Why Readers Should Support Indie Authors

(Guest post by Samuel Marquis)

Readers should support authors of any stripe for only one reason: great writing

Years ago, when I was a literary neophyte and secretly harbored delusions of grandeur about the publishing industry, mega-author James Patterson gave me a blistering review for my Colorado-based earthquake thriller 'Blind Thrust'. The simple truth is I deserved it (he also gave me a glowing quote for my book 'The Coalition', but that’s another story). I fully deserved his ridicule for the first incarnation of 'Blind Thrust'—fully deserved to be flogged like an 18th century seaman in the Royal Navy—because my novel was, though I didn’t know it at the time, not up to industry standards in terms of the opening and overall plotting. It was not a bad novel; it just wasn’t sufficiently enticing to persuade someone to shell out $20 at Barnes and Noble or Tattered Cover. In other words, I didn’t give the creator of the Alec Cross Series and the biggest-selling author since the Precambrian Era sufficient justification to promote me or my writing because the book I was peddling was flawed, even though it was reasonably well written and seemed to me and my circle of reviewers at the time to be promising. In short, I had done the unspeakable thing that no storyteller—whether you are indie, traditional legacy, or a cave-painting Cro-Magnon at Lascaux—should ever do, and that is put out a story that isn’t quite ready for prime time. To my infinite chagrin, I had not earned the right for James Patterson to lend me his support for this particular novel.

So what did I do? I went back and rewrote the book. Literally salvaged the submerged wreckage and rewrote the whole bloody thing. Then I had it professionally edited. Then I rewrote it again and edited it some more until I had revised it at least a dozen times. The editorial process landed me an agent, who proceeded to give me more editorial input, but at this point they were only minor tweaks because the book was highly polished. And now, recently, I received a completely different response to this reconstituted prose that had once been considered slush pile fodder. And from a highly credible critic I might add, someone who knows a thing or two about the written word, as he has perused hundreds of thousands of pages of non-fiction and fiction alike in his lengthy career in politics and as a Homo sapien sapien: “Blind Thrust kept me up until 1 a.m. two nights in a row. I could not put it down. An intriguing mystery that intertwined geology, fracking, and places in Colorado that I know well. Great fun.” —Roy R. Romer, 39th Governor of Colorado

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73 eager fans on four continents...  

The quote, I might also add, was unsolicited. So, by a simple twist of fate, the three-term governor of the Centennial State and one-time chairman/co-chairman of the Democratic Governors Association, Leadership Council, and National Committee, as well as the Clinton-Gore '96 campaign, got hold of an Advance Reading Copy of 'Blind Thrust', proceeded to read it cover to cover, and decided to give me a rave review (Okay, full disclosure, he snagged a copy of the ARC from his son, my friend Tim, that had been laying there on a table in Vail, but please note that the honorable Gov. Romer doesn’t know me from Donald Trump). What’s important about the episode is that a book that was once justifiably pilloried in its earliest incarnation had miraculously become so enthralling that a highly discriminating reader who presumably likes to go to bed early could not put it down and was forced to stay up late two nights in a row to finish the book. That same discriminating reader then proceeded to send me an unsolicited book blurb declaring before the entire world (or at least the 73 people from four continents, including my 94-year old Aunt Margaret, who will actually read my book): “I could not put it down.” The quote has made its way onto the front and back covers of Blind Thrust, which has now been released for the enjoyment of my 73 eager fans.
 
There is only one reason that any of this happened: the novel went from subpar, or just not good enough for publication, to something closer to superb, or at least good enough that it was deemed 'unputdownable' by an unbiased reviewer whose opinion actually matters. 

Authors should hold readers hostage with their writing

Author Samuel Marquis

So why should readers support indie and traditional legacy authors? For only one reason: good solid writing. Craftsmanship. Actual hard work, sacrifice, and talent coming together into an amalgam of significance.
 
Having gone through this experience, I realize now what the ultimate goal of a thriller writer should be: Make people stay up late at night against their will and not want to put the book down. Hold them hostage with your writing. Because they will only go against their will if the suspense is so gripping, the plot and characters so riveting and unpredictable that the story literally casts a temporary spell over them. Because the book you’ve penned—even if it’s not 'Moby Dick' or 'David Copperfield'—is quite good in its own unique way. And that is the only reason why readers should support authors, be they indie or traditional legacy authors or those fur-clad, cave-dwelling raconteurs at Lascaux. Because a work is actually really damned good.
 
Unfortunately, it is hard to make something hard to put down and make every page, indeed every line or paragraph, fume with tension. I know I have failed miserably in the past and I will no doubt fail again in the future. But ultimately quality and constant tension should always be the goal in a suspense novel. Nothing else should matter. We all have to write better and put forward the best material we can. Material that has been thoroughly vetted and edited and re-edited until we are bleary-eyed and brain-dead and so utterly preoccupied with making the thing good that our friends and significant others are convinced that we’ve taken a lover on the side. Ultimately, readers don’t care if you received your Creative Writing degree from Oxford or Yale, are a mega-best-seller, or are close friends with J.K Rowling or Lee Child. They just want a great story. Over and over again, every time out.
 
Readers will always support great writing. And they will stay up late at night to read it. But only if we writers put in the hard work and truly do our jobs. I had to learn that lesson the hard way.  

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More about Samuel Marquis

Samuel Marquis works by day as Vice-President – hydrogeology for an environmental consulting firm in Boulder, CO, and by night as ­­writer of historical and modern suspense novels. He is the author of 'The Devil's Brigade,  'Blind Thrust' and many other novels, has published over 25 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals/books, and has served as an expert witness on multimillion dollar environmental cases.
 
He can be reached on his website at www.samuelmarquisbooks.com or by email at [email protected].