Welcome to my Wild West!

To go Indie or Not?

The decision to independently publish came easily for me. After a 100% rejection rate from the couple dozen publishers that solicited for stories like mine, including a few I shoe-horned the book into historical fiction for, I felt like my writing career came to a screeching halt before it got off the starting line.

Westerns aren’t a popular genre. Search it online and you’ll find that the vast majority of writers in the genre are men. Refine that down to classic Westerns and they’re pretty much all male. That’s part of the reason I took “Tommie” for a pen name, which is an old trick for female writers.

Nowadays, they take it a step further. Few writers in the Western genre are not military veterans or grew up on a ranch in the western US. 

In contrast, most of the great Western writers were doctors or the sons of doctors. As the daughter of a physical therapist, at least I’m in the ballpark. What’s more, I lived a fiddle-footed life working seasonally for a decade and a half, traveling and living in the places I write about.

But that’s not what publishers consider marketable in a writer’s brand. At least, it was about as marketable as a classic-style Western novel written by a woman. 

Dorothy M. Johnson and Willa Cather are the only two women writers from the early 20th century that the average person might recognize their name or their work. 

Johnson wrote the original short story The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance which was adapted to the movie starring John Wayne. and Jimmy Stewart. 

Cather was known for her sheer volume of works about her native Nebraska. Her most popular work is My Antonia. 

It was over Cather that an American Lit professor insisted that I didn’t know the first thing about the genre. While I’ll admit that my experience and grasp of story was limited at the time, I still believe Cather was a better writer than Emily Dickenson.

His insistence on poetry being a superior form of expression and his love of Dickenson’s disregard for conventional format failed to impress upon me the validity of his argument, and that earned me a “C” for my essay on the topic, all because of our difference of opinion. 

Doubtlessly, that affected my attitude toward the literary establishment in general. The fact that someone can make a determination based entirely on their personal preferences without an articulated explanation scares and irritates me. 

That’s also why I loathe approaching gatekeepers. Why should one person decide for hundreds or thousands of others what they will and won’t read?

Independent publication platforms allow much more liberty for both writers and readers. It allows for a freedom reminiscent of the romantic image or the Wild West as a place to escape the controls and manipulations of civilization, being your own person and respecting those around you.

The debate of traditional versus independent publication crops up often in the writers circles on social media. It’s a valid question for which there is no simple answer for every author. For me, it boiled down to two things, the desirability of my chosen genre and my ability to turn over control of my work to another person in whole or part.

That’s not the case for every writer. Some are drawn to write what is popular, and the system works for them, which is awesome!

Indie publishing works well for me. There will always be more things to learn as the system is always changing, but I’m up to the challenge because I love sharing my novels with the world.

Until next time, may the cards fall in your favor!