in print. (Eve 20) To make a living as an indie-author is, first and foremost, to be a small business owner. While there will always be an artistic element to the production of stories, in pursuit of making a career from writing the author must consider their story a product first and foremost. The frantic, anything-goes-style scene of early indie publishing continues to mature towards a more serious business space as the market stabilizes with self-publishers trending towards business-owners rather than just writers (Cutler 87). Far from the days of Victorian literature, where writing was considered an artform, indie-publishing has more in line with the early 20th century era of pulp fiction. The basics of putting together a good pulp story remain, all that has changed is the delivery system. The Kindle changed everything, and that spells opportunity for the writer who wants to make some money (Bell 8). The self-published stories that sell the most online are not high-art pieces of literature that will be remembered for centuries, they are escapist pulp stories that are designed specifically to be quickly produced and quickly forgotten.
Considering that being a successful indie-author is more about business than art, it is no surprise that the largest online group of authors, 20Booksto50k, is focused on sales, rather than craft. When it comes to their advice on craft, the one golden rule of writing an indie novel is “write to market.” Write to market is all about picking a genre that is not already oversaturated with content, then giving that market exactly what it wants (Fox 44). Being an indie-author is not about writing the stories you want to write; it is about writing the stories that other people want to read. Indie-authors want to write stories that their readers will love, but have also accepted that they are writing escapist fiction, connecting a series of mundane plot points, and not crafting the next Great American Novel (Allen 53). With aspirations of quality all but abandoned by the self-publishing community, indie-authors have instead reached for that other trait – quantity.
In the age of social media, with algorithms tailormade to spike an individual’s dopamine receptors with pinpoint accuracy as they simultaneously drain their attention spans, the only way to stay relevant is to stay present. While traditionally published authors can go a year or two (or thirteen) between releases, indie-authors are part of the ever-changing online media landscape and are thus required to release far quicker to stay relevant. Not only do trends change quickly, but audiences tend to forget online personalities unless they are interacting with their audience on a weekly, sometimes daily, basis. It is a given that indie-authors will have at least some kind of presence on at least one of the social media platforms, so that they can engage with their peers and audience. On top of this, group consensus suggests that the most efficient (and safest) method of reaching the fans is via a newsletter that they can subscribe to, which is a direct pipeline to the audience free from the potential risk of interference that social media platforms pose. On top of all of this remains the all-encompassing fact that indie-authors are content creators, and all their other efforts will be for naught if they are not releasing another book. While indie-authors can make a living off of selling stand-alone novels, it is easier to sell ten books to one person than one book to ten people. While there is a read-through drop off with each successive novel in a series, it is far more lucrative to continue writing books in a series that the audience is invested in. The best marketing for the first book in a series is the latest book in a series, as each release bumps up the sales of those that came before it (Martelle 152).
2. The Post-Apocalyptic Genre
When it comes to traditionally published post-apocalyptic stories, the genre explores the full gamut of end-of-the-world scenarios. Mutants, doomsday weapons, demonic invasions, roaming black holes and other reality ending events, it all gets explored in traditionally published post-apocalyptic stories. The trends of the post-apocalyptic genre change over time because traditionally the post-apocalyptic genre is dependent on what is happening in the real world (Trevena 14). That is not the case with indie-published post-apocalyptic stories, however. When it comes books exploring the end-of-the-world by indie authors, the vast majority of the market is composed of preppers, and so this is the primary market that indie-authors can cater to. The prepper community is largely comprised of middle-class urban folks seeking rural, working-class knowledge because they have an abject fear of the collapse of civilisation (Beech 45). Preppers want clean and wholesome stories about realistic apocalypses (such as EMP, nuclear war, pandemic, coronal mass ejection events), that validate their way of life while also teaching them little titbits of survival knowledge. The (distant) second biggest audience that reads post-apocalyptic stories is focused entirely on zombie narratives. They are fans of the cult classic zombie horror films and are not interested in any post-apocalyptic story that does not have zombies. With these two markets being the best that indie-authors can choose from when it comes to writing post-apocalyptic stories, one can see why a lot of indie-authors choose to cater to the preppers.
One would think that the prepper market would allow for more variety in what the indie-author is able to write, considering that there is only so many ways that a zombie can bite someone. This does not turn out to be the case, however. “There are only two main plots in post-apocalyptic fiction: “The Road” and “The Siege.”” (Chase 85). Whatever end-of-the-world scenario that an indie-author chooses to write for preppers quickly fades to the background as the characters are entirely focused on either getting home, or defending their home. Preppers are not interested in the end-of-the-world scenario, they just want to see what happens when the prepper stand-in characters are forced to defend themselves from other survivors. It is why EMP stories are so popular, because the initial apocalyptic event wipes out the electricity grid, taking away modern technology, but then there is no lingering after effects beyond that. It is effectively a clean apocalypse, one that levels the playing field and allows the prepper stand-in characters to justifiably defend themselves from other survivors who were not as ready for the end.
With such a large percentage of the post-apocalyptic market skewed so heavily towards such a narrow band of potential post-apocalyptic narratives, it is easy to see how the genre has lost a lot of its creative potential. With multiple online communities spread out across various social media platforms, all focusing on post-apocalyptic fiction, or at least its prepper sub-genre, most indie-authors simply cave-in and end up writing prepper fiction. The audience that currently exists for self-published post-apocalyptic stories is effectively stifling the market and causing the genre to stagnate. Paradoxically, the most creative and varied post-apocalyptic narratives are to be found in traditionally published novels.
3. The Audience and their Author
As with any public facing figure, but especially like other internet celebrities, indie-authors are not so much leading their audiences as they are riding the wave of a passionate and fickle mob. Considering their entire livelihood is so dependent on catering to their audience, it is not too hard to see how a single misstep in terms of their online persona or in the content of their books could spell disaster for an indie-author’s career. Readers can be fanatical in their expectations, and woe betide any indie-author who dares break one of the very strict genre-specific rules (Trevena 18). Along with their books, the indie-author themselves, or at least, their internet persona, is as much a part of their brand as their books are. With this in mind, it is clear how indie-authors are quite susceptible to the phenomena known as audience capture.
A content creator is captured when they tell their audience what they want to hear, and is rewarded for doing so, and then they repeat the process until it spirals into a self-reinforcing feedback loop (Weinstein). In this manner, an indie-author can start out writing a story they do not particularly want to write but they are doing it to meet audience expectations (write to market), only for that story to be a success. They gain accolades, and an audience, and in order to maintain that momentum they write another story they do not really want to write while engaging with the audience they have garnered. Eventually, when they have an entire series in their backlog, and an audience that loves reading their work, they might try to write the book they have always wanted to write. But it is not received well, and their audience, all connected via social media, forms a unified front and turns on them. The audience does not want the book the indie-author has always wanted to write, they want the kind of books that got them the audience in the first place. This is (hopefully) when the indie-author realizes that their own audience is not actually there for them, but for the online persona that they have created and the content that persona has released. At this point the indie-author can either abandon the persona and probably lose most of their audience and financial stability in doing so, or they can choose to allow the persona to subsume them entirely.
When it comes to dealing with audience capture, there is really only three ways of handling the phenomenon. The first is for an indie-author to find the overlap between what they want to write and what sells. This may work out perfectly, as the indie-author might just happen to love writing in a genre that has a large reader base. But, more often than not, the indie-author will have to choose to write stories that are tangentially within the same genre as the type of stories they are passionate about writing. In this way, the indie-author sort of gets to write the stories they want to write, and the audience is getting what they want. The second way to avoid audience capture is for indie-authors to write under a pseudonym, which allows authors to write for different audiences without them cross-contaminating. If an indie-author has built an audience from their Clean Romance novels, that audience does not want to be getting updates about the indie-author’s latest Body-Horror project. Writing for two, or more, audiences is not just twice as many books that an indie-author needs to produce, it is also twice the newsletters and twice the social media engagement. It is not an easy path to walk, but it is one that more indie-authors are having to take in order to meet their creative, as well as financial, goals. Finally, the third way for indie-authors to avoid audience capture is to just write and publish the stories they want to write – regardless of what any particular audience wants. It is unlikely that they will ever gain a large audience, as they are not writing exactly what any one audience wants to read, and though it is unlikely that they will be able to make a living from their writing, they can take consolation in the fact that they will be able to write exactly the kinds of stories they want to write.
4. One Cover to Rule them All
Just as stories have a set of genre conventions that they need to follow, book covers also have a series of genre conventions that they are required to follow in order to be considered effective. This is because a book cover is not just a piece of cool art, it is a message that you are sending to potential readers. If the book has an unappealing cover, it is not going to be obvious who the book’s audience is (DeWild 22). For this reason, investing in a professionally designed book cover is standard in the indie-author scene (Nelson 155). Traditionally, when browsing through a book store, where there are potentially thousands of other books, a book needs to be able to not only catch the readers eye but also convey what sort of story is within. This battle for the attention of potential readers has only gotten fiercer in the digital space. Online shopfronts not only have other books displayed, but also advertisements that are given top priority. Alongside all this interfering noise, a book cover has to catch the readers eye and convey what sort of story the book is, all while doing so as a thumbnail. In this way, as has ever been the case, the book cover is the first and most important aspect of marketing a book (Fox 41).
In conclusion, the indie-author scene has been around for long enough that the industry has developed a lot of standardized practices. Though there is nothing forcing any indie-author to follow any of these practices, they are tried and true and have led many indie-authors to financial success. These successes have not come without their negative consequences, however, as these practices have created an industry focus on a formulaic approach to writing. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the post-apocalyptic indie-author community, where the market is dominated by a large group with a niche interest. Though we are at a point in history where the corners of the self-publishing world have all been mapped out, and we can safely make the journey along a well-maintained super highway that was laid down by those that came before us, those wide-open vistas of creative freedom and potential still remain. All that is require is to step off the beaten path.
Works Cited
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Beech, Jennifer A., and Matthew Guy. “CHAPTER FOUR: Fat Guys in the Woods Naked and Afraid: Rural Reality Television as Prep-School for a Post-Apocalyptic World.” Counterpoints, vol. 494, 2017, pp. 45–59, www.jstor.org/stable/45177653. Accessed 14 Feb. 2024.
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Weinstein, Eric. “Audience Capture” The Portal, 06 Sep. 2021, https://theportal.wiki/wiki/Audience_Capture