We’ve brought together some recent resources discussing ideas of what 2015 may bring for the indie writer, as well as discussing our own opinion on what the year may have in store. It would be good to get your opinions on how the industry may evolve, or to hear your own personal stories into your journey so far.

Looking at previous trends, the self-publishing industry on the whole has been a very rapidly growing in recent years, and along with any other industry or product a boom tends to stabilise and plateau. The same can be said for indie publishing, although figured are still going in the right direction, the state of the current landscape compared to 5 years ago is heavy market saturation, in other words the volume of competition has increased, which will make it harder for new publishers.

This is not a doom and gloom report of the year ahead, but as a suggestion that writers should continue to push for quality, as well as setting realistic expectations for themselves. As Mark Coker from Smashwords notes that self-publishing is not an easy option and not necessarily a route to success.

The ease and affordability of publishing on e-readers is expected to grown in 2015, grabbing a bigger market but the number of titles is suspected to overtake the demand for titles, meaning increased competition for independent authors.

Here at New Generation Publishing, as well as many other people within the industry have commented on the strong communities of self-published writers out there that are happy to collaborate and share advice amongst peers, this adds tons of personality and character to the self-publishing industry on the whole, rather the cold, money focused view of traditional publishing houses. This collaborative working is something that may grow this current year.

Any author setting out on their publishing journey this year should have minimal expectations to begin with on your publishing adventure, enjoy the experience of writing and receiving good feedback from your work, any thing else is considered a bonus and will happen over time, if you have the expectation that ‘this time next year I’ll be a world famous author’ then try reeling in these expectations.

Using promotions that involve massive reductions is something that has been suggested will dwindle of the next year for self-published authors, but this is something that the larger publishing houses may adopt more, these publishing companies can afford to provide this offer on a series of books, but the bottom line for indie writers will go down considerably, making it a less desirable option.

Although there are a number of writers that have become high profile using self-published methods, as well the industry itself slowly getting recognition and a better reputation it would be good to see a higher percentage of books on the selves from indie authors, perhaps one day taking the majority of the most popular books of 2015. Let’s see what the year brings.