The author community is on fire, and we’re the ones holding the matches.
Last week Vellum introduced automation. You could choose to connect Vellum with an AI assistant to take tasks off your plate, such as updating back matter among a series or your entire backlist, change a formatting choice like texts that are italicized to the text bubbles, or checking to make sure all your graphics have an accessibility description. Those are some of the examples that were included in the email that Vellum sent out on November 4th.
To me, it wasn’t a big deal. Like a lot of Vellum’s updates, it included things that I didn’t care about or need, and I put it in my Vellum folder in my email and forgot about it.
Then I went on Threads.
This blog post isn’t about AI.
This blog post is about basic human decency toward someone, in this case Brad Andalman and Brad West, who founded Vellum in 2012.
I have never seen so many F-bombs dropped in one place, or so much venom, vitriol, and I almost want to say, pure hate, that some authors spewed at them over their newest formatting software update.
I have never been ashamed to be an indie author until now.
How on this earth can someone think it’s okay to start off an email with “Fuck you” to a publishing partner who has done nothing but support the indie publishing community for well over a decade? You’re writing to a professional business as a professional author running your own business, and then, after having the nerve to actually hit send on a piece of correspondence like that, you post a screenshot of that email on Threads, loud and proud, just to hammer home how despicable you are. And that’s only email. We really don’t need to get into all the Fuck Yous I saw on Threads in response to their announcement. (You can go on Threads and search Vellum yourself to find all the trash posts.)
Have we all forgotten that we can disagree and make our opinions known with kindness and respect?
What has turned the author community into such a den of snakes?
I lost so much respect for so many of my peers that day, and I don’t think I’ll ever get it back.
Because what’s sad is that Vellum’s announcement isn’t an isolated incident. I see this kind of behavior whenever people talk about Amazon, and I saw it when Draft2Digital announced their $12.00 a year maintenance fee.
The kind of behavior I saw, and often see, goes beyond simple disagreement. There’s anger, and I can somewhat understand where it’s coming from–it’s tough out there and I feel that every day–but it’s being directed at people that it shouldn’t be directed at, and maybe it shouldn’t be at all. (Therapy, anyone?)
Brad and Brad, and Katharine, part of their team I didn’t know about until they sent out their email saying they walked back that feature, are real people who read those emails and posts on social media. They have feelings and mental health they’re protecting. Just like the team at Draft2Digital, and just like the poor Amazon reps who answer your chat and get blasted because your dashboard doesn’t look the way you think it should.
Honestly, I’m heartsick over this, and I wrote them an email and apologized for the behavior that was aimed at them last week. And you know, changing their minds and taking the automation out of their update wasn’t enough. It wasn’t enough for a lot of authors and it’s sad that over a decade of goodwill can be obliterated by a choice that not everyone agreed with. It’s not about AI or a difference of opinion. It’s about treating people with kindness and being a member of a community that prides itself on professionalism.
I saw very little professionalism on Threads last week.
And I hope that if you were one of the people telling them to fuck off, that you are afforded grace at a time when you need it.
This isn’t a very long post today, but I don’t have anything else to say. Authors have every right to criticize Vellum, stop using it, or disagree with Brad and Brad’s decisions. What they don’t have is a free pass to abuse and bully the people behind a software that has made hundreds, if not thousands, of authors’ lives easier.
The things I saw last week brought tears to my eyes, and I can’t imagine what that poor team went through over a development that some authors actually said they wanted.
There is no excuse not to be kind.
There is no excuse not to be respectful.
Do better.
I’ll see you next week! (Or…not. If you don’t agree with what I’ve said in this post and decide to move on, I wish you the best.)
Hello, hello! If you celebrated Halloween, I hope you were safe and had a great time! My sister came over and brought Chinese, and then we walked through a city park that I live close to. I like walking through there because sometimes we’ll see turkeys or deer. We usually carve pumpkins, but my daughter wasn’t into it this year, so we skipped that. We still had a good time, though. November will be packed as it usually is, with my daughter’s birthday, Thanksgiving, and my birthday. This year we also want to go to the new Hunger Games movie, Sunrise on the Reaping, so we’ll be fitting that in sometime as well.
I’ve been busy with making Reels for Instagram, and honestly, between that and trying to get Bitter Love edited for its January 26th release, I’ve been swamped. I used to post only two Reels a day (one for my King’s Crossing serial and one for Wicked Games), but reach has decreased since I started posting in July so now I post two regular Reels, one Trial Reel, and then maybe something in the evening if I have the time to make it and don’t forget to post it. It’s a pain in the ass, but in all my years of publishing, it’s the only thing that has actually sold books. I had minimal success with Facebook ads before they screwed it all up with AI, but I paid for those and only came out even. So there’s a bit of an urgency to keep posting, and posting means making them, even if I end up using snippets and captions that I’ve used before. To get around Instagram’s duplicate content warnings, I change the color highlights on the snippet, sometimes use a new hook, mix up the caption a bit, use new b-roll, and since I can never remember anyway, use new music. That seems to do the trick, but it’s still a lot of work to put them together, even if the snippet is already made.
I don’t want this blog to turn into How Vania Makes Reels™️ (that has a very Debbie Does Dallas ring to it), so I’m not going to say much more except that the pressure to keep something working that actually works is a real thing, and it can mess with your head. If a Reel doesn’t take off, it can be deflating, and I’m trying not to let it get me down when it happens. Not every Reel is going to pop, and I’m fortunate that any of my Reels have done well, considering what I’ve seen online with regard to other authors’ experiences. It’s just very interesting and humbling that the correlation between a viral reel and sales is so stark. I can definitely see how other authors get obsessed with their views.
Anyway, as if I didn’t have enough on my plate, I re-did the cover for Rescue Me. I really liked the old one, and it lasted for four years, but it’s looking dated now. So I took a little time to scroll through background stock photos, since for me, the background is what makes or breaks a cover. I used the same model but he’s wearing a different suit and he’s standing in a different pose. Even though it sucks that I chose a guy who’s done his own version of Debbie Does Dallas on romance novel covers, it’s really nice to find a model who’s in several poses to choose from. It’s handy for graphics and if you ever want to change the cover. Then you can maintain some consistency and your readers aren’t confused if they’re familiar with the book. If you want to read a little bit about my decision on why I changed the cover and the book’s history, you can read it on my author site here: https://vmrheault.com/2026/10/29/going-back-to-rescue-me/
I’m not interested in reading it again–I re-edited it last year–so when the proof comes, I’ll just make sure the cover looks nice in print, that the formatting isn’t wonky, and take a quick peek at my copyright page to make sure everything there is good. I credit the photographers for the stock photos, and I also updated my imprint logo a while back and I needed to update that information as well. I also added Wicked Games to the back matter because Wicked Games and Rescue Me have the same kind of romantic suspense vibe. So there are some changes that I’m going to look over, then I’ll approve it. Once I swap the ebook cover, I want to start making Reels for it. I’ve featured Wicked Games and my King’s Crossing serial the most, and I’d like to mix it up with a different book. Rescue Me fits with what my audience seems to like, and I hope with a new cover I can get it to sell too. If nothing else, it’ll give me a different book to make Reels with. I’m starting to get a little bored using the same scenes over and over again.
I really don’t have too much else. It would have been nice if I was done editing Bitter Love by now, but that’s okay. Listening to it takes a long time, but it’s worth it. And I’d rather put time aside to make Reels than be bitter and complain I’m not selling books. I could very well be at that place again some time in the near future, so I’ll make the compromise. Once I get the book edited, the rest will go fast. I already have the cover done, and Vellum makes it easy to format. I need to write the blurb for it, but that’s really the last thing I’ll need to do that might take some time. I hate writing blurbs, even when I have help.
I’ve been feeling okay physically. Health-wise, I mean. What has remained after my lichen sclerosis diagnosis and treatment and my hysterectomy is a daily discomfort that can feel better or worse depending on what my body decides to do. It doesn’t keep me from doing much, but after my Florida trip, I realized that I’m just happier at home in my pajamas and working on my books. It doesn’t make for a very glamorous life, but the daily grind of working my day job, errands on Wednesdays, and playing taxi driver for my kids doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for much else anyway.
Mental health-wise, I’m doing okay. I still feel a bit lonely in my writing and publishing, especially since Threads seems to be so toxic with so much Amazon and AI hate. It’s particularly depressing and distasteful to see authors posting screenshots of their arguments with Amazon reps over their empty dashboards. I can understand the AI hate, and the number of books I see on the bestseller lists, in Written Word Media promos, and scrolling my Facebook author page feed is disappointing to me too. But screaming at each other isn’t going to do anything. Threads has just turned into not a very nice place and reminds me that it’s not so bad keeping to myself. I’m pretty happy and content with how my life is, especially if I happen to be having a good Reel/sales day, but I love this time of year and SAD hasn’t hit me yet. You’ll have to check back in February when the weather can get me down.
November is my birthday month, so I’ll be celebrating with the new cover I made for Rescue Me and putting my Christmas novel on for free for a few days after Thanksgiving. When I have Bitter Love packaged and ready to go, I’m going to start my hockey standalone that I thought of when all that Alpine Divorce stuff was making its way around Threads. I wanted to write a book with an FMC who goes through that and the ex-hockey player who finds her in the woods. I have it all plotted out and even have a title for it. I’m not sure what the cover will be yet, though. I’ll have to worry about the covers for my Black Ice duet first. Those are still breathing, but they’re both done at 81,000 words. My conveyor belt is still in motion! But my boss keeps giving me extra tasks and I hope I don’t fall behind.
My boss, Pim
That’s about all I have for this week, and I have no idea what I’m going to write about for next Monday. Anybody have any ideas, give me a holler!
Have a great week, everyone! (And for goodness’ sakes! Go vote!!)
With how hard things are in publishing right now, I see a lot of entitled attitudes, misguided accusations, and a desperation to find the next “thing” that will move the needle, even just a tiny bit.
I know how that is, and I feel it still. Just because I found some slight success with Instagram Reels, that success was fleeting, and I can blame laggy reporting on my KDP dashboard or the natural ebbs and flows of the algorithms, but I’ve found that in the past couple of weeks I’ve had to post more often to find the reach that I was getting when I first started experimenting with Reels at the end of July. That’s stressful, because like any thirsty person dying from dehydration, you don’t want the water to turn off. You have no control over that though, and all you can do is your best. So, I know exactly what it feels like, but pushing that blame onto something or someone other than myself isn’t anything I’ve ever done. Sometimes there’s just no explanation except that’s the way things are.
I’ve seen the blame pushed on Amazon, AI slop, and unfortunately, readers not doing enough. I’m here to remind you that it’s not a reader’s job to do most of what an indie author wants or expects them to do, and you’re setting yourself up to have some rocky relationships with your readers and those in your chosen genre.
It’s not a reader’s job to follow you from publishing platform to publishing platform. I know this hurts because we all want fans to buy and read everything we write and to follow us everywhere we go. But no matter how much you hate Amazon and detest any and every change they make to their programs, if you decide, for whatever reason, to pull your books, it’s not a reader’s job to follow you. You’re making that business decision and you’ll have to adapt to whatever benefits and consequences that come your way. I think it’s been pretty well established that KU readers will not follow you if you yank your books out of Kindle Unlimited. Readers will just find someone else to read, and trust me, there are plenty of authors to choose from. And it goes the other way too. If you’re in Kobo Plus and decide to go all in with Amazon, readers won’t all of a sudden start buying your books there. They have the Kobo app on their phones or tablets or a Kobo ereader. They built up their library and don’t want to lose it. It’s unfortunate, but readers are where they are because they like it there, and it’s not a reader’s job to change their reading habits because you decided to leave.
It’s not a reader’s job to be your unpaid PR department. This is one I see a lot, and I’m not sure why this has turned into such a big thing. Authors these days seem to think that reading their book isn’t enough. They expect readers to make Reels and TikToks, create graphics and post them everywhere, and if a reader isn’t doing that, they’re a big disappointment. I understand it’s different when a reader decides to be part of your street team and specifically signs up, or downloads an ARC and there are some outlined expectations attached. An author approached me in my Instagram DMs not long ago and asked if I wanted an ARC to a book I told her I preordered. I looked at her form and the TikTok field was required. I didn’t have TikTok at the time, nor would she have been happy with the two followers I have now, so I said I’d just stick with my preorder. Then I could read it and not be expected to do anything else, which is how I’m really guessing most readers like to feel when they open a book. But somehow, only buying your book and reading it is a really low bar these days, when ten years ago, that’s all we wanted. It’s not a reader’s job to hype your book or give you word of mouth. It’s very nice when it happens, but it’s not a given. Expressing your disappointment puts the success, or lack thereof, of your book onto a reader’s shoulders, when it’s on yours.
It’s not a reader’s job to give you a review, and a positive one at that. Readers don’t have to give you a review–they don’t even have to if they download an ARC. An ARC is a gift and a review should be looked at as a form of a thank you for that gift. I’ve seen a lot of authors say they aren’t doing ARCs anymore, and this is actually something I agree with. I’m not doing ARCs anymore either. I’ve been disappointed with the lack of follow-through and the quality of some reviews I’ve gotten on BookSprout (AI slop is everywhere). So I decided to give my next book away on my website for a couple of days before I publish it, and I’m going to say that a review would be appreciated but it’s not the reason I’m giving away free copies. Then I can take the expectation of getting reviews out of my mind and just enjoy treating readers to special early access before they have to pay for it or borrow it in KU. I’ve seen authors make fun of readers for their reviews, blocking them from ARC teams and street teams for leaving 3 star reviews, and authors getting angry because all their ARC copies went and reviews weren’t forthcoming. It’s getting harder and harder, but getting angry at readers isn’t the answer. Let them read how they want to read, let them review how they want to review, and let them say what they want to say in that review.
It’s not a reader’s job to care how you get paid. I see this a lot: READERS SHOULD CARE IF AMAZON TREATS AUTHORS LIKE CRAP. And actually, no they shouldn’t. It’s not a reader’s job to know if buying your ebook will pay you more than reading it in KU. It’s not a reader’s job to know how much a page read is worth in KU. It’s not a reader’s job to understand why we have to mark our paperbacks so high to make just a couple of dollars. And it’s not a reader’s job to know that you make more if they buy/read your book over on Kobo rather than Amazon (I have no idea if this is true LOL). None of that is a reader’s job, and it’s not their job to fight on your behalf if you think Amazon is paying you unfairly. If you’re enrolled in Kindle Select, then you are accepting the terms and conditions, and it’s not a reader’s job to know what you think you’re giving up. It’s a very strange stance to think that readers should care how much, or how little, we make. My books are in KU, and I’m okay with what I’m paid or I wouldn’t have my books in it. If you don’t like it, then take your books out. But I’ve said many times that I’d rather have ten readers in KU than one who buys because I’m wide, and that’s not a fight I expect readers to fight for me.
It’s not a reader’s job to give you engagement on social media. I saw someone post on Instagram something to the effect of, if someone is following you but they aren’t engaging or supporting you, they’re your opposition. Oh, hell, I might as well just post it:
Let me tell you how fast my mouth popped open. People following you, be it readers or other authors, don’t owe you hearts, thumbs up, shares, or comments. They can actually consume your content as quietly as a mouse and scamper off just as silently. But here’s the thing. I would rather someone scroll away without giving a post a heart or a share because that’s not something they do, and go buy my book because they liked the snippet! You have no idea that’s not what they’re doing, and it’s not their job to tell you, either. Many years ago, back when I was on Twitter, I followed an author I liked. I bought her paperback book and kept it on my bookshelf. That was my way of supporting her. But I didn’t engage enough for her liking, and when she culled her followers, I was one of them. I gave her book away. I didn’t even want to keep it after that, and now, if I ever see her pop up on socials, I block her because I know the true person she is underneath. Readers, and people in general, really, don’t owe you engagement. And posting things like this on your social media? It’s gross. I saw this because someone I follow reposted it, and now I wonder, is that how she feels about me? I don’t like her posts so I’m the enemy? I have a couple of her books on my Kindle. I guess it doesn’t mean that much to her.
Authors can invest months or years in their books, and when the response doesn’t match the effort, they start looking for someone to blame. A lot of times they choose Amazon, sometimes it’s the algorithm, other authors who they see as competition, readers who won’t review, followers who won’t share, or the market full of books (AI or otherwise) they don’t think are worthy enough to be bestsellers.
But I think it’s worth it, no matter how uncomfortable it is, to remember that readers are not the enemy. They don’t owe you anything and aren’t in the wrong for not giving it to you. There are plenty of ways to show an author support, the biggest one buying your book, and you have no idea if they’re doing that or not.
Since I’ve been back from vacation, I have seen a lot of things online about blame, and I get it, you know? Times are hard, sales are low, and we look for excuses and people, companies, and platforms to point our fingers at.
It’s exhausting because sometimes there isn’t anyone to blame–things are just the way they are. And even if there is someone to blame, does it do any good? I’ve watched indie authors try to take on Amazon and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When it doesn’t, it just makes authors more bitter, and when it does . . . they’re happy for a little bit until something else happens.
Let’s take a look at what we’ve been blaming lately:
The KDP Sales Dashboard This has been going on for a long time, and because KDP/Amazon isn’t exactly known for its transparency, even if there was a glitch with reporting, I doubt they’d tell us much about it.
I’ve seen authors post “proof” that KDP’s reporting is broken because a customer service rep told them there was a known issue and that they were working on it. But do you really think those reps have the most up-to-date information? I doubt it. They can only tell you what Amazon has told them, and I’d be surprised if the people answering the customer service chats knew much more about what’s going on behind the scenes than we do.
And those poor reps probably deal with angry authors all day long. I don’t know why so many authors accuse them of gaslighting when they’re just trying to help to the best of their ability and go home at the end of their shifts.
Another thing that really bothers me is authors trying to “catch” Amazon holding back sales and page reads by asking their friends to buy their books and read them in KU. Amazon has stated that there’s a lag in reporting and that monthly KU page-read totals aren’t finalized until around the 15th of the following month. Why authors are determined to read their dashboards in real time and then get pissy about it is beyond me, and seeing those posts has actually made it so I really don’t like being on Threads anymore. There are a lot of reasons why your dashboard doesn’t reflect sales and page reads immediately. People read on airplane mode; readers aren’t charged for paperback copies until they ship out; credit card processing differs from credit card to credit card and bank to bank. Stop trying to read your dashboard in real time. It won’t do anything except make you mad.
At the end of the day, I truly doubt Amazon is trying to cheat us out of money. They’re a ginormous company, and yes, there are going to be days when things aren’t working right. But a reporting glitch (real or imagined) doesn’t automatically mean Amazon is deliberately withholding royalties. It would be nice if Amazon would be more transparent when things weren’t working correctly, but that’s the price of doing business with them. You can put up with it or publish elsewhere.
AI Slop This might be a legitimate concern, until we think of the phrase “Other authors aren’t our competition.” We hear that a lot, and maybe you think it’s true, maybe you don’t, but I honestly don’t see the influx of AI-written books as competition. Yes, it’s infuriating, but we’ve had to deal with other influxes of bullshit before.
Remember back during COVID when everyone had a book in them, and with no gatekeeping, everyone was able to publish it? The number of books published increased significantly, and there wasn’t anything we could do about it. And before that, we had authors using ghostwriters, people selling each other already-published manuscripts, click farms generating page reads, and blah blah blah. There’s always going to be something getting in the way of organic discoverability.
And this circles back around to Amazon again. We call for Amazon to take the AI slop down, but can you imagine them paying enough people to manually vet every book before it’s published? And if I recall correctly (and I’m pretty sure I do), Draft2Digital implemented an account maintenance fee to help cover the costs of reviewing content, and everyone bitched about it. When Amazon does try to do something, like limit the number of books uploaded per week or ask authors to disclose AI-generated material, it’s never enough for anyone.
Do I wish the AI slop would go away? Of course I do. But that’s also like saying you wish authors wouldn’t publish shitty books. There are always going to be poor-quality books in the marketplace, whether they’re mass-produced AI slop from scammers or books written by authors who can’t afford editing or haven’t found their voice and style yet. I’m not saying those authors have the same intentions as scammers trying to game the system, but I am saying that poor-quality books aren’t a new problem, and readers have always had to sort through them to find something they want to read.
In the scheme of things, I don’t see AI slop as some new obstacle that makes it impossible for the rest of us to succeed. Indie publishing is open to everyone, and if it weren’t, there’s a good chance neither you nor I would be able to publish our books either.
The Algorithms Just this morning I saw someone on Threads talking about how Instagram’s changing algorithms have tanked her writing career. Her reach has disappeared, and with it, her sales. I can understand why she’s frustrated. When you finally find something that works and the platform changes the rules on you, what are you supposed to do?
But the first thing you learn as an indie author is to never plant your seeds in someone else’s garden. Is it inevitable? Yes, yes it is. And I know I’m doing that exact thing by enjoying the sales boost posting Reels has given me. But I’ve always been realistic about the fact that, at some point, it will stop. It might not be this year or next year, but one day posting Reels won’t do anything, and I’ll have to figure out what to do next, if anything. I might even find myself back where I was on July 24th, 2026, the day before I posted my first Reel.
You can blame the algorithms, and you’d probably be right. Platforms change, reach disappears, and there’s not much you can do about it. But you also have to admit that you built part of your business around what that platform was giving you. That’s not necessarily a mistake–sometimes you have to take advantage of an opportunity while it’s there. The question is what you’re going to do when that opportunity disappears and you’re left with nothing but tumbleweeds.
This is where I struggle with my own advice.
Before I started posting Reels, I’d done just about everything I could think of, and nothing moved the needle. Not a newsletter, not running ads (I came out even but never ahead), and not buying newsletter promotions like FreeBooksy. So when I say authors need to have a plan for when the algorithms decide to jerk you around, I’m well aware that I don’t have one myself.
I could retry some things, like going back to TikTok or posting more consistently on Pinterest, since I never really gave that a chance. I could try something brand new like Lemon8. Or I could get discouraged and threaten to walk away like I did over the summer.
I’m not sure what I’ll do. But I do know that if Instagram changes its algorithm tomorrow and my sales disappear, spending my days blaming Instagram isn’t going to bring those sales back. I can be frustrated. I can even be angry. But eventually I’ll have to decide whether I want to try something else, keep writing without worrying about sales, or walk away from publishing altogether.
The Market I actually haven’t seen anyone blaming the market for a while. We all know trends shift and subgenres die until they come back again like a vampire when the sun goes down.
Writing to market used to be a dirty phrase, but I don’t hear it much anymore. I don’t know if that’s because people have accepted it as a way to sell books or because authors who aren’t writing to market aren’t so vocal about it anymore. I’ve never had a problem with writing to market. In fact, when I started my pen name, I did it so I could write even more to market.
Reader preferences can change, but from what I can tell, dark romance and hockey are still having their moments. There was some talk that billionaires were out, but I only heard that from other authors, and I take their opinions with a grain of salt. I don’t write for other authors, so I don’t really care if they hate billionaires because Bezos, Musk, and other shitty men have ruined the genre for them.
What you write is one of the few variables you can control, and depending on how fast you can crank out a book, you might be able to catch the wave of whatever’s popular. Or you could switch to an established subgenre like romantic suspense or small-town romance. If you don’t write romance, maybe mystery thrillers or domestic suspense are more your thing. Freida McFadden has certainly attracted plenty of attention, and if that kind of storytelling appeals to you, you could explore it yourself.
Of course, there’s no guarantee that chasing a trend will result in sales, but at least choosing what to write gives you an opportunity to respond to the market instead of simply complaining about it.
There was also some talk on Substack about leveling up your craft and writing a better book. I blogged about that because when I first read it, I was offended. I would assume most of us try to write the best book we can every time we open a new document. But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. It’s easy to grow stagnant, and plotting a new novel that requires you to stretch your skills could be exactly what you need to improve your craft. Wicked Games was my twistiest book to date, and I enjoyed the challenge of making sure everything fit together. It pushed me in ways my previous books hadn’t, and I’m glad I wrote it.
If your books aren’t hitting, though, it’s hard to tell whether the problem is what you’re writing or a lack of discoverability. You can write a wonderful book that nobody finds, just like you can market the hell out of a book that readers aren’t interested in, and sometimes you won’t know which problem you’re dealing with. That’s why I think it’s important to keep writing what you love. If the sales and reader interest aren’t there, the enjoyment you get from writing might be the only thing that keeps you going.
Playing the Blame Game isn’t much fun, and for me, there’s not a lot of point to doing it. There are always going to be things happening in the industry that affect sales, and there are always going to be companies like Amazon that are difficult, and maybe downright skeezy, to work with.
We can’t control any of that, but we do have to make choices about how we respond. We can pivot when it makes sense, try something new if we have the time and money, or recognize when something simply isn’t working anymore.
Maybe that means experimenting with a platform you haven’t tried before, like TikTok, or writing in a different subgenre. Maybe it means taking a break from writing and marketing and coming back when you feel better. Those are decisions only you can make. And while it’s understandable to be frustrated by things outside of your control, spending all your time blaming them won’t help you figure out what to do next.
So, remember, when sales are low and you’re discouraged, there might not be anyone to blame. Sometimes things are just the way they are and all you can do is push yourself through the muck and keep going.
Last Wednesday I had to do my errands alone and that means having to put everything away by myself when I get home. It’s not so bad, but it’s tedious if I don’t have my son’s help, so I decided to see if my favorite podcast had any new episodes.
I love listening to Print Run, and I’ve talked about them in the past. The podcast is hosted by two agents in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and I listen for industry news. I don’t ever plan to query, but I like keeping up-to-date on what’s going on since indie publishing is a part of that. Anyway, so I started listening to their April episode, Mahjong on the Telephone. In it, they talk about Helen DeWitt winning, and then losing, the Windham-Campbell Prize ($175,000!!) after her reluctance to be online and participate in promotional activities resulted in the prize’s board yanking the cash away from her. Erik and Laura speculated that the era of the eccentric author only surfacing when they’ve published a new book is gone and that authors are now required to be online all the time.
They were frustrated because from their standpoint, being on social media doesn’t sell books. In fact, Erik said, and I’m borrowing from the transcript here, “You have to like be pretty on Instagram. Which is crazy because it also, that doesn’t move books. Like that’s the thing. It’s like the same like digital media pivot to video. I don’t think it’s making irony of it all. It’s like, this shit doesn’t even work. It doesn’t.”
And this is where I laughed because being pretty on Instagram might not sell books, but posting snippets of your books sure does, and I have proof of that from the Reels experiment I’ve been doing for the past couple of weeks. I’m kind of mystified that as a romance agent (among other genres) Laura agreed with him. If anyone should know what sells romance books on social media, it should be her. But we’re talking about two different kinds of being online, and after the past ten years of being online as an author, I know the kind of activity they’re talking about definitely does not sell books.
PR and advertising aren’t the same thing. A long time ago, I heard someone say that public relations is for the author as a person and advertising is for the book, and until someone explains that, it doesn’t make much sense. You are the author. You are the book.
PR can be chopped into activities like interviews, podcast appearances, author photos, personal social-media posts, Q&As, appearances, “day in my life” content, posts about the writing process, and lifestyle content (pets, kids, vacations, etc). Most advertising consists of hooks, snippets, tropes, emotional premises, covers with sales copy and reader reviews, and anything else specifically designed to make a reader want this book. There can be some overlap, especially once you build a loyal readership, but simply being visible online isn’t necessarily advertising. And you can test it yourself by asking this: Do your readers care if you ate breakfast outside this morning or do they want the juiciest snippet from your newest release? Do your readers care that you went for a walk then wrote two hours, or do they care about the first time your FMC and your MMC kissed, and you let them read some of that scene? There’s marketing yourself as an author and there’s marketing your book and what it has inside that will appeal to your audience. Nobody cares if I ate a Clif bar for breakfast, but they want to know why Stella thinks Zane isn’t going to love her anymore.
Being online isn’t the same as posting content to sell books. That’s why the statement “Instagram doesn’t sell books” is too broad. It can. And it does. Thousands of indies know that and use it every day.
But the “pretty on Instagram” problem is real, and I’ve seen on Threads people talking about “pretty privilege” and how conventionally attractive authors have more followers, get more traction online–especially on BookTok–and presumably sell more books. I saw a good example of that just the other day when I was scrolling Instagram and came across Melanie Harlow’s post:
This is not giving shade to Melanie at all. Obviously, she’s gorgeous, but she’s also kind and gives back to the indie community. I watched a romance talk with her on the Writer’s Atelier a couple of years ago, and she’s so nice and smart. She’s just the perfect example of what people mean when they talk about pretty privilege. But we also know, even if we don’t want to admit it, that it takes more than blonde hair and a size six figure to keep readers. Your books have to be good, and hers must be for her to keep the kind of success she has and has been able to build. It wouldn’t be fair not to say that she has an advantage that some of us don’t–being charismatic and photogenic has benefits outside the book industry too–but showing your face isn’t the only way to use Instagram. Keeping the book the content instead of turning yourself into the product works just as well or even better. It’s the lucky few who can market both ways.
When Social Media Started Selling Books I’ve been on social media for many many years as an author, and it was a humbling experience to realize that social media/followers don’t sell books. You’ll get your friends to buy a few copies, but just simply posting on social media will not sell books in the number that most authors would like. It’s a pipe dream to hope that if you have 14,000 followers somewhere like Twitter, that when you publish a book you’ll sell 14,000 copies (or even 7,000 copies if we’re being “realistic.”) And that’s usually because when you’re an author you get sucked into the #writingcommunity, where it’s well known that while writers read, they don’t read enough to make their friends bestsellers. So a lot of being online as an author is posting word counts, the weird way your cat sleeps, and the cup of coffee you drank before bed. I have posted all of that, and it didn’t sell books. When BookTok came about, or really, TikTok in general, I didn’t hop on the bandwagon because I thought I already had evidence that posting all those things, but now in video form, wouldn’t sell books and I didn’t want to waste my time. But then readers started talking about books in a different way. Books they couldn’t put down. Scenes that wrecked them. Male characters that made them swoon. Even books that were published many years earlier started taking off.
Authors noticed. They started posting snippets and POV hooks of their own, and with a few viral videos, some of their careers took off. Authors started advertising emotion, and book marketing as we know it has never been the same.
Doing My Own Instagram Experiment I’m pretty stubborn. When I say I don’t want to do something, I mean it. And if you try to get me to do it, you’ll usually get a big “fuck off.” So, it does take a lot for me to come around to something people are doing, even with a lot of evidence. Last month, I came upon this Threads post by Jessica Gadziala, and I just said “fuck it” in a different way and decided what the hell. I was going to give Reels a try.
I had already done some form of this last year when I was on TikTok briefly before they starting accusing me of using AI to make my carousels. I hadn’t seen much benefit to being on there before that (as in, boost in readers/sales), so it wasn’t a big loss to me to delete my account in a fit of rage. I missed making carousels and videos though, and seeing Jessica’s post gave me the kick I didn’t know I was looking for to try Reels on Instagram. I’m glad I did. Copying Jessica’s style, I found snippets and wrote hooks, and when one of my first videos went viral, you can see that sales suddenly moved too. I posted the video in my Trial Reels on Instagram on July 26th.
You can literally see the impact on my sales dashboard:
Screenshot taken on August 15th, when the author wrote this post
Admittedly, it takes more than one viral reel to keep royalties up, and since the one I posted on July 26th, I’ve had a quite a few do normal numbers (anywhere from 200 views to the thousands). The aggravating thing is you don’t know why a reel takes off and because you don’t know why, you can’t dependably replicate it. Unlike Jessica, I haven’t reused any content, and I’ve made each reel with fresh content every time. I’m afraid that if I do reuse snippets and hooks that my account will be dinged for duplicate content, but I have enough juicy scenes that I haven’t needed to recycle snippets anyway.
You might say that correlation doesn’t equal causation and you’d be right, but I also wasn’t doing anything else marketing-wise, like ads. My sales before the reels are pretty clear from the graph.
So does Instagram sell books? It did for me, but I wasn’t posting pictures of my new pedicure either.
When You Don’t Want to Advertise This Way It’s perfectly fine not to want to advertise this way. There’s a learning curve to finding a snippet, thinking of a hook, and writing a description that ties everything together. Then you have to learn how to put the reel together inside Instagram’s app, and it took me watching a tutorial on YouTube to figure out how to place the snippet and be able to move it around. And on top of that, you have to learn how to make the snippet with the highlights and I just told someone on Threads how I do it in Canva, and I might have saved her life. (Just kidding, kind of.) All of that is what kept me from trying. I had put time into TikTok and I was resentful I had to learn another app.
You might have other reasons too, like you don’t want to show off your work or you think the blurb is enough. Maybe you’re worried about theft and don’t want your prose floating around online. Those are all valid choices, but keep in mind not wanting to advertise this way isn’t the same thing as believing this way won’t work. I didn’t want it to work because I didn’t want to try it. But I saw Jessica’s post and decided to see for myself if it would work or not. With what I was throwing out there, it did. And I’m grateful I have a low-stress, even fun, way to spread the word around about my books.
It’s Not About Being Online–It’s What You Put There In a way, Erik was right. Being online doesn’t sell books. I lived that for many many years. I had Twitter, I had Instagram, and I had my Facebook author page. I’ve been blogging since before I should have been. None of that sold books, but I enjoyed myself anyway. I made lots of friends. I’ve helped people with this blog. I got really good at making graphics. I know the things I know (like making paperback covers in Canva) because I dove into the indie community with both feet. And I have no regrets. I love living the indie life. He’s also right in that authors shouldn’t have to turn themselves into personalities or influencers to get attention online. We’re entitled to keep some things private, or for goodness’ sakes, just work on our books, and if you want to know the hard truth, most readers aren’t going to care about a lot of what you think they want to know. They’re looking for something good to read, and if you’re the one who can provide that, all the better.
It’s rather embarrassing that after ten years in the business I’m still stumbling around the internet looking for ways to sell books that actually work. And posting a snippet and a hook on Reels has produced results for me, for now. That doesn’t mean it always will and it also means that not everyone is going to get it to work for them. For every success story on Threads, I see five people who say they can’t find traction, for whatever reason. They aren’t the magic bullet to sales.
But after typing all of this, I think the real takeaway is this:
PR = Here I am. Advertising = Here’s my book.
And advertising might be the preferable way to go for a lot of people.
Thanks for reading this monster of a post today. I’m not sure if listening to podcasts is good or bad, but I love Print Run and the topics they cover. You can find them wherever you listen to podcasts.
I have one last editor Q&A that I’ll post next week because it’s been a while since she got back to me and I don’t want her to think I forgot about her. I enjoyed reading them and I appreciate the time everyone gave me. I hope you enjoyed them too and that you picked up something along the way.
Take care this week, and I will chat with you soon!
A week ago or so, I was scrolling Threads as I do while I’m waiting for my daughter to get out of work or something, and there was an author who posted a screenshot of her KDP author dashboard in the name of “author transparency.” It showed she had made $13,000 in one month. I didn’t save it, and I wish I would have because along with the usual “Congratulations” posts, she said that she was getting nasty emails from throwaway email addresses accusing her of bragging.
This made me wonder how much good author transparency posts actually do. To be honest, I don’t think they accomplish much without context—and that context rarely fits in a Threads post. Because those numbers don’t always inspire hope. They evoke defensiveness, anxiety, and sometimes, hostility.
It’s worth taking a look at why that is, and I can tell you why because when I see posts like that, I feel it.
It’s annoying and frustrating because you don’t know how they got there, and unless they blog about it or write a lengthy post in an author group like 20Booksto50k, you’re not going to know. You could do a little snooping (if they aren’t making that money with a pen name you’re not aware of) and see how many books they have out and how many books they consistently publish in a year. You can look at their Facebook ad library and see if they’re running ads or if you scroll through their author page maybe you can ferret out if they run regular promotions. But even if you do all that, you’re still not seeing the whole picture. They could have gone viral on TikTok or an influencer could have hyped them up. They could be paying a PR company. Every algorithm out there could love them. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Ironically, there are people who ask for this kind of transparency, and they accuse authors of gatekeeping if they don’t want to share their numbers. What I don’t think they realize is those numbers don’t mean a whole heck of a lot if you don’t have the why and how behind them. And you and I know the why and how can be anything from the genre they write in to how quickly they publish.
Do I think authors need to stop sharing? I don’t post my numbers on places like Threads because I know how useless it really is. I mean, you don’t need to have the why and how if you’re posting zeroes, but on the flip side, those zeroes come with their own story that you should be prepared to tell. When I talk about my numbers here, that gives me space to explain what I’m doing or not doing and I believe that’s more helpful than posting a screenshot of your dashboard and saying, “If I can do it, you can too!”
In this current industry climate, I think authors who share their large numbers are going to be on the receiving end of some bad feelings. The publishing industry isn’t in the best place right now, AI is taking over, and it feels like there are even more real authors out there writing and publishing books than ever before. Someone who manages to cut through all that and say that they’re making a living wage isn’t going to be viewed as helpful when they post their dashboard screenshots because they’re sharing a destination that doesn’t feel reachable. I mean, let’s be real. If it was easy, more people would be doing it.
What do you think about author transparency? Do big numbers get you down or are they inspirational? Let me know in the comments.
In the name of author transparency [insert smirking emoji here] I do have some semi-positive thoughts to share about my own numbers. Lately I’ve been trying Trial Reels on Instagram that I talked about in my last blog post, and for a little while they worked. I had a couple take off, one even getting 62.1k views. I have never posted anything in my life (that’s not true, on Threads I posted a picture of some turkeys I saw on my way home from dropping off recycling that got over 64k views but I don’t count that) that has gotten that much attention. And then I had some smaller ones that took off (44.6k and 47.3k) and then had one that I forgot to make a trial reel and it was just a normal one on my profile that got up to 11.2k before dying. I hate to admit that those reels did result in a bump in sales. You can tell they worked too, because looking at my dashboard, it’s just obvious:
But you can also see that I haven’t been able to keep it up, and the reels I’ve been posting now are more like what I was getting when I was on TikTok, barely making it past 300 views. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to keep that up long-term, but it was still a downer when it happened, and I wish that kind of luck hadn’t happened so quickly. Trying to keep your expectations at a reasonable level is really hard. But it does tell me that I have marketable books that people want to read, so I’ll keep feeding the machine because you never know what will hit just right that will cause another bump.
As for what I’m doing now, it feels like my free time is being sucked away minute by minute, and I just haven’t been finding the time to write like I have in the past. I’m only 40k words into Cold Mercy, which, I guess is a milestone since I don’t plan for it to get past 80k, keeping in range with Frozen Assets, but I just kind of thought that since I have the whole book plotted out that I’d be further along. Still, I’m having fun with the characters, and when it’s done, I’ll let them both breathe for a while and flip back over to Bitter Love to get that ready for whenever I want to put it up. Despite my recent “success” such as it is, I’m still going to give that away for a while before publishing it, and I probably won’t do ARCs for it either. The results for Wicked Games weren’t worth the hassle, and it feels like the ARC environment is changing into something that I don’t want to be a part of anymore. If readers bump into the book and want to leave a review when it’s possible, that’s fine, but I’m going to stop asking and hoping.
(Yes, I did choose the title for the alliteration. I’m not doing anything this month except trying to sleep in this heat.)
Happy Monday! And hello to the last month of summer. Not that it’s truly the last month of warm weather. I remember taking the kids to many a Fall Festival in September and always overdressing because in my mind, a Fall Festival was associated with hot apple cider, leaves crunching, and woodsmoke in the air. What we got was sweating while picking out pumpkins and everyone being crabby by the time we got home. But, every year I did it, and every year was the same result. Until the kids got old enough to say they didn’t want to go, and I started buying my pumpkins at Walmart. Nothing stays the same.
There’s not a lot going on with me since the last time we spoke. I’ve been dipping my toes into the Trial Reels waters on Instagram, and it’s been fun. A couple of my reels have taken off, and I’ve gotten quite a few new followers on my Facebook author page–something I hadn’t counted on. I’ve always treated my author page as something I had to keep going because I’ve had that page for close to ten years and God only knows where that link has been. I can’t stand broken links, so I never took the page down and only post proof-of-life posts in case someone lands there. I want them to see I was at least still writing and publishing. So those new followers had somewhat of an updated page to scroll through when they followed me, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy posting on there now. That’s not to say I don’t want to talk to my readers, but social interaction as a whole is kind of hmmm, and you can see that by how often I post, or don’t, on my personal Facebook page and Threads. Still, I’m having a good time making reels and not worrying about the BS TikTok was known for. Their 200 views dungeon scarred me, but it taught me to keep expectations low. If that’s anything positive to say.
I’ve stalled with writing Cold Mercy and I’m not any further than where I was last week. It’s not that I don’t know what’s going on, it’s just that, I think the past two weeks wore me out and it’s been so hot that I haven’t been sleeping well. I hope the busy weeks are behind me, though my daughter’s post-op for her wisdom teeth surgery was rescheduled and I have to deal with that this week. But as long as nothing happens to my car, we all keep our health, and we all have jobs so we can pay our bills, I’m happy to keep chipping away at my book around my day job and playing with Pim.
Here she is lying on my bookshelf for the cat tax:
There’s a lot we can say about things like this, but on the other hand, nothing at all. This is going to keep happening, that’s pretty clear. Someone who doesn’t like the way a metaphor is written is going to automatically jump to the AI conclusion. Someone who doesn’t like the way a book’s prose is written is going to jump to the AI conclusion. Someone who doesn’t like an author’s vocabulary is going to jump to the AI conclusion. Five years ago, if you didn’t like a book, you set it aside and started reading something else. Nowadays, if someone doesn’t like it, it’s almost natural to say, “Well, they probably used AI to write it.”
What was interesting to me was this quote by Sandy Hodgman, Jerry Falade’s UK agent who pulled back its submission of the novel to international publishers:
It’s curious how she included the “editorial process” when she vetted the manuscript with the author because given all the “purists” online and what they classify as AI, assistive AI like ProWriting Aid and Grammarly is still okay to use. If that’s changing, then where do we draw the line? No spellcheck and grammar check in Word? It’s infuriating when companies like Microsoft (CoPilot) shove AI down your throat to the point where it’s almost impossible to turn off those features, then later, you’re penalized for using them. (I’m looking at you Canva and Instagram respectively.)
But even if you go old school and write your book by hand and type it up with no AI whatsoever, the burden is still on the author to prove it. I’m Gen X and love me a good notebook and a brand new pen. In fact, even after writing and publishing for ten years, that’s still how I start all my books–writing in longhand. I create a character bible and write out their plots and character arcs. Sometimes if I’m stuck and can’t get into a scene, I’ll muse longhand until I can get into their heads again, so I do have bits and pieces tucked away. But I don’t know if that would be enough to fight AI allegations if any where to come my way. Writing is hard, and I’ve said more than once that I would just stop writing rather than turn to AI to write books for me. Publishing isn’t a moneymaker and there’s no guarantee that you’ll make a dime after you publish a book. After a decade of writing and publishing, I don’t see any benefit to using AI because at the end of the day, when your dashboard is zero, you better love the process because that’s all you have.
We’re treading into a new era of book publishing, and it will be interesting to see what the trad industry does in the future. Maybe they’ll stop paying advances all together because it sure seems odd to win a 2.5 million dollar bidding war only to yank it back when someone in a meeting says, “This sounds like AI.” Once that seed is planted, by anyone, for any book, you can never take it back. Which means maybe people need to stop assuming an author used AI when they don’t like something, and decide they don’t like it long before an offer is made. To read a down-to-earth take by Kathleen Schmidt, you can here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-209258189
That’s about all I have for this week. I have to admit, creating reels and posting them has pushed me out of my groove and I haven’t gotten as much writing done as I’d like. It’s not difficult to create reel, but I can say that now because I know how. Like anything, figuring out how to make parts in Canva and make parts in the Instagram app then putting them together was a small learning curve. Once I knew that Instagram wants you to make as much as possible in the app, things clicked for me. There are things that are impossible to make, like the B-roll and snippet because even if you make your snippet the “real” way by taking a screenshot of your book on your Kindle, that screenshot still has to be uploaded from your photos. But I don’t make the whole thing in Canva, like typing out the hook and putting the snippet graphic on top of the video, and I think that helps a lot with Instagram willing to push your video out. I never quite got a hang of doing the editing in TikTok which (besides them tagging my videos as AI) might have held me back. So to be able to create a reel and not have it take all day helps the motivation to keep posting and possibly make reels a small only part of my marketing plan.
As for other Mondays on the blog, I’ll just wing it. I have one more editor Q & A to post, then I’ll be on my own again. We’ll see what happens.
I hope you all have a good week! Enjoy the dog days of summer. I know I have been!
Two years ago I used to believe that you had to spend money to make money. It’s a common quote that holds some truth and I bought into it like the true business owner I wanted to be. For most of the time I’ve been writing and publishing, I’ve had more money going out than coming in, and every year I tried to do better, thinking if I tried hard enough and spent enough money, I could turn my books into a career.
The latest price increase news circulating Threads is Squarespace’s announcement that they were upping their prices by 26% (Business/Core plans increased to $348/year from $276) and not adding any extra features to make the price hike worth it. If you don’t know what it is, Squarespace is a website platform, and it sounds like a lot of authors and other creatives were using it. This coming right after MailerLite’s decision to cut their free plan down to 250 subscribers, Draft2Digital’s maintenance fee, and Bookfunnel’s price increases has made it a bad year for indie authors so far.
I think, from what I’m seeing online and what I’ve concluded during my own thought processes about all this, is that we need to separate the idea that if we’re spending money we have to make that back, and if we aren’t making money from our hobby, business, books, or however you view your writing, that it’s still okay to spend a little if you want.
The difference for me is intent. Do I want to spend that money or do I feel like I have to? I downgraded how I think about my books considerably and no longer think about what I’m doing as a business. I don’t even really want to think of my writing as a hobby. Labeling it anything has taken the fun out of doing it, and as of right now, I’m going to stop writing for anything other than the joy of creating.
I tried the ad route, as I have mentioned before, and 2024 was my highest spending year since I started publishing, investing $5,000 in Facebook ads. I know that might not sound like a lot to some authors who spend that much or more per month, but five thousand dollars is 15% of my yearly income and I didn’t spend it lightly. I earned that money back, but the stress of making sure I did so wore me out, and in 2025 I scaled back considerably to the point that right now, in 2026, I rarely run ads anymore. It didn’t help that in April of this year I spent $80.00 on Amazon ads to only make thirty dollars of that back.
When my Amazon ads didn’t even break even, it taught me a lesson that up until then I hadn’t needed to learn: ads aren’t guaranteed to make you money. It used to be that if you ran ads, you stood a really good chance of boosting your discoverability and selling some books. There were always exceptions, those with the bad covers or the bland blurbs, or the authors who priced their books too high, but if you had a commercially viable product, you could sell books if you ran a few low cost-per-click ads. That’s not true anymore, not for everyone, and you can blame it on the algorithms or saturation or AI being put in charge, but running ads no longer works well enough for me to justify the stress and expense.
I have the same opinion of Written Word Media’s promo newsletters like Freebooksy and BargainBooksy. I haven’t earned my fee back in a couple of years now and to be honest, with the number of AI covers I see in those newsletters, I don’t want my books to be in them anymore anyway. It’s not worth the money for me and the kinds of books I’m writing, and I have finally realized that. Same with the Goodreads giveaways. I used to not mind paying for exposure, but I stopped doing that. Life is too expensive to hand money over to something that has no measurable ROI.
But you need some kind of presence online which is why authors struggle with increased prices from their service providers. After a while it just feels like they’re price gouging the small folk, and it can make you bitter. So you have to decide where can you go that still gives you what you want at a price you can afford, and that answer, unfortunately, may be nowhere. Then you take the downgrade and make do with it because there’s no justification in paying more.
It’s the same with your newsletter. You can hunt around and find something that might work that doesn’t make you jump through too many hoops at a cost that you’re willing to pay, or maybe you decide that sending out a newsletter isn’t something you want to do anymore because your open rates are crap and no one is reading it anyway. I decided to stop sending my newsletter out unless I have big announcement like a free book blast or a new release and just put updates on my author site. Especially since for the most part, I don’t know when I’m going to publish again. No one wants to read, “Good morning! I’m 20k into Cold Mercy, but I have no plans to publish it yet. I’m having fun though. Have a great day! ♥️🥰♥️🥰” There’s nothing in that for them, and my open rates will get worse than they already are. So for me, there’s definitely no reason to spend money on an aggregator that doesn’t fit what I’m doing with my writing or the dead end publishing has turned into for me.
Maybe this is how it is for you too, but you have to understand that if you decide to go that route, you’re consciously making the choice to stop trying to sell books and that can be really hard. I’ve tried for many years, doing everything I was supposed to do, and it didn’t work. So dropping everything, like a kid not wanting to play with a deflated ball, was a very conscious choice, even though it hurt like hell.
That’s not to say that I stopped paying for everything. Otherwise I’d be scaling back in a way that I didn’t want to. My backlist is available for purchase, and though I don’t have plans to publish any more books this year, I’ll probably put out a book next year just because I don’t like books piling up in my computer (I know. What a terrible problem to have!).
So, I’ll always pay for Canva because I have a lot of IP in my account, and actually, a lot of other authors’, too. If I ever wanted to close my account, making sure everyone had everything I’ve made for them over the years would be a lot of work, and something I’d like to avoid. Even if I don’t publish to make money, I’ll eventually put my books up on my website and Amazon, and they’ll need covers and the occasional graphic for Instagram. I also make all my graphics for this blog in Canva, so I’ll be locked into paying for it until I completely stop doing this due to health or death. That’s fine. Canva, or some way to make graphics, is practically a must, but if you don’t post on social media that much and you hire out for your covers, you may not need it or can make do with their free plan, and that’s valid too. I’ll keep paying for it because it’s one of those websites where I always have a tab or three open at all times.
Bookfunnel I’ll keep, because I need to have a way to distribute my books from my website, and as I’ve said before, I’m locked into giving My Biggest Mistake away since it’s in all my back matter. I’m paying for their cheapest plan, so I don’t mind the cost for a service I need.
The last thing are my websites, but I pay for two years at a time and get a discount. I pay for two websites for two years and it costs about as much as Squarespace wants to charge for one year. My websites aren’t fancy but they do what I want them to do. I’ve been with WordPress.com for ten years and the only issues I’ve had were the ones I created myself–that their tech support was able to help me with, which is more than I can say for MailerLite when I had trouble there. To be fair, the fee isn’t cheap when you’re not writing for sales, and I still pay for my Google Workspace email from when I did have a real newsletter. I kept it because I attached that to my pen name’s Goodreads account, and well, I guess it’s just professional to have an email that’s not gmail in case I ever need it. Then I pay $20/year for my two domain names. All that comes to about $275.00 a year.
That might add up to a lot more than anyone wants to pay for an activity that you don’t even call a hobby, but my websites are important to me and worth the cost.
That’s the whole point of this post. If it’s not worth it to you, don’t pay it, and either find a workaround or be okay with going without it. That’s not a philosophy I’ve always had, and I’ll be honest, I used to kind of . . . disapprove of people who didn’t want to spend money on their business. But I’ve come full circle. I did pay and it didn’t help, so I’m done judging others for their choices. Maybe they knew something I didn’t and I had to figure it out for myself. Who knows. That’s just going to be another thing I’ll add to my list of things I’ve learned over the past ten years.
If you take anything away from this post today, it’s this: save money where you can. Stay professional where you can because your readers—the ones you had, have, and will have—deserve that.
Beyond that, only spend money on things that still make sense for your goals.
As for me, I’m done paying for things that have stopped working or never started.
Introduce yourself! How did you get into editing and what are your qualifications? What genres do you enjoy editing most? My name is Hannah, but I also respond to April. Or as some of my authors like to call me—April Hannah. Editing was always a dream job of mine, but after getting my bachelor’s in English Linguistics, I got sidetracked and became a flight attendant instead. Now that I’ve been flying for about nine years, I have some seniority and a lot more flexibility with my schedule. I went from flying 18-20 days a month to about 12 days. I also panicked during COVID and realized I needed to have another income stream in case the world falls apart. So I went back to my love of reading and editing, took some courses online through ACES & the Editorial Freelancers Association, and dove right in. I edit primarily romance novels, but have dipped my toes into fantasy and am editing a horror novella right now which is a fun change of pace.
What is the biggest mistake you see indie writers making right now? (For example, info dumps at the beginning of their book, not enough conflict, too much tell vs. show, etc.) If you’ve worked with me before, you’ll know one of the first things I do is delete as many instances of ‘that’ from your book as possible. I have a personal vendetta against the word now. When it comes to the story though, the biggest pitfall I think a lot of authors struggle with is making each character unique. Dual POV is so popular, but I don’t think people realize how hard it is to write from two different points of view. Each character should have their own mannerisms: if one person plays with the ends of their hair all the time, it’s better to not have other characters doing that. Maybe he sighs a lot, but she rolls her eyes. Their dialogue should also stand out. I always suggest authors assign words and phrases to each character to help with this, and building good character profiles before you start writing is so helpful.
How do you keep the author’s voice intact while also guiding them with suggestions on how to make their book the best it can be? I always start out my feedback by saying all the edits and comments are suggestions, take what you want and leave the rest behind. At the end of the day, it’s their book and not mine. If I make big changes, I always explain why or leave multiple suggestions for rephrasing. I don’t want to cross over into ghostwriting. My goal is to use what they’ve given me and make small tweaks here and there to ensure everything flows together and remains consistent.
Is there ever a time when a book requires too much work? What do you tell a writer whose manuscript isn’t ready for a professional edit? What resources do you refer them to? Since I’m getting paid for the size of a manuscript (my rates are per word) instead of the time it takes to edit, I simply can’t help an author with every single issue within their manuscript. During my first read through, I start to notice trends and the major elements I believe they should focus on. I also don’t want their revisions to be too overwhelming, so narrowing things down helps us both out. I also have a section in the editorial feedback where I provide resources to help them improve their writing and premade cheat sheets I’ve made to help them with things I may have not had the time to fix or that aren’t part of the style of editing I was hired for. I love getting to work with authors for multiple books because each book improves more and more. As long as they have taken in the feedback for each one, we can move on to focus on other issues.
What advice can you offer an author who can’t afford a professional edit? Are there things they can do to sharpen their own self-editing skills? There are tons of resources out there for authors, and tools I’ve used to help myself become a better editor. I have a list of recommended reading on my website but “Romancing the Beat” by Gwen Hayes & “Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” by Renni Browne and Dave King are great places to start. I am also working on some self-editing courses geared toward authors who are unable to hire an editor. So stay tuned for those!
Have you noticed AI writing tools affecting the manuscripts you edit? What are your thoughts on authors using them in the writing process? I have a clause in my contract for this and will not work with authors who use genAI in their writing. So far, I have not noticed anything funky in the books I’ve worked on but I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before someone sneaks through the cracks. I think using AI eliminates the heart and soul from a novel, the creativity and uniqueness. I want no part of a romance written by a robot.
As an editor, it’s important you’re honest and give critical and actionable feedback. How do you offer this feedback so a writer doesn’t take it personally? With any edit, I always start off by telling an author what they’re doing right and what their strengths are. I think starting on a positive note makes it easier to take in feedback. It’s also helpful to let them know they’re not alone, and a lot of this feedback is common. I also provide lots of examples and resources to back things up and never tell an author they can’t do something or it’s wrong. A great benefit of working with indie authors is they can write the book how they want and don’t have to adhere to style guides and story structures.
Are there any other tips or thoughts you would like to add about editing or publishing? Don’t let self-doubt take you out. Nobody’s first draft is a bestseller. And find your community. It can get lonely, but I can guarantee there are others out there struggling with the same things you are or wanting to celebrate the same wins both big and small.
I saw something sad yesterday, and no it wasn’t my sales dashboard. Just kidding. I stopped looking at that.
No, even though I talk like I’m not a part of the writing community anymore, I’m still a member of a lot of writing and publishing groups on Facebook. It’s pretty much all that’s in my feed right now which works because I’m not really interested in much else besides the occasional spoiler for House of the Dragon. Anyway, so a woman that I have actually met in person when I tried to join a local writing group posted that her debut had just been published by a “small-press–” I use the term loosely–and her cover was . . . not great. It kind of looked like the romance covers that were coming out in 2016 when authors were doing it themselves and didn’t know how to blend or add a filter so the couple fit into the background. It made me curious about the publisher, and I went on their website. Unfortunately, nothing I saw boosted my confidence that this author would have a good experience with this small press.
I understand the appeal of wanting to publish with a small press, and I’ve known other people who have made the same choices. You can’t afford an editor, you don’t know cover design, and you wouldn’t begin to know where you’d get your book formatted. So a small press sounds like an answer to a desperate prayer. They take on your book and promise you editing, formatting, and a genre-appropriate cover. If they’re being honest, maybe they say that marketing efforts will be weak and that you’ll have to do the bulk of it, and you think that’s a fair trade in exchange for the services they’re going to provide.
Deciding to go with a small press presents the same challenges that an indie author faces having to hire out every step. When you’re looking at a small press and you’re thinking about submitting your work, there are a few things you should do first:
Look at what they’ve already published. This is huge because if you don’t like the covers on some, or most, of the books in their library, chances are really good that you aren’t going to like the one they do for you. Small presses tend to have one designer on their staff, and that one designer is going to have a certain way of doing things. If you don’t like their style, you may take that as a warning that what they come up with for your book won’t match what you had in mind. And what you want may not even be that crazy. Just a nice, normal cover that meets genre expectations and that looks professional. When I looked up the designer on the copyright page of my acquaintance’s book, the designer’s website looked sketchy as hell. So please click around the internet and look at what they’ve published, peek at the designer they use, and decide if you think they’re going to give you a cover that will actually sell your book.
Look at who the founders are. I don’t think judging someone by their looks is that great in most cases–we all have our bad hair days–but on the other hand, if you’re running a business, you should look professional in your picture. A founder of a small press who is wearing pajamas doesn’t inspire much confidence even if they work from home and wear pajamas for most of their day. Also, what are his or her credentials? What makes them a good fit for your book? Do they have previous publishing knowledge? What can they offer that you don’t have access to yourself? I can edit, format with Vellum, and make you a decent cover in Canva. But that doesn’t mean I know how to run a small press. I have no distribution channels besides knowing how to upload a book to KDP and IngramSpark. I can’t get your book into bookstores. I don’t have the connections or warehouse space for storage to do that. I have absolutely no money to hire someone to help me. Think about what your goals for your book are going to be once it’s published. Can the small press you’re considering do those things? Also look to see if they’ve published their own books. If their finished products don’t look professional, chances are good they won’t be able to do any better for yours.
What kind of editing do they do? It’s really important that you skim, if not read, a few of the books that the small press you are considering has published. If you find typos on the very first page, or if there are grammar or punctuation errors throughout, their editor may not be very good. When you’re going with a small press and giving them your rights, the least they can do is edit your book properly. Do they have an editing certification? Do they have testimonials saying that they’re good at what they do? If they’ve published their own books, do they sound good? How long will it take them to edit your book? Do they use AI tools, or will they do it themselves?
What kind of formatting do they do? Granted, formatting is probably the least of your worries if you’re finding red flags elsewhere. And from what I can tell, small indie presses just use Vellum. But you should still check out whether their books look nice on the insides. Do they add chapter headers? Ornamental scene breaks? I don’t pretty my books up too much, because I think story is king, and I have actually seen readers complain that gooped-up pages take away from the reading experience, but still. A nice chapter header can make a paperback look professional. Like, you know, someone actually cared. And if you can, make sure that they’ve taken a little time with an author’s front and back matter. You might not get all that with Amazon’s 10% sample pages, but look at what you can. Formatting, from my experience, is the simplest step. If they aren’t doing that, your editing and cover chances don’t look great.
What are they doing for distribution and visibility? To be fair, this was probably one of the only things that the small press that I referenced earlier was doing. Or looked like they were doing. Their website listed the book fairs they attended or were planning to attend. Whether they actually did, I guess no one knows, and what they did there would be a mystery unless you were present to see it. Since both the founder and the editor of that small press had published books, they could have been there to only represent themselves. Hard to know. If they aren’t going to show up on your behalf, will they pay for author copies or other swag so you can attend your own book fairs and signings? How are they investing in your books besides basic services? Zero investment may be more common than you hope, and maybe you think that’s asking too much anyway since author copies are expensive, but if they aren’t going to do anything, it’s better to know before you sign your life away.
And then after you’ve taken a look at all that and think it isn’t so bad, take a look at what they’re asking for. How long do they hold your rights? When can you get them back if you decide to? What happens if the press closes? Do you automatically get your rights back? Are your rights folded into a new small press? You might say this should be the first bullet point, and you might be right. If you don’t like the contract terms, none of the rest matters. But I also know some authors will accept contract terms that aren’t exactly awesome if it means they’ll have their editing, formatting, and cover taken care of. Is it a good trade? It really depends on what you’re comfortable with. You’re essentially giving your book away and may never get it back. Some small presses can be really nasty to their authors, never giving rights back or asking exorbitant amounts of money to break a contract. A mediocre cover is annoying. Being locked into a mediocre cover for seven years is a disaster.
I’m not sure what’s going to happen with my acquaintance and her book. Her cover broke my heart, but she could be happy with it and that would be okay too. It’s her debut, and maybe she’s not really aware that her cover doesn’t fit in with what contemporary romance covers look like now. If she’s happy, then I’m happy for her. But competition is so fierce–not in an author-eat-author way, but we’re at an all-time high for how many books are available to choose from–that a poor cover can kill a book before it’s even had a chance. If she would have posted in the group that she wanted to self-publish and needed help, I would have helped her and she could have kept her rights. Not everyone knows that I would do that, and maybe that’s for the best, haha, or if she didn’t trust me, I could have at least pointed her in the right direction so she could have hired out dependable people.
Wanting to go with a small press is an understandable choice, but if you have to ask, “If the publisher’s version isn’t better than what I could have reasonably done alone what exactly am I getting in exchange for my rights?” then maybe that small press isn’t for you.
Not all small presses are bad. Some do excellent work and provide opportunities that would be difficult for an author to access alone. The point isn’t to avoid small presses. The point is to investigate them with the same care you’d use when hiring an editor, cover designer, or formatter. Because the old adage, “If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself” may be truer than you want to admit and you could save yourself a lot of pain and heartache along the way.
Thanks for stopping in this week! Next week I’ll have another editor Q & A to post, and after that possibly an author update. By then summer will be half over. Do you have any goals you’re keeping an eye on that you’d like to finish up before the kids go back to school? Let me know so I can cheer you on!
![screenshot of Sandy Hodgman's quote:
[The author] produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion. During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with [the author] for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilizing AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process. We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.
This raises so many questions about authorship and what AI means for this industry but those are questions for another day. We regret that our enthusiasm led to this outcome and we apologize to our publishing partners.](https://vaniamargene.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/screenshot-2026-08-01-at-10.33.46-am.png?w=1024)
