Author Tahlia Newland

I first met Tahlia Newland months after I had submitted my first novel to Awesome Indies. This organization seeks to curate the best indie works — not just for quality of writing, but for editing and production values, too. I remember that when I first stumbled across it, I was impressed that it evaluated submissions based on a book I think is terrific — Renni Browne and Dave King’s SELF-EDITING FOR FICTION WRITERS. It also demanded literary qualifications from reviewers. Perhaps best of all, it offered ways to submit that didn’t require payment — so it clearly wasn’t just another sketchy prize mill. Eventually, I became a volunteer myself. But I never really asked Tahlia how Awesome Indies got its start. So…

Tahlia, what prompted you to begin Awesome Indies?

When I first got an e-reader back in 2009 or so, I discovered cheap books and read them voraciously. They were all self-published, of course, and I soon discovered that even books with high star ratings on review sites like Amazon and Goodreads could be really badly written, even some that were selling thousands of copies.

Though I picked up many terrible books, I also discovered some real gems, and I really wanted to tell the world about these great books where self-publishing authors had beaten the odds and produced something excellent. I began writing reviews so I could tell readers which self-published books were well enough done that readers could be sure they were getting a good product.

Next I came up with the idea of listing them all on one website so interested readers could have a one-stop quality shop for indie books. I created that first Awesome Indies site on a WordPress.com free blog, and it grew from there. At the point I decided I needed to create a submission system and get some helpers, I made the decision that if a group of people were to set themselves up as determiners of quality, then they had better be people with the kind of qualifications that no one could argue with, so it had to be people with formal qualifications in writing, English literature, or editing.

What would you say are the greatest challenges and opportunities facing
Awesome Indies? What would your dream be?

The biggest challenges are getting the website’s existence and value widely known, finding sufficient assessors and volunteers to keep it running smoothly, and dealing with author egos, in particular those who refuse to accept our assessors’ opinions as valid and like to spread their opinions on the matter.

My dream for the Awesome Indies is that it becomes the first place readers go to find indie books, that in people’s minds Awesome Indies Approval equals the kudos of getting a mainstream deal, that it changes the perception of the world as regards to the quality of indie books (as least as far as books listed on the site goes), and that it becomes really popular with the kind of people who usually would only read mainstream books.

 How can readers and writers who value quality indie work support Awesome Indies?

By submitting their book with an administration fee, or by volunteering to help. We have a very good admin team at the moment, but I am always short of qualified assessors and people willing to help spread the word about our existence. What we need more than anything is people who can write blog posts about the Awesome Indies and get them published on influential blogs and newspapers. (I should note that I am a volunteer for Awesome Indies myself — primarily by writing occasional web copy and notification emails to authors.)

As an indie author yourself, what are some of the greatest challenges and opportunities you see facing such authors today?

The biggest challenge is selling your book. A good book does not equal a best-selling book (and vice versa), and great authors are often not natural salespeople. The very nature of indie books is that many of them are so not mainstream that they only have a small niche market — at least at present. Finding the readers for unusual books is not easy, and selling few books can be soul-destroying for authors of truly great works with enormous literary merit. But so long as a book has some kind of independent professional assessment like Awesome Indies Approval, then the author can at least know that the problem is not with the book. Without that, the indie author can never be sure.

The greatest opportunity indie authors have is that we can publish what we want, when and how we want. There is nothing to stop our creativity going in whatever direction we want it to — so long as we aren’t concerned about making a living. But with that freedom comes a great responsibility: to do it in a professional way. If the majority of us can do that, then eventually the stigma attached to indie publishing will fade.

Tell us about your new release, THE LOCKSMITH’S SECRET, including what inspired it.

THE LOCKSMITH’S SECRET is a multi-narrative-strand novel about a woman who finds that her boyfriend is not who she thought he was, and she finds herself having to choose between him and her beloved property in the Australian rain forest — a situation that challenges her ability to live up to her Buddhist ideals. The story looks at sexual abuse, women’s rights, and the various aspects of a person that make up their sense of self, including dreams, memories, past lives, creative expression and metaphysical experiences. The themes are explored from these different angles, one of which is a steampunk murder mystery that the protagonist Ella, an author, is writing.