Launching Turn the Page: The Indie Book Podcast

I'm super excited to be back re-launching the Turn the Page podcast, but this time we're focusing solely on indie books and authors!

As a book reviewer and blogger, there's nothing I love more than chatting about the books I've read. So, if you're looking to stack your TBR full of indie books, Turn the Page is the podcast for you! 

In Chapter One, I share some of the best places to search for new indie books, let you know what I'm reading at the moment, and chat about this month's Indie Spotlight: May Day by Josie Jaffrey. 

Check it out and let me know what you think and what you'd like to hear in future episodes! 

Listen Here: 

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Read the Transcript:

Kay M. Weston: Hello, book lovers. Welcome to Turn the Page, the podcast that's turning a new leaf and diving headfirst into the world of indie books.

I'm your host, Kay, and I'm excited to be back here, chatting with you about my favourite indie books and authors. In this short episode, you'll find tips to help you discover new indie books to read, why indie books and authors are worth reading, and what you can expect from this new podcast. Plus, my indie book recommendation of the week.

But before we jump into all that, let's talk about the big change, because for those of you who used to listen to the podcast, you might remember that it was hosted by my sister and I, where we chatted once a month-ish, about what we'd been reading and enjoying.

It started as a lockdown project to help us stay connected and we thought it'd be a fun thing to share, but once things reopened to return to the "new normal", we found it more and more difficult to plan sessions together. So, a little under two years ago, we said goodbye to the podcast.

But Turn the Page is now back with me flying solo at the home, and I'm turning the page quite literally on the podcast format. I've transitioned from focusing on traditionally published books to embracing the incredible world of indie books and authors.

The home of Turn the Page has also changed. It used to be hosted on the My Endless Shelf review website, but can now be found at kaymweston.com/turnthepage. I'll leave a link in the show notes.
Now, there are a couple of reasons for the changes, the main one being that there's a whole universe of amazing stories out there waiting to be discovered.

I love indie books. I work with a fantastic self-publishing organisation who do great things for indie authors, and I see so many self-publishing authors who deserve a bit of the spotlight that can often feel taken up by traditionally published books.

I'll go into a little more detail about why I think indie books deserve more love in a little while. So, stay tuned for that.

The podcast change also has a little to do with the fact that I'm in the process of self-publishing my own books, and I'd like to share a bit of the behind-the-scenes process of writing and publishing my books.

If you're interested, the book I'm currently working on is a collection of short fantasy stories. There's a mixture of super short, under 500-word stories, so flash fiction, and then the others are around the 1 to 1.5k word mark.

There are 10 stories in total, each containing magic in some form or another. At the moment, there are stories about witches, werewolves, vampire hunters, old ladies accidentally summoning demons, and they're all standalone stories so that you can dip in and out depending on your mood.

The collection is called Spellbound: A Fantasy Short Story collection, and the first seven stories are currently available to read for free on Wattpad. So, if you go to Wattpad and search for Kay M. Weston, that's KAY, or click the link in the show notes, you'll find it there. I'd love for you to read it and let me know what you think.

Right, that's it for the shameless plug. I promise!

The other reason I wanted to start this podcast, and it's probably the most important is just that I'm growing more and more fascinated and frankly impressed by the indie books that are available out there.

These are some of my absolute favourite books now, and I think back to a few years ago when I was only reading traditionally published books and so much has changed now in self-publishing. So, I'd really like to give something back to the indie authors I love to read and shine a bit of a spotlight on them with this new iteration of the Turn the Page podcast.

So, what's the deal with indie books? And for those of you who don't know, what do we even mean by an indie book?

Okay. So, in simple terms, an indie book is a book that's being self-published by the author. I actually don't like the term self-published, because it seems to imply that you sort of do everything all by yourself, which isn't actually true for most indie authors. An indie author will still use a cover designer, editors, proof-readers, formatters, maybe even a marketing team, just like a traditional published author. They just do it on their own terms, using their own money and as their own business.

For most indie authors, the reason they love self-publishing is for the freedom they have to explore whatever they'd like, be that storylines or genres, some of those that, you know, editors and publishing houses might think don't fit with the mainstream.

They'll also maintain full control of things like their titles, publication dates, a greater percentage of royalties often is also the case, and being able to stay in touch with their readers.

Indie authors can do things outside the mainstream mould and can often drive change in the publishing industry.

I'm sure most of you will have heard of Legends & Lattes, the little cosy self-published fantasy book by Travis Baldree that blew up so much that cosy fantasy is now one of the biggest selling fantasy genres, and one of the biggest growing fantasy genres, and led to Travis and other cosy fantasy authors being signed by various publishers.

That's just one example of how indie authors are responsible for big change in publishing and the kind of impact they can have.

There are more, but we'll get onto those in another episode.

So, one of the reasons I knew I wanted to focus on indie books on this podcast was because they're just fantastic, and with all of the buzz surrounding traditionally published books, a by-product of traditional publishing houses throwing so much money behind their own marketing teams, indies can sometimes be overlooked by readers, when in truth they have a lot to give.

So, how do you even find indie books? Do they stand out from the crowd compared to traditionally published books? The truth is, not really.

Like I said, a lot has changed in a relatively short space of time for self-publishing and indie books look a lot like traditionally published books these days. Indie authors tend to work hard to ensure their books meet industry standards with professional cover designs, working with editors, and even setting up imprints so that the books are associated with a publishing name.

So, to help you on your search for new indie books to read, I'll be sharing recommendations with you here on the podcast. I'll also be chatting with indie author guests will be coming along to tell you a little bit about what they're working on. We'll have guests from all sorts of genres, so there'll be something here for everyone.

You can also check out your local indie bookstore. I love a good indie bookstore. There are two in my hometown that are stocking more and more indie books, often by authors local to the area.

You can also search for the hashtag #indieauthor or #indiebooks on social media; that's a fun way to discover new authors and other readers who live in the books too.

Take a look at indie book awards, awards like The Selfies or the Amazon Storyteller award are all awards for self-published books. So, looking at the list of finalists is a great place to find books you might love.

Indie book fairs is another one. There was a brilliant fair I went to with my daughter last year, called Tales on Trent. I think there were around 60 authors at that, and it was so much fun. I met some really great authors, including Hannah Lynn, who actually won the Amazon Storyteller award a few years ago, and I picked up her book Athena's Child, which is a Medusa retelling that I really enjoyed.

I also picked up the book I'm reading now actually, Whisper of Witches, which is an urban fantasy novel by Nikita Rogers.

I'm really enjoying that at the moment. It's a very paranormal, witchy, sort of investigative series. So, I'm looking forward to seeing how that goes.

Another book that I have to mention that I got from the Tales of Trent fair was, When Our World's Collide by DJ Cook and AH Robinson. It's a young adult contemporary romance with an LGBT love story, and I loved it. So, I definitely recommend that. It does have some trigger warnings to do check those out first.

So yeah, do search for indie book fairs happening in your area. There's a really fun sounding one happening in Shrewsbury in England. Why is Shrewsbury so hard to say? In November called Author's Behind Bars.

It's literally taking place inside an old prison, and I so want to go because it just sounds spooky and weird.

Okay, where else?

BookBub. If you haven't heard of it, BookBub is a sort of discount eBook service. It's completely free. So, you sign up for an account, set your preferences of books you like to read, and they'll send you a daily digest newsletter full of discounts, and often free eBooks for you to read.

These lists do contain traditionally published books as well, but since self-publishing authors have full control over when they run sales, you'll usually find a few on each list. They were easily five or six indie books on the BookBub email that I had today, and obviously the more genres you subscribe to, the more you'll probably get.

The only other thing I can suggest right now off the top of my head, are places like Goodreads or Storygraph. I love Storygraph; it's a book review platform, like Goodreads, but it's really great if you're a mood reader, it's very visual. So, do check that out.

Oh, and Kickstarter! This is one I discovered only recently, but Kickstarter is a really great place for finding indie authors who are doing some really fab things with their books.

If you haven't heard of it, Kickstarter is a crowd funding platform for all sorts of interesting things from tech to gaming, and they also have a publishing section.

So, if you download the Kickstarter app, or go to the website and then go to discover and publishing, you'll see all sorts of projects that are happening right now.

How Kickstarter works is if you find something you like, you financially back a project in exchange for a reward, it's usually a copy of a book and maybe some extra goodies, and then if, and only if the project is fully funded, your pledge will be charged to your card or whatever method you chose to pay, and you'll then receive the rewards at whatever time scale that the author has laid out for you.

I backed a really cute cosy queer romance called Kit & Basie last year and received an eBook version of the book and some goodies in the mail.

At the time of recording this, Ruby Roe who writes lesbian, vampire romance has a really amazing Kickstarter that's had a seriously impressive amount of funding in exchange for a gorgeous, shiny foil hardback copy of her book that comes with tons of goodies.

So, there are some really cool book projects happening on Kickstarter at the moment. So, that's another good place to check out.

But yeah, that should get you started if you're looking for new indie books and authors to discover.
Do also let me know if you read a great indie book. I'd love to hear from you via [email protected]. I'll leave that address in the show notes. It's [email protected].

And now drum roll, please.

It's time for my indie book pick of the week. This is where I feature a fantastic indie book that I've read and loved, and I believe it deserves a place on your reading list.

This week, I'm talking about May Day by Josie Jaffrey. This is the first book that I've read by Josie, but when I saw the book advertised on Twitter as vampires, murder mystery, and a bi love triangle, I really wanted to read it. I don't usually like love triangles all that much, but this one worked really, really well.

So, the blurb for this one is actually, if the murderer you're tracking is a vampire, then you want a vampire detective, just maybe not this one.

It's not that Jack Valentine is bad at her job. The youngest member of Oxford seekers has an impressive track record, but she also has an impressive grudge against the local barren Killian Drake.

When a human turns up dead on May Morning, she's determined to pin the murder on Drake. The problem is that none of the evidence points to him. Instead, it leads a Jack into a web of conspiracy involving the most powerful people in the country, people to whom Jack has no access. But she knows someone who does.

To get to the truth, jack we'll have to partner up with her worst enemy. As long as she can keep her cool Drake will pointer to the ringleaders, she'll find the murderer, and no one else will have to die. Body bags on standby.

So, the main character, Jack is a bit of a mess. She's an investigator, and she's trying to figure out why people are being murdered in her city, basically. This leads her to a run in with Killian Drake who's this sort of vampire duke guy, and they have really cool chemistry, and so they have to sort of team up a little bit to try and figure out what's going on.

There's also. So, the third part of the love triangle is with Tabitha who is an additional character. So, she comes into things and there's this sort of chemistry and tension going on between them. So, we're not sure yet who she's going to choose, who she's going to wind up with. The plot was really great. There was so much mystery. The Oxford setting was really cool. I loved the variety of the characters, and I spent loads of time trying to work out who the killer was. I did not guess that at all, it was a complete twist for me, and I love when that happens. I love it when I'm taken by surprise. There are some trigger warnings for this, but I'm not going to go into that. So, do look those up if you want to read it.

Overall, though, it was a really interesting start to a new paranormal fantasy series, and I'm really looking forward to more of Jack and Killian's character, their charm and wit sort of battling off against each other in the next instalment.

I actually really love it when we get a main character that isn't perfect, that's a bit of a mess, has obvious floors that are right there on the page, and it's going to be really interesting to see how she changes and how the challenges that she has to face, and that they have to face together, and how this whole love triangle thing works out as they try and solve all the issues and the murders that are going on around them.

So, if like me, you enjoy stories with strong characters, witty banter, and dead bodies popping up all over Oxford, do take a look at May Day by Josie Jaffrey. I think it's a trilogy this series. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but it's definitely the first in the series.

If you do read it, just drop me a message and let me know what you think. I will be back in the next episode with another recommendation.

So, we've almost reached the end of the first episode, but before I leave you to your reading, I want to hand the mic over to you.

So, if you have an indie author you'd love to hear on the podcast or a favourite indie book you think I absolutely must know about, then send them my way and I'll see what I can do. The email to reach out to me is [email protected].

And if you're an indie author and you'd like to appear on the podcast to chat about your books, there's a form you can fill out and I'll include the link to that in the show notes. Or you can just go to kaymweston.com/turnthepage.

Obviously, I can't guarantee everyone a slot, but do fill out the form anyway and hopefully I can chat with you at some point in the future.

And that's it for our very first episode of Turn the Page: The Indie Book podcast.

I'm so excited to be back chatting about indie books and authors, and I hope that together we can discover some new favourites and shine a light on some really great stories.

Before you head back to the pages of your books, don't forget to subscribe, share, and leave a review, if you enjoyed the show.
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Until next time, happy reading and keep turning the page.