Spotlight on Sarah Woodbury

Another author featured during the HNS North America conference was Sarah Woodbury, whose success as an indie author is amazing. Sarah spent five years seeking a publisher for her first novel and during that time of continuing to write further novels in what has now become a series. She ultimately decided to ‘go indie’ and hasn’t looked back.

During her talk, Sarah spoke of traditional publishing and the layers inserted between author and reader: specifically, the agent, the editor, the editorial board and marketing department, the publicists and production people, the bookstores, and finally the bookshelves. Sarah believes that going indie allows an author to remove all of those layers and connect directly with readers.

Sarah also laid out her view of the key differences between traditional and independent publishing.

When Sarah ultimately made the decision to become her own publisher, she gave away her first book – The Last Pendragon – for free. In fact, she gave away 10,000 copies in three months. But she had five other books ready and soon published them so that her readers could continue with the series and the characters they’d enjoyed. Her strategy has paid off. She publishes across all retailers, not just Amazon, and has established a YouTube channel focused on medieval Wales where her novels are set. She now has 40 published novels and several series. Over the last five years, she’s sold 2.5 million books and now earns a six-figure income from her writing. And she writes 1000 words a day.

Sarah believes that getting rejected was the best thing that happened to her and left the audience with her view of the keys to success in the indie world.

I don’t know about you, but I’m going to be doing a lot of thinking over the next few months.

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M.K. Tod writes historical fiction. Her latest novel, PARIS IN RUINS, is available on Amazon USAmazon CanadaKobo, and Barnes&Noble. An earlier novel, TIME AND REGRET was published by Lake Union. Mary’s other novels, LIES TOLD IN SILENCE and UNRAVELLED are available from AmazonNookKoboGoogle Play and iTunes. She can be contacted on FacebookTwitter and Goodreads or on her website www.mktod.com.

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6 Responses

  1. I love your blogs, Mary. They are great. Ms Woodberry hit the nail on the head with her inserts. I wonder about the traditional marketing tho. Has that changed since Indies began? Seems even in our historical past, trads expected authors to do most of the marketing. The rest is spot on. It would have been a great conference to attend. But I struggle to spell Zoom much less use it. But I am totally excited to find out HNS was a great success and that next year…c19 depending….is in person. Keep me in the loop for that one. You are the best.

    1. Thanks for adding your thoughts to the mix, Judy. Keep your fingers crossed that 2023 will be hybrid – a mix of in-person and virtual. Best wishes for your writing.

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