#indieApril is lighting up my Twitter and Instagram feeds these days. What does a month devoted to the celebration and promotion of independent publishing mean to folks that love a good story?

I could start this blog with the invention of moveable type (I’m pedantic like that), but I think we can all agree that the means to produce multiple copies of a story and the access to story consumers are crucial to writers.

Means and access: Whose story gets told. How the story gets told. When the story gets told. Whether the story gets told at all. At one time, the “Big Five” New York publishing houses were, by and large, our book gatekeepers. A huge, centralized homogenous book-spewing entity became the only business model that seemed feasible. Any exceptions from back in the day that we can think of—from the underground press to pirate radio stations—proved the rule.

Then personal computers happened. Literally anyone with a word processor program could write a book and have it printed up.  And thousands and thousands of people did so. Then these authors would rent a sales booth at their local science fiction convention to peddle their creation. They might even sell a few copies. Although these writers had the means to produce a book, that access thing needed some work.

Time and technology marched on. Amazon and other internet booksellers became a thing. Then ebooks. Then print-on-demand providers. Today, anyone’s story has, not only the means, but the access to the public. Consultant Jane Friedman provides a great graphic that summaries the similarities and differences among the many publishing paths, but they all fall into two main groups:

• Traditional, aka, the Big Five as well and other large, mid-size, and small presses. Greatly simplified, the business of these companies is to sell stories. They purchase story from writers, package them up, and sell them to the public.
• Non-traditional, aka, independent press. With or without help from area experts in editing, book design, cover art, marketing, sales promotion, and merchandising, the storyteller packages and sells their tales to the public.

What does independent press mean to the story-buying public? Check out next week’s blog!