Welcome Author Emissa Ghaight

Welcome to our thirteenth Fall for the Indie Book Author, Emissa Ghaight! Check out her Monday Blogs interview below:

Why did you write your book?

There were several themes I wanted to explore in the book, and they all had this theme of loyalty around them, and that's how I chose the title, "The Loyalty Factor." The first was the notion of the loyalty in the marriage relationship, where you have a heteronormative married couple who, all of the sudden, not only does he find himself transformed into a woman, but now they're a lesbian couple. How do those original vows they took when they got married still apply? What if this were to happen to, say, a conservative Christian couple who abhors homosexuality? How far do you go to keep those promises you kept to each other?



The other deals with the whole notion of freedom vs. slavery, and this shows up in the loyalty they feel towards their captors, whereas at first they are resisting their fate, later, they come to accept and actually embrace what has happened to them. And without giving too much away, there comes a point where they not only prefer their slavery, but they come to realize that they're actually more free than they were as "free" individuals.

Why did you choose to go indie?

Honestly, it's a way of getting my feet wet. Some of the themes you see above are definitely controversial, I acknowledge that, and a more traditional publisher may not want to tackle something so brazen from an unknown author. At least this way, there are a few feelers put out there, and there are those who are interested who I can make connections with.

Why didn't you write a "safer" story to begin with, then?

I really haven't been inspired by such a storyline. I've tried to think of what such a story would look like, and my mind has come up blank. On the other hand, exploring gender bending and blurring the lines between male and female has actually opened my mind up to what other barriers can be broken down, so that tends to be where I draw my inspiration from these days.

What's the best part about being an indie author?

Having the flexibility to write what you want to write and not having to worry about whether or not your publisher will drop you if your book doesn't sell right away. Plus it's a better percentage of the royalties.

What's the worst part about being an indie author?

I do wonder sometimes if I couldn't have a bigger audience and better outreach with a larger publisher, although I hear that even with that, authors are having to pull a lot of the marketing weight themselves these days. Sure, the publisher gives them more resources to work with, but the author is still on their own for a lot of things.

Where do you see the publishing industry going in the future?

I think with Kindle Publishing, you're going to see a lot more people trying to go it alone, but they won't see the results they're looking for because they don't know how to promote themselves, or they can't dedicate themselves to it. You'll still have the traditional big name publishers, but they'll probably remain as monolithic as ever. There will also probably be something in between with more small name publishers who collect a small stable of authors and promote them through ebook sites such as Amazon, and those will probably end up being the most successful in terms of independent publishing.

How do you market your book?

My publisher, TGWorld Books, usually takes care of that for me. But I also take opportunity to post the occasional tweet about it amongst the retweets I post of other people's books and other people's posts that they tweet about.

What social media works best for you from a marketing standpoint?

Twitter, actually, because I can post a short tweet about my book, even if it's not something I've newly published, and I just retweet other people's tweets, and so usually, they'll retweet mine as well. It's very convenient while running on a busy schedule.

What's your opinion on bad reviews?

Depends on the nature of the review. If it's clear that they just don't approve of the genre on the whole, then it's possible that the bad review could backfire and generate good exposure, because people know that the reviewer has an agenda behind them. On the other hand, a bad review from a potentially sympathetic reader could work well for the overall writing career of the author, because then the author knows what their reading fans want to read and can weave that into subsequent stories they write.

What is your favorite book?

If we're talking about any Kindle fiction out there, then I like to recommend the Saving Mars series by Cidney Swanson. But drilling down specifically into TG fiction, I like A Girl's Life by DK Masters, since it also takes more of a non TG theme and weaves TG elements into it, in this case being religion, faith, and spirituality.