Victoria Noe

Award-winning Author, Speaker, Activist

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Indie Author Day

Indie Authors, Libraries and Discoverability

Indie Authors, Libraries and Discoverability
Oct 05, 2016 by Victoria Noe
123rf.com

What’s the hardest part of being an author?

Some people will say it’s the writing itself. Others insist it’s the editing process. But most will agree that the hardest part is figuring out how to be discovered by eager readers.

The challenge – no matter how they publish – is for their book to rise above the ever-increasing numbers of titles published each year. For those of us who are indie authors, it is daunting.

Bowker, the company that issues ISBN numbers to authors in the US, just released their report on 2015. Last year 625,327 indie titles were issued ISBN numbers in the US. That’s over 1,700 each and every day, weekends and holidays included.

Now consider the fact...

Mark Your Calendar for Indie Author Day

Mark Your Calendar for Indie Author Day
Sep 21, 2016 by Victoria Noe
I love libraries, don't you? But until recently, my books were not available there, in print or ebook. That changed when the first four Friend Grief ebooks were accepted by Library Journal's SELF-e program for their Illinois and National Select collections. Print, however, was a different story.

Authors want to see their books in public libraries: actual, physical books. But too often, indie authors are shut out. The reasons are, well, reasonable. The sheer number of indie authors is growing every day. The number of librarians is much smaller. They simply don’t have the time to meet and greet every author who walks in to sell their books.

Purchasing requirements vary from library system to library system. When you’re on your own...