Feeling like your writing time keeps getting chipped away by the holiday chaos? This post explores how to reclaim your creative space with a personalized mid-holiday writing retreat. Between Christmas and New Year is the perfect window to refocus, recharge, and write your heart out—without leaving home.
The Mid-Holiday Writing Retreat: Claim Your Time, Writer Read More »
The indie publishing world has fractured into a thousand niche markets, and the old one-size-fits-all advice just doesn’t cut it anymore. To thrive now, you need two things: a platform that keeps your readers close, and an experimental mindset that helps you navigate the mountain of conflicting advice. These aren’t just tactics—they’re survival strategies for the modern indie author.
The Two Survival Strategies Every Indie Author Needs Now Read More »
If it feels like publishing is tougher than ever — it’s not your imagination. The market is saturated, algorithms are pay-to-play, and readers are trained to expect endless content for pennies. But that doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It means the game has changed. And smart indie authors are adapting by building direct reader platforms, redefining success on their own terms, and learning to market without selling their souls. The old paths are gone — time to blaze your own.
No, It’s Not Your Imagination. Publishing Is Tough Now. Read More »
October might be here, but it’s not too late to jump into holiday book promotions. If you’re short on time but still want to take advantage of the busiest buying season of the year, here are nine creative, effective ways to promote your books—and get them into readers’ hands before the new year.
Too Late for Holiday Promos? Not Even Close: 9 Smart Ways to Make the Most of Q4 Sales Read More »
If you’re serious about writing — I mean serious-serious — then at some point you’re going to have to give things up. And not just a Netflix show or two. I mean real, soul-wrenching, this-or-that decisions.
I’ve made them. I gave up socializing. I gave up making clothes and jewelry. I took lower-paid jobs so I’d have the energy to write.
Writing takes time. And if your life is already full, then something else has to go. That’s the reality. You can’t wedge a writing career into the margins of a life that’s already packed.
The Perfect Life for an Author? It Looks Boring as Hell. Read More »
Juggling multiple pen names, a production pipeline, and the occasional bout of procrastination takes more than just caffeine and stubbornness—though those help. In this post, I break down exactly how I manage my writing and publishing schedule, from rotating pen names to keeping six+ books in postproduction at once. I also explain why I never write more than one book at a time and how I use a 300-step checklist to keep my head (mostly) attached.
From the Mailbag: How do you organize yourself? Read More »
There’s a question that haunts a lot of indie fiction writers, particularly after the third burned-out book in a series they don’t even want to read anymore:
Your Genre is Killing You — Here’s How to Break Up With It Read More »
The 2024 Indie Author Survey by Written Word Media offers some interesting insights—albeit not without its blind spots. While the survey highlights obvious trends like the link between publishing more books and higher earnings, there are nuances that the survey didn’t fully capture, especially for those who’ve found success outside digital norms. Key FindingsThe survey
What the WWM 2024 Indie Author Survey Got Right (and What It Missed) Read More »
The Fine Art of Schedule Compromises: How to Eat Your Cake and Have It, Too. In The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, when I spoke about writing schedules, I made the observation that you can do anything you want…you just can’t do everything you want. In order to keep your daily routine from blowing out, to
The Fine Art of Schedule Compromises Read More »
One of my terrible tendencies is that I’m a relapsing/remitting Perfectionist. So, writing about planning for the new year, in the New Year, instead of December 2023, makes me itchy and uncomfortable. Because planning now, my perfectionist brain argues, ruins the year. The year has already started, and now it’s already a mess because the
How to Review Your Business & Plan for This Year Read More »
