Bestselling Author Success Stories

Thanks to social media, many people have thriving relationships with folks they’ve never actually met in person—online interactions that would have seemed unimaginable just a few generations ago. Here are a few notable novels, all reviewed by Kirkus Indie, which put these modern types of connections front and center:

Steve McManus’ debut thriller, Red Flag, reviewed last year, focuses on Danny Kasho, a blogger for California-based crime-news website City of Angels/Dead on Arrival, or CODA. He investigates a murderer ...

King Grossman had just returned from participating in the Dakota Access Pipeline protests when Kirkus caught up with him. His desire to become an active citizen informs the backbone of his debut indie venture, Letters to Alice. The novel has a feel for the zeitgeist of our times with Occupy Wall Street and the Arab Spring woven into its threads. The book’s protagonist, Frazier Pickett, an editor whose writing ambitions have been mostly quashed, is a “slumbering man,” somebody ...

Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh, North Carolina, which just moved to a new, two-story location, rarely goes a night without hosting a discussion group, town hall, or author event—recent visiting writers include Laurie Halse Anderson, Jacqueline Woodson, and Gloria Steinem. In 2001, QRB won all three major bookselling awards: Publishers Weekly’s Bookseller of the Year,the Pannell Award for Excellence in Children’s Bookselling, and the Haslam Award for Excellence in Bookselling. Here, General Manager Sarah Goddin gives us the ...

Crista McHugh is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of romance and fantasy novels. Growing up in small-town Alabama, McHugh relied on storytelling as a natural way for her to pass the time and keep her two younger sisters entertained. She currently lives in the suburbs of Seattle with her husband and two children. Some of the jobs she’s had in the past to pay the bills include: barista, bartender, sommelier, stagehand, actress, morgue attendant, and autopsy ...

Most indie authors want to see their books on the shelves of their local independent bookstores. Janet Geddis, owner of Avid Bookshop in Athens, Georgia, recently talked about the best way to make that happen.

Janet Geddis: I mean this advice in the most open-hearted way: if you are a local creator and you want local shops to stock your creations, you should support those shops when you are able….If you’re a local author or publisher, we at Avid ...

We’ve talked about strategies for simplifying e-book distribution in this column before (basically use KDP and Smashwords to consolidate your information and reach nearly all e-retailers, including indie bookstores), but what about print books? Physical books can be pricey to manufacture, store, and ship, but with print-on-demand distributors, you upload your files, and they produce and ship your book with few or zero upfront costs. It’s an easy, inexpensive way to test the market for print. Here are the leading ...

Shannon Mayer is the USA Today bestselling author of the Rylee Adamson novels, the Elemental series, the Nevermore Trilogy, A Celtic Legacy series, and the Venom Trilogy. Mayer lives in the southwestern tip of Canada on a farm with her husband, son, and numerous animals.

Her new book, Venom and Vanilla,out this month, is part of a new trilogy and is a blend of magic, Greek mythology, monsters, and cupcakes.

Can you describe your start as an author? What ...

The Full Circle Bookstore began as a New Age store in Oklahoma City in 1970. After a fire, a couple of moves, and several expansions, they’re now the largest general interest indie bookstore in Oklahoma and stock more than 60,000 titles of every conceivable genre. Buzzfeed, which lists Full Circle as one of the 44 Great American Bookstores Every Book Lover Must Visit, writes that it’s “packed from floor to ceiling with books you can access via ladders, just ...