September 3rd, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in DistributionProjectPromotion
We’ve gone over the focus on the narrative and the forms stories come in, now let’s talk about sharing stories on Indie Aisle. One of the things that makes the internet so great is how we are able to communicate in a variety of ways and quickly share ideas with other people. Indie Aisle has been designed with this in mind, by offering two ways to connect with people:
Find and follow
Authors can keep their fans updated, and everyone can find and keep track of great indie authors on Indie Aisle. This is done by posting short updates and choosing to follow other people’s updates. Additionally, you can keep a personalized library of stories and let people get an idea of the kinds of stories you enjoy as well as see what other people are reading.
Share with the web
To take the experience even further, Indie Aisle integrates with the openness of the web by allowing you to share with other web services that you’re already familiar with by connecting them with Indie Aisle. Starting with Twitter and Facebook, in the future they’ll be many different services to pick from with different options for how to integrate each into your Indie Aisle profile.
The combination of the people you connect with, the stories you share, and how you customize your settings, makes your Indie Aisle profile unique to your personality. And how you interact with the tool allows you to connect with people from across the web and across the world!
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August 13th, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in ProjectPublishingWriting
Going along with the previous post on the kinds of stories you can expect to see on Indie Aisle, this time I’ll talk about how the tool will allow you to publish your story. While mainly focused on digital stories, Indie Aisle is designed to ultimately let you decide the form you want your story to be in:
- eBook – Upload your file and it is converted to a number of standard formats, set your own price for purchase through the website and earn 85% of all digital sales
- Physical Book – Use various service providers for print versions of your story
- Work in Progress – Post information on a story before you release it with options for fans to follow your updates on when it becomes available
- Series – Ability to add multiple eBooks or physical books under the same story
Additionally, stories will also be categorized based on content format:
- Primarily Text – Basic text formatting with or without accompanying illustrations
- Styled Layout – Mainly text but with specific formatting and illustrations
- Illustration-based – Full-page artwork with text being layed out around it
- Comics – Artwork with specific areas for text
With each format there will be tips for how to lay out your story for outputting it as an eBook. It will also allow Indie Aisle to figure out how your story can be distributed and promoted in other venues outside the site. I will talk more about how that will be done in a future post!
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July 14th, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in ProjectReading
So what will Indie Aisle be all about and what will make it unique from other online marketplaces? Well, for a start, it will only have narratives. No textbooks or guides or anything not based on a sequence of events. Non fiction is fine, but should be in the form of a story.
The main reason for this is because one of the goals of Indie Aisle is to show the power of storytelling and how important it is to each of us. How personal a story can be, or how interactive and social. How a story impacts the way we see ourselves and the world.
And with the focus on the story itself, I hope to allow for exploring stories across all formats, from the written word, to illustration-based, to comics and beyond. Each format is its own artform, creating a different kind of experience for its audience.
This also allows for organizing stories in new ways based on specific interests and tastes, making it easier to find the kind of story you’re looking for, or to provide the right context for others to find your own story.
And that’s just the beginning. The core design for Indie Aisle is complete and as the under-the-hood development work takes place, I will go over other aspects of what Indie Aisle has to offer. Stay tuned!
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February 9th, 2010 | By Ovi Demetrian Jr | Posted in Project
Welcome to Indie Aisle, dedicated to helping independent artists and writers publish, distribute and promote their work. The Internet has given everyone the ability to post their stories, the next step is to allow them to find their audience. That’s what Indie Aisle has set out to do.
I originally had the idea for Indie Aisle when I noticed that there were people I knew who wanted to do something creative from starting a band to having their own online comic, but didn’t know how to get their work seen by other people. As a web designer, I’ve worked with small businesses in helping them setup an online presence for getting their potential customers interested in the work that they do. Indie Aisle to me is a way to do more of that for artists and writers who ultimately want to make their passion into a business that they can make a living from.
This blog will serve as a discussion about distributing and promoting in the digital world and offer tips for utilizing tools to connect to fans. A lot of information is available online but it’s pretty scattered and can often be confusing. Articles posted will often be from people who are independent artists and writers themselves.
If there’s an article about a specific topic you’d like see here or are interested in writing one yourself, send me an email.
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