Tag: indie author

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Know your stuff! The Importance of Research

There’s this piece of advice that floats around writing circles that I absolutely hate. “Write what you know.”

I hate it for a couple reasons.

For starters, it’s become a means of gatekeeping. People use it to tell people they shouldn’t write a character of a gender or sexual orientation or race that’s different from their own. People also use it to tell others not to write characters in a situation that they’ve never experienced, like mental illness or extreme poverty.

And I hate that.

It completely negates the fact that we can learn. We can do research and broaden our horizons and grow as human beings.

We can come to understand other people in ways we didn’t before, and books are a wonderful way to do that.

“Write what you know” also limits what a person can write in other ways.

If authors only ever wrote what they know, every character would be a bookworm of some sort, and the fantasy/sci-fi genres wouldn’t exist. Magic isn’t real, and aliens aren’t officially recognized as real, so no one “knows” them to write them. Same with zombies or super-advanced technology.

And then there are the hobbies and things that people could never write without first diving into them.

So, instead of, “Write what you know,” I’m an advocate for research.

For example, if a character is a mechanic, learn a little bit about cars.

It won’t hurt you to know how to change your oil. (And knowing how doesn’t mean you can’t just pay someone else to do it.) It won’t hurt you to know that if a pully on the motor is bent, it might shred the serpentine belt (over time), which fucks a lot of shit up (goodbye power steering and engine cooling, for instance).

It also doesn’t hurt to know that Stop Leak is a thing, but most mechanics would recommend replacing the head or the head gasket rather than using it because it’s more of a band-aid than an actual fix, and could leave you stranded on the side of the road later on with all the fluids draining out of the engine. (Personal experience from my days as a broke ass college student taught me that one.)

If a character is an archer, you probably need to research archery.

It won’t hurt you to know that the extended arm will ache more than the arm drawing the string if you hold for too long (same tension because of the whole equal and opposite reaction thing, plus the weight of holding the arm and bow out away from the body), or that double jointed elbows might mean the string clips your elbow on release if your elbow is at full lock.

If a character suffers from depression, you probably need to know about intrusive thoughts and the complete and total lack of energy that sometimes holds a person in an existential crisis on the couch, stopping them from doing things they know full well that they need to do while simultaneously making them feel like shit for not doing those things.

If a character is a lesbian, you should probably do some research and learn that not all lesbians have a high sex drive or fit the typical “butch” stereotype. And they aren’t lesbians just because they haven’t met the right man.

My point is, these are things you should learn, things you should research.

Not things that should stop you from writing a character the way they’re supposed to be written.

This doesn’t mean you have to be an expert in every hobby your character undertakes (unless the character is supposed to be an expert and that knowledge affects the story). At least get the basics, though.

Do your characters (and real people) justice.

Research appropriately.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

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Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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Editing Your Manuscript To Death: Knowing When To Stop

Editing a manuscript is a long and (sometimes) grueling process. It’s a necessary step, because no manuscript is perfect.

But how do you know when to stop?

How do you keep from falling into an endless cycle of revisions?

Write the whole book first.

Don’t edit your first chapter five times instead of writing chapter two. This is a good way to never finish the book.

There are exceptions to this. Some people can make editing as they write work for them and still finish books. For instance, I edit as I go, but only minimal edits (fixing misspelled words as I type them, things like that). Sometimes, I’ll stop progressing to go back and make a change earlier in the manuscript, but only if it’s a pivotal thing, something that I need to do because it alters the character arcs or plot.

Everything else gets tacked on at the end of the manuscript with a note that says, “Add such and such to this specific scene.”

That’s enough to convince my brain to let it go for the moment while ensuring that it gets fixed after the book is finished.

If you’re wondering if your first chapter is good enough for you to stop editing it and write the next chapter, the answer is yes. Write the next chapter.

Once the book is finished, if you fall into a cycle of fifteen to twenty rounds of edits, and you’re unsure whether it’s done, try these:

Step away from it for a little while.

If you’ve pored over your book time and again, and you don’t know if needs something adjusted or removed or added…

Step away from it for a week or more.

Coming back with fresh eyes is insanely helpful for seeing things you didn’t see before, or for realizing that you were overthinking.

Hire a pro for at least one round of edits.

Please. At least one round of editing needs to be done by a professional. I promise, they’ll see things you didn’t, and it’ll help you get some peace of mind.

Accept that there will always be a typo or two (or ten) left scattered throughout the book.

A book is the product of a human, and humans are incapable of perfection. I believe the industry standard is somewhere around 1 typo for every 10,000 words, but obviously you’re not going to count them. If you could find them to count them, you’d just fix them.

But if you feel like you’re close to that point, as long as you’ve done story and grammar edits in addition to hunting for typos, you’re probably good.

When in doubt, have someone else (someone you trust to be honest with you) take a look.

Honestly, you should have someone else look at your book before publication, no matter what. Be it critique partners, alpha readers, or beta readers, you need other people’s eyes on your work.

Your brain will fill in words where they’re missing because you know what’s supposed to be there. Other people don’t, so they’ll like see these things.

Your brain will also fill in backstory and world building because you know what’s supposed to be there. Again, other people don’t. They can show you what you’ve missed. (Or what you’ve overexplained.)

Or tell you when they think it’s ready and that you’re just doubting yourself unnecessarily.

Doing this before sending your manuscript to a professional editor could actually save you money. Every problem fixed before the pro gets their hands on it means one less thing for them to find, and thus, potentially fewer rounds needed with a pro.

But basically, when it gets to a point where all you’re doing is taking out a comma or addressing a typo once every ten (ish) pages, or better yet, when you get your manuscript back from the pro and can scroll through ten (ish) pages between corrections, publish that bitch!

Stop tearing your hair out hunting the four typos that slipped through seven rounds of edits.

(Btw, seven rounds is my average for editing, including the professional edit and a sweep with Grammarly. Older works got more to bring them up from my early writing abilities to my current abilities.)

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

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Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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Fantasy Maps Made Easy

So many readers love a good map to accompany their books, and for good reason. It’s a nice little extra bit of world building and helps to orient a person in a fictional world.

But unless you’re extremely familiar with graphic design, making the map yourself could prove difficult. Hiring the work out could prove expensive (as it should, graphic design work require time, effort, and a lot of practice).

But there are a couple alternatives that allow you to make your own map and (for a reasonable price) use them for commercial purposes, i.e. in a book. If you’re making a map for a non-commercial purpose (a personal Dungeons & Dragons campaign with friends, perhaps), I’m not sure the same fees would apply.

So, without further adieu, the map making resources you came here for.

Inkarnate

This lovely website lets you build a custom map from the ground up. Well, from the sea bed up, because at the start, it’s all water.

You start out by selecting the overall feel you want the map to have, be it parchment or watercolor. You also choose whether it’s a battle map, regional map, or world map.

Then, you start shaping continents with a tool that raises land up out of the water. You can adjust the edges of that tool to be smooth or rough (for more realistic coastlines). You can sink areas back down to make lakes. There’s a separate tool for drawing paths, which could be used for thin snaking rivers or trade routes or whatever you want.

With the geography roughed out, you can choose from a bunch of “Stamp” options. These are used for the compass and scale, banners and bridges, towns and buildings, mountains and trees, even mythical creatures.

There’s a pretty wide assortment, so you’ll just have to play around and find the ones you like the best. It automatically defaults to the ones that match the style you chose for your map, but you can change the filters and select from any stamps, regardless of style.

There’s also an option to add text (with the option to curve it to fit banners) and brushes for different textures and colors. It has some trial and error involved for sure, but once you get the hang of it, it’s pretty fun.

And you can come out the other side with some amazing maps.

The cost to use the maps for commercial use?

$25 a year or $5 a month.

Here’s the official terms of service if you want to read them. Don’t worry, it’s only 8 pages or reasonably sized text.

Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator

As you may have guessed from the word “generator” in the link above, this one makes a complete, randomized world for you. Of course, you can change it, altering altitudes and coastlines to fit what you have in mind for your world if you don’t like a few parts of the random map. Or you can generate a new one altogether.

One of the really cool things about this one is that it’s really in depth. It populates the world for you, throwing in a variety of cultures (derived from real world influences as well as existing fictional races), countries, political factions, religions, trade routes, etc.

It accounts for precipitation based on topography, temperature based on a country’s position on the globe. It even has a layer option to show military forces.

And if you click on the cities, it pulls up a small map of the city streets.

All the various layers and options are available for you to tweak if you click the little bitty triangle in the top left of the screen.

Now, since I’ve only discovered this map generator recently, I’m by no means an expert in what can be done with it. But I can see its potential, and there are a multitude of tutorials on YouTube to help you get the most out of it.

Cost for commercial licensing?

Judging by the reply the creator left for a Redditor, all they ask is that you mention that you used their generator.

Which is astonishing and unbelievably cool of them.

The license itself is linked in that post, but if you’d rather skip straight to the license (which says free) here it is. They even made that simple. It’s less than one page.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Find me on Goodreads.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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Front and Back Matter: Important Things to Include in Your Book

Getting our books just right is hard sometimes. But there’s a really easy way to make it look more professional and potentially drive readers to your next book (or to review the book they’ve just read).

The secret?

It’s all those extra pages at the beginning and end of the book. The front and back matter.

Here’s a little list of things to include (or consider including) to take your book up a notch.

Front Matter

Pretty Title Page
This one isn’t necessary, but it does give the book a little something extra. In a few of my own books, I’ve put a page with the cover art but in black and white (printing in color drives the price way up), the typography off the cover, or a completely different design specially made for that page.

*Don’t include in ebooks. Different screen sizes from one ereader or app to another could cut the image off and make it look bad.

Regular Title Page
This one should be in there, whether you have a pretty title page or not. It’s easy to read and provides a good place for signatures.

Copyright Page
An absolute must. Include the copyright claimant, the copyright year, the ISBN, and the statement that the rights are reserved. If you want to, you can include the copyright registration number. If you’re not sure how to word all that, you can look at the books you read to see how they did it and take cues from their copyright pages.

*If you’re in a country that requires it, don’t forget to register your copyright.

Dedication
Optional, but nice. There are a lot of ways to format these. Sometimes a simple, “To Mom,” works, but you can get elaborate if you want to. There have been a lot of these floating around the internet that are more like… warnings for loved ones that shouldn’t read it.

Table of Contents
These aren’t 100% necessary, but a lot of readers really appreciate them. And as long as you have all your chapters/section headings marked as Headings in Word, it’ll format the table for you when you insert it. In the ebook format, you might want to set the table of contents up with hyperlinks to make things even easier for your readers.

Map
Not a necessity, but again, a lot of readers really like these, especially in high/epic fantasy.

Front or Back Matter

Other Books by This Author
I’ve seen these at the front of the book and at the back of the book. Either way is fine. If it’s an ebook (which means you can include hyperlinks) maybe put it at the back with something along the lines of: On to your next great read with…
If you’re publishing your debut novel, don’t stress about not being able to include this. Self-publishing means you can always update the files later to include this page.
If you have multiple books out, please please please include this! It’s free marketing for your other books directed at someone who already said yes to one of your books. Not including this is a wasted opportunity.

Back Matter

Thank You Page
Thank your reader. They just spent a ton of time in your world. They gave you and your characters and your creation their energy and focus. Thanking them gives the book a slightly more personal feel.
This page is also a great place to ask that they leave a review on Goodreads or Amazon.

Acknowledgements
This one isn’t a necessity, but it could be a nice little finishing touch. Whether you had a co-writer (who might have their own acknowledgements page to include), a developmental editor that really helped you from the start, supportive friends and family, a team of beta readers that went above and beyond, patreon supporters, or a group of writer friends that kept you going, this is a great place to mention them.

Afterword
Again, not necessary, but sometimes good. This is just a place to review some things that took place in the book, maybe compare themes to the real world, explain why something is the way it is, or address your reason for writing the book in the first place.
Two of my books include an afterword (though in one it’s called A Letter from the Author). One focuses on sexual abuse, its after effects, and the needs for better treatment of victims and stricter punishment for offenders. The other talks about suicide and includes the number for the suicide helpline. One that I’m currently writing will have an afterword that includes information about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and memory deficits/time misperception in survivors of childhood sexual abuse.
These are pertinent to the books they’re placed within.
Yours don’t have to be so heavy.

About the Author
You definitely need one of these. Tell a little something about yourself, list awards if you’ve gotten any, and provide a website or social media platform for readers to follow you. Don’t go overboard with links though. Just a dab’ll do ya.
(So, no more than three or four.)
And these links should not be four pages long with random letters and symbols and numbers. Provide clean links or even simply usernames for certain platforms.

Teaser of the next book in the series
If this is a series, you can include a small excerpt of the next book to try and lead your reader through. The first chapter is usually a good amount.

Pick and choose which of these are best for you and your book. Have fun with it, and good luck with your publishing journey!

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Find me on Goodreads.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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Kindle Unlimited: Pros and Cons in Self-Publishing

Publishing is like walking through a minefield. Some of the mines hurt. Some of them are more like a jack-in-the-box. Others actually hand out rewards in a non-explosive way.

But which of those categories does Kindle Unlimited fall into?

For those who don’t know, Kindle Unlimited is something you can only enroll your ebook in (through Kindle Select) if you publish through KDP and only KDP. Paperback and hardback can be published through other publishers, but the ebook has to be specifically through KDP and enrolled in Kindle Select.

Now, that does eliminate some potential sales and readers on Nook, Kobo, iBooks, Google Play Books, etc. But 72% of people reading ebooks do so on a Kindle or Kindle app.

Putting your book in Kindle Unlimited does alienate 28% of ebook readers, but it also opens up a whole new market for you.

You see, if someone subscribes to Kindle Unlimited, they can read as many books from the program as they want. They pay the monthly subscription fee, but nothing else.

So, programs like this are where you tend to get your reading “whales,” the truly big fish, the people reading so much that not having a monthly subscription just doesn’t make sense financially. And voracious readers are what writers want to find.

Now, how do you get paid if your book is in Kindle Unlimited?

KDP pays you per page read (they call it KENP). So, if a person reads your entire book, you get paid for all those pages. If they read fifteen pages and never come back to it, you still get paid for those fifteen pages instead of forfeiting the royalty if they had returned a regular ebook or just read the sample and never bought the book.

So, there are some positives there.

The amount you get per page read varies from month to month. KDP does some calculations, figuring up what the total income of the Kindle Unlimited subscriptions were worldwide and breaking it down across the total number of pages read. And they give bonuses to the people who whose books were read the most.

What does that mean for you?

Typically, the amount paid per page is pretty low. I’m talking fractions of pennies per page. But it adds up over the course of a book or two or a full blown series or your entire backlist.

Kindle Unlimited is really good for people with a lot of books out or with a big series and good readthrough rates. Because then, when a reader finds one of your books and loves it, they can immediately read through all of them. No further purchases on their end, but more royalties for you.

Enrolling in Kindle Select also means that you can run price promotions on KDP, lowering your price without sacrificing your royalty percentage or even making it free for a certain number of days per quarter.

And since Amazon now owns Goodreads (yep, they sure do), you can still run a Goodreads giveaway while enrolled in Kindle Select. I emailed them to make sure.

But you can’t sell it anywhere else.

No Nook ebooks. No Kobo. No iBooks.

Not even on your own website.

As long as it’s enrolled, your ebook can only be available for Kindles.

So, though there are a lot of pros to enrolling in Kindle Select to get your book into Kindle Unlimited, there is a very real drawback. You just have to decide whether you want your ebooks wide or strictly through KDP.

But rest easy. If you decide you don’t want to be in Kindle Select, you can unenroll and go wide. Or you can release your ebook with wide distribution through another self-publisher and later on, unpublish it with the other publisher to enroll it in Kindle Select.

If that’s your plan, I recommend that you publish the ebook through KDP and the other publisher simultaneously, that way the Amazon listing is unaffected when you unpublish with the other publisher. That way, you don’t lose your reviews.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Find me on Goodreads.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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It’s time for me to restructure my writing blog.

I’ve been doing this blog for three years now. There have been some highs and lows, some moments where I really felt like it was helping people, and some moments where I doubted whether anyone even reads these things I spend so much time on.

Which could be said of any part of any creative field, honestly.

But after three years of weekly posts, it feels like I might be reaching a breaking point for this blog.

My mind comes up with characters and stories and worlds without even trying, handling creative writing with relative ease. But when it comes to trying to teach or share skills, my well often runs dry.

Partly because I don’t feel like I know enough to actually teach or share any skills. Partly because technical writing (like blogging) just isn’t my thing.

And partly because I’ve already done somewhere around 150 blogs, and to be honest, I’m not sure what else to cover.

Every week, I try to put notes into my phone about potential blog topics, complete with a phrase or two to round out a couple of those ideas. Sometimes that happens. Sometimes I just can’t think of anything.

Then, when Sunday night rolls around and it’s time to sit and write my blog… I sit staring at the screen, wracking my brain for anything to write.

And it’s stressful.

So unbelievably stressful that, every week, I consider just… not doing it anymore.

But I have this problem with giving up on things. Namely, that I don’t. I hold on, forcing myself to keep going, to keep doing things because it’s expected, because it’s a habit, because it’s what I’m supposed to do.

Even if it’s genuinely stressful.

Even if I’m not sure it’s benefiting anyone else.

Even if I know it’s not benefiting me.

And while I’m proud that I’ve managed to do a blog every week without missing a single time (though the holiday and extra time off threw me off and nearly made me miss this one), I’m not sure I’m going to keep it going as I have so far.

I’ve considered making it a weekly update on my writing, as that’s what it was to start with. It was a means to keep myself accountable with my writing and editing, a way to let people know what I’m doing.

But I don’t really need the accountability aspect. I genuinely love creative writing and editing, and do those things regularly.

Plus, I have my social media pages/profiles for sharing tidbits, with exclusive stuff sent out in my newsletter. (You should sign up, btw. You’ll get a free short story, updates on my progress, and exclusive sneak peeks/excerpts.)

So, maybe I’ll cut my blog back to every other week instead of weekly for now, just to ease the strain of trying to make myself feel like an expert in four subjects every month.

My newsletter will still be weekly. That’s not really stressful as it’s more of a place for me to show you how things are going. Plus, I’m an expert on the worlds I create. Lol.

But for this blog, expect a change.

Who knows, I may restructure it entirely, transforming it into something new altogether and taking the pressure of being an expert out of the equation altogether. Because I’ll be honest, the content grind of long-term blogging is absolutely exhausting.

If that happens, that’ll be a long time coming though.

So, in the meantime, if there are any topics you want me to cover, don’t hesitate to ask. Send me a message, drop a comment on social media, whatever.

I’d say leave a comment here, but honestly, there are hundreds of bot comments backed up, waiting for me to delete them, that are just full of spammy links to other websites. Any real comment here would get buried rather than approved to be posted. Which… is another exhausting part of running a blog.

Anyway.

As I said above, if there’s a topic you want me to cover (tips on a certain aspect of writing/publishing, resources for a specific part of the journey, etc.), let me know on social media. I’m on Instagram, Facebook, Goodreads, and Twitter.

And don’t forget to sign-up for my newsletter to stay up to date on all of my writing projects (because there are a lot of them, and thus, there’s a lot that doesn’t get shown on social media).

And of course, if you want to check out my already published books, you can do so here.

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6 tips for writing better dialogue

Dialogue is important. I think we can all agree on that.

For me, it’s one of the first things that come to me when working on a story. The characters have conversations in my head, and the scene develops around them.

It’s one of my favorite parts of writing, honestly.

So, today, I want to share some tips to help you get your dialogue down in a way that’s easy to read and feels natural.

Said is not dead.

Said/says are viable dialogue tags, but a lot of writers seem to think it’ll make their writing boring somehow to use “said” instead of “whispered” or “spat” or “hissed” or any of the other million dialogue tag options.

But there’s a reason said/says is kinda the standard.

It’s neutral.

Aside from the fact that it’s just the basic action of speaking, it’s virtually invisible. The word said is a background word, something most readers don’t notice unless the book is just dialogue heavy and there are no other tags attached to dialogue.

Things like “crooned” or “shouted” are more active. They change the way the dialogue is interpreted. The reader has to actually engage with that word to interpret the things your characters say appropriately.

And though it may be an infinitesimal difference in reading time, there is a bit of a difference. Refusing to use “said” means that every time a character speaks, there’s that little split second delay of applying the manner of speech to the words spoken. Not only does that add up, it gets annoying.

So, said/says should probably be your primary dialogue tag. Others should be sprinkled over the manuscript.

Certain grammatical rules don’t apply to speech.

People do not speak with proper grammar. We say “towards” instead of “toward.” We use contractions, saying “can’t” instead of “can not” most of the time.

This should be reflected in your characters’ speech patterns unless you’re writing a character who’s unbelievably proper.

Or if you’re writing a historical regency romance.

Go easy with the slang.

Just because we don’t speak properly doesn’t mean every other word should be a slang term. Slang happens and should be a part of your dialogue (though it should be customized to the world/characters).

But it shouldn’t sound like a parody where someone is trying to be cool and failing miserably.

Dialects/Accents can be distracting when typed out.

It’s unbelievably tempting to type things up according to a character’s accent or dialect. But there is a risk associated with that.

It can be distracting or difficult for people who don’t use that dialect to understand.

But they might also be the thing that really defines the character (if done well).

As with most things in writing, it’s all a matter of doing it well. Every rule can be broken (if you do it well). Every trope can be subverted or embodied with great results (if done well).

And accents and dialects are no exception.

Get it right, and it might be the thing that makes a character relatable or endearing or swoon-worthy (depending on what you’re writing).

New paragraph for a new speaker.

For the love of everything that’s still good in this world, start a new paragraph when you switch speakers. It gets so hard to keep track of things when there are multiple speakers in one paragraph.

And it’s such a simple fix.

Just hit enter.

Personally, this is something that will make me stop reading a book. If I can’t tell who’s speaking, I can’t keep track of the characters’ motives, fears, or relationships. And the characters are the main reason I read.

Find me on Goodreads.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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Garbage Days: A New Writing Tradition?

I’m thinking of trying something, and I wanted to share it in case it might help someone else out there.

I’m going to call them Garbage Days.

Basically, I want to sit down and write literally anything. A short story, something new, an alternate ending, stream of consciousness, a random character description that’s been rattling around in my head…

Anything.

Things just feel so cluttered sometimes, and I’m always paranoid that I’ll forget the details. It gets a bit distracting at times.

So I think having a Garbage Day every now and then might help.

I guess if you don’t want it to sound so negative, you could call it Spring Cleaning or some other prettier name, but I tend toward blunt and sarcastic, so Garbage Day works for me. Lol.

I’m not sure how often to do this or when I’ll actually be able to start, but I’m kinda excited to see what the hell will come out of it.

Will you be adopting Garbage Days as a writing tactic?

Find me on Goodreads.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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On the Dilemma of Genre Hopping

In the past week, I’ve worked on writing a literary fantasy romance and editing a literary sci-fi fantasy epic, thought of ways to advertise my recently released literary thriller romance, and came up with ideas for a sci-fi novel and a literary zombie apocalypse romance.

So, to say that I hop genres might be an understatement.

Now, every big marketing expert whose classes I’ve taken said that hopping genres is a bad idea.

Truthfully, it does make marketing a great deal harder.

But.

I can’t imagine sitting down to force myself to write something I hate just because it’s in the same genre as something else I wrote. The idea of spending months with a story or world or plot or character that I just couldn’t sink myself into seems exhausting, and I’m pretty sure it would ruin writing for me.

So I refuse to settle into one genre.

And I don’t have the energy to maintain a social media platform for pen names for every genre.

Which means that it does make marketing harder.

But it isn’t impossible.

You just have to find the unifying theme in all your books and really lean into that. In blurbs, in ads, in social media posts, everywhere you talk about your books, lean into that unifying theme.

For me, it’s the grit and psychology, the character development and the fact that these characters go through real shit (even if the world they’re in is far from real).

That, and my writing style. Lyrical, full of sentence fragments and short paragraphs for the sake of flow, providing only necessary details, first person/present tense.

Those things all together mean that my books, even when they’re fantasy or sci-fi or a thriller, are literary fiction.

So, I need to lean into that.

Character profiles and details about their struggles, their traumas, their strife.

Things like that.

So if you’re debating on whether to hop genres, you need to make a decision.

Which is more important, writing what you want or having a more straightforward marketing path?

If you plan to hop genres, going wherever your heart wants with your books, then you need either multiple pen names or you need to find that thing that unifies your books.

Maybe it’s that all your books have a love triangle. Maybe it’s that they all contain a clean romance tucked within the larger plot. Maybe it’s that you prioritize world building.

Lean into that in your marketing efforts so you can attract the right readers, people who’ll want to read all your books, regardless of the genre the story is contained within.

(My main problem so far, if I’m being completely honest, is that I tend to prioritize every other aspect of the writing and publishing process over marketing/advertising.)

But if you really lean into that unifying theme across your books (and actually market and advertise), you can hop to your heart’s content and still build a fan base that will follow you through the genres.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

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Self-Publishing Resources That Have Helped Me Out

There are a lot of steps involved in self-publishing. And I mean a lot. From searching the internet for good keywords to making pretty pictures of your book to post on social media, there’s a lot to do.

But there are also a lot of awesome resources at our disposal.

The trouble is, they’re hidden in all the garbage floating around online.

So, today, I wanted to give you a list of resources I’ve discovered in the past year that have really simplified things for me.

Some of these things are free. Some are not. But now that I have them, I can’t imagine not having them and having to do all this stuff by hand.

Category Finder

Figuring out what categories to put your book into can be an absolute nightmare. But there’s an awesome tool that finds all the categories a comparable bestseller in your genre is in so that you can use those categories.

Just go here.

Then, in a new tab or window, go to Amazon and get the ASIN or ISBN-10 of a book similar to yours that ranks in the top 100 in your genre.

Paste that number into the site above and let it work its magic.

And by the way, if you didn’t know (because I didn’t until this year), if your book is published through KDP, you can contact their support team and have them add your book to more categories. They allow two in the setup phase, but you can add an additional eight!

KDP Rocket/Publisher Rocket

This one’s useful for a lot of reasons, though the primary thing I use it for is finding keywords for my books. If you type in a keyword you think might be good, it does some tech magic and finds a bunch of stats for that keyword, as well as any similar keyword that’s been entered into Amazon.

It tells you: how many times that keyword is entered into Amazon and Google per month, how much the books with that keyword average in sales per month, how many books use that keyword, how competitive it is, and a few other things.

A recent update even color codes those stats to show you at a glance whether or not those stats are in a good range.

This one is not free, but it makes keywords so easy that I think it’s worth the $97 (USD) price tag.

Instant Data Scraper Plug-In

This little tool put Goodreads to work for you. You just find a list on Goodreads that has books similar to yours, give this plug-in the requisite link, and let it extract the information. With a little work in Excel to clean them up, you’ll end up with a bunch of book titles to target in ads.

Mock Up Shots

This site charges $198 for lifetime access, but gives you tons of professional mockups for your book. Just upload the cover and download as many of them as you want for as many books as you want mockups for.

Book Report Plug-In

KDP has a decent sales reporting system, at least compared to Ingramspark. But this plug-in shows you a more comprehensive view of your royalties, even breaking it down by individual books. Which is pretty helpful if you’re running a sale or an ad and want to know if a specific book or series is selling.

It’s easy to set up and use. Somehow, it reports sales that might not show up in KDP’s sales reports.

It only works for KDP books though. If it was published through any other publisher, the sales won’t show up on Book Report.

Check out my gritty, literary sci-fi and fantasy books here.

Want to help fund this blog and my writing efforts? You can support me directly here.

Subscribe for sneak peeks and updates on my upcoming books (and get a free short story).