One Honest Indie

“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

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To Substack or Not

06/17/2025 by Debbi

Remember this? 🙂

Hi. Yeah, I’m on Substack and apparently every Substacker’s favorite topic is Substack itself. Is it really? It’s not really my favorite topic, but I’ll take a look at this article and think about that. There are a lot of names mentioned here. A lot of people are on Substack. A lot of people seem to be making money there. I’m not one of them. I mean, I make a little bit of money, but it’s very, very small.

Now, raise your hand if like me, your email is inundated with more newsletters than you have time in the day to read. Since you’re reading this newsletter, I’m guessing many of these missives are coming courtesy of Substack, the 8-year-old publishing platform that’s seen explosive growth since the presidential election last year.

Most interesting.

Well, I have to tell you, I’m not inundated with newsletters that I have no time to read because when I don’t read them, I unsubscribe. Or these days I avoid subscribing entirely because I have no time to read them. I do have time to talk about it though. I think what we’re heading toward is a situation in which there’s going to be too much of everything and not enough behind it to merit the payment. And I am just a little bit worried about that myself. So these are things that bother me quite a bit in reading stuff like this. I mean, we have big names coming onto this platform and people feel threatened or something because they’re not making the leaderboard.

 


Making the leaderboard sometimes is not as awesome as you think it is. Sometimes it just does not last. I know in my case with Amazon, it did not last. So all of this obsession over numbers and where you end up on a leaderboard, I don’t know how much we really benefit by obsessing over these things. I’m thinking we don’t benefit much at all, that we’re better off trying to find a way to reach people without obsessing about these numbers. So I don’t know, but I, I’m trying to get at that a little bit with what I’m saying here. Maybe we need to just kind of relax and not worry so much about this stuff. That’s just my thought, thought for the day.

At some point I reached a point where I was burnt out and I just had to just relax and just not worry so much. So that’s what I have to say about that. And I hope that you’re having a good day, wherever you are, whoever you are, and whatever you’re doing, I’ll go back to exercising. I should have been exercising this whole time and I haven’t been. There, you see. Helps with the dystonia.

Okay? So I’ll be seeing you! Take care and yes, I’m in my Colonel Kurtz mode here, or whatever his name was who went after Colonel Kurtz. Half in shadow. The horror, the horror of the internet. Take care, be seeing you.

PS: It was Captain Willard played by the amazing Martin Sheen! 🙂

Want to subscribe to my Substack? 🙂 For free?

PPS: Takes a while to get geared up, doesn’t it? 

 

You know things are bad …

01/07/2025 by Debbi

It’s pretty bad out there when Jane Friedman goes off on GoodReads and Amazon.

I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires).

Quoting the article:

There’s not much that makes me angry these days about writing and publishing. I’ve seen it all. I know what to expect from Amazon and Goodreads. Meaning: I don’t expect much, and I assume I will be continually disappointed. Nor do I have the power to change how they operate. My energy-saving strategy: move on and focus on what you can control.

That’s going to become much harder to do if Amazon and Goodreads don’t start defending against the absolute garbage now being spread across their sites.

I know my work gets pirated and frankly I don’t care. (I’m not saying other authors shouldn’t care, but that’s not a battle worth my time today.)

And that’s exactly what Amazon is counting on. They want you to feel powerless and like you must subject yourself to their arbitrary and unreasonable rules.

To read the rest, click here for the “secret draft link”! 🙂

 

So Glad We Can All Agree on This!

02/07/2023 by Debbi

Photo by JESHOOTS.COM on Unsplash

That photo represents me in 2010 and 2011, obsessively checking my Amazon rank and blogging incessantly and with the intention of sharing my experiences as an indie author.

As I have stated here and elsewhere, I’ve spent the past few years losing money. I can’t begin to make enough to cover book production and other expenses, let alone live on what I make from selling fiction, at this point.

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Meet Debbi

Welcome to my writers' corner of the Internet. I'm a novelist, who also writes short stories and screenplays. I hope to share the benefit of my experiences as an indie author with dystonia since 2009. I also post a lot of book reviews, because I love to read and learn new things. I hope to share that knowledge with you.

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Beginner’s Guide to Mystery Writing

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