Going Indie:
Publishing Your Book Your Way
'Today’s publishing landscape defies easy categorisation. Authors launch careers on Substack. They build audiences on social media. Go wide with aggregators. Serialise novels on fanfiction platforms. Crowdfund on Kickstarter. Produce special collector’s editions for superfans. And pop up on each other’s podcasts.'
John Bond & James Silver
John Bond is the co-founder and Executive Chair of Whitefox Publishing, a new breed of bespoke publishing agency. Prior to setting up Whitefox, John held senior positions at Penguin and at HarperCollins, where he was on the main board for nine years, running sales, marketing and publishing divisions including the 4th Estate imprint and its stable of award-winning authors such as Hilary Mantel, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and Nigel Slater. He co-founded Whitefox in 2012 on the principle that the future of successful publishing would be based on writers taking creative control and collaborating with the highest-quality specialists. Nothing that has happened since has dissuaded him of this view.
James Silver is a journalist, author and ghostwriter. He is the author of Upscale - a series of in-depth interviews with 30 leading UK tech entrepreneurs and investors - and has ghostwritten numerous books on business, technology and productivity, including a Wall Street Journal business bestseller. James’s career began at the BBC, where he was a staff producer at BBC Radio 5 Live and Radio 4. After leaving the BBC, he regularly wrote the Monday media interview in the Guardian, also writing for the Observer, WIRED, Total Politics, The Times, the Independent, the Evening Standard, Press Gazette, Media Week, TechCrunch, BBC News Online and the Sky News website.
‘You only have to look at the bestseller lists to see how independent authors now dominate.’
Contributors
‘Even though I’ve had enjoyment and success with traditional publishing, I started to feel quite removed from the process. If you want to be closer to the creative process, there are other options.’
‘Whether you’re a publisher or an author, your destiny is much more in your own hands.’
‘I feel the quirky, individual, surprising, unclassifiable nature of the well-functioning imagination is hard to duplicate by a computer.’
‘You only have to look at the bestseller lists to see how independent authors now dominate.’
‘Embrace the business side of publishing as an extension of your creativity.’
‘If an author goes viral on TikTok, they are very much an outlier. If you run a blog and an email newsletter, no one can interfere with that.’
‘Even 10 years ago self-publishing was almost a dirty word. That’s changed entirely.’
‘I and many others created our Shopify stores, which are always selling, and now many of us also launch our books on Kickstarter.’
‘Indie’s going trad, trad’s going indie. And it’s been awesome to see it from both sides of the fence.’
‘The idea that one route is superior to the other is nonsense. If a book brings joy or comfort, the reader doesn’t care how it reached them.’
‘You have to understand where you sit within your genre and analyse what you’re competing against.’
‘You are going to have to outgrow any hunger for ego or recognition.’
‘You’ve got twenty-four-hour news, newspapers that print overnight and nanosecond social media yet [trade publishing] is an industry that can’t speed up or doesn’t want to.’
‘When people buy a copy of the book from our website, we build a connection – and a community.’
Talking about Going Indie
Substack post
Behind the Scenes of Cover Design (When It’s Your Own Book)
A behind-the-scenes look at how Whitefox developed the Going Indie cover, from creative iterations to final concept.
Read on SubstackSubstack post
What we learned when we decided to write a book
Whitefox reflects on why they are creating Going Indie, what they are seeing in the market, and what today’s publishing landscape means for authors.
Read on SubstackPre-order Going Indie
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