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I’m going to go ahead and start this one with a hard truth. I’ve never been anything but honest with everyone, and so even in the hard moments, when we have to say the things no one wants to hear and no one wants to believe… I try to keep it honest. And with this one, I’m also going to keep it blunt, because will argue about it. Your book will be stolen by pirates and posted online. It does not matter if your book is not in KU. It does not matter if you are careful about who you

It is release day! You made it to the finish line! Your book is out in the world! Now what do you do on this day! Wait! Crap! Welp— Alright, I hope it’s not release day for you, because you have stuff and things you need to do and schedule before release, so like… let’s do those things, but you know, if this is release day for you, congrats! There’s lots for you to do. So, pull up a chair, grab your coffee, take a deep breath, and get ready with your calendar and some post it notes. We’ve got

I am going to say something that is… not a popular statement, but it is a factual one. It’s something that a lot of people forget. It’s something a lot of people want to ignore. But, the fact is, if you are here right now reading this blog, then you are serious about being an author and publishing and succeeding and doing it right, which means, we need to have this conversation. You, as an author, are running a business. This is a business. And you, as an author, are your brand. Your morals, what you stand for, what you

Let’s talk marketing. Now, we’ve talked about social media and graphics and ARC teams, all of which are also marketing, but we haven’t really talked about active vs passive marketing, or how to ride the waves, or even how trad pub glorifies the first 30 days when they’re a lie, or even about the push. So much goes into marketing for an indie, things that you wouldn’t normally think of, and a lot of what I’ve already discussed, things I encourage and recommend, are all a huge part of it, but marketing as a whole… it’s a constant. It’s something

Last March, I shared with everyone via my Patreon how I went about journaling, planning my week, and organizing tasks. I also included a video, showed off my various journals, showed off a new planner I had, and had a very color coded and organized system for tackling all of the things I concern myself during the week. If you think I still journal/plan that way, you’re crazy pants. Original Posts: Step 7 : Journaling Step 8 : Social Media Now, part of this is because life is busy. Part of this is because I’ve moved onto different journals. And

Part one : Budgeting Are we going out of order? Yes, but this is important information, and I need to share it all. If you have looked at my Author Stats posts, you have seen my budgeting spreadsheets, so part of this you’ve seen before, but I actually want to go into depth on how I organize it and why, but also what I haven’t been doing but should have been doing.  I recently had a conversation with a CPA about what in all I have, and in turn, found out so much more about what I’ve been lacking, but

Let’s talk going wide! (from the perspective of an author who is NOT) Now, depending on who you ask, “going wide” means different things. The general broad term means simply that your book is available on multiple different platforms, rather than via one place of production. This does NOT mean widely distributed, which we will come back to in a moment, but instead is about the SOURCE of production. For many indie authors, myself included, that one source is Amazon. Amazon has my ebooks, my paperbacks, and through ACX, my audiobooks. Many people will say that being wide means ebooks