On the 31st of December, I made a post on Instagram for the #buyreadreview initiative, originally started by @sophiewriter (IG handle). This initiative focuses on buying books written by Indies, reading and reviewing them.
For those of you who do not know what 'Indies' are, let me give you a brief explanation. Indie authors are people who have chosen to self-publish their book. This means they have no publishing house behind them, and more often than not they do most, if not all, of the work themselves. I can tell you from experience, this is hard work. Most of these people write outside full-time jobs while also balancing their household, (small) children, family lives and whatever else you can come up with. Sadly, Indies have been given a bad name by those of us who chose not to carefully edit and revise their work thousands of time, or have it done for them, so there's still the stigma of Indie Books being bad. Sure, there are still books out there who have that problem, but you know what, I have read several traditionally published books I had to put away because of lack of character development or waver thing world-building. At the same time, I've read at least a dozen gems of Indie books that I discovered in the past year. Were they flawless? No, of course not. Did you know not even traditionally published authors' books are 100% perfect? Anyway, I'm digressing.
I called for Indies to give me the name of their book for my "12 months 12 indie books" iniiative. Each month, I'll read one book (guaranteed) and leave a review of the book here on my blog, on Amazon, on Goodreads, and I'll leave a post on Instagram.
Earlier today, I announced which Indie Authors were selected on Instagram. Here's the list of which book I'm going to read when!
January: Poems to Burn by D. Ciesielski https://amzn.to/2ZS2dCd
February: Thumbelina: The Bride Experiment by Sky Sommers https://amzn.to/2QqIaaU
March: Popularity Rules by Shamika Lindsay https://amzn.to/2N0tg9k
April: Between Worlds by Jennifer Ridge https://amzn.to/2SVXCNO
May: The Heartbreak Bucketlist by A. Lee Hughes
June: title to be announced by J Brandt (available in May)
July: Darkness Stirs by Luke Kramarz (available in June)
August: The King Trials by D.L. Sims https://amzn.to/2rVpVkq
September: The Landfill by Erik R. Eide https://amzn.to/2QsLrXo
October: Street Magic: Stories and Tales by Mary B. Banks https://amzn.to/2ZU1cta
November: The Black Orchids by Ishita Goel https://amzn.to/36sFD5t
December: Gisela's Passion by Astrid V.J. https://amzn.to/2QptV61
Disclaimer: none of this is sponsored in any way by Amazon, Goodreads, Instagram, Wix, or any other party. I will be buying these books myself for my own enjoyment. None of the authors have paid me in any way for doing this.