Self-published Historical Fiction

 Part Two - A reader's guide

In my previous post, I tried to make a case for respecting and embracing self-published historical fiction.  If you find yourself interested in exploring self-published historical fiction (often lumped with small publishers as ‘indie’), here are some suggestions to get started.  All these links are those I am familiar with or have been recommended through other authors – perhaps they’ll lead you to others.

• The Historical Novel Society will not review self-published books in its printed review, mainly from lack of space (ebooks are also not reviewed in print).  However, they do consider them for their online review.  Reviewers (like me!) are unpaid and are supposed to abide by a code of conduct that includes no contact with authors of the books they review.

• A site that gets you straight to indie authors in this genre is Historical Fiction ebooks, found at historicalfictionauthors.net.  Authors become part of this network by invitation only.

• Another popular site is Indiereader.com, which has both ebook and historical fiction pages.

• The Independent Author Network is a good resource for readers as well as writers, though it’s open to any independent author who makes heavy use of social networking tools (OK, for me heavy means they tweet!).  Their Avid Reader’s Café offers recommendations for what they consider the best in indie publishing.

A few author sites you may wish to check out include:

• Mirella Patzer, who helped me with suggestions for this post, writes historical women's fiction, often with an Italian setting.  She also reviews historical novels, including self-published ones, on her website, History and Women.

• Lisa Yarde, at one time a member of my critique group.  I don’t know her personally, but I often see her comments on Facebook via my author friends!  She has written several medieval novels.

• M. Louisa Locke.  An example of how far you can get with self published fiction, Locke has been a Kindle bestseller with her Victorian mystery series set in San Francisco.

Looking further into this topic both whetted my appetite for discovering gems that fit the scope of my blog (books outside the mainstream) and encouraged me not to dismiss self-publishing as an option for my own work.  I hope it does the same for you.