Jumping into the indie author scene, for me, was a calculated risk. Like I do with a lot of decisions, I looked at the pros and cons.

Pros:

• You can easily publish your work on a number of platforms at little or no cost (Amazon, Nook, Smashwords, etc.).
• The royalties for sales are good. If you price a book on Amazon over $2.99, for instance, you will get 70% of the selling price as royalties.
• You can write at your own pace in whatever style you want.
• You can directly interact with your readers on many platforms (blogs, mailing, lists, social media, author signing events).
• There is an organized community of independent authors and you can learn from others and help others that are just getting started.
• My writing would be judged directly by the readers and not some low-on-the-totem-pole publishing house employee looking for the flavor of the month.
• Trend-setters like Hugh Howey