By Cliff Potts
December 9, 2025

Most first-time independent authors are handed the same piece of well-meaning, outdated advice: “Take your book to the local newspaper. They’ll review it because you’re local. That’s what newspapers do.”

It sounds great. It feels encouraging. And thirty years ago, it might have even been true.

But if you’re an indie writer in 2025, you need to hear the real story — the story nobody told you until after you wasted gas money, burned a day off, and watched your book vanish into a newsroom void that never even said “thanks.”

I learned this the hard way.
My first novel, Spiritflight, was written, printed, and ready to go. My publisher at the time insisted my local paper would jump at the chance to review it. After all, I was a local author in a metro area obsessed with “local success stories.”

So I walked into the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ready to do the polite, traditional thing. Except — surprise — you can’t walk into a building if the reviewer isn’t there, the desk is empty, and the department you need has been downsized into vapor. I left the book anyway. I followed up by email. And what came next?

Silence.
No review.
No acknowledgement.
No courtesy reply.

It wasn’t personal. It wasn’t even about the writing. It was about risk management, corporate priorities, shrinking newsroom staff, and the hard truth that most newspapers today aren’t in the business of celebrating local creatives. They are in the business of not angering their core subscribers.

In the Dallas–Fort Worth region, that meant one thing: staying on the good side of a highly sensitive conservative Christian readership — even though the pagan/occult community in the area is massive, vibrant, and absolutely real. But that community doesn’t buy ads. The traditional Christian organizations do.

So when Spiritflight — a book unapologetically rooted in pagan themes — hit the desk?
It didn’t matter that it was locally written.
It didn’t matter that newspapers are supposedly “champions of local culture.”
The only thing that mattered to them was avoiding angry phone calls from readers who think Harry Potter is witchcraft.

And that gets us to the real lesson for today’s indie authors:

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Five Things Indie Writers Need to Understand About Newspaper Reviews

1. Modern newsrooms are understaffed and overwhelmed.

Most papers cut arts coverage years ago. A single editor may now be responsible for books, theater, film, and sometimes even general community news. They’re drowning. Your book is one more fire hose in their face.

2. Local doesn’t mean what it used to.

“Local author stories” died when newspapers began chasing online metrics. An article that gets 300 clicks won’t survive against political scandal, civic dysfunction, or an AI-generated traffic spike. Nostalgia won’t resurrect it.

3. Controversial themes are filtered before they reach the newsroom.

Pagan, occult, queer, anti-establishment, or aggressively progressive work often gets quietly sidelined — not because it’s bad, but because editors want to avoid backlash. Newspapers are terrified of losing the remaining subscribers they still have.

4. Your book is competing with Big Five publishers.

Traditional houses send books with press kits, prewritten reviews, scheduled author tours, and publicists who already have personal relationships with journalists. Your book — however good — is arriving alone.

5. Newspapers aren’t your real path to readership anymore.

They used to be. They’re not now.
Today’s discoverability ecosystem lives on:

• newsletters
• TikTok BookTok
• indie book blogs
• genre-specific Discords
• Goodreads communities
• podcast interviews
• well-timed social media campaigns
• paid and free targeted ads
• coordinated release-day pushes
• local bookstores that still support actual writers

The world moved. Newspapers didn’t. Don’t anchor your success to a sinking ship.

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So what should indie authors do instead?

Here’s the straightforward playbook:

► Build your own audience.
Every follower, every email subscriber, every reader who shares your work is worth more than a vanishing arts section in a regional paper.

► Pitch niche reviewers — not generalists.
Find reviewers who specialize in your genre. They care. They read. They champion new voices.

► Use newsletters and small-press blogs.
They still take community seriously.

► Send your ARC to micro-reviewers.
Influence today grows bottom-up, not top-down.

► Accept that newspapers are optional, not essential.
A review is nice if you get it.
It’s not a career strategy.

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The Bottom Line

If you walk into a newspaper today expecting the old-school “local boy makes good” treatment, you’re walking into a ghost town. Build your platform. Build your reach. Build your readership. Success doesn’t come from the gatekeepers anymore — it comes from the people who actually read your work and want more of it.

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APA Citations

Pew Research Center. (2022). State of the news media. https://www.pewresearch.org/journalism/
Franklin, B. (2014). The future of journalism. Journalism Studies, 15(5), 481–499.
Rosenstiel, T. (2020). The local news crisis. Columbia Journalism Review.