by Joe Walters

Writers, it’s about that time.

You’ve done the work. You’ve written, you’ve revised, revised again, gotten beta readers, implemented their feedback, edited, edited again, polished, and now you’re feeling confident that your book is pretty damn good. 

First of all, hell yeah.

Second of all, where do you go from here?

It’s easier to publish a book in 2023 than it has ever been. But that doesn’t mean you should necessarily take the easy route. Sometimes it could be the best decision; sometimes it could be the worst. Take your time and choose with confidence (and maybe a little guidance from me). This post includes info & tips for writers looking to publish with an indie press, to self-publish, or to publish with a major publisher.

Here’s an essential guide to publishing companies (with 50+ publishers included).

I’ve never shouted, “I love indie presses!” from the rooftops, but that’s only because I don’t like rooftops.

Independent presses run the full gamut—large, small, niche, broad, great, not-so-great, you name it. There are a lot of people out there who love books enough to publish them. An indie press can be a side-gig for a book lover or it can be a million-dollar business for a CEO with major connections and funding. 

Indie presses are important to book publishing. So many books in your local bookstore come from the same five publishers and their imprints–more on this in part 3!–but traditional indie presses expand the horizon of books and ideas. Many of these presses take risks on books they believe should be published even if they don’t fit a common model like salability and neat genre fits. I salute them (and review them) as often as I can!

So how do you publish with an independent press?

That depends on the press! Some indies require agented submissions, while others you can submit without an agent. You just have to follow each specific press’s guidelines, write your best book, and cross your fingers.

My biggest recommendations for publishing with an indie press:

• Actually read a couple books from the press. Not only do you want to find out if their vision matches that of your book’s, but you also want to see if it’s professionally formatted and something you’d be proud to share a shelf with.
• Follow their submission guidelines exactly. They receive a lot of queries, and you don’t want to miss your chance at the very beginning.
• Google them & their books to find out any book publicity they’ve received. You want to see what kind of coverage your book could get.
• Make your book as good as it can be ten times over. Many indie presses want to take books that can slide right into a publishing queue. Since they pay their editors on their own dime, it’s a lot less of an investment to take on a book that requires fewer editing-hours to complete.
• Write and get feedback on a compelling query letter.
• Some presses take breaks in their reading periods. Don’t submit outside of them, and if you think your book is the best fit for that press anyway, wait for them to re-open.
• Many indie presses publish books across genres, but some ask for specific genres. Don’t submit if your book doesn’t fit.
• Some publishers frame their submissions as contests or awards. This is fine! You may have to pay to submit, but it usually helps pay an advance to the winning author, something not every indie press does.
• Actually like the look and applicability of their website! The online marketplace is an important one.
• Research what they do to market their books. Do they run a regular newsletter? Are they active on social media? Do they get a lot of book reviews?
• Ask their authors what their experience has been.
• Try university presses! (Not included in list below)
• Peruse more lists like on Duotrope, NewPages, P & W, and Bookfox.

Want to know what people would say about your book if it was published today? Try group beta reading!

Self-publishing is the right route for some people. There’s no getting around the fact that you get complete creative control AND a considerably higher royalty percentage than publishing with a press. You can publish that thing today if you wanted to, or you can transparently use it as a business tool to funnel clients straight into your business. 

You know what that means? More money!

But you know what it also means? More competition & less free help!

But before we get anywhere, it’s imperative that you recognize which part of the publishing process you are skipping: The gatekeeper.

An agent receives thousands of queries. Publishers do too. They choose only a select number of them per year—could be two, could be twelve, could be two hundred. It depends on what that particular person or organization is planning to do with their business. 

They choose only the books that they think will: sell, get acclaim, move readers emotionally, get optioned into a movie, or some other business-specific reason.

By skipping this gatekeeper step, you are not putting your book to the test in the market. I want you to have a published book too, but sometimes that book isn’t ready. You publish it early, and some readers don’t love it. Some might even find things hurtful inside it. That’s a big reason why beta reading and getting feedback is so important. Test the market. Take your time. Make that thing shine before publishing.

And if you do go the self-publishing route, make sure you read up on book marketing! Taking an honest look at what you’re up against—like the amount of actual work hours it’ll take to market—will help you decide if self-publishing companies are the right decision for you.

In addition to doing it all yourself, you can self-publish with a vanity or hybrid press.

A vanity press is one that you can pay to publish your book for you. They do the dirty work like uploading, designing, and accounting. Depending on whichever services they offer in your contract, they may also provide developmental editing, copy editing, proofreading, cover design or illustration, and marketing. 

A hybrid press is a press that either A) requires some money to publish your book, but will front other costs; B) Doesn’t publish every book that is submitted to them; or C) a press that publishes some books on their own dime and other books by being funded by the author.

Some vanity or hybrid presses are awesome to work with. They care about their authors, provide great customer service, and are upfront about their fees and requirements. Others are not as awesome. Some have poor or nonexistent customer service and mislead authors to expect the brightest lights in exchange for more money. 

Some questions to ask your vanity or hybrid press:

• How much is the basic service and what specifically does it entail?
• What does the upgraded service include specifically? 
• Do you charge me when I need to make changes to my book or my book listing?
• How often are you available for marketing help and guidance?
• How many book cover mock-ups does your designer provide?
• Does the basic service include developmental editing, copy editing, and proofreading?
• Are there any yearly fees?
• Can I get freelance services elsewhere and still use your company to publish?
• How long will it take to edit, design, and publish the book?
• Can you show me some books in a similar genre that you’ve published?
• Can you share any other authors’ contact information so I can ask their opinion of your company?

Don’t be afraid to say no to hybrid or vanity publishing companies. There are others out there. 

Here are some of our favorite indie books of 2022.

The big five publishers—listed below—publish many of the top-selling books of a given year. These books appear on reading lists, major media outlets, celebrity book clubs, and bookstores all over the world. They have many imprints and have published a ton of books for a long time. They are a sort of 1%, except they’re probably more visible than that.

As an author, these things probably sound great to you. If you want to get an advance and get financial backing for your book, publishing with a big five publisher is something you probably want to try.

But wait! 

In order to publish with them, you have to find a literary agent to represent you. Then they have to successfully convince a publishing house to publish your book. This is not easy.

Authors spend years perfecting their craft, making connections, publishing short form works in recognizable outlets, getting grants, increasing their social media following, and beyond in order to impress agents and publishers to increase their chances. But again, this doesn’t guarantee anything.

Yet again, some authors don’t take years. Some take one incredible story to blow the doors off, get signed, and get published. 

Lesson of the day: Write the best book you can. Pitch agents strategically. And write more books.

Parting words

Publishing a book is complicated. Choosing the right path, pursuing it at the right time, dealing with the repercussions of your choices: It’s all stressful but only because you care so much.

Take your time, publish the best book you can, and keep writing. That’s what it’s all about anyway, isn’t it?

What is the most important thing you need from from publishing companies? Let me know in the comments below!

About the Author

Joe Walters is the editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and the author of The Truth About Book Reviews. He has been a book marketer for Sunbury Press, Inkwater Press, and Paper Raven Books. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel, playing with his kids, or reading indie books by Kindle light.

Thank you for reading “50+ Publishing Companies for Traditional & Self-Publishing: A Guide for Writers“ by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post 50+ Publishing Companies for Traditional & Self-Publishing: A Guide for Writers appeared first on Independent Book Review.

by Joe Walters

What does the phrase “indie books” mean?

Weirdly enough, this a complicated question. 

Different companies and different people consider an “indie book” different things, almost like the ambiguity of “blurbs.” For an industry so obsessed with words, this makes sense to me. Oh, it needs analysis? Sign some book nerds up!

So I’m throwing this out there…

This is how IBR defines an indie book: “a book that is either self-published or published by an independent press.”

You may ask, “Why not just choose one word for indie press authors and one word for self-published authors? Why use only ‘indie book?’” 

Well…

There are a TON of similarities between the two types of indie books.

Let’s look at it first from the perspective of a person entering a bookstore.

Maybe it’s Barnes & Noble or Books-A-Million, but my vote is for the indie bookstore down the block from you. You walk in and see books on tables and books on shelves, and you want to read them all. (Or I do.)

But did you know that most books in most bookstores come from the same five publishing houses or their imprints? 

You might know their names: Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, Harper Collins, and MacMillan. These companies publish books by celebrities, by Stephen King, by Booker Award winners. They use large marketing budgets to sell large amounts of books to their large customer bases. And a lot of the time, they’re excellent books by brilliant authors & experts.

But just because they’re published by these companies doesn’t mean they’re better than the books that are published elsewhere.  Just because they’re all over your local bookstore doesn’t mean that they’re the only authors and books worth reading.

Books by indie presses win major awards every single year. These presses publish and promote books that break boundaries, take risks, and change the way we see our world. (I’m looking at you, Braiding Sweetgrass!). 

Now, here’s the thing…

Books by self-published authors can be just as or better than traditional publishers. They see this is a business decision–one in which they can launch when they want to, build their brand how they want to, control the output, and receive considerably more in in royalties. There are so many good self-published books out there, with hustling authors pumping out bestselling books. 

I guess what I’m really trying to say here is:

Put your trust in indie books.

I’m not telling you to stop reading books by the major publishers. Actually, I’ll tell you to read more of them (because *plot twist* books are awesome). It’s just–you should also make room on your nightstand for the best indie books.

Don’t balk at your purchase when you see “Independently Published” in the Product Description box. Make indies a regular part of your reading habit so that you can see all of the amazing things that authors and presses can do with their limited budgets and unlimited creativity.

My company (IBR, the site you’re on RIGHT NOW) reviews only indie books and curates lists of them. We want to give both types of “indie author” the opportunity for publicity & recognition. We want to shout indie books from the rooftops since the Big Five publishers already have real estate up there.

But before you go scrolling more of our book lists, let’s put to rest some indie publishing anomalies.

What is an indie press exactly? 

It is a publishing house that is not connected to the Big Five publishers except in relation to distribution. Indie presses can be as small as one dedicated individual in a basement to full offices of full-time employees. The departments can include editing, marketing, design, legal, accounting, management, etc. An indie press can even have a number of imprints.

What is a small press?

An indie press (just smaller)! A small press may consist of only a few employees and publish a few titles a year, while bigger indies with bigger staffs publish 100+ books a year. Things can also get a little mixed-up with that “small” designator when the books make it big via huge sales and big awards.

Since I know you’re wondering! Some of my favorite small presses are Future Tense Books, Thirty West Publishing, and June Road Press.

What is an indie author?

At IBR, we consider an indie author to be a writer who either self-published their book or got it published by an indie press. Some people choose only to describe self-published authors as indie authors, but I like indie presses & their authors way too much to leave them out of the distinction.

Yes, this means that bestselling authors with major indie presses and wide distribution wear the same “indie author” moniker as a self-published author who has to do most if not all the work themselves. So why put them in the same category?

By going with an independent press, these big-name bestselling authors are still contributing to a break away from the at-times singular vision of the same five companies & their imprints. New minds, idea expansion, risk-taking, groundbreaking–indie authors can sell a ton of books or none; they’re both still indie to us.

What are some more similarities between self-published & indie press authors?

If you publish with an indie press, you may receive services like editing & cover design for free. (If you publish with a vanity indie press, you pay them for the services). 

When your book comes out, the press may do some marketing on your book’s behalf too. Maybe they send an email, post it on social media, and pitch for reviews. It benefits them to sell books because they get a portion of the royalty. 

But beyond this help from the press, they share almost everything with self-published authors. Many indie presses use Print on Demand services instead of printing large quantities of books at a time. 

Like self-published authors, indie press authors are responsible for doing the bulk of the marketing: pitching for reviews & interviews, doing readings, operating email lists, paying for book promotion, etc.

This is hard, time-consuming work—one of the many reasons why I want to make things a bit easier on indie authors with IBR. These humans are out here actual sweating—selling, producing, and writing great books all wiping their brow.

Where can I find & support indie books?

1. Independent Book Review! We review only indie books, and we curate our collection by delineating our favorite books (Starred Reviews) and we put together book lists regularly that highlight some of the amazing work being done in the indie publishing community.
2. Kindle Unlimited & Scribd! These eBook subscription services are highly utilized by indie authors. Not all of them will be indie published, but if you check out the “Product Information,” they’ll share if the book was independently published or published by an indie press.
3. Deal sites like BookBub, BargainBooksy, and Fussy Librarian! If you subscribe to email lists like the ones provided here, you’ll get notifications of free or discount books. And who utilizes this service often? Indie authors! 
4. Amazon bestseller lists! If you go to specific genre bestseller lists, you’re bound to find indie books scattered throughout. Like I said earlier, indie authors know how to make this thing work. You can find out if the book is indie by clicking on the title and scrolling down to the Product Information section.
5. Your local indie bookstore! Maybe! Hopefully! Some indie bookstores respect the struggle AND believe that these books can sell, so they stock indie books. Some bookstores that come to mind are A Novel Idea (Philly), Greenlight Bookstore (NYC), and Powell’s (Portland)!

And…indie book 101 is complete. Thanks for stopping in! Let us know your favorite indie books in the comments below.

About the Author

Joe Walters is the editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and the author of The Truth About Book Reviews. He has been a book marketer for Sunbury Press, Inkwater Press, and Paper Raven Books. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel, playing with his kids, or reading indie books by Kindle light.

Thank you for reading Joe Walters’s blog post “What Are Indie Books? (and Other Indie Publishing Anomalies)!” If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post What Are Indie Books? (And Other Indie Publishing Anomalies) appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Reviewed by Jaylynn Korrell

A valuable guide to crafting a novel worth reading

Writing is a constant learning process. Every book you read will help you hone and understand your craft, whether it be from the success or utter failure of the work you’re reading, or if it’s a book about writing. John Matthew Fox give us some excellent tips that both experienced and brand new writers can learn from in The Linchpin Writer.

In writing, the “linchpin moments” are the pivotal places that will either make or break your work. When done correctly, these moments hold your book together and make sure your readers are always engaged.

With specific examples from some of the greatest novels ever written (both classic and contemporary), his own personal experience, and lessons from writing professionals, Fox guides readers to better writing in regards to killing characters, ending chapters, creating gripping first dialogue, describing characters, evoking wonder, and so much more. 

Fox ends each of his chapters with activities for writers to do to apply the lessons he just discussed. They demand you to actually put pen to paper—the hardest part of writing for some—but they also confirm what he’s said to be true. 

By working through writing activities—like writing down every description you can possibly think of for your character and then throwing the whole thing away—writers can better understand their characters AND recognize that writing time shouldn’t always result in words on your novel’s page. 

There are no hard and fast rules in The Linchpin Writer, though there are many suggestions that I think will be beneficial. Fox never lets readers forget that their creativity is the star of the show and that these guidelines are here to help improve their writing—not take away from its uniqueness. 

Numerous times he gives examples of people’s writing that do the exact opposite of what he’s suggesting, but the example shows clearly that the reason why it works is because of how well it’s done. Readers will appreciate his openness as well as his devotion to using well-researched examples to back up his points. 

“For every rule, there are a thousand ways to break that rule. And it’s important, I think, for writers to see the full range of possibilities.”

Fox brings a personal touch to The Linchpin Writer. He shines in his storytelling of the moments that made him into the writer he is today. By tying in memorable points in his own writing life, you’ll get a sense of his experience as well as his true passion on the subject.  

One of my favorite pieces of advice? Insert yourself in the direct path of the writing life. Writing conferences, writing classes, buying too many books, attending bookclubs, and talking to writers about writing. In addition to some really spot-on writing advice, Fox provides personal experience and inspiration to make this book something that writers can’t afford to miss.

Publisher: BOOKFOX

Genre: Nonfiction / Writing & Publishing

Print Length: 190 pages

ISBN: 978-1737847403

Thank you for reading Jaylynn Korrell’s book review of The Linchpin Writer by John Fox! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post Book Review: The Linchpin Writer appeared first on Independent Book Review.

by Joe Walters

Book promotion is a really big megaphone.

To promote your book, you have to yell about it in an appealing way so that everyone at the party hears it and thinks, “Man, I gotta get me some of that.”

But…

This…is annoying.

And it doesn’t work.

So please please please don’t do it.

Instead, you’ve got some options for everyone at the party to learn about your book.

How can you promote your book? Here’s a quick rundown of your primary options:

• Your newsletter
• Other people’s newsletters
• Through publicity (media platforms, review outlets, podcasts, TV)
• Your social media
• Other people’s social media
• Advertising
• Merch
• Participating in events

Let’s tackle one at a time.

(Please note: Our posts may include affiliate or sponsored links. Everything on Independent Book Review comes as an honest recommendation from our team.)

Your Newsletter

There’s a reason why I started with your newsletter. It’s the direct communication access point. When good & random things happen that might help you sell books (like if you were featured in a cool book list or something), you’re going to want to communicate directly with the people who would be most interested in buying it. 

Social media is cool and all, but if you’re not a social media influencer or celebrity, it doesn’t touch email. Now, it’s not easy, but it is good—when you take the time to get good at it.

There are so many ways to execute email marketing effectively, like using reader magnets, providing free beneficial content, sharing regularly, and being wholeheartedly-genuinely you. (And, of course, doing your research.)

But…

If you have only written one novel and don’t know when the next one’s coming out, then maybe take a breather on this aspect of book promotion. Dedicate your writing time to writing more books instead of spending your time producing free written content for your followers, who may have already bought your book and who probably won’t buy a second copy.

Other people’s newsletters

This is not about contacting your followers. It’s about appearing in front of somebody else’s. 

This can be another author in your niche’s newsletter, yes. You can send one author (or multiple authors) a request to feature you or you can request to do a list swap. A lot of authors are looking for this exact type of thing—how can I provide new genuine, not-too-salesy content to my following while appearing simultaneously in front of readers who don’t currently follow me? 

You can also add in the chance of appearing in a media platform’s newsletter, your indie press’s newsletter, or a local or niche-specific organization’s newsletter without swapping anything. You might want to consider offering something tangible—maybe a workshop or an in-person event—and you should definitely know the organization’s newsletter aesthetic before requesting their help. You should have an idea of how you & your book could be featured.

But still, that’s not all.

This is where one of my absolute favorite marketing strategies come into play.

There are newsletters out there that advertise free or discounted eBooks to thousands of readers. Authors & presses pay to be included in these newsletters, and their followers (who like to read eBooks voraciously—especially cheap ones!) scour the email in the hopes that their next favorite book is only $.99.

And…

I love them! They can not only launch you into bestseller categories on Amazon and put you in a position to make money off your work, but you’re reaching actual real-life readers here. And isn’t reaching readers what this has always been about?

Here are ten book promotion sites I’d gladly recommend:

1. Bookbub – Consider submitting for a featured deal on the fifth day of your promotion. If you’ve got the budget for it, I always recommend giving this one a shot. Please note that not all books will be accepted.
2. Bargain Booksy – A good budget-friendly option that still moves books.
3. Fussy Librarian – Super budget-friendly.
4. Robin Reads – A really passionate reader base with reasonable prices. In my experience, this one resulted in some reviews too.
5. Ereader News Today – Have always loved this one. I’m even a subscriber, so I might even read your book.
6. NewInBooks – Love the variety of names and titles this one gets.
7. Freebooksy – Free ebooks only, which can be really effective!
8. AudioThicket – An excellent audiobook option
9. Book Barbarian – Sci-Fi & Fantasy only. I love these genre-specific ones because it’s clear the subscribers/readers came here for a reason.
10. Red Feather Romance – Romance only

I’ve got more tips for how to advertise your book in the advertising section, so open up those link tabs and come on back to me.

Book Publicity

You might have heard of this one. It’s probably the thing I hear most from my authors at Sunbury Press. How do I get featured in _____? How do I get interviewed on ________? Should I reach out to my local paper? How do I get my book reviewed at Foreword Reviews, Independent Book Review, and this awesome specific blog about my niche that everyone loves?

Well, here’s the secret.

You have to ask. (Or someone has to ask for you).

But you have to do it professionally and with purpose. Don’t just find their emails, cc them along with thirty other media outlets, and ask for them to read your book. 

Here’s how I would recommend pitching that you or your book are featured at a media outlet:

• Research platforms you want to pitch & organize them in Excel or Google Sheets with platform name, website, email address, specific contact person (if possible), and your angle.
  • Possible angles: What is your biggest selling point? Why would this specific platform find your story useful for their audience? Does your indie press have a relationship with this platform? 
• Write a strong pitch letter. Be personal but professional, make your book sound awesome (but don’t overdo it), and ask specifically if they’d be willing to feature it. If they have submission guidelines, you NEED to follow them.
• Design a sell-sheet, press release, or attractive landing page that will do the selling of the book for you. Don’t use Amazon. You can attach the sell-sheet to your email, or you could create a shareable Dropbox link.

If you or your publicist has connections with media outlets, that’s about as close to a magic strategy as it gets. That’s one of the best reasons to hire a publicist. I chatted about this topic for a while over on this video if you want to hear more AND see my face.

The best path to being featured in a media platform is having a great book with a great cover, a great description, great blurbs—overall, a great product. You want the head of their organization to see this pitch and think, “Man, I gotta get me some of that.”

Your social media

I have been working in indie publishing for a while now. From Inkwater Press to Independent Book Review to Paper Raven Books and Sunbury Press—the most common question I get from authors is about how to use social media to sell books.

I don’t blame them. It’s…everywhere (and nowhere).

Sometimes (or, most times), I feel like a mediocre swimmer in a sea of social media posts. When things get popular on there, it feels like they’re the most popular things in the world. And if you’re an author, you, also, might welcome the idea of your book being one of those things.

But it’s not just about getting the proverbial megaphone and shouting into the social media void. It’s about creating content on the internet that other humans find interesting to engage with—to like, to share, to comment. 

Give yourself time to grow as you create engaging content on your social media pages. Don’t jump on too many get-big-quick schemes. Don’t ask your followers to do things for you too often. Use graphics & cool photos. Link to your book (or author website with your book on it) in your bio. If you have an exciting announcement to make, announce it. Let your followers in on your fun. Help other users by liking, commenting, and sharing their posts when appropriate for your audience.

When people think about social media promotion, they often think about advertising.

This is when you pay for your post to show up in front of more people than it does simply by bouncing around the platform’s algorithm. And this can be super effective, super mediocre, or a super dud. It depends if you created a strong ad and if the users who are expected to engage with your content actually engage with your content. Be catchy, be cool. Run a sale or discount. Ramp up your spending at the right times. Target exactly which audience you want to see your book. Do it all with a plan or don’t do it at all. 

I particularly like using social media ads (particularly Facebook) when running a discount AND doing one or multiple book promotion sites simultaneously.

Other People’s Social Media

Nothing sells books like word-of-mouth sells books. Tattoo this on my forehead. Write a catchy song about it.

When other real people talk about the books they love, they have a tremendous influence on other people who read. 

One way the rest of the party can hear about the good aspects of your book is by having other people at the party doing the work for you.

The first way of doing this, of course, is by writing the best book in the world so that people can’t help but talk about it. I’d definitely recommend doing this. (Having the coolest book cover in town also helps). 

The second way of doing this? Pitch people.

Form a team before publication made up of the people who want to support you the most and who might be willing to promote your book on their social pages when the time comes. Be active about this. Don’t just think that once the book comes out, they’ll do it on their own. Ask them beforehand, let them know what they could do that would be beneficial. 

You can also reach out to book reviewers and influencers on social media who might be willing to talk about your book. In some cases, you can pay for this too, but I personally don’t love that concept (unless, again, it’s batched together with other promotions). In my experience, paying other people to get a bunch of likes on your book cover doesn’t always translate to sales.

Advertising

And here we are! The grand daddy of them all. 

You: “Should I pay for book promotion?”

Me: “Maybe!”

*CROWD BOOS*

But seriously, do you have it in your budget to advertise your books? Actually look at your budget.

Keep in mind that in the world of print-on-demand, you’ll probably have to print books and ship them. That costs money. Keep in mind that you also may want to send some physical books out for review, so we won’t just be accounting for the copies you plan to store in your garage. If you’re going to travel for any events, leave some aside there. Leave some room for some merch in case you want to make your events cool and dreamlike and good at selling books.

Now that this is out of the way…

Let’s take a look at some advertising options:

1. Amazon
2. Book Promotion Sites & Other Newsletters
3. Social media
4. Media platforms in your niche
5. Catalogs
6. Podcasts
7. Review platforms
8. TV
9. Podcasts
10. Print 
11. Radio
12. Google

Ask yourself some questions: How much does each one cost? Will my target audience see the book on this advertising platform? How many of them can you do with your advertising budget? 

As you’ll see, I’ve crossed off radio and Google. These are two advertising avenues that I would not recommend you use to sell books. They can work for selling some products, but in my experience and in the current time, books aren’t one of them.

Amazon Ads are excellent and you can absolutely sell books there. If someone’s on Amazon, they are one step closer to buying than they are on other sites. 

As of now—no matter if you published with an indie press or you’re a self-published author, you can advertise on Amazon through Amazon Author Central. This deserves a million words of advice, so make sure you do a lot of research first, like with this book and this book and this book.

What’s my favorite way to advertise?

David Gaughran’s Amazon Decoded put me on to some incredible strategies and research on the Amazon store. Shout out to that dude and that badass book.

Because the answer is…

Using book promotion sites and Facebook simultaneously.

Here’s how I’d recommend going about it:

• 1st Step: Set up a $.99 deal for five days on Amazon.
• 2nd Step: Schedule book promotion sites on each of the five days of the deal, and ramp up your ad spend on the 4th and 5th days.
• 3rd Step: Design or purchase an enticing graphic that you can use as your ad on Facebook.
• 4th Step: Draft some killer sales copy for Facebook. Info about your book is obviously important, but the personal voice is too. Take your time with this.
• 5th Step: Advertise the deal on social media (with specific target audiences) on the day the promo starts and ramp up with a bigger budget on the 4th and 5th days.

I’ve seen this strategy not only get authors to the top of the bestseller lists on Amazon during the promotion, but remain there after the promo (when it’s full price). If it’s in your budget and this sounds like a fun and potentially fruitful exercise, give it a shot and let me know how it goes.

But make sure you add more categories to your book before running that $.99 promotion!

Merch

I like merch! But I mostly just think it’s fun. There are so many ways for you to spend too much on merch (like sweatshirts, bookmarks, business cards, posters, etc.), but there are also ways where you can increase book sales with it.

I like to think of using merch when considering all of the physical locations I will use them at.

This usually starts with your book launch event. Depending on the venue, you may be able to leave a poster, a sell-sheet, and bookmarks to inspire browsers to come to the event. But make sure they’re cool! Maybe your local coffee shop welcomes bulletin-board style announcements. Maybe your friends would willingly put a sticker on their laptops.

These…might result in book sales! They also…might not! And they all cost money. So if this sounds fun to you, do it. And have fun doing it! But probably don’t expect this merch to be the staple of your book marketing campaign.

Participate in events

You may have heard of book events. Maybe you’ve seen a reader come to your local bookstore. Maybe a signing at Barnes & Noble. But don’t forget about book fairs, writing & niche-related conferences or conventions, digital panel discussions on your topic. Workshops. Craft fairs where you might be only one of one or one of a few authors in attendance.

But doing book events isn’t all rainbows and butterflies. It can be taxing work, expensive, and occasionally fruitless. So…

Do them ONLY if they sound like fun to you. And if you sell some books in the process, all the better.

Don’t forget to have fun with this author career. Unless you’re a living pseudonym, it’s the only one you get.

Got any questions about book promotion or questions you’d like me to answer in a later installment? Let me know in the comments!

About the Author

Joe Walters is the editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and the author of The Truth About Book Reviews. He has been a book marketer for Sunbury Press, Inkwater Press, and Paper Raven Books. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel, playing with his kids, or reading indie books by Kindle light.

Thank you for reading “A Marketer’s Guide to Book Promotion” by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post A Marketer’s Guide to Book Promotion | IBR Book Marketing Series: Part 2 appeared first on Independent Book Review.

by Joe Walters

The term “book blurb” is used to describe a few different things in book marketing.

But it shouldn’t.

I get it. Language changes as the industry changes, so I’m not harking on this or anything.

All I’m saying is—we shouldn’t confuse the term in publishing anymore. 

What are book blurbs?

I’ll tell you.

Blurbs are short book reviews written by authors or experts in the book’s field. They are used by authors & publishers on their marketing material. 

It is not a “book description.” 

A book description is written by a publisher, book marketer, or author, and it describes the contents of the book. For reference, on an Amazon product page, this description is placed beside the book cover on Desktop or below the book cover on Mobile. This book description doesn’t (usually) express opinions on how well the book is written. 

That’s what blurbs are for.

If a browser comes to your Amazon product page, they may scroll down to the section that says “Editorial Reviews” (see below). There, they’ll read what authors or experts in the book’s niche have said complimentary about the book. As an author & publisher, you can get blurbs or editorial reviews to increase validity in your product.

Here’s what it looks like on Amazon:

You can also find book blurbs on the front or back cover of a book, like this:

Okay, so now that this is out of the way…

How do you get book blurbs or editorial reviews?

I am a book marketer for Sunbury Press. I used to be a book marketer for Paper Raven Books & Inkwater Press. I’ve been chatting with indie authors for a long time now about making sure readers & browsers discover their books as salable products for years.

This is what I tell indie authors when they ask what’s most important in selling books.

• Your cover should be incredible. The best it can be. So so so so good. Book covers are EVERYTHING.
• Your book description should be crisp and catchy and leave readers wanting to find out more.
• A strong subtitle (especially for nonfiction) can sell so many books all by itself.
• You should have at least three book blurbs. The bigger the name the better. If you can slap “#1 New York Times Bestselling Author” onto the accreditation of your blurber, you’re going to get yourself some extra attention from book reviewers and booksellers.
• You should get book reviews on Amazon as soon as you can, as many as you can, and make sure they keep growing.

It would be best to have blurbs before publication, but you can keep working on it after publication too. It’s obviously important to get consumer reviews to show that people are buying it and saying nice things about it, but there’s a different layer to blurbs or editorial reviews.

These reviews communicate that not only are consumers enjoying this book, but professionals in the book’s niche are too. Think of it almost in terms of Rotten Tomatoes’ “Tomatometer” and “Audience Score.” You want to make sure browsers see your book as good for the regular everyday reader as well as “certified fresh” by the people who read and write for a living.

Here are some ways authors & publishers use book blurbs to market their books:

• Use the quote on promotional material such as social media graphics, posters, bookmarks, book trailers, press releases, websites, and more.
• Add the quote to their book’s front or back cover.
• With your Amazon Author Central account, add it to the “editorial reviews” section on your book’s product page.
• Design or purchase a graphic that highlights the review and place it on your book’s product page using Amazon A+ Content (or the “From the Publisher” section).
• Include the quote in your pitches to booksellers, libraries, conferences, other reviewers, and more.

Get the gist yet?

Book blurbs are doing work every single time a potential buyer goes to your product page. All you have to do as a marketer is get readers to visit the page, and the reviews, cover, and description do the rest.

So how do you get book blurbs or editorial reviews?

Well…you’ve got some options!

First, make sure your book is ready. It doesn’t have to be copy-edited yet—just make sure the story and structure is in its final shape and you’re proud of the characters and sentences. You can tell your hopeful blurber that the book hasn’t been copy-edited yet in the pitch letter. (Don’t worry–I’ll get to that!)

What kind of authors or experts should you add to your list?

It depends on your genre, but here are some options:

• Authors in your genre
• Professional reviewers (Independent Book Review, Foreword Reviews, Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, etc.)
• Professors & academics in your niche (usually for nonfiction)
• Industry leaders (like non-profit and organization directors in your niche)
• Museum curators (for nonfiction)

Okay, now write down all of the ones you can think of that might apply.

Feel free to dream big with your blurber list. The bigger the name, the better the blurb. (But be aware of your good ol’ writerly friend Rejection.) 

After you list their names in a spreadsheet, find their available contact information and input it. Email info is best, but if you’ve interacted with these people on social media before, you may be able to contact them via direct message. (But please please please don’t be weird or pushy).

In your list, be sure to include authors below that “dream-big” stature too. These people are probably awesome and their books are probably awesome too, but you usually know when an author isn’t so popular that they have trouble keeping up with emails. Just like with college applications, it’s usually good to have some backups.

But don’t send anything yet!

Look at your list. Read each one of them and realize that each one of them is a human, and you are about to request that they do work for you.

Yes, your book rules, I agree, but it’s important to recognize that reading takes literal hours to do and then writing a book blurb takes time too. You’re going to want to be patient and understanding going in. Don’t come at this coldly; be a friend, a good literary citizen.

How do you ask someone to blurb your book?

This is such an anxiety-riddled thing. Asking people you admire to do work for you is not easy and quite humbling. But if you’re pitching someone, this is exactly what you (or your publicist) would do–ask.

In an email, text, or direct message (if appropriate), make sure you keep your pitch personal. Call them by their name. Tell them how you know them. If they mean a lot to you as an author, let them know why (briefly). 

After this, ask them if they’d be interested in writing a blurb for your book in [x amount of time]. I usually like 4-5 weeks, with a buffer of when you really need it at like 8. 

Then I’d recommend adding a very short description of your book with genre denominations after your request; they’ll want to be interested in the book if they’re going to read and vouch for it.

Also, if they have a book that just came out or is forthcoming, you can offer to blurb theirs back, but know your audience. If you’re telling Stephen King that you’ll blurb his book for him, I don’t know if he’ll care that much. 

If you want to promise one or two actual book cover space, you can definitely do that. That may actually help convert them into saying yes. But don’t promise it to everybody right off the bat or your book cover is going to be a smorgasbord of too many cheeses.

I’d recommend only sending about three pitches at a time, top of the list to the bottom.

But what if you don’t have contacts? What if everyone says no?

Don’t worry, old sport. (Sorry)

But again, you’ve got options.

Take a look at book review companies.

You can request a review for free from companies like Independent Book Review, Kirkus, Reader’s Favorite, and Foreword Reviews. (If you’d like to submit to IBR, you can learn more about what’s expected here.) You (or your publicist) would request a review by following their submission guidelines, and then you’d cross your fingers and hope for the best.

In some instances, you can guarantee a book review company to review your book.

These companies pay their writers to cover a range of popular books on their own dime to make sure those platforms remain important to readers. 

And remember–reading takes literal time, so if you want an honest review, an opportunity to receive a blurb, and the chance to be featured in their outlet, you can pay for a review.

Do you have to? No! Definitely not. Do whatever makes you feel comfortable at all times. But also, just know this is an option.

Some people are all gung-ho about never paying for reviews, which I agree with when it comes to customer reviews on Amazon & Goodreads, but editorial reviews and blurbs are a different animal.

If you have it in your marketing budget, you may find it helpful to guarantee a book review from a professional book review company. This way, you don’t have to pitch and hope for your book to be reviewed. You’ll save time in researching and pitching outlets, and you can guarantee that a reader from that company’s team will read, assess, and provide an honest review of your work. Not only might you get a blurb or two for your marketing material, but you could even learn a thing or two about how your book is being received by readers.

If you want to give it a shot, I take pride in how we run our editorial review service here at IBR. Not only are our readers the best ones we can find, but they care deeply about the genres they get paid to read.

What do you do when you get your blurbs?

Dance party!

But also, where you are in your publication process? You may want to keep the blurbs under wraps so that you can share them a little closer to your launch date, or you may want to share them with your newsletter following right away. You also may want to start using them to pitch other platforms or blurbers, or you may want to wait. If you’re publishing with an indie press, make sure you share it with them.

Just definitely make sure you add them to the editorial reviews section on Amazon when you can.

And when you do, format it professionally. Here’s a good format I like:

• “This is not just a story of prohibition in America, it’s a story of womanhood and strength. The feeling one is left with when closing Gathering Storm is one of steely determination and hope.” – Independent Book Review

or

• “This is not just a story of prohibition in America, it’s a story of womanhood and strength. The feeling one is left with when closing Gathering Storm is one of steely determination and hope.” – Steph Huddleston, Independent Book Review

Best of luck to you, friend! If you have any questions about book blurbs, let me know in the comments!

About the Author

Joe Walters is the editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and the author of The Truth About Book Reviews. He has been a book marketer for Sunbury Press, Inkwater Press, and Paper Raven Books. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel, playing with his kids, or reading indie books by Kindle light.

Thank you for reading “What Are Book Blurbs and How Do I Get Them?” by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

The post What Are Book Blurbs and How Do You Get Them? | IBR Book Marketing Series: Part 1 appeared first on Independent Book Review.

Curated by Joe Walters

Make room on your bookshelves. It’s time for our list of impressive indie press books from 2020!

Every year, independent presses put out acclaimed and award-winning work. More often than not, they are doing this with a lower budget and fewer staff members than many of the big five publishers and their imprints.

So I think it’s about time we celebrate these awesome indies–with a big old end-of-the-year book list!

I’ve seen a whole lot of great books flash across my inbox and social-feeds this year, and I’ve flown through my fair share of pages, too, so I decided to stop being so stingy and curate this year’s list of impressive indie press books. I hope you enjoy it.

I’ve chosen my list with care, almost like a book-nerd mixtape. There are stories in here that’ll send you somewhere new, that’ll amaze you, thrill you, make you sad and make you happy at the same time; by my including these books out of the thousands in indie press lit, I’m saying they’re worth a shot. If you think the cover and the description sound awesome, make sure to head on over to Bookshop and support your indie bookseller in the process.

In no particular order, here’s our list of 32 Impressive Indie Press Books from 2020!

Fiction

#1. Virtuoso

by Yelena Moskovich

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: LGBTQ Literary

About the Book:

As Communism begins to crumble in Prague in the 1980s, Jana’s unremarkable life becomes all at once remarkable when a precocious young girl named Zorka moves into the apartment building with her mother and sick father. With Zorka’s signature two-finger salute and abrasive wit, she brings flair to the girls’ days despite her mother’s protestations to not “be weird.” But after scorching her mother’s prized fur coat and stealing from a nefarious teacher, Zorka suddenly disappears.

Meanwhile in Paris, Aimée de Saint-Pé married young to an older woman, Dominique, an actress whose star has crested and is in decline. A quixotic journey of self-discovery, Virtuoso follows Zorka as she comes of age in Prague, Wisconsin, and then Boston, amidst a backdrop of clothing logos, MTV, computer coders, and other outcast youth. But it isn’t till a Parisian conference hall brimming with orthopedic mattresses and therapeutic appendages when Jana first encounters Aimée, their fates steering them both to a cryptic bar on the Rue de Prague, and, perhaps, to Zorka.

With a distinctive prose flair and spellbinding vision, Virtuoso is a story of love, loss, and self-discovery that heralds Yelena Moskovich as a brilliant and one-of-a-kind visionary.

#2. A Girl Is a Body of Water

by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi

Publisher: Tin House

Genre: Coming of Age & Womanhood

About the Book:

In her thirteenth year, Kirabo confronts a piercing question that has haunted her childhood: who is my mother? Kirabo has been raised by women in the small Ugandan village of Nattetta―her grandmother, her best friend, and her many aunts―but the absence of her mother follows her like a shadow. Complicating these feelings of abandonment, as Kirabo comes of age she feels the emergence of a mysterious second self, a headstrong and confusing force inside her at odds with her sweet and obedient nature.

Seeking answers, Kirabo begins spending afternoons with Nsuuta, the local witch, trading stories and learning not only about this force inside her, but about the woman who birthed her, who she learns is alive but not ready to meet. Nsuuta also explains that Kirabo has a streak of the “first woman”―an independent, original state that has been all but lost to women.

Kirabo’s journey to reconcile her rebellious origins, alongside her desire to reconnect with her mother and to honor her family’s expectations, is rich in the folklore of Uganda and an arresting exploration of what it means to be a modern girl in a world that seems determined to silence women. Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi’s unforgettable novel is a sweeping testament to the true and lasting connections between history, tradition, family, friends, and the promise of a different future.

#3. Anthropica

by David Hollander

Publisher: Animal Riot Press

Genre: Literary Science Fiction

About the Book:

A Hungarian fatalist convinced that the human race is a blemish on God’s otherwise beautiful universe; a statistician who has determined that we completely exhaust the earth’s resources every 30 days; a failing novelist whose nihilistic fiction has doomed her halfhearted quest for tenure; an Ultimate Frisbee-playing man-child who has discovered a fractal pattern contained within all matter, but is nevertheless obsessed with the chase for a National Championship; a banished race of mole people preparing for a violent uprising; a factory filled with human heads being mined for information; a former philosophy professor with ALS who has discovered, as he becomes “locked in,” that he can make things happen simply by wanting them badly enough; and a trio of vengeful, superintelligent robots secretly imprisoned in an underground hangar in Iksan, South Korea, patiently waiting for some gullible human(s) to release them.

This is a partial cast of Anthropica, a novel that puts Laszlow Katasztrófa’s beautiful vision of a universe without us to the test. Because even if Laszlow believes that he is merely an agent of fate, a cog in God’s inscrutable machine, he’s nevertheless the one driving this crazy machine. And once he has his team assembled, it turns out that he might-against all odds and his own expectations-actually have the tools to see his apocalyptic plan to fruition.

#4. Fiebre Tropical

by Juliana Delgado Lopera

Publisher: Feminist Press

Genre: Hispanic American Literature & Fiction

About the Book:

Lit by the hormonal neon glow of Miami, this heady, multilingual debut novel follows a Colombian teenager’s coming-of-age and coming out as she plunges headfirst into lust and evangelism.

Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead.

But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor’s daughter. As her mother’s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls more and more intensely in love with Carmen. To get closer to her, Francisca turns to Jesus to be saved, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion.

#5. Temporary

by Hilary Leichter

Publisher: Coffee House Press

Genre: Magical realism

About the Book:

In Temporary, a young woman’s workplace is the size of the world. She fills increasingly bizarre placements in search of steadiness, connection, and something, at last, to call her own. Whether it’s shining an endless closet of shoes, swabbing the deck of a pirate ship, assisting an assassin, or filling in for the Chairman of the Board, for the mythical Temporary, “there is nothing more personal than doing your job.” 

This riveting quest, at once hilarious and profound, will resonate with anyone who has ever done their best at work, even when the work is only temporary.

#6. The Enlightenment of Greengage Tree

by Shokoofeh Azar

Publisher: Europa Editions

Genre: Family life

About the Book:

FINALIST for the 2020 INTERNATIONAL BOOKER PRIZE

From the pen of one of Iran’s rising literary stars, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree is a family story about the unbreakable connection between the living and the dead.

Set in Iran in the decade following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, this moving, richly imagined novel is narrated by the ghost of Bahar, a thirteen-year-old girl, whose family is compelled to flee their home in Tehran for a new life in a small village, hoping in this way to preserve both their intellectual freedom and their lives. But they soon find themselves caught up in the post-revolutionary chaos that sweeps across their ancient land. Bahar’s mother, after a tragic loss, will embark on a long, eventful journey in search of meaning in a world swept up in the post-revolutionary madness.

Told from the wise yet innocent gaze of a young girl, The Enlightenment of the Greengage Tree speaks of the power of imagination when confronted with cruelty, and of our human need to make sense of trauma through the ritual of storytelling itself. Through her unforgettable characters, Azar weaves a timely and timeless story that juxtaposes the beauty of an ancient, vibrant culture with the brutality of an oppressive political regime.

#7. Little Feasts

by Jules Archer

Publisher: Thirty West Publishing

Genre: Feminist short fiction

About the Book:

Following her successes from All the Ghosts We’ve Always Had, critically-acclaimed flash fiction writer, Jules Archer, returns to the dinner table with Little Feasts, her debut short story collection. The stories are a table-long buffet of femininity, a lying tree, childhood innocence, toxic masculinity, and a 20-pound cast-iron skillet. Works within have been featured in Five:2: One, SmokeLong Quarterly, Maudlin House, PANK, and more.

#8. The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing

by Joseph Fasano

Publisher: Platypus Press

Genre: Literary

About the Book:

Deep in the mountains of British Columbia, across an unforgiving landscape, one man’s pursuit of a fabled mountain lion leads him into the furthest reaches of himself. As he struggles to confront the wilderness surrounding him–from the baying hounds to the relentless northern snows–he journeys into his own haunted memories: a life of wild horses and ballet, fishing skiffs and blizzards, tropical seas and dolphins. Through wind, snow, and the depths of grief, he asks what price he is willing to exact on a world that ravages what we love, and whether redemption awaits those who learn to forgive. A tender story of love and a modern-day parable, The Dark Heart of Every Wild Thing, the debut novel from acclaimed poet Joseph Fasano, guides us into the deepest territories of the human heart.

#9. She Is a Beast

by Christina Rosso

Publisher: Apep Publications

Genre: Feminist fairy tales

About the Book:

She is a Beast is an illustrated collection of feminist fairy tales published by APEP Publications in May 2020. Some are re-imaginings of the classic tales we know, such as Beauty and the Beast and Cinderella, while others are completely original. This collection is about women reclaiming their stories and finding agency by embracing their beastly natures and adopting monstrous appetites deemed inappropriate by society. In their wildness they find freedom. 

#10. Collective Gravities

by Chloe N. Clark

Publisher: Word West

Genre: Genre-bending short fiction

About the Book:

In Collective Gravities, something magical is always just beneath the surface–the zombie apocalypse happens, but the world stays relatively the same; a woman begins to feel the earth moving beneath her feet. In this fantastical, genre-bending collection, Chloe N. Clark launches readers from Iowa, to outer space, and back again. Lyrical, funny, and full of transcendent beauty, Collective Gravities is a cause for celebration: an astronomically gifted writer, who, in twenty-six stories, shows us an entire world (and beyond) full of heartbreak, hope, redemption, and wonder.

#11. Elegy for the Undead

by Matthew Vesely

Publisher: Lanternfish Press

Genre: Literary Science Fiction

About the Book:

Jude and Lyle’s newlywed life is shattered when a vicious attack leaves Lyle infected with a disease that transforms him into a violent and often incomprehensible person. With no cure for the “zombie” virus in sight, the young husbands begin to face the last months they have together before Lyle loses himself completely. Fond remembrances of young love meet the challenges of navigating a partner’s terminal illness in this bittersweet tale that explores both how we fall in love and how we say goodbye when the time comes far too soon.

#12. The Hole

by Hiroko Oyamada

Publisher: New Directions Publishing

Genre: Absurdism

About the Book:

Asa’s husband is transferring jobs, and his new office is located near his family’s home in the countryside. During an exceptionally hot summer, the young married couple move in, and Asa does her best to quickly adjust to their new rural lives, to their remoteness, to the constant presence of her in-laws and the incessant buzz of cicadas. While her husband is consumed with his job, Asa is left to explore her surroundings on her own: she makes trips to the supermarket, halfheartedly looks for work, and tries to find interesting ways of killing time.

One day, while running an errand for her mother-in-law, she comes across a strange creature, follows it to the embankment of a river, and ends up falling into a hole―a hole that seems to have been made specifically for her. This is the first in a series of bizarre experiences that drive Asa deeper into the mysteries of this rural landscape filled with eccentric characters and unidentifiable creatures, leading her to question her role in this world, and eventually, her sanity.

#13. The Prisoner of the Castle of Enlightenment

by Therese Doucet

Publisher: DX Varos, Ltd

Genre: Historical fantasy

About the Book:

Violaine, a devotee of books and learning, is sold by her father to a mysterious nobleman to become his companion. Fearing herself at the mercy of a monster, Violaine instead succumbs to the seductive spell of her magical new home, and the love of a man she has never seen, who comes to her only in the darkness of night.

The Château de Boisaulne is a place of many mysteries, but also a refuge for children of the Enlightenment in a time when Europe still languishes under the repressive chains of monarchy and superstition. But modern thought meets ancient lore, as the castle borders the forest lair of the roi des aulnes, an ogre said to be the ancestor of Violaine’s unseen lover … or are they one and the same?

#14. What Shines from It

by Sara Rauch

Publisher: Alternating Current Press

Genre: Literary Short Fiction

About the Book:

The eleven stories in Sara Rauch’s What Shines from It are rife with the physical and psychic wounds of everyday life. In “Beholden,” girl meets boy meets the unsettled spirits of post-9/11 New York City, but her future can’t hold them all. In “Kitten,” a struggling veteran and his wife argue over adopting an abandoned kitten, deepening their financial and emotional rifts. In “Abandon,” a ghost-baby ravages a woman’s body following a late-term miscarriage, marring her chances for new love. And in “Kintsukuroi,” a married potter falls for a married geologist and discovers the luminosity of being broken.

What Shines from It is populated by women on the verge of transcendence—brimming with anger and love—and working-class artists haunted by the ghosts of their desires. Abiding by a distinctly guarded New England sensibility, these stories inhabit the borderlands of long-established cities, where humans are still learning to embrace the natural world. Subtly exploring sexualities, relationships, birth and rebirth, identity, ghosts, and longing, Rauch searches for the places where our protective shells are cracked and, in spare, poetic language, limns those edges of loneliness and loss with light.

Nonfiction

#15. The Magical Language of Others

by E.J. Koh

Publisher: Tin House

Genre: Memoir, Mothers & Daughters

About the Book:

A tale of deep bonds to family, place, language―of hard-won selfhood told by a singular, incandescent voice.

The Magical Language of Others is a powerful and aching love story in letters, from mother to daughter. After living in America for over a decade, Eun Ji Koh’s parents return to South Korea for work, leaving fifteen-year-old Eun Ji and her brother behind in California. Overnight, Eun Ji finds herself abandoned and adrift in a world made strange by her mother’s absence. Her mother writes letters, in Korean, over the years seeking forgiveness and love―letters Eun Ji cannot fully understand until she finds them years later hidden in a box.

As Eun Ji translates the letters, she looks to history―her grandmother Jun’s years as a lovesick wife in Daejeon, the horrors her grandmother Kumiko witnessed during the Jeju Island Massacre―and to poetry, as well as her own lived experience to answer questions inside all of us. Where do the stories of our mothers and grandmothers end and ours begin? How do we find words―in Korean, Japanese, English, or any language―to articulate the profound ways that distance can shape love? Eun Ji Koh fearlessly grapples with forgiveness, reconciliation, legacy, and intergenerational trauma, arriving at insights that are essential reading for anyone who has ever had to balance love, longing, heartbreak, and joy.

#16. The Names of All the Flowers

by Melissa Valentine

Publisher: Feminist Press

Genre: Race & Loss

About the Book:

Set in rapidly gentrifying 1990s Oakland, this memoir—”poignant, painful, and gorgeous” (Alicia Garza)—explores siblinghood, adolescence, and grief in a family shattered by loss.

Melissa and her older brother Junior grow up running around the disparate neighborhoods of 1990s Oakland, two of six children to a white Quaker father and a black Southern mother. But as Junior approaches adolescence, a bullying incident and later a violent attack in school leave him searching for power and a sense of self in all the wrong places; he develops a hard front and falls into drug dealing. Right before Junior’s twentieth birthday, the family is torn apart when he is murdered as a result of gun violence.

The Names of All the Flowers connects one tragic death to a collective grief for all black people who die too young. A lyrical recounting of a life lost, Melissa Valentine’s debut memoir is an intimate portrait of a family fractured by the school-to-prison pipeline and an enduring love letter to an adored older brother. It is a call for justice amid endless cycles of violence, grief, and trauma, declaring: “We are all witness and therefore no one is spared from this loss.”

#17. A History of My Brief Body

by Billy-Ray Belcourt

Publisher: Two Dollar Radio

Genre: Sexuality, Race, & Colonial Canada

About the Book:

The youngest ever winner of the Griffin Prize mines his personal history in a brilliant new essay collection seeking to reconcile the world he was born into with the world that could be.

For readers of Ocean Vuong and Maggie Nelson and fans of Heart Berries by Terese Marie Mailhot, A History of My Brief Body is a brave, raw, and fiercely intelligent collection of essays and vignettes on grief, colonial violence, joy, love, and queerness.

Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut memoir opens with a tender letter to his kokum and memories of his early life in the hamlet of Joussard, Alberta, and on the Driftpile First Nation. Piece by piece, Billy-Ray’s writings invite us to unpack and explore the big and broken world he inhabits every day, in all its complexity and contradiction: a legacy of colonial violence and the joy that flourishes in spite of it; first loves and first loves lost; sexual exploration and intimacy; the act of writing as a survival instinct and a way to grieve. What emerges is not only a profound meditation on memory, gender, anger, shame, and ecstasy, but also the outline of a way forward. With startling honesty, and in a voice distinctly and assuredly his own, Belcourt situates his life experiences within a constellation of seminal queer texts, among which this book is sure to earn its place. Eye-opening, intensely emotional, and excessively quotable, A History of My Brief Body demonstrates over and over again the power of words to both devastate and console us.

#18. The Incredible Shrinking Woman

by Athena Dixon

Publisher: Split/Lip Press

Genre: Memoir in Essays

About the Book:

A quiet retelling of a life in the background, Athena Dixon’s debut essay collection, The Incredible Shrinking Woman, is a gentle unpacking of the roles she learned to inhabit, growing up as a Black woman in a small Midwestern town, to avoid disruption. But after the implosion of the life she’d always wanted, Dixon must explore the implications of her desire to hide as she rebuilds herself in a world that expects freedom to look boisterous. As Dixon presses the bruises of her invisibility, these essays glide between the pages of fan fiction, the rush of new panties, down the rabbit hole of depression, and reemerge on the other side, speaking with the lived authority of a voice that, even when shaking, is always crystal clear.

#19. Before and After the Book Deal

by Courtney Maum

Publisher: Catapult

Genre: Writing & Publishing

About the Book:

“Like sharing a coffee with a kind and witty mentor, Before and After the Book Deal is an ideally conversational guide to traditional publishing.” – Independent Book Review

There are countless books on the market about how to write better but very few books on how to break into the marketplace with your first book. Cutting through the noise (and very mixed advice) online, while both dispelling rumors and remaining positive, Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal is a one-of-a-kind resource that can help you get your book published.

Are MFA programs worth the time and money? How do people actually sit down and finish a novel? Did you get a good advance? What do you do when you feel envious of other writers? And why the heck aren’t your friends saying anything about your book? Covering questions ranging from the logistical to the existential (and everything in between), Before and After the Book Deal is the definitive guide for anyone who has ever wanted to know what it’s really like to be an author.

#20. Suppose Muscle, Suppose Night, Suppose This in August

by Danielle Zaccagnino

Publisher: Mason Jar Press

Genre: Poetic memoir

About the Book:

SUPPOSE MUSCLE, SUPPOSE NIGHT, SUPPOSE THIS IN AUGUST explores how anxiety and escape can shape a life from childhood to adulthood. This hybrid of lyrical essays and poetry weaves a delicate thread across the country, through dreams and nightmares, euphoria and fear, and intimacy and distance, always with particular attention to form and language. With dreamlike imagery, a unique inventiveness, and emotional clarity, the collection dissects that which we are too afraid to touch in our waking hours.

#21. High Cotton

by Kristie Robin Johnson

Publisher: Raised Voice Press

Genre: Race, Family, & Womanhood

About the Book:

Kristie Robin Johnson has lived nearly her whole life in small town Georgia, as did five generations of African American women before her beginning with a slave, her oldest known ancestor. In High Cotton, Johnson explores the social and economic consequences of her lineage, drawing on pivotal moments from her own experience to illuminate the lived reality of a daughter of the Deep South.

Johnson unapologetically describes a life that falls below the standards of black respectability, that of an unmarried young mother, an addict’s daughter, a college dropout, welfare recipient, and willful sinner. The voice in High Cotton is a cry from within the masses. Johnson stretches out long brown fingers as far as they will reach to barely skim the first, crucial rung of the ladder to success, that so-called American dream. She exposes the soft underbelly of black girl magic, celebrating black life in all its glorious vulnerability.

The essays in High Cotton contain all the complication of a post-civil rights era, post-women’s liberation, pre-millennial black woman living in the modern South, conjuring universal truths every reader will recognize.

#22. An Ambiguous Grief

by Dominique Hunter

Publisher: Atmosphere Press

Genre: Grief & Loss

About the Book:

“An Ambiguous Grief is a beautiful, unflinchingly honest, poignant and wistful memoir, written with humor, and a graceful sangfroid that is admirable. One thing Dominique Hunter has done extremely well is to reveal her son Dylan’s story in the exact right way: readers know upfront that she has lost him, but they don’t know how. By the time we find out what happened to him, we know enough about his struggles and hers to understand how he came to that point in his life. Although the story is about Dylan, in the end, it tells the story of a mother’s journey through coping with a devastating loss and moving forward – not “getting over it,” but facing it by using her intelligence, humor, honesty, and humanity to deal with it in all its messy, sad, loving, ironic, despairing, hopeful, ambivalent ways. And to survive that journey, she takes us into an imaginative realm where past, present and future align to give her the space to heal.”

— Susan Edwards

#23. A Fish Growing Lungs

by Alysia Li Ying Sawchyn

Publisher: Burrow Press

Genre: Mood Disorders & Health

About the Book:

At age 18 Alysia Sawchyn was diagnosed with bipolar I. Seven years later she learned she had been misdiagnosed. A Fish Growing Lungs takes the form of linked essays that reflect on Sawchyn’s diagnosis and its unraveling, the process of withdrawal and recovery, and the search for identity as she emerges from a difficult past into a cautiously hopeful present.

Sawchyn captures the precariousness of life under the watchful eye of doctors, friends, and family, in which saying or doing the wrong thing could lead to involuntary confinement. This scrutiny is compounded by the stigmas of mental illness and the societal expectations placed on the bodies of women and women of color. And yet, amid juggling medications, doubting her diagnosis, and struggling with addiction and cutting, there is also joy, friendship, love, and Slayer concerts.

Funny, intelligent, and unflinchingly honest, Sawchyn explores how we can come to know ourselves when our bodies betray us. Drawing from life experience, literature, music, medical journals, films, and recovery communities, each essay illuminates the richness of self-knowledge that comes from the act of writing itself.

Poetry

#24. $50,000

by Andrew Whitehead

Publisher: Publishing Genius

About the Book:

$50,000 is a long poem that allows Andrew Weatherhead the space to search everything–his cubicle, his relationships with coworkers and friends, and the worlds found in literature, sports, economics, and history–for something more meaningful than mere facts. What arises in these 116 pages is the pure drama of life: the unrelenting passage of time, the inevitable need to make a living, and the foreboding beauty of numbers, names, and friendship. In hundreds of standalone lines that align with Mike Tyson’s peek-a-boo style, this long poem moves like prose but sticks with all the weight and heft of poetry.

#25. When My Body Was a Clinched Fist

by Enzo Silon Surin

Publisher: Black Lawrence Press

About the Book:

“Back in the day when KRS-One intoned–The Bridge is over!–he did not prefigure a poet from Queens of the fierce attitude and intellectual magnitude of Enzo Silon Surin. WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST gives the Heisman to such a refrain with lyrical power-packing poetics that settles the score with a succinct–Not! No the Bridge is not over, for Surin’s Queens is alive and well and under the gaze of a master observer who eulogizes lives that though at times are battered have always mattered. Enzo Silon Surin’s poems get you caught up in the deeply personal experiences of growing and visceral all-encompassing knowing from an acute witness of every breath and follicle of Black life from palm trees, sand and sea to street corner projects, suburban houses and fistfuls of black water.

“Surin writes about the confused and disconnected, trigger happy wannabes trapped by outdated notions of masculinity, the cracked head crackheads all held in the clutch of society’s clinched fist through which the trauma that comes with being of color, addicted, broke, lost and tossed, is itself a clinched fist of black bodies caught in the Russian nesting doll America’s clinched fists make. WHEN MY BODY WAS A CLINCHED FIST is an elegy for ‘the premature exits.’ It is a blues for the black-on-black black and blue. Surin yields his pen like a microscopic scalpel whereby an autopsy of possibility is performed to un-clinch the remarkable bone gristle poetry in these unflinching heart-wrenching pages.”

— Tony Medina

#26. Ways We Vanish

by Todd Dillard

Publisher: Okay Donkey Press

About the Book:

WAYS WE VANISH, Todd Dillard’s debut poetry collection, navigates the grief following the loss of a loved one while also starting a new life and becoming a parent. It peels back the layers of everyday living to reveal the impossible landscape flourishing underneath—one fraught with sorrow, want, and pain, but also filled with hope, joy, and flight.

#27. Travelers Leaving for the City

by Ed Skoog

Publisher: Copper Canyon Press

About the Book:

Travelers Leaving for the City is a long song of arrivals and departures, centered around the murder of the poet’s grandfather in 1955 in a Pittsburgh hotel, exploring how such events frame memory, history and language for those they touch. The poems probe the anonymity of cities, and the crucible of travel. The historical impact of arousal, rage, regret, and forgiveness is seen in visions of interrogations and hotels. These poems explore how family bonds, and disruptions shape, the mind and language, all the while urging the reader to listen for traces of ancestors in one’s own mind and body.

#28. Praise Song for My Children

by Patricia Jabbeh Wesley

Publisher: Autumn House Press

About the Book:

Praise Song for My Children celebrates twenty-one years of poetry by one of the most significant African poets of this century. Patricia Jabbeh Wesley guides us through the complex and intertwined highs and lows of motherhood and all the roles that it encompasses: parent, woman, wife, sister, friend. Her work is deeply personal, drawing from her own life and surroundings to convey grief, the bleakness of war, humor, deep devotion, and the hope of possibility. These poems lend an international voice to the tales of motherhood, as Wesley speaks both to the African and to the Western experience of motherhood, particularly black motherhood. She pulls from African motifs and proverbs, utilizing the poetics of both the West and Africa to enrich her striking emotional range. Leading us to the depths of mourning and the heights of tender love, she responds to American police brutality, writing “To be a black woman is to be a woman, / ready to mourn,” and remembers a dear friend who is at once “mother and wife and friend and pillar / and warrior woman all in one.”

Wesley writes poetry that moves with her through life, land, and love, seeing with eyes that have witnessed both national and personal tragedy and redemption. Born in Tugbakeh, Liberia and raised in Monrovia, Wesley immigrated to the United States in 1991 to escape the Liberian civil war. In this moving collection, she invites us to join her as she buries loved ones, explores long-distance connections through social media, and sings bittersweet praises of the women around her, of mothers, and of Africa.

Younger Readers

#29. Surrender Your Sons

by Adam Sass

Publisher: Flux

Genre: YA Mystery/Thriller

About the Book:

Connor Major’s summer break is turning into a nightmare.

His SAT scores bombed, the old man he delivers meals to died, and when he came out to his religious zealot mother, she had him kidnapped and shipped off to a secluded island. His final destination: Nightlight Ministries, a conversion therapy camp that will be his new home until he “changes.”

But Connor’s troubles are only beginning. At Nightlight, everyone has something to hide—from the campers to the “converted” staff and cagey camp director—and it quickly becomes clear that no one is safe. Connor plans to escape and bring the other kidnapped teens with him. But first, he’s exposing the camp’s horrible truths for what they are—and taking this place down.

#30. Camper Girl

by Glenn Erick Miller

Publisher: Fitzroy Books

Genre: YA road trip

About the Book:

While her friends head off to college, Shannon Burke is stuck with a dead-end job and the responsibility of saving her mother’s business. The only bright spot is her upcoming birthday and a visit from her eccentric Aunt Rebecca. But before Shannon can blow out her candles, she receives devastating news: Rebecca is dead. When she learns that her aunt has gifted her a beat-up camper, Shannon decides to sell it for cold, hard cash.

Then she loses her job and finds a mysterious map in the glove box, and in a moment of desperation, she jumps behind the wheel and hits the road. Following Rebecca’s maps, Shannon journeys deep into New York’s Adirondack Mountains where she faces her greatest fears and navigates a new reality that is as unpredictable as the wilderness itself. During her scavenger hunt of self-discovery, Shannon experiences the healing power of nature, uncovers a stunning family secret, and comes to realize that a person’s path through life is never clearly marked.

#31. David Tung Can’t Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College

by Ed Lin

Publisher: Kaya Press

Genre: YA coming of age

About the Book:

In David Tung Can’t Have a Girlfriend Until He Gets Into an Ivy League College, novelist Ed Lin conjures up “a fast-paced, acid-tongued, hilarious teen drama for our age,” says Marie Myung-Ok Lee, acclaimed author of Somebody’s Daughter and Finding My Voice. Both playful and wryly observant, Ed Lin’s YA-debut explores coming-of-age in the Asian diaspora while navigating relationships through race, class, and young love.

David Tung, our nerd-hero, is a Chinese American high-school student who works in his family’s restaurant, competes for top grades at his regular high school located in an upscale, Asian-majority New Jersey suburb, and attends weekend Chinese school in NYC’s working-class Chinatown. While David faces parental pressures to get As and conform to cultural norms and expectations, he’s caught up in the complicated world of high school love triangles―and amid these external pressures is the fear he will die alone, whether he gets into Harvard or not!

#32. The Candy Mafia

by Lavie Tidhar

Publisher: Peachtree Publishing

Genre: Middle Grade Mystery

About the Book:

When notorious candy gangster Eddie de Menthe asks for her help to find a missing teddy bear, Nelle Faulkner is on the case. But as soon as the teddy turns up, Eddie himself goes missing! As a seemingly innocent investigation unravels into something more ominous, Nelle and her friends quickly find themselves swept up in a shady underworld of sweets smugglers, back alley deals, and storefront firebombs.

If Nelle has any hope of tracking down her missing client, first she’ll have to unmask the true faces behind the smuggling ring. Can Nelle and her friends find a way to take the cake? Or will they come to a sticky end…?

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory meets Bugsy Malone in this page-turning mystery from World Fantasy Award-winning author Lavie Tidhar. With moody illustrations by Daniel Duncan, readers will be sucked into the action-packed narrative as Nelle pulls the curtain back on black-market candy rings.

And that’s all you’re getting out of me this year. Which books from indie presses were your favorite this year?

About the Curator

Joe Walters is the editor-in-chief of Independent Book Review and a book marketing specialist at Sunbury Press. When he’s not doing editorial, promoting, or reviewing work, he’s working on his novel and trusting the process.

Thank you for reading “32 Impressive Indie Press Books from 2020” by Joe Walters! If you liked what you read, please spend some more time with us at the links below.

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