Blog Post #1: About the Project

My main research question that I will be posing during the life of this blog is how Traditional and Indie publishing differ, what each's benefits are, and how each strand of publishing impacts the author. Some related questions are:

1) How an author's income is impacted.

2) What benefits an author receives.

3) How much control an author has over their project(s).

4) What aspects of publishing impact the author's career beyond income.

5) Marketing avenues open to an author.

These questions are not the only ones that will be posed and explored, but will be the main points of this research project. Many places will be options for me to seek answers to these questions. My main resources will be articles written upon the subjects above-listed. I will also interview Indie authors and small-press publishers, editors, and compare and contrast the answers.

One of the major challenges of this project will be removing myself from the research. As a small press published author, I have personal experience in the publishing world from an Indie perspective. I would also like to include questions related to self-published authors, and why that trend seems to be lumped in with Indie authors. What are the similarities? The differences? Where can lines be drawn between the two, and is there a schism between the different types of authors, as if there is a class difference? Can these various types of authors be considered separated into "classes" from one another?

I hope to achieve more than some enlightenment on the subject, and to also learn more about my fellow writers, our goals as a community, and what we can do to strengthen one another's works rather than treat each other as competition.

Feedback will also play an important role in my research, and I appreciate any thoughts my fellow classmates offer.

Thank you for your time.