The book industry has changed a great deal over the last ten years or so, and self-publishing, or going it alone as an independent author, is something that has grown phenomenally during that time. It certainly no longer has the stigma once associated with it. It’s not only debut authors who go the independent route: many established authors, including, in Australia, such well-known writers as Isobelle Carmody, Steven Herrick and Hazel Edwards have all experimented with it for various projects, as indeed I have, with a couple of ebooks of short pieces produced with my micro-press Sixteen Press. But some writers choose to go the independent route not just for an experiment, but because they prefer it. And now there’s an organisation to support them: The Alliance of Independent Authors, or ALLI, which started and is based in the USA but which has chapters in several countries, including Australia.

I first came across it as one does, through a glancing mention in an internet article on publishing, and, intrigued, wanted to find out more. And so today I’m speaking to author Rebecca Lang, the Australian representative of ALLI, about the organisation and what it does.

The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) is a fairly new organisation, isn’t it? Can you tell us a bit about how and why it started? And how long have you personally been involved?

ALLi was founded in 2012, I have been a member since the organisation’s inception, but I have personally been self-publishing since 2010.

I spent several years writing a book with my partner on Australian folklore – a niche interest area at the best of time – and shopped it around to a couple of Australian publishers, receiving a somewhat lukewarm response. As I used to work in newspapers as a journalist and editor, I decided to have a go at creating and project managing my own publication, and co-opted another friend into designing the book cover. I was really pleased with the end result. To date, I have produced three books and have another two in the pipeline this year, including my first foray into fiction.

I have also worked with other authors to guide and advise them on their own publishing journeys, editing books, refining book ‘blurbs’, assessing the quality of book covers, and creating successful marketing strategies.

As a writer and self-publisher I think my ALLi membership is one of the best investments I have ever made. Through ALLi I have been inspired, supported and most importantly connected to a community that by its very nature is ‘disruptive’ – it’s all about shaking up the publishing model to allow fresh and diverse voices to be heard.

Self-publishing – actually, ‘author-publishing’ is probably a better term given the number of hybrid and traditional authors who have now adopted the model (including successful children’s authors Cornelia Funke, and J.K. Rowling – the latter selling her Harry Potter ebooks exclusively through her Pottermore.com website) – tends to attract dynamic and energetic people who have a strong creative drive. I think it’s this passion to succeed that authors need to get their work into print and into the hands and minds of readers. After all, it’s a highly competitive industry.

What does membership of ALLi offer to authors? 

ALLi offers authors an unrivalled peer-to-peer author-publishing experience, allowing seasoned and first-timers alike to interact, share their expertise and network to promote each other’s work.

There’s a real esprit de corps, and its membership is highly informed about all the latest publishing developments in business and technology.

And it’s quite a diverse crowd – you have romance and fantasy writers rubbing shoulders, and authors of non-fiction and fiction keeping company and swapping marketing advice. And it’s not just writers. ALLi also counts graphic designers, editors, copywriters and publicists among its members.

I would go so far as to say an ALLi membership is almost compulsory if you’re going to strike out on your own and navigate the publishing trail. Why wouldn’t you tap into the best author-publishing network in the world?

What are ALLi’s relationships with other author organisations, such as, in Australia, the Australian Society of Authors (ASA), the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and others, such as the Writers’ Centres? 

There have been some early discussions with some of these groups, but author-publishing is still in many ways in its infancy in Australia, despite being a successful pathway for many now ‘traditional’ authors including the likes of thriller writer Matthew Reilly (Contest), sci-fi author Simon Haynes (his first three Hal Spacejock novels), cookbook authors Rachel Bermingham and Kim McCosker (of 4 Ingredients fame), Frank Hardy (Power Without Glory), and Patrick White (Flaws In The Glass).

ALLi is very much about encouraging its membership to not only produce quality, professional products but to use the channels open to them to more effectively market their books. ALLi welcomes professional partnerships with likeminded organisations.

Over the years I have been a member of the NSW Writers’ Centre, the NSW Society of Editors and the Society of Women Writers, and have attended countless writing festivals around Australia. I see real value in writers coming together to seriously tackle the business of writing – not just mastering it, celebrating it and sharing it, but actually coming to grips with the nuts and bolts of marketing it, selling it (into foreign markets and on multiple platforms), and navigating the world of digital publishing. This is where ALLi excels.

I’d love to see more Australian author-centric organisations embrace, include and work with ALLi members and the author-publishing model.

As the Australian representative for what is an international grouping of independent authors, how do you see your role? And what kinds of things have you participated in? 

Being a regional representative involves raising awareness about ALLi’s services and getting involved in Australian publishing life. Most importantly, it’s about helping to build a network of writers and author-publishers to share knowledge and champion each other’s work.

I have been involved with quite a few online conferences and blogs, but I would welcome the opportunity to speak with Australian writing groups, centres and organisations about the benefits of ALLi membership, the role of author-publishing, and the business of being an author.

What’s planned for ALLi in the future?

ALLi has quite a few irons in the fire for 2016, chief among them the free Indie Author Fringe events, featuring some of the world’s most successful self-published authors.
Indie Author Fringe (formerly known as IndieReCon) offers FREE online one-day conferences for any authors interested in self-publishing.

Over the course of 2016, ALLi will take authors through the entire indie author journey, from writing to promotion and beyond. There are three planned online international events in 2016 on the heels of London Book Fair (April 12th-14th 2016), Book Expo America (May 11th-13th 2016) and Frankfurt Book Fair (19th-23rd October 2016). But it doesn’t matter where you are in the world, if you have an internet connection you can join in.

Thanks Sophie for the chance to share what ALLI does. It’s a really exciting time to be a writer involved in self-publishing!

Today I am interviewing well-known authors Bem Le Hunte and Sue Woolfe, who are two of the founding partners in a new author-centred publishing enterprise, Wuthering Ink, which after several years of hard work, was launched in Sydney recently.

First of all, Bem and Sue, congratulations on the recent launch of Wuthering Ink! It’s been a massive undertaking, I know. Can you tell us about how it all started? 

It all started on a balcony in Sydney where we gathered one candlelit evening – a group of writers with unchecked revolutionary tendencies – all good at inventing worlds and thinking differently about possibilities. We were writers of novels, plays, poetry and children’s books, but on this occasion we gathered to write a manifesto…

I imagine it must have been quite a steep learning curve for you! What were the challenges you faced during the set-up? And what discoveries did you make along the way?

(BEM) In my other life I run a world-first, transdisciplinary, future-facing degree called the Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation at UTS – where students meet the challenges of a fully disrupted, open, complex, dynamic networked society, responding with creative interventions in a constantly evolving innovation ecosystem. (Phew, that sounded long-winded!)

Bem Le Hunte

Anyway, one of the things we do is human-centred design, and then human-centred everything – that is, everything beyond design. In publishing that means an author-centric vision of what’s possible. It occurred to us that this had never been done before, and yet we were at a threshold moment when we could re-invent the system. The new, transformed digital publishing environment gave us that opportunity to create a portal that really put the writer at the centre of the deal, not at the end of a long system that allots a slot on a September list for your ‘title.’

So you can see, this is a re-vision of what publishing could be, from an author’s perspective. The only problem was that the world was already organising too-fast around the new intermediaries – giants like Amazon, who presented a new system for authors to slot into, on what is often described as a ‘long tail’ model of publishing. (The long tail is the million plus self-published authors selling no more than a hundred dollars worth of books, but still making money for Amazon.)

The only problem was to create a partnership with a company that could build us the portal – the back-end. For that, I approached Macmillan Publishing Solutions, in India, who have been incredibly supportive over this period of time. Not only did they understand our vision, they interpreted it through clever technology. For example, we didn’t want to just dump books on our site and leave them there to rot. We wanted to give authors the option to upload videos. And we wanted to be able to promote books to Wuthering Ink readers, which we will be doing through a regular newsletter. And we wanted to make it easy for authors to upload their books and liberate their backlists. Macmillan Publishing Solutions have helped Wuthering Ink to do all this and more.

Can you explain exactly what Wuthering Ink can do for authors? What can people expect if they sign up with you? And what are your criteria–if any–for works featured on Wuthering Ink?

*Higher royalties – 80% on your book. (When we began we rather cheekily called ourselves ‘The Royalties’ for this very reason.)

*A chance to be published in perpetuity – and possibly the chance to earn a living from your work, over time.

*A ‘book in a bag’ service, which allows authors with backlisted titles to easily and cheaply convert their titles through Macmillan Publishing Solutions in India.

*A truly international market with no barriers to overseas publication. (We know we’re as good as the best of American and British writers, but here’s a chance to prove it with sales!)

*The ability to publish outside the strictly commercial demands of traditional publishing. (A chance to experiment and take risks – the thrill of any creative practice.)

*More control over the production and promotion of work. (Long past the time allocated by publicists in publishing houses.)

How do you feel Wuthering Ink differs from similar services such as, for instance, the ASA’s Authors Unlimited?

We offer higher royalties than Amazon, and more generally an exclusive list of published authors – writers who all bring their readers with them. We also offer authors the ability to promote their work directly to readers who sign up for our regular newsletters. Traditional publishers, or even digital intermediaries, rarely allow this type of direct contact between writers and readers as it undermines their role and financial advantage in holding the ‘list’ of buyers. Our goal is to make the contact between readers and writers far more fluid and enriching for writers and readers. What we’re after is intimacy, and we need a community for this, which is why we are so keen to talk to other people in the community of readers – including your readers, Sophie!

Having said all this, we’re not exclusive. Wuthering Ink authors can have their book on any number of sites. We believe that this type of promiscuity promotes a thriving publishing ecosystem!

What have the reactions of authors been so far? And have you had any comments from publishers too?

Sue Woolfe

 (SUE) Tom Keneally said it was “a grand concept”. Stephen Sewell said ‘we’re changing the world, one book at a time”. Our family of authors, who we’ve tested it all out on, who’ve been patiently waiting for our launch, sometimes for years – are delighted.

(BEM) I’ve had so many writers thank Sue and I for creating Wuthering Ink – especially since the launch. Time will tell how their responses develop – we’re still so new. I’d be very interested in what your readers think of it, and would really encourage them to get on board, test it out and join our push to transform the world of publishing!

What are you hoping Wuthering Ink might do, in the short and long term, for Australian authors and Australian literature?

 Well it’s a world first and it’s an Australian innovation, so Aussie writers are well-placed to benefit from this social enterprise from the word go. However, we’re hoping it will begin a worldwide phenomenon. If Wuthering Ink can help publish the work of established authors around the world – of every ilk – we’d love that. So if there’s a biography of a Tuareg Chief, a philosophy book that will help us understand how to survive capitalism, or a book of hand-written poems that have been dug up from the 16^th Century, we’d welcome all these additions and more on our site! Please join us – check it out – upload your books and connect with your favourite authors.

In the course of my reading for the PHD, I have come across some wonderful books, and one of them is American novelist Laura Whitcomb’s daring, touching and beautiful YA novel, A Certain Slant of Light, which is half ghost story, half romance. The main character, Helen, died over 100 years ago, and since then has existed  in a transitional place between life and death as one of the ‘Light’, haunting the ‘Quick’, living people who are her ‘hosts’ and immersing herself in literature as all her ‘hosts’ are writers of one kind or the other, so that she’s almost like a variety of muse. She’s forgotten most of her life history, and doesn’t understand why she’s stuck in this dimension but is afraid of finding out more, in case she gets moved on into hell. Then one day, in the class of her current host, a literature teacher, she meets a boy called James, who isn’t quite what he seems at first.

That meeting will transform Helen’s afterlife, as she learns more about herself, love, and salvation. The language is intensely poetic, and the compelling story well-integrated with exploration of such things as the intricacies of sexual relationships and the nature of religious hypocrisy. It’s such a gripping, unusual novel that, reading it on the train, I very nearly missed my stop!

The novel, which was Laura Whitcomb’s first, was very successful, and led to others, which have also done very well. Inspired by my reading, I contacted the author, and asked her a few questions.

A Certain Slant of Light was your first novel,but it is remarkably accomplished both in style and story. Can you tell us about  your  writing career before it,and how the novel was published?

In the 20 years before I sold my first novel I wrote 20 drafts of 20 unpublished novels. So I had lots of practice. Most of the time I was not actively trying to land an agent or sell a book. I was just writing because I loved to write.

The novel  is a bold and unique re-visioning of the traditional ghost story,infusing it with the passionate vivacity of romance. How did you first come up with the idea? And how difficult was it to maintain that balance between the wistful dread of the ghost story and the warm recklessness of romance?

I came up with the idea for SLANT while I was listening to an Anne Rice audio book while I did housework. I liked the way her vampire narrator was from an earlier period of history but reflecting on the contemporary world. But, I thought, you don’t have to be a vampire to do that. You could be a ghost. Next I tried to think what might be the strangest thing that could happen to a ghost. I decided it would be being seen. Next I wondered, why can just this one person see her? Let’s say it’s because he is like her–he’s dead but borrowing a human body. And then the story unfolded from there.

Your characters,both the Light and the Quick, are intensely real. How did you go about creating them and their worlds?

I think creating vivid characters and their worlds comes partly from having life experience and writing experience. And partly it comes from real people I’ve met and environments I have experienced. If you love the story you are writing, you will be compelled to craft that story with the heart and details that make it come to life.

The novel is infused with the living, necessary,inspirational and consoling presence of literature and words–indeed Helen’s hosts have all been writers in one way or the other. Can you tell us about that?

The hosts in SLANT were similar to Emily Dickinson and other famous authors and Helen clung to them because she was a book lover, like I am.  When a soul is stuck, like the ghost of Helen, literature would be a healing escape, I thought.

You wrote a sequel to the book–Under the Light–quite a while after the publication of A Certain Slant of Light. Was it an unexpected thing,or did you always intend to write a sequel?

For years I thought there would never be a sequel to SLANT, but then I was haunted with the idea of what might have happened after that first story ended, what stories led up to it, and where the spirits of Jenny and Billy went, what they did, while the ghosts of Helen and James were borrowing their bodies. It became too appealing–I had to write it!

The book you wrote between those two,your second novel,The Fetch, was also very successful. Can you tell us about the inspiration behind it?

I got the idea for The Fetch while walking in a woodsy park along a river on a winter day. The scenery reminded me of Russia. I thought how strange it was that such fascinating real characters were involved in the same adventure: Anastasia and Alexis Romanov, youngest children of Tsar Nicholas II, and Rasputin, the controversial spiritual advisor to the children’s mother, Alexandra. I started to create a supernatural re-imagining of why it was nearly impossible to assassinate Rasputin and why, after the execution of the royal family, the bodies of the two youngest children were the only ones not found.

You have also written two non-fiction books on writing novels. What has been the reception to them?

I have gotten lots of great feedback about my “how to” book Novel Shortcuts, but Your First Novel, co-authored with my agent Ann Rittenberg, has been even more popular probably because it not only covers how to write a novel, it includes fabulous insights into the career side of the business. And then there’s the wonderful forward written by another of Ann’s clients, Denis Lehane.

Since your first novel came out ten years ago,there have been quite a few changes in the publishing industry. What’s your take on it, and how do you think authors can best cope with change?

I am not an expert on publishing trends, but my advice to novelists is to avoid chasing them. And write the story you love best. If it doesn’t sell right away, don’t fret, because you’re already working on your next novel and the more you write the better you get. You never know which book will be the one that launches your career.

Read Laura’s blog here.

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