Category: Advice for Authors (Page 1 of 2)

January 15, 2025 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Congratulations, you’re an indie author with your first book out! What next? Most likely your first book is #1 of a series, and you need to write, edit and publish #2. Gurus say we should also be writing and somehow promoting a newsletter. We may elect (as I do) to write a blog, or run a podcast or a Youtube channel). And almost everyone seems to think social media presence is important. And if all that doesn’t sound like a full time job, there’s the non-writing job we do (full or part time) to pay bills and put a roof over our heads.

So how do you find the time and energy to do it all? Especially if, like me, you’re chronically ill, and or neurodiverse? In this post I’ll unpack time management factors to consider, outline my own attempts at breaking down and making marketing manageable, and conclude with resource links to help with actual marketing at the end.

The ‘Small Amount of Time Daily’ Model

There are those people who say: just do a little each day, like writing 500 words. Its not much time or work in that day. And over not too many weeks/ months you’ll have a novel/ established newsletter/ paid advertising campaign!

A big factor here seems to be that when’s life’s busy, its easy to say, ‘I won’t do it today because x,’ and ‘not tomorrow because y’. There’s a risk of not setting aside time to write/ market books and therefore not starting (as I well know, having not spent 9 months of 2023 marketing due to life and earning a living).

If you’re looking for a way to jam marketing into a daily/ weekly schedule under strain, that ‘short amount of time a day’ model may appeal. But personally, I have one main objection.

Some of Us Cannot Spare a Small Amount of Time

Some of us have a disability. Maybe marketing is ‘just’ an extra 20 mins in my day and that’s not much. But my back hurts and gravity is trying to pull me into the ground. My Fibro is DONE with today. It needs that 20 mins (and the next three hours), and same time the next day/ week/ month to recover from the rest of the day. I don’t control what I do on day’s I’m at my day job. My body makes that call and woe is me if I ignore and defy early warnings of increasing fatigue, and or signs my chronic pain is about to flare.

Maybe it takes you time and effort to get your brain out of work/ parenting/ other mode, to tune into something book/ marketing related (especially if you have ADHD). By the time you’ve spent ten minutes (or for ADHD three hours to days/ weeks/ months) trying to engage your brain on The Thing, you want/ need a solid block of time on that task. The first hour ‘on The Thing’ is passed and you weren’t able to properly engage with, or even start The Thing yet.

Need Solid Blocks Of Time?

I NEVER bother sitting down to write if I don’t have at least 1-2 hours. Otherwise I don’t remember who’s in the scene, where the scene is or what just happened, let alone what I’m writing now, or setting up to happen next. Marketing is similar. I want AT LEAST an hour to draft that newsletter/ blog/ design that ad graphic/ series of upcoming book teasers.

The ONLY ‘book marketing’ thing I do in less than an hour is run late to a social media author chat (you’ll find those listed on my Bsky writer chat list). And while technically talking about your characters and plots online could ultimately result in someone reading one of your books, its mostly an activity I do for fun, and connection with fellow writers.

Do What Works For You

So before considering when in the day/ week/ month to schedule your marketing, I’d first consider your ability to focus, your stamina and what length of time blocks you need for marketing (or writing) to be focused AND productive. IF a little each or most days of the week works for you, of course go for it! If it doesn’t? Ideally, I’m finding ‘how often’ boils down to ‘often enough to remember what I’m trying to achieve and how,’ and often enough ‘to feel like I’m making progress.’

When Did I Do All The THINGS?

Blog?

My blog could mean one afternoon a month editing the next blog, and penciling in ideas for the next few month’s blogs. Enough time to check I’ll have a blog ready to roll out at the same time this month, and enough ideas/ of a draft to have edited and published one next month. Ideally, some ideas and or drafts beyond that.

With that system in place, I’ve published one blog most months for nearly four years. This despite the time blindness and management barriers my undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD posed for most of that period.

Newsletter?

I spend probably one or two afternoons very second month drafting and editing newsletter content and inserting images. Usually, that’s now within a week of sending out a newsletter. Initially though, I always began the next letter before sending out this one, to have content ideas already ticking in advance.
Again, in this case that helped me have a newsletter ready to go every two months for the last three years (quarterly initially, which wasn’t frequent enough to engage people).

Write the Next Book?

Writing/ editing the next book for me is more challenging than both of the above. As a distracted ADHDer, and autistic person who desires exploring story and character logic ALL THE WAY down the deepest rabbit hole, I love writing complex stories produced by whole days writing and editing. In my energetic twenties, Saturdays were rest from the new, challenging career of teaching, Sunday morning’s were reading to enhance my focus, and afternoons for writing. (Of course there were days my ADHD wouldn’t focus at all and I’d stare at a blank page or not even turn on my computer.)

When I was lucky enough to work only three hours a morning part time for a year (in 2018), I would come home from teaching literacy, read for an hour or two, then write for six to eight hours (going for an hour long run in the middle). Those days were brilliant for my undiagnosed, unmedicated ADHD. The teaching burnt off the restlessness I started every day bursting with. Reading when I got home calmed and focused my highly distractible brain. And I still had HOURS to focus and write. Than an hour to run off the resltessness and re-calm and re-focus my hyper, ADHD brain mid-write block.

Getting Marketing Goals Into a State to Determine WHEN To Do Them

First: pick ONE aspect of marketing to focus on. A social media account, a newsletter, a blog, seeking author interviews, getting your book up on all the platforms (details in Step 9 of this post) , or ONE type of paid ad campaign. As an who began social media with Facebook, Instagram AND Pinterest simultaneously, then mastered Twitter, I assure you its more effective to learn ONE platform/ aspect of marketing well first. THEN transfer your learning to a second a few months later. Otherwise its too easy to do multiple things with lack of clarity/ understanding, and thus ineffectively.

Once you’ve got your One focus, getting started is great, but the challenge (as everyone with ADHD knows), is sustaining your work. I find marketing hardest. Aside from individual blog posts/ podcasts/ youtube videos, its hard to break ‘book marketing’ into small, yet related, continuous tasks. Bookbub ads (the first paid option I experimented with) seemed big, and daunting and I put it off for probably over a year before trialling them.

Example: Breaking Learning Bookbub Ads Into Sessions

Once you’ve picked your One Thing, consider how to break it into smaller parts, likely to fit the time you have daily/ weekly/ monthly for them. When I took a break from teaching early in 2023, that involved three week’s full time testing Bookbub ads for my first trilogy (massive fail. I spent money and lots of hours, but my designs were WAY too far off the mark to be potentially worth it). Here’s how, if I only had a few hours daily, as opposed to whole days, I’d break down learning Bookbub ads.

1: Research

Read David Gaughran’s Bookbub ads book and browse sample Bookbub ads (like Top 10 Bookbub Ads of 2024), and take notes in the first few 1-2 hours slots, for a week (or two).

2: Design Ads

Spend the next few 1-2 hour slots designing my first ad images.

3: Compare My Ads to Successful Designs & Revise

Spend the next few hour slots (over around two weeks) examining each individual aspect of design. I’d break these down into; font & font size, background, text & background contrast, how cluttered the image looks etc. Then I’d compare design elements of my ads to my notes on effective design from Step 1 and tweak accordingly.

4: Test & Compare Results of My Own Ads

Run a test ad, then spend slots over the next week comparing and contrasting the amount of clicks it got to previous ads. Then analyse which design elements/ or whether the target author likely influenced clicks positively or negatively. Repeat step 3 with ad test conclusions in mind.

Repeat As Needed

By this point in my process a loop between step 3-4 involving redesign, reflection and re-evaluation could spread over as many sessions and weeks as needed to nail design. Or to conclude that would waste too much time and money (it did with my first book).

Indie Author Marketing & Time Management

Photo Credit: Aron Visuals

When Might You Do All The THINGS?

When you’ve had a go at breaking things into manageable parts, and in so doing developed a clearer idea of what exactly you want to achieve in which time; you can consider WHEN to do All The Things. In deciding that, these considerations helped me, and may help you plan your marketing schedule/ routine.

1: Choose Your Focus

Realistically choose which authorly things you want to focus on in coming months. If you don’t have a website; DO THAT NOW. If you do, will you start a newsletter/ blog/ youtube presence? Build a particular social media platform/ your writer-author network? Or are you ready to consider promoting your book(s) on Amazon/ to a Wide audience? Or do you want to start local and look at public author events, or getting your paperbacks into a local bookshop?

If you’re unsure which of these Things to tackle next, or in what order to tackle Things plural, I go into detail, link resources and sequence The Things I’d aim to do before and soon after launching a book in this post.

How often a day/ week/ month do you need to work on marketing to stay in touch with your goals and keep making progress? (Note: ‘progress’ can include identifying ways that do NOT work and your reflections on why. I still call on-the-job-learning ‘progress’, as knowledge puts you in a better position to achieve in future.)

2: Block Out Other Comittments

What days/ times aren’t an option for you because of your day job? Because humans need sleep and or your kids need parents to raise them? What other comittments require how much of your time?

In blocking out non-writing time, please don’t forget to block out time to rest, recover, chill, smell roses, eat chocolate etc! In other words, don’t work yourself to death. Modern life is BUSY and we need BREAKS.

3: Identify Your Authorly Time Slots

Having blocked out time for life and wellbeing purposes, what time do you have left and how often, across a week (or even month)?

For my teaching career, all work days are a no for anything authorly (except social media, which is more social for me). Teaching takes a lot out of me physically, emotionally and cognitively, so if I taught that day, the evening is for rest.

If like me, your disability, ADHD distraction, autistic overload (or other) determines when and how much you can get done, use a good day to record Thing you’re working on, parts you’ve broken it into and sequence them. Then, each time your body and mind co-operate and allow you to make progress, make a quick ‘where to next’ note. With that note, after however long it next takes for the stars to align for you to tackle The Thing again, you’ll know where you’re at.
(I’m so glad I wrote a May 2024 Author To Do List, because I spent May moving out, June moving in and life happened for 6 months, so its now my Jan-Feb 2025 To Do List.)

4: Choose a Thing ( big picture focus) for The Year

What’s your big focus for the next few months, or even the year?

With my website established (tips on that in this blog), Newsletter established (Newsletter tips here) and blog established, they all get a couple of hours a month.

Last year I intended to focus on trialing paid ads, but didn’t get to begin FB ads after my Bookbub ones bombed because moving house and setting up (a chronic illness, autistic and ADHD friendly) house took up the rest of the year.

For 2025, my big overall focus seems to be how to promote my books wide (ie. beyond Amazon). My First Thing may be setting up direct ebook sales on my website. Ideally, I’ll do paperback ones after that (which I know will be more complicated).

My Big Thing 2 may be exploring in-house promotions. I’d like to check that for Kobo via D2D and see if I can access Apple in-house promotions that way. I also want to experiment with Smashwords Sales (when they FINALLY merge my Smashwords and D2D accounts, which will put all 3 Ruarnon Trilogy books on ONE trilogy page. They’re currently spliced across two different series pages, for the SAME series).

Blue edged, pink, orange and yellow rainbow scroll with text: Get blogs in your inbox & updates from Elise every second month. Join my Fiction Frolics. Select this image to learn more.

Neurodiverse Communication

Rehearsing Conversations

I’m guessing neurotypical people rehearse conversations in their heads when they’re giving a speech, or telling someone they really care about something that really matters to them. By the time I was around fifteen, I rehearsed ANYTHING and EVERYTHING I may like to say to my friends before saying it aloud. I would approach social situations with prepared topics and comments drafted in my brain and would be happy when I got to say them all.

Did I monitor the interest levels of people as I plunged through my pre-rehearsed topics? Not really. Sometimes when I’d finished talking I did. Knowing how much to say about a topic and not rambling on when the other person isn’t as interested as me is a life skill I am still refining, in my thirties.

This is an autistic trait common in adults.

What are You on About?

As a teenager, I routinely initiated conversations with peers because it was the easiest way to communicate. Even as an adult I find other people starting the conversation challenging. With people I don’t know well, the first thing I think they’re saying usually isn’t what they mean. I’ve developed a habit of listening, ignoring my first interpretation, and waiting until a second or third interpretation forms in my mind before I respond. Usually by then I’ve correctly identified the topic and their intended meaning. If I take too long, I comment on one aspect I’m sure I understand, to encourage them to say more, to give me more time to figure out what they’re talking about.

When I’m tired, I also struggle because I interpret things literally. I suspect that any other time I remember what I know about that person, or topic and do mental gymnastics to get from what they literally said to what they actually mean. That gets socially awkward because neurotypical people, especially adults in a professional context, tend to want immediate answers to their questions. But they don’t say what they literally mean, so I need processing time to do mental gymnastics before I can answer.

I suspect my main challenge with both of the above can be taking people more literally than they intend. Though my ADHD being challenged by information overload is also a close contender for that title. When the other person talks too much I start forgetting information they’ve said before connecting the pieces of it together and extracting meaning from them. Either way, the other person’s point can go completely over my head.

Taking people too literally? Classic autistic trait.

Why Can’t People Just SAY what they MEAN?

I am already using SO MUCH energy in conversations to: stay focused (because ADHD), not interrupt (because ADHD), read body language and tone (because autism), put effort into the above simultaneously (neurodivers e people tend to struggle with split-focus) while tracking what you mean AND responding swiftly. I have very few spoons left to dedicate to hunting mystical meanings you hide between your words. Just TELL ME what you want!

This wasn’t easy for me to recognise, because while I was swiftly frustrated with academics who waffle on at Uni (mostly in articles), and adults who beat around the bush; I work with kids. I’m always working with people who may be discussing things they are unclear on, and struggle to put into words. Teaching has me forever piecing together clues, filling gaps and actively supporting students to communicate more clearly/ effectively/ socially acceptably with each other.

I tend to recognise sarcasm and quite a few other things autistic people generally struggle with, perhaps because I’ve worked closely with twenty-something kids five days a week and adults after hours, for over ten years. Experience has positioned me to present as neurotypical, but when I get tired at the end of the day and someone in leadership gives an instruction that sounds like its giving me a choice but actually means ‘I want you to do x like y,’ I’m prone to mis their intended meaning and take them at their literal one. When I’m online and tired, sometimes I skip over posts because there aren’t enough contextual clues within them and I just don’t know what they mean.

I prefer to get directions at work from leaders who speak directly, even bluntly and keep to the point. That’s A LOT clearer to me, and a lot less effort to process.

I Say What I Mean

I lost track long ago how many times growing up my mother would joke ‘why don’t you tell us what you really think?’ Over the past year I’ve often deleted my posts about genocide in Palestine because I can’t express my feelings without swearing the house down and saying things I know could be inflammatory and not do any form of good.

But growing up, with close friends and family, I tended to just say what I meant, uncensored. Only in England did I learn to shut up at work, so I didn’t spend the entire day saying; ‘This system is on fire. Why are you teaching in it instead of trying putting out the flames?’ (Yes, this is a metaphor for the string of swearing I was actually thinking in).

Honestly, I think the downside of ‘polite society’ in an age where Trump is running for a second presidency and the phrase ‘you can’t make this shit up’ is common commentary on real life is an era in which MORE people need to be saying; ‘This shit is fucked up.’ I fear that being ‘polite’ and not bluntly calling things out normalises shit that absolutely SHOULD NOT be happening. *Points at genocide in Palestine*.

Again, the tendency to be blunt is an autistic one.

Tone

I had no idea that speaking more informally than is appropriate is an autistic tendency. (I was more familiar with the perhaps more common, or better recognised tendency to speak formally when it isn’t expected/ required). But both are autistic traits, and natural inclinations I learned to adapt at work. I did it as early as working in retail (where being tall, thin, blond and female presenting, speaking in a more formal, professional manner meant I was less likely to have to put up with people treating me like an airhead).

A more warm and welcoming professional tone also works well with parents as a teacher. And when I step into ‘professional communication mode’ I find it easier to make eye contact, ask other people questions and behave in what people consider a welcoming, professional way (which is of course a neurotypical way).

With adults at work, I also tend to tone down my excitement, and present in a calmer, more professional manner. Whereas with students I’ll be up pacing, gesticulating, and my tone will be full of enthusiasm on topics of interest, which is thankfully many within the expanse that is twenty-first century curriculum.

Leading Conversations

Having prepared my talking points in advance, I also like to lead conversations. When I start the conversation, especially a group conversation, its SO much easier to keep track of what we’re talking about and have clarity about the conversation. It also gives me the chance to ensure my particular interests feature strongly, which makes it much easier for me to follow and actively participate.

While struggling to follow group conversations is a classic ADHD trait, the desire to lead them is an autistic one. (This and other autistic traits being listed nicely in this article).

Reciprocity In Conversation

I have the ADHD tendency of ‘I just need to tell you these ten things, all at once, before I forget half of them.’ THEN I have the headspace to properly listen to and take in what that person is saying.

But when the other person asks about me first, I have to make a real effort to ask about them, because its what they expect, not my natural inclination. This is a more autistic tendency.

I loved an episode of the Aussie comedy FISK, where the autistic coded main character is being pretty much trained in small talk/ social niceties by a colleague, but needs to urgently leave. She’s trying to throw out, ‘How are you? And isn’t it a nice day? And what are your plans for the weekend?’ In a very rushed, and random order, because its what the colleague expects, but is clearly unnatural and awkward to the autistic coded MC.

What are Social Graces?

I’ve never been a fan of a few basic social conventions.

1. I don’t like eye contact.

This is a classic, obvious autistic trait but I was unconcious of it for quite some time. Because people look you in the eyes and insist you look back from childhood. So you make yourself do it and pretend it doesn’t bother you. Or you make eye contact so they know you’re listening but you keep finding excuses to look away.

They don’t notice anything. And you don’t want to notice how uncomfortable eye contact makes you, because God knows how often how many people are trying to make eye contact with you and you’re trying to uncomfortably meet it!

2. I don’t do small talk.

When you talk to people you’re supposed to ask how they are. When they’re strangers you’re supposed to do ice breakers, or ‘polite conversation starters’ like the weather, or —hell, I don’t know because I don’t do it. Why? Because I’m not interested. I’m interested in what I’m interested in. In a state of nature going to launch into whatever interests me n that moment with no names, greetings, preamble or niceties. No time wasting— lets get into it! (Yes the impatience is likely ADHD, though struggling with small talk period as an autistic trait.)

Again, I have had to spend lots of time learning and practicing asking how people are, or thinking of things that matter to them and asking how about those. I do care about the latter. If they start talking about it I will show interest in my responses. But its not natural for me to think what to ask about other people. I used to just assume that if something mattered to people they wouldn’t need an invitation to talk about it and would just say it, but I’m learning there are many exceptions to that.

Elise Carlson selfie, smiling, wearing glasses, a cap, with short curls poking out the sides, stripy top, river and mossy rocks in background. — Neurodiverse me, hiking in the Otway Ranges, March 2023.

I’m Thinking…

Hyper Focus

For me, hyper focus is a very important strategy that enabled me to have a teaching career and ADHD at the same time. What I didn’t notice in this section of the blog back in 2021 was how much I like hyper focusing on topics of particular interest, or special interests —a classic autistic trait.

What’s the Point?

Why be on time for class, so I can line up outside, wait for everyone else to enter and sit down slowly and get zero benefits for having got out of bed a bit earlier? If you want me to do something —tell me why. The fact you want me to do it doesn’t motivate me. The fact you were my parent or teacher and even now, the fact alone that its my boss asking doesn’t motivate me.

Intrinsic motivation for me is not conforming to other people’s expectations, their wants, being obedient or doing anything purely because someone asked. I care about, I want to understand, I am motivated by WHY. Tell me how it benefits people —students, colleagues, my boss, me —anybody— or how it makes my work more productive, or easier, or safer or whatever. That’s what motivates me. I don’t know anyone else so strongly motivated by being told why.

The most likely explanation I’ve found at this time for ‘why?’ being so important: the autistic tendency to excel at logical reasoning, which may be more important than or even compensate for intuition in decision making (source on this).

Logic and Decision Making

Deleting my Twitter account was initially an emotional decision, because I had so many friends and writer contacts there. But as the account with a violence against Jews handle was repeatedly reported and found to ‘not violate Twitter’s safety policies’, and the Australian esafety commissioner fined Musk for failing to meet minimum child protection standards, the site became increasing dysfunctional and un-usable, the word ‘cis’ was banned… how could anyone NOT delete their account? How could decent humans ignore reason and divorce their actions from their consciences like this?

Guess what? Turns out excelling at logical thought and reasoning, and a strong sense of social justice are autistic tendencies.

I’m coming to realise that for people choosing to stay on Twitter, its likely an emotional decision about not wanting to lose friends they have there. If only all my friends could leave based on logic and reason and then we could all have migrated together and not got separated! GAH!

(I understand people who chose differently on perhaps an intellectual level here, but as you can see my own emotional reasoning takes me in the opposite direction, because my emotions are a response to the logic of the situation, not an emotional, direct response to the situation itself.).

Why did you change that?

Earlier this year I was in casual teaching. Before doing so, I had to answer the question: are you prepared to be called in to work on the day, or only to be booked in advance?

I have (while living in England) woken up to a phone call, looked up how to access a school I’ve never been to before via public transport and rushed off to work. I can do that. But the relief I felt on being texted a list of dates, and comparing them to my (physical) calendar to check my availability and getting to text back with ‘Yes I am available on those dates’ in a text message?

That’s my autistic love of structure, order, routine. I like predictability telling me what will happen and when, giving me time to mentally adjust to the fact its coming. In this case I liked it to fit work days around medical appointments and moving house, and writing novels and socialising around work.

So heads up, if you know a neurodivergent person (especially someone who’s autistic): don’t spring sudden changes on them! Sudden change is stressful. It often needs to be processed faster than I’m capable of processing it. And if you’re the parents of an autistic child: always give them an idea of how long they can do that thing they love, that they must pack up in five minutes, in two minutes, now! Sudden change is bad!

Memory

Before Twitter became fascist zombie land, (yeah, being blunt is also an autistic tendency and sometimes I just think fuck sensoring my language into neurotypical, I’m calling this shit as I see it), I knew SO MANY writers by name. I recalled at least one genre SO MANY of them wrote. I did make lists to help me, and now do so on Bsky, but my memory was unusual.

Which is clearest when I tell you my ADHD hates making notes about my multi character, complex plot, epic fantasy novels. So I just edit whole novels multiple times. I do my consistency edits of 100k novels in three days, because reading them that close together lets me just remember compass points on their journey, or that character mentioned something seven chapters ago clashing with this chapter’s mention of it.

In some ways my memory is terrible: see ADHD’s impact on working memory. But in others its excellent, and the excellent ways tend to align with autistic tendencies.

Sensory Needs

Its Too Bright

I was once co-teaching and noticed that when the other teacher was teaching, I kept looking at the wall away from the children. That’s because it was blue, and calming and not cluttered with teaching charts. When that teacher went on leave and it became my classroom, I spent 45 minutes pinning A3 sheets of pastel purple over the lurid colours of the wall children sat beside, and took down most charts (I didn’t use them anyway).

That was the most obvious instance in my life of; dude, you have sensory issues! Certain colours, and brightness/ tone are so uncomfortable I don’t want to look at them (and yes, will spend forty five minutes covering them up).

Its Too Loud

The other obvious sensory issue my whole life has been sound. The number of times a repetitive noise has continued until it distracts and frustrates me and I verbally complain and no one else in the room can hear it…

Until getting chronically ill, I was a light sleeper. Possum lands on the roof? I wake up. Car drives over speed bump outside my house? Wake up. Someone walks down the corridor, opens a door, uses the shower in the bathroom next to my room… I bought earplugs when a housemate was getting up at 5.50am because I would wake when he open his door opened (it scrapped across his carpet) and not get to sleep until he shut the front door (it was deadlock only and impossible to turn quietly.)

Sensory sensitivity (which can also be to smell, taste and texture, all of which bother me a lot less) is another classic autistic trait.

Other Areas

Difficulty Maintaining Friendships & Holding Down Employment

This wasn’t an easy one to evaluate, because I move house (sometimes countries) every couple of years. I change work places just as often (these are classic ADHD novelty seeking behaviours). But I didn’t realise holding employment and maintaining friendships are also common autistic struggles.

The one year contract was my bane as a teacher. My ADHD swiftly got fed up with the same time-consuming, repetitive routine of annually re-applying for my job because my contract had finished. That made things hit harder, and is why I figured why not teach overseas? Employment is no longer enough incentive to go through several weeks of lots of work and stress to get the same outcome annually (employment). There’s your autistic logic, running away with the ADHD quest for novelty. My difficulty in spotting both is that at moments like these, they ran hand in hand.

Creativity

I was the ‘in their own world child.’ My author bio mentions ‘graduating from playing imaginary games to writing fantasy.’ This is very much true. While fascination with facts is known as a typical autism trait in children by teachers, it was news to me that an interest in fantasy worlds can also be an autistic trait.

What Now?

Since moving house, I’m selling off things I don’t use and have purchased matching crockery and glassware, to reduce visual sensory overload at home. I also de-clutter my classroom where possible. I ask clarifying questions when needed at work, to help me piece together the too-many pieces of information people are telling me and extract the speaker’s intended meaning from them.

I tell colleagues when I can’t keep up with the professional conversation and again ask clarifying questions as needed. Ultimately, in conversation and meeting sensory needs, I give myself space to be comfortable, my neurodiverse self –autistic and ADHD-istic– and to succeed as such.

Engaging Readers (of Your Novel)

August 15, 2024 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

I’ve had a few reading experiences where I felt pushed out of the story. Where story ideas were interesting and I wanted to sink my teeth in, but the way the writer told the story and wrote the characters kept pushing me back to arm’s length (or further). So this blog aims to give examples of ways you can let your reader access your characters emotionally, logically, and enable the reader to properly join your characters on the journey your story takes them on. It aims to get you thinking about engaging readers more deeply in your story.

I’ll given advice on positioning your readers so they aren’t chasing after your characters asking, ‘WHAT?’ ‘WHY?’ and so your readers don’t find your characters every action unconvincing. I’ll try to help you show your reader how your characters feel, think and are developing. And to foreshadow events and build your story into a journey on which it makes and keeps satisfying promises to the reader.

Ground Zero

Characters & Status

There are a few simple ways to let the reader truly see and get to know your characters. First: show their emotions. Don’t only let the reader know what your character says to their boss. They can’t be their entirely honest, true self to the boss, they’ll be constrained by professionalism, their ambitions in their workplace, job insecurity, workplace politics etc.

So have your main character spend some time with a friend/ partner/ family member they trust, and can be completely honest with (throughout the novel –when possible). What your character shares of their thoughts and feelings, and how they express both in the presence of people they trust will show us things we cannot see when your character is at work.

Similarly, where relevant, show how your character interacts with people of higher rank, or possessing different and or greater forms of power (in any relevant setting to your story). Show when and how your character must hold their tongue, or restrain their emotions or reactions, or conform to others expectations because they lack position or power relative to others.

Who is your MC among their equals, their superiors and those less fortunate than themself?
All of those situations can reveal different aspects of your main characters to your reader.

Showing Feelings & Developing Feelings

Thoughts That Heighten Feelings

Don’t have your character make a single comment that suggests to the reader they’re angry, then have them punch someone in the face. Give us some internal thoughts (internally or via dialogue) to show the build up of emotion (unless you’re writing an emotionally unstable or extremely on edge character who goes from zero to ten on the temper scale in two seconds).

Example:

Why was it always Jorgen who got the nasty, most disgusting jobs? The ones that took the most effort and time to complete? While everyone else came in out of the cold early, put their feet up and got an extra serve of meat soup, Jorgen was shovelling shit and shivering in the cold.

The shovel in Jorgen’s hands stilled. He was falling behind in his studies. It was all the extra work. While he groomed the fine stallion nibbling straw opposite him, and mucked out its stables, his older siblings were racing ahead, towards better jobs. As each of them completed their studies and departed to jobs and lives of their choosing, who would be left behind, stuck doing extra chores in a life he increasingly resented?

The shovel fell, as Jorgen roared and charged out of the stables, headless of the horse dung flicking up in his wake.

Non-Verbal Emotion Cues

This is important. A book lacking emotion cues can also keep characters at arms length from the reader. So show characters feelings with nonverbal cues. The way the oldest sibling rolls their eyes dismissively as Jorgen makes his case. The second eldest crossing their arms as they protest that washing up the dishes and foodscraps is also yucky. The way the third sibling eyes the hem of their immaculate clothes, not even bothering to look at Jorgen as they dismiss his protests with the statement ‘everyone does chores.’

Have Jorgen pause his shovel as he realises who’s got the short end of the straw. Have him drop it when he realises everyone’s using him, right now and always. Then have him charge out of the freezing stables and into the warm kitchen, where no one really listens or seems to care about him or his point of view. Then, having emotionally engaged the reader by showing them everyone’s feelings along the way, when Jorgen’s most arrogant sibling tells him “we all do things we don’t like, suck it up” the reader will totally understand why Jorgen punches the arrogant snot in the face (and quite possibly cheers him on as he does so).

Side Character Agenda

Don’t reserve agendas for the MC and major players in the plot. While the agents of the Intergalactic Police confront a crime wave of chemical weapon sales (and potential attacks), you can still have the MC’s little brother searching for his missing cat. Why knows, maybe the cat is onto something, and in finding the cat, the little brother will lead their older agent sibling to a major clue in locating the lab that produces the illegal weapons, bringing him that much closer to said criminals and shutting down their illegal trade?

Giving your side characters goals gives them the opportunity to grow and develop independently of the role they play in helping your MC. By giving them a life outside of the MC’s bidding, and in making side character’s more fully rounded people, you make your story richer, more authentic and a more enjoyable experience for readers.

Character Internal Development

Please be very aware of the emotional and mental state in which your MC (and supporting cast) begin the story. Of the skills they possess, their social and technological and any other relevant competencies they have. Be aware of how these things and their relationships with other characters grow and change for the MC (and supporting cast) to achieve goals and solve the story problem.

Track these things throughout the story (especially when editing, if like me you’re a pantser). This isn’t just to show the reader how your character strives to change for the better or to strengthen their relationships to the solve the plot problem. Its not just about positioning the reader to share the character’s inner journey and cheer them on and provide the reader with a sense of payoff when the characters finally succeed in their goals. Showing the reader how characters and relationships develop also helps you avoid sudden, unexplained leaps in confidence and ability. Sudden changes (even inconsistencies) in character can confuse the reader, make characters seem implausible to them and ultimately pull the reader out of the story.

Story Foreshadowing & Tension

If you’re writing SFF, Thriller, Crime or Historical in particular, and don’t bother much with foreshadowing —you are killing your story’s tension. As a reader, I want to know what could happen next. My favourite authors, like Robert Jordan and Steve Erikson will suggest via world building and character interactions that two different events could unfold. Then they will lead me down a third path I never saw coming and I will love them for it.

But when a writer tells me there’s a spaceship that a side character can repair for everyone to escape in, then at the twelfth hour characters discover a secret tunnel and everyone escapes through it.. I wasn’t expecting that. I had no sense of anticipation, so I couldn’t be satisfied when my anticipation was fulfilled. I didn’t even know that was an option, so I may be initially confused, instead of satisfied by the way a story problem has suddenly and unexpectedly been solved (in a pulling-me-out-of-the-story way).

As a reader of primarily SFF, the bare minimum I want is Granny built a secret tunnel and no one has seen her for months. So when she does appear, having extended her secret tunnel into the prison cell just before everyone’s execution, her appearance doesn’t pull me out of the story. But if you want me to be really excited to see Granny, show me her struggles to dig fast enough. Let me hear her worries the tunnel exit will come out in the wrong place. If you do that alongside characters fretting as they probe a cell with no possibility of escape and the execution is at dawn and the pale grey of first light is creeping across the cell floor like the ax that’s about to chop off their heads… now I’m feeling the tension!

Tracking Foreshadowing

This is also important. Because if you mention Granny vanishing in chapter one, rumours she’s digging a mysterious tunnel no one quite know’s where in chapter six, then she breaks into the cell to save the day in chapter thirty two… by then I forgot this story had a granny. I’ve forgotten where she is and what she’s doing (unless nothing much happened in chapters seven to thirty two).

So when you’re doing a structural edit, take note of how early you show the reader story facts that will be crucial later. Notice how often you remind the reader of those facts. And check in with your critical readers if they recalled those facts, and the foreshadowing did prepare them for what was coming, and help them enjoy it, even if like Jordan and Erikson you manage to take the story down that third path, making a use of those facts beyond your readers anticipation.

Character Foreshadowing

This is something I’ve enjoyed in films in the last decade or so. I’m noticing more films where a side character has what seems to be a random hobby, and that interest or skill turns out to be crucial to assisting the MC in the finale. So again, if you have side or unlikely characters playing crucial roles in the end, track when and how often you incidentally remind the reader of their skills/ knowledge. When it helps the MC save the day, you want the reader to feel rewarded for paying attention and not pulled out of the story by a side character doing something they didn’t realise the side character could do.

Third Party Development In Stories

This might be an organisation in a contemporary or historical story, or a city, race or empire in SFF. As with your side characters, be wary of under-developing your third parties. I don’t just want to know Sarah’s Sewing repairs clothes. I’d like to know she has access to rare and expensive fabrics no other seamstress has, which may have come from the black market.

As a reader of my own book, I wouldn’t be satisfied if the book just showed the Zaldeans as toxically masculine warmongers. Given that the lead warmongers betray their peace-loving king by trying to manipulate him to war; I want to know what drives them. What does war give them other than the promise of glory? It gives them the opportunity for governorships —political power, and personal estates —wealth. It gives middle ranking men the chance to trade with new markets, where their goods are rarer, and they can charge more and make more money.

Don’t just tell me what the head of the third party/ organisation/ country wants. Show me what’s in it for everyone. Show me what lengths these contagonists or antagonists are prepared to go to, to further their own goals. Show me why its so important to them to achieve their goals.

Why? Because letting me as the reader see what drives the baddies and the characters who get in the way as well as I see the ‘goodies’ ramps up tension. It makes me get more emotionally invested in the story.

I confess, I did laugh reading one of Brandon Sanderson’s characters in the Stormlight archives answering the question, ‘How did all this start?’ with something like, “Other people had stuff and we wanted it.” Yes, in war that’s often what it boils down to. But the more layers you give the agendas of characters on all sides of any conflict, the more tension there is, the more emotionally invested the reader is; the more emotional pay off we get when the story problem is resolved!

Sustainability & Cross Posting Problems

I know, especially with the Twitter Writing diaspora (no this post isn’t dated, I reject the name change), its easy to get FOMO. To wonder about creatives and people you’re not connecting with or reaching on other social media platforms. So some people use an app to schedule posts on multiple social media, more than they have time or energy to interact on, which has its own problems.

I hope you don’t use an app which auto-posts: ‘I just posted on Insta’ or ‘just pinned (whatever) on Pinterest…’ because I’ve unfollowed people for that. If I follow you on Blue Sky (Bsky) or Mastodon, its because I want to see your Bsky or Mastodon content.

Then there’s the issue of audience differences. I prefer to manually post on Bsky/ Mastodon and Facebook. My FB is mostly people I’ve known personally from all walks of life, including far less people from the diverse communities I interact in on Bsky. So if I scheduled the same posts for Bsky and Facebook, they would resonate with my Bsky community, but not my FB contacts, or vice versa, OR compromise too much and not resonate with either.

And that’s not the biggest problem.

Sustainability Becomes Rockstar Status/ Snobbery

Sure, there will always be those kind people who like and comment on your post, even when you don’t reply or even like their comments (I’ve seen it happen).

The problem with posting and running is it feels like rockstar status. Like you’re saying, “I’ve got things to do (as if my followers don’t). I want engagement from you and I’ll give you nothing/ little in return.” Alternatively “I think my time is worth more than yours.”

I don’t expect any writer/ creative to be Neil Gaiman on Bsky (how much that guy posts but also interacts with other people’s posts is AMAZING! When does he even write?!) But when Neil Gaiman interacts with his followers and others don’t (I don’t just mean life gets busy so you disappear or are hardly present for a bit, I mean post and run is your modus operendi) it feels like snobbery.

If people comment on your posts and you don’t reply, it will feel to them that you’re not really there. Like you’re talking at them, but not listening to them. You’ve taken the ‘social’ out of social media. So why follow you on that platform?

Building Loads of Social Media Followings: does it Actually Work?

Which brings me to, if you’re on more platforms than you have time to connect with others on, if all you’re doing is posting and running… does that build a following?

Sure, there are people who post frequently, have interesting things to say and gain lots of followers. I follow one on Blue Sky who posts multiple times a night on multiple topics, in such a way that many people feel a connection to him. He’s also entertaining and has an unusually large number of followers for Bsky. (And I bet its his main platform, which he gives most of his social media time and energy to).

But most of us don’t present in ways lots of people frequently feel so connected to. Its people who feel like they know me who tend to regularly interact with my social media posts. And while they may feel that from reading my posts often, they get to know me far better if we talk to each other. That’s what gets me the most engagement.

So if you’re posting and running, do people feel like they know you on that platform? Do they connect with what you’re saying? Do they interact with you? Or are you shouting into the void? And if so, would letting those accounts go dormant (or deleting them) lose anything? Or would it gain you time and energy/ spoons for other things?

What’s your Preferred Mode of Operation?

As an indie author, I took the advice to be where my readers are. I tried to post there more often than once in a blue moon when it wasn’t somewhere I didn’t have the motivation, time or spoons to interact. And I learned that reciprocity is important to me not just as a writer and author, but as a social media user.

I don’t want to post and run. I don’t want to be that person who’s always taking and never gives anything back. Who wants engagement and interaction but never returns it.

Learning this about myself made it much easier to decide to let my Tik Tok and Instagram accounts become dormant, to only use my Pinterest to pin a link to my latest blog and to mainly interact on my Blue Sky and Mastodon accounts. I just have a Facebook profile for anyone who isn’t on the former two (because I hate the fan-style set up of FB pages).

But if you are comfortable interacting only with those who reply to you or posting and running…

Are You on the Right Social Media For You?

This can get overlooked among the ‘be where your readers are’ advice and the temptation to be everywhere to ‘reach as many readers as possible’.

Boundaries: Use-ability

This is a simple way to cut down your platform presence.

At one point I had writer groups on Facebook. It was clunky and disorganised. Posts didn’t display in chronological order. The display order of posts kept changing. It wasn’t easy to organise by topic. I found myself not wanting to interact in FB groups I created, because every time I did they frustrated my impatience to interact swiftly and effectively.

So when Facebook shut down Australian community groups without warning during a 2020 lockdown and I moved my writer groups to Discord and found it had ten times better functionally, I all but stopped using Facebook to interact with writers.

When it comes to usability, is there a platform where the notifications, functionality, layout, the way posts are organised (or totally disorganised) frustrates you? That makes things more time-consuming to use?
How much frustration does it cause you or how much of your time does it take up across a day, a week, a month? Is it worth it?

(On these grounds alone, Twitter was a monumental waste of my time by mid 2023 and its dis-functionality was right up there with its antisemitism in driving me to Mastodon and Blue Sky.)

Boundaries- Ill Fitting Platforms

I liked the idea of Instagram. I enjoy travel and nature photography and sometimes write poems. Its also popular with the target audience of my YA Fantasy books: fifteen to forty-somethings (I don’t think YA readership stops at forty, though I know far less fifty-something+ are on Insta). In theory it was a good place to promote my writing and have a social media presence.

But Insta never worked out for me. Posts were bigger and took longer to scroll than my preferred text-based platforms. The algorithms showed me populist posts instead of people I actually knew socially, or fellow writers. The relentless plague of bots commenting on my bookish posts and spamming my inbox was ANNOYING. And I’m still convinced half my followers are men treating Instagram as a dating app…

Then Insta started imitating Twitter with blue tick offers, increased ads and populist post and follow suggestions clogging my feed. This was a feed I wasn’t going to interact on because it just didn’t fit me. It was my post and run platform. And every time the algorithms changed, my posts got seen by less people and slowly dropped from an average of 40 likes to around 15.

I thought, what’s the point? I’m not going to reach readers here anyway. I could use the time and energy I spend on Insta writing my newsletter or blog… even my books! So I let my Insta go dormant.

Avoiding Social Media Burnout (For Writers/ Creatives)

Do you have a platform you feel the same way about? What could you achieve for your books/ art/ newsletter/ blog/ business if you ditched that platform?

Boundaries: Personal Comfort (In my case ND comfort!)

Sometimes, the place your readers/ viewers/ customers hang out ISN’T a good place for you. I don’t just mean you find it tricky or aren’t too sure how the platform works. I mean you’re there because you feel you ‘should’ be and are fighting that little voice in your head telling you ‘this is UN-comfortable.’

For me, this is Tik Tok. I write YA Fantasy. Book Tok sells books. I ‘should’ be on Tik Tok. But my Tik Tok feed is to my ADHD like someone running their nails down a blackboard nonstop. Its audio and visual sensory overload. Its also constant change and unpredictability because every few seconds its a different person/ place/ colours/ sounds/ music/ volume level etc. Tik Tok is sensory HELL for my neurodiverse needs.

Because of the above I have zero desire to interact on Tik Tok. I could just post book promo videos there. Maybe a few author friends would be generous and interact with me even though I never interact with them. Maybe on the right hashtags and with the right sounds my videos would sell some books.

I did make a few personal videos (because I hate just being salesy anywhere). I paid my cover artist to make one animated book cover and reviews video. Then I lost interest, motivation, spoons, time and didn’t go back.

If you’ve got that account your readers hang out on and you ‘should’ be on but you don’t feel comfortable or dislike the platform, maybe the best thing for your comfort/ energy levels/ not spreading yourself too thin is to let that account go.

Boundaries: Ethics

If you don’t approve of hate speech, you wouldn’t want to give it the thumbs up by having an account on a social media platform that enables hate speech, would you?
So have you deleted your Twitter yet?
If not, please read ‘Delete your Twitter’ below. (Yes, its more sympathetic than what I wrote above).

You may also want to consider social media platforms where misinformation is rife, given how that can fuel social division, the climate crisis, maintain the status quo by keeping marginalised communities and people marginalised, etc.

Tik Tok may give you pause because of its Chinese ownership and China and human rights…

For more on my personal stance on Twitter, Facebook (and KU/ Amazon) ethics, see Author Ethical Dilemmas.

Maximising Social Media: Integrating Interests

I assume you were on social media before you had books/ art/ products to sell. That you partly use social media to interact with friends and family, with fellow creatives and possibly with groups who share your interests or facets of your identity. So in this next section I’ll talk about social media spaces that meet your social, personal AND indie needs. Those are the ones I suggest prioritising with most of your time and energy/ spoons.

Other Communities & Special Interests

Let’s say for example you’re a SciFi nerd and you’re on Tumblr for that. Or you love bird watching and follow FB groups for that. Or like me you’re queer, neurodiverse, chronically ill or otherwise disabled. Let’s say sharing life experiences in those communities is affirming, informative and beneficial to your wellbeing.

But communities and interests can be on different platforms, which spread you thin and can wear you out. So where can you integrate your interests, social groups and personal interactions?

Facebook

The Old School option was Facebook profile to interact with friends/ family, and FB groups for writers, other communities and your interests plus your author Facebook page. As I’ve mentioned, I’m not fond of Facebook functionally or ethically. Technically I’m still in FB groups for writers (I almost never look at them) and Wide for the Win as an author (I always mean to look at that more —on its own platform).

But if you are a FB user, it does integrates lots of groups and interests in one space (and likely a lot of your personal contacts if you’re Gen Y or older.) Limiting yourself to it (and few others) is an effective way to avoid social media over-stretching and burn out (and time suck).

Blue Sky

I love Blue Sky because I can connect with writers, get and give writerly and authorly advice, help others AND do the same things as a neurodiverse, queer and chronically ill person. I can check in on the latest news, the latest archaeological discoveries, find historical articles, its all there in one place. Individual posts are even organised topically so I can browse feeds by topics that interest me. And it hosts Twitter’s writer chats (see my Bsky Newby guide for details).

Bsky can integrate your interests and communities (in my opinion with better functionality and organisation than Facebook) —and without Musk or Zuckerberg! These are some of multiple reasons its my favourite social media.

From what I understand, Reddit is another good option to engage with particular interests and topics. It also categorises posts and includes categories you can share shorts, poetry etc in to build your audience on social media.

Hashtags, Instagram & Mastodon

Yes, you could browse Twitter or Instagram, or Mastodon or I don’t know what else by hashtags to explore your interests. In my experience (of Twitter) people often forgot to use relevant hashtags in their posts, or they overused them (especially on Instagram) and this is not nearly as effective in connecting with your people as Facebook groups, Blue Sky Feeds or what I’ve heard of Reddit.

But if Instagram or Mastodon are where you personally connect with people, your creative community (via Mastodon prompt hashtags or Instagram challenges), and where your other interests and communities are; by all means connect there by hashtag. And make either your main social media base that gets most of your time and energy (bonus if it fits where your readers hang out!)

Pick ONE Creative Community

In the author interviews I’ve done (all linked on this page), ‘build your writing community and do it early’ or ‘I wish I’d done it sooner’ is something writers say A LOT. So in prioritising social media platforms, the first question I suggest you ask is; where is my creative/ writing community?

If it’s always been in Facebook groups or on Instagram, this is easy to answer, and I’d stay active in your community. But if your community used to be Twitter…

Delete Your Twitter

The time has long passed to beat around the bush about this.

I had 16k Twitter followers. I introduced writers to each other by genre. I critiqued pitches, ran query letter and Pitch Party DM groups. Then I started an Author Platform DM group, an SFF one, a Querying Writers DM (then moved them all to Discord).

Twitter’s #WritingCommunity was my home and I knew literally hundreds of writers by name and could tell you off the top of my head what genre tens of them wrote. But everything I loved about Twitter’s #WritingCommunity was already dying when Musk started breaking Twitter.

Its not 2022 Anymore

We’re not uncertain what kind of transphobia-promoting, fascist-enabling hellhole Twitter could become. [Twitter’s safety measure cuts are now documented, as are statistics on hate speech tweets not being removed and people not being banned for tweeting them. Spoiler, the latter statistic is ZERO)]. We’re also in no doubt how many staff will be sacked and how dysfunctional and unusable the site will become.

Twitter is dead.

True, by leaving, I lost friends (who didn’t go to Blue sky/ Mastodon/ Facebook/ Discord) and that’s sad. I hope they’ll become active on Blue Sky or Discord one day. But I haven’t regretted deleting my account or departing a discrimination-enabling, rage-bating platform once.

Let it go and move on —preferably before fascists start seeing your continued presence as support of their beliefs.

Choose ONE Twitter Alternative

By now you’ve either settled into algorithm-less Mastodon, or found it not a close enough clone of Twitter (writers, check out #WritersCoffeeClub if you’re still settling there -that’s where the #WritingCommunity is!). Or you’re feeling more comfortable on algorithm-less Blue Sky or on Threads. Or you’ve settled on Discords or into Instagram’s creative communities.

Have you noticed how hard it can be settling into one creative/ writing community? Building connections among creatives in one space? This is why I suggest sticking to ONE main creative community on ONE platform. Go there with your experiences, questions, learnings, random thoughts, memes —everything. Let fellow creatives get to know you and get to know them. Make friends and build ONE proper creative community.

Ideally, do it on the social media with your queer community, your bird watching community, your BIPOC community, your personal contacts —to minimise your platform spread, build strong connections and get the most out of the time, energy and spoons you invest in social media.

Exception: Communities Its Effortless to Pop in and Out Of

I’m active almost daily on Blue Sky AND Mastodon. Its do-able because Mastodon’s writer prompts give me a topic to talk about and other people’s responses to interact with on the same hashtag. It makes getting to know and meaningfully interact with a group of writers effortless (and when time’s short I skip Bsky that day or do two day’s Mastodon prompts the next day).

Discord or Facebook may be like this for you. You go in to the group —and on Discord go to the topically relevant channel— ask your question and get it answered. Or you look at what other people are saying (again on specific topic channels that interest you on your choice of Discord servers) and reply —when it suits you to do so.

If you get what you want from the platform quickly and easily, as rarely or as often as you want WITHOUT putting much time, effort or energy into it, you may find Mastodon/ Discord/ FB Groups sustainable —on the side of your main creative community.

How Many Social Media Platforms are you Active on Now?

Ideally you’ve got ideas on where you can interact as an author/ artist/ other creative and person and with your creative community and potential readers/ viewers/ consumers on one or across two, possibly three platforms.

I’m not saying necessarily delete everything else (exception Twitter). Consider what I did on Instagram: say you’re going elsewhere, leave links for people to find you and let the account go dormant. That way anyone who finds it can connect with you where you’re maximising and integrating your social media presence.

And if they don’t?
I wonder how many more people you’ll reach on the few platforms you make your online homes, by being present, by effectively connecting and being a part of the community. Good luck!

Amazon, Libraries & No Thanks Kindle Unlimited

When you’re an emerging Indie Author and readers don’t know you from Adam, entering your book in Amazon’s Kindle Select program (into Kindle Unlimited -KU) is very tempting. It has lots of readers, your book is discoverable and you will get some page reads (even if you don’t market much or aren’t very good at it). Conventional author wisdom seems to be that its a wise financial and discoverability move for a first time author. But my books are not in Kindle Select (despite that at the time of writing I’ve only published 2/3 of my debut trilogy).

Growing up, I was the child of a single parent. Money was tight. We got most of our books from the library. I like libraries. I like that they’ve always made access to books, digital resources, the internet, printing and apparently now recording studios, an equitable experience. So when I published my first book I wanted libraries to have access to print AND digital copies. But no library could have digital copies in their catalogue if my ebook was in Kindle Select (KU).

No matter what research I did, or advice I considered, for me it was the ethical point that got stuck in my head. I’m a full time teacher and can pay off a home loan on my own salary (which is great because I don’t have a partner and am not inclined to want one). I’m privileged enough not to depend on writing to earn a living. Which is awesome, because as a debut author breaking even financially is a challenge. So I’m in a financial position to stick to my ethical guns and make my ebooks available to libraries.

Non-Amazon Stores

Then there’s stores. I don’t like Amazon. When I got long covid, I got banned from having books available on pre-order on there for a year. That’s because Amazon’s highest priority is customer experience (read ‘profits’). Authors don’t matter to them. I’ve heard of authors having their accounts deleted, their books taken down (before I left Twitter, more on that below). It doesn’t have authors’ backs.

So I researched bookstores and looked at alternatives. I discovered (I’m Australian so neither of these is really a thing here) that Barnes & Noble have a reader subscription service (Nook) and Kobo has Kobo Plus, and unlike Kindle Select (KU), neither of those subscription services is exclusive. So you can have your ebook on Nook, and Kobo Plus AND in libraries.

And there are so many other (non-exclusive) ebook subscription services online (Scribed & Hoopla for example). Sure, these services don’t make your book as visible as Kindle Unlimited, but they have less books for yours to get lost competing among, so I figured why not?

Cover of fantasy book Manipulator's War, purchase icons for ebook: Kindle, Apple, Nook, Kobo, Booktopia, Scribd, Vivlio, Smashwords, Indigo, S24, Thalia, Bucher De, Angus & Robertson.

Paperback purchase icons: Barnes & noble, Waterstones, Booktopia, Angus & Robertson, Bucher De.

The above isn’t all the digital stores my first book is on, its just the main ones. If I was in Kindle Unlimited, you’d only see the first two ebook icons. That’s quite a few stores of difference.

Eggs in One Basket

I also don’t like a ‘put all your eggs in one basket approach’. Not just in terms of one basket, but also an American and far from global basket. Of the icons above, the blue icon is a French store. 24S is a Spanish owned subscription service. Thalia and Bucher De are German, and the green Rakuten Kobo is Booktopia, Australia’s biggest online bookstore. Not everyone will choose to buy from an American company when they can support stores in their own country and not everyone is fond of Amazon.

But the biggest problem of putting all your eggs in one baskets is it leaves me vulnerable, should the basket break. Which leads me to Twitter.

Goodbye Twitter, Hello Mastodon & Blue Sky

Perhaps a pressing author ethical dilemma for many authors of late has been the demise of Twitter. Twitter’s #WritingCommunity was my first social media home as a writer. Privately I was on Facebook (which I’ve never liked). On Twitter I found a space to network with, befriend, learn from and help my fellow writers. It grew beyond that. When I identified as both queer and neurodiverse, I saw great overlap between the writing community and those communities.

Twitter was a space where I could listen to voices I’d never heard before. Among them were, black people in America, BIPOC the world over, people with chronic illness, mental illness, neurodiverse and gender diverse people. It was a fabulous space for both professional growth as an author and personal growth as a person. Then Musk bought it.

True, algorithms always made your visibility and how easy it was to find friends on your feed variable. But Musk’s take over mostly made me feel more invisible than ever and made a concerted attempt to banish familiar faces from my feed. Familiar faces and good friends started leaving or stopped tweeting. The TERFs, transphobes, Trump supporters, and raging anti-science tribes started sounding louder. Twitter seemed to be competing with Truth Social to become the leading social media hate space.

Time To Go

I thought it would be transphobia and homophobia that drove me off Twitter. I’m the kind of person whose inclined to tell people where they can stick their shitty opinions. And I didn’t want to go on Twitter to be outraged or get angry or to argue. But that wasn’t the final straw.

A tweet about who was profiting from every fifth tweet (now a paid ad tweet) on our feeds stopped me tweeting. Fund the alt right? Fuck that! Sure, you can get an ad filter (which I did -and it helps a lot as someone with ADHD and visual sensory issues). But as Twitter became more like what I imagine Parlour or Truth Social stands for? I didn’t want to be associated with that place or its owner.

Hate Site

Since then and before publishing this blog @GasTheJews was revealed to be an entirely acceptable Twitter handle, when it was reported for hate speech multiple times, and Twitter claimed it wasn’t breaking any of their rules. Because did you know it isn’t hate speech if its in your Twitter handle instead of a tweet?

Text from tweet by Elliot Malin: Account @gasthejews6969 has not broken @X's safety procedures because 'gas the Jews' notably is not 'threatening violence against someone or a group of people' and definitely isn't 'celebrating or praising violence' whatsoever

And @ElonMusk wonders why advertisers left.

Screenshot of Twitter's reply to a reported account: Hello, After reviewing the availible information, we want to let you know gasthejews6969 hasn't broken our safety policies.

The Kid’s Aren’t Safe

Then came the move (nearly two months after I ceased using my account), which persuaded me to delete it, cutting off multiple friends I don’t see on any other platform. My country’s Esafety Commissioner concluded that Twitter doesn’t have even the most basic child safety measures in place, to prevent not only child abuse but also child sexual abuse from occurring on it, and our Esafety Commissioner fined them accordingly.

Australian's ESafety commission fines Elon Musk's X $610,500 for failing to meet anti-child-abuse standards

Worried its only a matter of time before child abuse material is circulated on Twitter (if it isn’t happening already), and disgusted that every type of marginalised adult AND children don’t matter enough to Twitter (or its reputation) for them to even pretend to be doing anything to ensure user safety on the site, I deleted my account.

The Dilmena

How is Twitter being a hate site a dilemma? People seem to be staying because they personally aren’t attacked or aren’t witnessing marginalised people being attacked. People seem to be making decisions based on their personal user experience. And or indies are reluctant to give up sales from the site, when many of us indies struggle to even pay the costs of our business with our earnings, let alone MAKE any money (my cover art and editing costs are several thousand dollars more than I’ve earned so far as an indie author).

As for me, I had ten thousand followers on Twitter. I’d welcomed newbies, done threads to connect writers. I made lists, and gave extensive feedback on pitch party pitches over two years (and wrote this blog on writing a good one, still my most popular post.) That was my community. I had good friends on that platform who weren’t anywhere else, and dm groups -writer, author, queer and ND support groups that as a group didn’t want to move. Leaving meant losing my community and my platform as a budding indie author.

What’s an Author’s Place?

There was an interesting prompt for October on Mastodon: should writers post about politics or avoid it to avoid controversy? Should we publicly interact as if we are part of the world, or act like Ents, tending our books? Predictably, people who thought politics wasn’t an author’s place were white, cishet, neurotypical, able-bodied authors oblivious to their own privilege. They didn’t seem to notice that for others, eg. First Nations, Black, Asian, Queer, Neurodiverse, Chronically Ill, or Disabled people -existing IS political. (I’ll be blogging about writing diverse casts in Jan 2024 ????).

To me, a nonbinary, a-romantic, asexual, neurodiverse, chronically ill white person living in a cishet, ableist world, ‘should writers speak publicly about politics’ translates as, ‘should writers shut up and put up?’ My answer is ‘no and did I mention fuck no?’ I agree with writers who said they are part of this world, impacted by it and am writing my identities into a world that barely knows we exist and or doesn’t understand and or accept us.

My Place

As part of this world, how could I tacitly support for example, the idea that @GasTheJews as a Twitter handle is acceptable, by retaining my Twitter account or using the platform? If you think I’m going too far in saying that not deleting your account is publicly signalling support of Musk and all he and his bootlickers stand for, I’d refer you to Mene Wyatt, who said, “Silence is violence. Complacency is complicit.” (Source, a powerful monalog on the Australian Aboriginal experience, worth watching).

I’d also point to the blog one of a nazis who greeted Posie Parker (a UK TERF) on the step’s of my state’s parliament house with a nazi salute. In his blog, he referred to most people as ‘normies’ and presumed he and his neo-nazis were acting on behalf of ‘normies’. People like him can’t claim shit like that if you publicly signal that you DON’T support them and they DON’T speak for you.

So I see removing all association with Twitter as a way of making my disapproval of Musk and everyone and their hatreds he shelters and promotes undeniably clear. Do I value that over money and even friendships? Yes.

Mastodon

So where does a writer, author, and a queer, neurodiverse person seeking all of those communities go? Mastodon had the greatest appeal. It’s similar in terms of functionality. The main difference is the whole platform isn’t the plaything of a single dick who can screw it up any which way every time he throws a temper tantrum. Or persecute minority groups wholesale because he’s angry at one individual in his personal life, who happens to be marginalised in a particular way.

Each Mastodon instance has a different admin. Hashtags can display toots on hashtag feeds that bridge instances (#WordWeavers and #WritersCoffeeClub being my favourites). And the Fediverse has toots from every instance your instance hasn’t blocked. This means Mastodon can’t be destroyed by a single white man who scores zero points on the diversity scale and doesn’t give a shit about marginalised people. I also like that there’s no advertising or algorithms, just humans interacting, as opposed to glaring ethical concerns.

Blue Sky

The issue with your single greatest social platform turning to shite is that the communities and contacts you’ve made there aren’t all migrating to the same place. They’re scattering to the winds. Spoutible and Post as well as Mastodon and Blue Sky and I don’t know where else. But writers in the DM groups I was in (DMs being about the only reliable space on Twitter to talk to people I knew at this stage) seemed keen on Blue Sky. Created by the man who created Twitter, also without algorithms or paid ads (yet) and most importantly, not controlled by Musk or Zukerburg or other bastards, as ethics would define them. (For more about Blue Sky, see my Blue Sky Newby Guide.)

The above is how I traded my largest social media account of 10,600 followers to 100 (and slowly counting) on Mastodon and 500 (also climbing) on Blue Sky. Not a decision you make to get publicity for yourself or your books. Not a smart financial decision, at this time. But why stay on a poisoned, sinking ship where decent people are leaving (or hiding in dms), when I could build a small community on platforms far better aligned with my values? Not to mention where people like me can interact publicly and safely, without constantly blocking those who hate us for not being cishet/ neurotypical/ able bodied or in other people’s cases: white?

Goodbye Facebook Page!

Before Musk blew up Twitter, Zukerberg was the bad name in social media. I cracked it at Facebook, (at the height of the Pandemic in 2020) when without warning they blocked Australian community groups (including emergency service warnings that literally save lives), without warning. (We passed some law, I think around journalism, that pissed Facebook off). So I closed the writer Facebook groups I’d made (I’d liked having publicly discoverable groups for writers) and moved them to Discord (all four are described here.)

Facebook rebranded as Meta, but I’d never liked the platform (I find it primitive now, especially the limited functionality and clunkiness of Facebook Groups compared to Discord) and I hated it for its lack of ethics. Yet all the indie author advice seems to recommend that if you want to minimise time wasted on social media and make more time to actually write books; at least have a Facebook Page. In fact, you can’t run ads on Facebook (or Instagram) without one. So de-activating yours is directly a financial and business decision.

But I deactivated mine. I hate the platform. It doesn’t have a great demographic for my books anyway (that demographic being educated, lefty/ liberal minded, teen to forty-ish or young at heart allies or queer folk -Mastodon/ Blue Sky seem most likely for them). I could still advertise on Amazon (yeah, that doesn’t appeal either -again, ethics, eggs, one basket- no thank you.) But having just a Facebook Profile (for over 50’s in my family and the few Gen Y people who actually post there) and inviting anyone wanting to follow me as an author also keeps my writing Facebook private from students. And technically I’m still on ‘the world’s biggest social media’. It’ll do.

Can You Be Ethical & Still Make Money Writing?

Now I’ve abandoned my biggest social media platform, deactivated my Facebook Page and not put my books in the easiest place for the biggest number of readers to find, read and review them, how do I make money as an author?

You may sell the occasional book directly via social media, but I’ve been watching this for over a year. It seems you either push hard with ‘buy my book posts’ that I feel must annoy people, or you sell to friends via conversations, small scale. Its seemed to me for quite some time (and yes, the authority on making money as an Indie Author, the Facebook Group 20BooksTo50K agrees), that you make money selling books by spending money, mostly on advertising, though in-person events like conferences can be great too.

There is one big advertising option I’ll consider ethically: Bookbub. Their features cost hundreds, but are well worth it. You have to apply and they’re hard to get. But like Facebook and Amazon, they also have ordinary paid ads, which I plan to start experimenting with. And their adds reach readers who purchase from many stores, in many countries, which I also like.

What About Community?

Having left the platform my online communities were on, I’m rebuilding, a little on prompt hashtags on Mastodon, a lot on Blue Sky and on my Discord servers. I’ve just created a Discord for Queer, and or Neurodiverse, and or Chronically Ill and otherwise Disabled Writers, which is getting as much interest on Blue Sky as my writing, and indie authoring Discords once got on Twitter. (More about my discords for writers here). I’m making new friends, staying in touch with the few old ones still on platforms I use, and rebuilding my writerly, queer and disability communities.

Not another NEW Platform!?

Blue Sky (bsky) is basically Twitter. Look at my Bsky dashboard (below). It’s VERY similar. The general differences with Bsky include no algorithms, no sponsored ads, no trending topics (very little rage baiting), alt text is encouraged, and transphobes ARE NOT WELCOME —nor are fascists. (I rarely see either complaining no one will debate other people’s right to human rights with them because like most Bsky users —I’ve blocked them).

Getting Started: Profile Set Up

Be sure to fill in your bio so we know you’re not a bot. If you can find space, consider including alt text for your cover photo, as Bsky doesn’t have that option on the cover image itself (yet). Cover photos don’t tend to crop well. I ended up shrinking my book covers on a larger background image on Canva and uploading to Bsky multiple times, using trial and error to get this fit.

You’ll note my bio gets personal. I’m openly nonbinary, neurodiverse and chronically ill, and happy to present publicly as such and to discuss all three to raise awareness. Don’t feel you owe anyone this information. But do consider including your traits, interests etc —things you will post about, that will help your people recognise you as their people.

Pinned Posts

Yes creatives this is our chance to pin images and links to books/ art etc. You might also want to elaborate on anything in your bio and or give your new followers something to interact with. For example, my pinned posts ends with the question, “What are your projects?”

First/ Intro Post

Not everyone you knew on Twitter will be on Bsky, and some people on Bsky never had a Twitter account. There will be people in whichever communities, interest groups or fandoms you’re part of whom you don’t yet know. So assume we don’t know you, tell us who you’d like to hang out with in your intro post and maybe give us a question to answer. For example, my intro post is below.

BlueSky Post

Text: Hello BlueSky! Where are my fellow #Fantasy/ #SFF/ #IndieAuthors/ poets? Pantsers? Fellow queer and or ND people? Aussies?

I'm all of the above, and writing my third epic YA Fantasy set beneath sorcerous skies, where a continent-wide war is brewing. Happy to talk all things writerly/ authorly!

Why bother? So when more of us know who you are, have interacted with you in a digital ‘meeting each other’ way and are more likely to interact with your posts.

Finding Your People: Following & Starter Packs

The tried and tested method initially was find your mutuals by looking at who friends you’ve found are following. If you’re a writer and you knew me on Twitter, I linked as many writer friends as I could by their Insta and Bsky handles and by genre, identity, country on this (view-only, master) spreadsheet (in 2023).

But with Starter Packs arriving in 2024, you can now find up to 150 profiles linked by common interests, shared identities etc. Entering your interests and the words ‘starter pack’ into the Bsky search bar could turn up what you’re looking for. It may also turn up posts offering to add you to starter packs.

My starter packs are all linked to this thread. Feel free to reply if you’d like to be added to any.

Finding Your People: Feeds

Bsky vertical menu
Text: search, Follow, OnlyPosts, Aussie Feed, Australian Media, Aussie & Kiwi Writers, Writerly & Authorly Posts (etc). More Feeds.

I won’t give advice on general posting yet. Because to understand post visibility, you need to understand how posts are organised on Bsky. You have many options in another menu in your profile here (right/ below). You’ll have a feed of everyone you’re following. Under that, you can pin feeds of any topic or community you wish to see (and ‘Only Posts’ which filters out reposts and replies of your followers, showing only organic posts).
Posts are displayed on feeds if they include the keywords or emojis described a the feed’s description.

Adding Feeds

So how do you find feeds displaying posts you might want to see, or get your posts displayed on?

1.Under the feed menu (pictured right/ below), select ‘more feeds’. That will display this menu.

2. Enter topics that interest you in the search bar.

3. To add a feed to your feed menu, select the plus symbol. (Select the bin to remove a feed from your menu if you change your mind).

Text: Discover new feeds, Search.
Two hands making a heart symbol beside: For You. Plus symbol (right).
Blye square with white flame on. What's Hot Classic, bin (right).

My Favourite Feeds

Writing Feeds

Fiction Writers & Authors: picks up: ‘writer(s)’, ‘author(s), *hand holding pencil emoji* ‘(#Am)writing(community)’ by me.

SFF Writing -Fantasy, SciFi, general SFF and writing/ editing/ writer/ author, or *trident emoji* by me.

Writing Prompts – #vss365, #vsspoem, #whistpr, #mpotd and other vss by Helen Whistberry.

Querying Writers, by me.

Indie Author Life
by @larisa-a-white.bsky.social, whom you’ll need to ask to add you.

Pitch Parties, by @adriabailton.com displays posts by accounts who run pitch parties (on Bsky and elsewhere).

Book Sky

BookSky:
Posts with *blue heart & 3 books emoji*

Diverse Books
Posts with: *globe with the Americas & 3 books emoji*

SFF Books: Posts with Fantasy/ SciFi, SFF etc.

Queer Bookworms
Posts with *rainbow emoji & 3 books emoji*

Queer SFF
Posts with *rainbow, rocket & shooting star emoji*
(Or keyword combos, see its description).

Trans Books: Posts with #TransBooks365

Aussie Feed

Aussie Feed posts naming Australia or its capital cities.

LGBTQIA+ Feeds

LGBTQIA+ Posts picks up LGBTQIA+ and most queer identify words by me.

Asexual Spectrum picks up asexual, aromantic, aroace, asexuality, *a black & a purple heart emoji* etc. by me.

GenderQueer: picks up genderqueer, genderfluid, nonbinary etc, by @plutopsyche.nicomaramckay.com.

Disability Feeds

Neurodiversity: all ND posts.

AuDHD, ADHD & Autism posts and quote reposts.

Chronic Illness

Disability

Writers Finding Your People; Prompts & Chats

(Last updated Jan 2025)

Daily Prompts

#Vss365 there are so many posts on this tag now that selecting it and seeing the second word hashtagged in posts will tell you the day’s prompt.

#2WordPrompt by @jason-h-abbott.bsky.social

#FromOneLine by @fromoneline.bsky.social asks writers to begin poems/ vss posts with the first line it provides.

#WIPSnips by @wipsnips.bsky.social invites you to share a passage from your wip containing its prompt word.

#PretendPanel a prompt asking writers to pretend we’re being interviewed and respond accordingly. Hosted by @hiriadunning.bsky.social‬.

#BookishQOTD ???????? (open book & blue butterfly emoji is part of the hashtag) by @bookishquestions.bsky.social posts daily prompts for writers and readers to interact.

#QueerWriters, daily checkin for queer writers hosted by @amaralynn.bsky.social. You may need to check their account for the prompts, as the hashtag has other usage too.

#(insert current month)WorldBuilders run by @KiraoftheWind for world building writers.

#FantasyIndies(insertmonth) by @fantasyindies.bsky.social for fantasy writers.

Weekly Chats

#KidLitChat by Bonnie Adamson
Open to Kidlit writers
Tuesdays: 9pm EST.
The chat is one question weekly posted by this account.
It looks like participation is by replying directly to that post, on the chat hashtag.

#HorrorWritersChat by Matt Mason
Open to horror writers
Wednesday: 7pm GMT.

#MomsWritersClub hosted by Sarah Read and Jess.
Open to writers who are ‘Moms, furball moms, other parental units, people who have moms… as long as you’re kind’
Wednesdays

#WeekNightWriters by Dianna Gunn
Open to all writers.
Thursday: 7-8pm EST

#WowChat by Talli Morgan
Open to all writers.
Friday: 7-8pm EST. Discontinued

#SFFChat by C.J Subko & Steve Westenra
Open to SFF writers
Friday: 5pm CST on Thursdays (Aussie AEST 10am Friday) . Same format as above.

#WITD by Payne Sillavan
Open to all writers, some prompts having a dark/ horror leaning angle. Same format as above.
Friday: 5pm central. Discontinued.

#LateNightWrite hosted alternately by Blackbird and Jo Bruehler
Open to all writers.
Monday: 10pm central/ Tues 2pm AEST (Aussies) summer time). This chat has its own feed.

#MiddeGrade Chat by Ros Dando
Sunday: 5pm GST, for MG writers. Paused for 5 months. Discontinued

Following Feed -Making it Easy to View

Your Following/ Home feed automatically displays posts by people you follow AND all replies to those posts AND everyone you follows reposts. If this is too much, you have a few options.

Go to ‘settings’
Select ‘Home Feed preferences’.
Here you decide whether to see or hide all replies, to only display replies by people you follow, or to remove all reposts from your feed.
Select right for ‘no’, left for ‘yes’ to change any of these 3 settings.
Select ‘Done’ (blue button at the bottom).

Home Feed Preferences.
Show Replies (ser to 'No' to hide all replies.
Blue toggle button beside 'Yes'.
Reply Filters.
Enable this setting to only see replies by people you follow.
Grey toggle button beside Followed users only.
Adjust the number of likes a reply must have to be shown on your feed.
Blue toggle button beside 'show all replies.'
Show Reposts
Set this setting to 'no' to hide all reposts from your feed.
Blue toggle button beside 'yes.'

Following Feed Display -Content

Another thing about settings is it will default to not displaying adult content, which includes sexual content, violence, nudity (yes, a happy snap of a woman showing some cleavage will be censored as nudity), hate groups, suspected impersonation and spam. There are harmless emojis I can’t see in my followers posts because I can’t work out which setting in Adult Content Settings is bothered by it. So if you’d like to see things rated anything above G by Bsky:

Select ‘Moderation’ (the handle symbol in your main menu, above settings)
Select ‘Content Filtering’ and ‘hide,’ ‘warn’ or show to suit your preferences.

Posting & Getting Seen (Feeds, Emojis AND Hashtags)

You’ve got 300 characters to play with. So how do you get your posts seen by your people? You can select hashtags to see a feed of what people are posting on them, but they don’t impact your visibility via algorithm, as Bsky doesn’t have algorithms.

Keywords (sometimes emojis and hashtags) get your posts onto topically relevant feeds, with the exception of chat hashtags (tags for prompts posted regularly that have moved to Bsky from Twitter). NB: hashtags were not a thing originally on Bsky, so its hit and miss whether the topic you want to see posts about or are posting about appear on that topic’s feed by keyword and or hashtag.

1. Go back to feeds you added above,

2. Select the 3 dots (top right of the feed name).

3. Select ‘about this feed’.

4. Check which keywords and emojis (and or hashtags) get your posts displayed on that feed.

5. Use any combination of relevant keywords/ emojis/ hashtags on your post to put it on multiple relevant feeds.

Note: you can put pairs of emojis ‘back-to-front’ and they still display on that feed.

Writer/ Author/ Book Visibility

Writers, our main key words are: writer(s), author(s), and any words containing ‘writing’ (this includes WritingCommunity, etc).
Book Feeds: see links under ‘Book Sky’ and ‘My Favourite Feeds’ above.

Accessibility: Alt Text

Alt text is big on Bsky. We want all users to enjoy content posted. If you tend to forget to add alt text to images in your posts, good news —you can adjust your settings so Bsky will not let you hit ‘post’ till you’ve added alt text.

1. Go to ‘Settings’
2. Accessibility (forth option down)
3. Flip the toggle beside ‘require alt text before posting’ to blue.

Sharing Links in Posts

If you paste a link into a post, a little box will appear saying, ‘add link card’. Selecting this will add a link card. Then you can delete the link text from your post, saving characters.
Be warned, if the link makes your post exceed the 300 character limit, Bsky may cut off characters over the limit, breaking the link. So always check your complete link has pasted.

NB: there are no algorithms on Bsky, so unlike on Twitter, posts containing links will not be penalised and are just as visible.

Blocking Culture On Bsky

If you haven’t yet, you’re bound to see posts by and reminding Bsky users that the culture is block freely, block often, isolate trolls of all varieties until they give up and delete their accounts because no one will listen to them. Yes, you can subscribe to block lists to mass block people and these seem popular with MAGA of late, though I’m also seeing posts warning about bad faith block lists with misleading titles not matching users added to them. So user beware. I generally block manually as needed.

Bsky Lists

This looks like feeds, but has key differences. Its a better way to display posts of and stay in touch with people you know, as opposed to following feeds by topic.

Differences With Lists:
-List Feeds don’t pick up posts by keyword.
-List feeds display ONLY and ALL posts of people added to the list.
-You can create your own lists within Bsky (in the same menu that lets you post, view feeds, etc).
-You can add people to lists (go to that person’s profile and hit the 3 dots next to the ‘follow’ button for a menu to do this).
-The ‘about’ section of a list displays the profiles of every account that has been added to that list.

My Lists

I’ve made A LOT of lists. The screenshot below is a menu for them, and every list is linked into that thread. You can also view all of my lists by visiting my profile and looking at the menu under my bio (‘lists’ is on the right end).

If you’d like to be added to any of my lists, let me know by replying to my post below by selecting it.

Emoji flags or relevant symbols beside each keyword describing Elise's Lists:
????????Aussie
????????Kiwi
????????Uk
????????Euro
????????Merican
????????Canada

????️‍????LGBTQIA+
Neurospicy
♿Disabled/Chronic illness

✍️Writers
????Fantasy
????SciFi
????SFF
????Horror/Dark
????️Historic
????‍????‍????KidLit
Poets
????️Mystery/Thrill

????Indie Authors
????️‍????Queer Rep/Romance/Themes
????SFF: trans, enby, asexual,????️‍????
BIPOC
ND/Dis

Functions That Don’t Exist (yet) & Alternatives

No Algorithms –Repost

Likes have no impact on visibility. Re-posting just shares posts with whoever of your followers is on their feed at that time. This means my posts get the most interaction in their first 3 hours (if America is awake then). Aussie afternoons, when America and Europe are sleeping (except the night owls) tend to be VERY quiet.
So if you see a post you think is helpful/ enjoyable etc -repost it to your followers! This is our main way for anything worth seeing to get seen. While most feeds I browse DON’T display reposts, they DO tend to display quote-reposts. So re-posting with your own comment/ thoughts seems best for visibility.

Bookmarking Posts –Pinned Feed

If you see a post you want to refer to later, reply to it with the red pin emoji. Then add this pinned feed to your feeds and select it to view posts you’ve ‘bookmarked.’

Ask Bsky Developers For Functions

There’s a ‘send feedback’ link on your profile (mine displays under my feed’s menu on computer). Selecting that lets you fill in a form to ‘make product suggestions.’ I’ve already made my case for adding pinned posts and requested bookmarks, so we can store things we want to refer back to, without those posts getting buried.

I hope this is all helpful as you get started. Welcome to Bsky!

Formatting a Novel Tips

May 7, 2023 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Why Proper Formatting Is Important -a guest blog by Joyce Reynolds-Ward

We’ve all read the different essays from editors about editing, right? All of that good stuff about slashing excessive adjectives and adverbs, eliminating said-bookisms (definition: going out of your way to use any other dialogue tag besides “said”), cutting prepositional phrases and the like, correct?

All of that is good information to have. But I want to harp on something else about editing that isn’t discussed as often as another big issue.

Formatting.

Formatting is one of those processes that can make your editor either love you or hate you. And if you work with an editor who charges by the hour—i.e., actual time spent working on your manuscript—a clean format saves you a lot of money. Even if you work with an editor who charges a flat fee, clean formatting means that your editor has more time to focus on actual wordage rather than fixing a messy manuscript so that they can get around to working on the words rather than the formatting.

You get a better deal for the money spent on an editor if you spend a little bit of time formatting your manuscripts correctly. Period.

Some of this is simply common sense. A clean manuscript causes less eyestrain for the editor. It’s easier for anyone doing the layout in a production program if the manuscript fits standard formatting protocols. Copyediting and proofreading go much more smoothly.

Most of all, a properly formatted manuscript demonstrates that you are a professional. Period.

Style Guides

So let’s get started. What sort of formatting setups am I talking about?

First of all, if you aren’t familiar with the basics, please go to this site—https://www.shunn.net/format/

Also keep in mind that all of my references are for Word. Again, that’s a professional standard. I understand that others prefer other programs, but in the long run, your documents end up in Word when editors and publishers are working with them. Your formatting needs to be compatible with Word.

The Shunn formatting style is widely accepted by all publishers. Use it, especially for margins and typeface (that means no Calibri! Use Times New Roman at the minimum. I prefer Palatino but others like Garamond, Helvetia, or Bookman Old Style. Essentially, you want to use a serif font that is readable. I personally do not care for Courier or Courier New, but that’s because I no longer find them to be that readable).

I want to emphasize something that Shunn mentions in that first page, which is start with a blank document. Some editors recommend Styles. I’m not fond of using Styles, because it adds extra codes to your document, which can cause problems when someone starts formatting for publication. Plain old blank document works just fine.

Getting Started

Another thing—you’ll see a little symbol that looks like this ¶ on the ribbon at the top of your document. Click it on, and you will see all of the formatting codes that Word wants to show you. This is helpful for figuring out some issues, and allows you to see when you’ve inadvertently hit the space bar multiple times (or your hyperreactive touch pad or keyboard does that for you), or other issues. More on that later.

Set your margins. Then format your paragraphs. That means, in Word, that you go to Format>Paragraphs. Set your line spacing to double spacing and your first line indent to 0.5, with no extra spacing between paragraphs. This means that all you need to do to start a paragraph is hit return.

Spacing

DO NOT USE YOUR TAB BUTTON FOR PARAGRAPH INDENTATION. That just causes more problems for whoever is laying out the manuscript for publication. Don’t hit the space bar five times, either. Again, that causes more issues.

Single space between sentences. Yes, yes, I know that double spacing used to be the standard and for some people it doesn’t look right. However, that era is long gone, even for those of us who started out writing on manual typewriters. Don’t do it. Otherwise, your dear editor or formatter will at the minimum need to do a find-and-replace to eliminate those extra spaces—and that double spacing between sentences can add quite a few pages to your manuscript, especially at novel length. If an editor is quoting you a flat fee based on manuscript pages, single spacing between sentences can save you a little bit of money.

One of my editors automatically deletes any spaces between a period and a hard return, because that space can cause issues in some formatting programs. I haven’t noticed that issue in particular when working with my formatting program (Vellum), but I understand that this is a problem with some programs.

Justification

Always use left justification (the default) unless you are doing something in particular with a small section, or centering a title. Right-side ragged edge is not an issue when drafting and editing, as modern formatting programs automatically convert left-justified Word documents to full-justified documents.

Page Breaks

If you use scene break dividers instead of an extra space (I recommend the dividers, but some people don’t like them), show them with a #. Some people use asterisks, or multiple #s. I’ve found that formatting programs understand # just fine, and will put a prettier scene break divider in nicely when # appears between paragraphs. Some presses have different standards—<<<>>> for one, or ~0~ for another, but # also works just fine.

Text: Formatting a novel in Word.Image: two pages of my novel Secrets of the Sorcery War formatted in word, with author name and title headers, page numbers right bottom corner, indented paragraphs, chapter heading and art and a chapter heading.

Spelling and Grammar Check

Do not completely trust your spellchecker or grammar checker in Word. I have discovered numerous mistakes in Word alone, including indicators of extra commas, word substitutions that don’t make sense (such as “cheap” when I was describing a bird’s “cheep”—my most recent gripe). One of my greatest rants is the misuse of “free reign” for “free rein.” Word will tell you to use “reign” instead of “rein,” and it is WRONG. The idiom refers to giving a horse more rein when you are riding or driving it—i.e., telling the horse to set its own pace and direction. That is what the idiom means. Period. “Free reign” is meaningless in that context. But Word also makes mistakes when it comes to the proper use of “its” versus “it’s”; “lets” versus “let’s”. Be aware.

If you don’t trust your spelling and grammar understanding, use other checkers besides Word. Also, don’t trust that it will identify all of your misspellings and typos. If the mistake looks like a real word but doesn’t make sense in context, then Word may not flag it for you.

When you are cutting and pasting across documents, or if you are working on different devices (especially switching between a tablet and desktop or laptop) be aware that Word will insert a superscript “o” irregularly in those sections. Those have to be edited out by hand, as far as I know. Some people may be macro wizards who know how to do it otherwise. It’s a pain but there’s no way around it. If everything else is clean, then editing those “o” appearances isn’t that big a deal.

Version Control (during edits)

This leads into the related but short topic of version control when working with editors or beta readers. I do not recommend working within the document that you get back from an editor or beta reader. My suggestion is that you designate one version as your final document, and do all editing within that document without cutting and pasting. Why? Because that introduces other formatting into your document, including those dratted superscript “o”s.

I learned this lesson the hard way when working with a British editor. Working in the document I got back instead of my own designated final document ended up with that person’s formatting instead of my own—including British English spell check and usages. Designating that separate final document also lets you work with multiple other versions. I do like keeping earlier versions around when drafting, because sometimes I end up cutting things that I wanted to keep in the long run.

Concluding Remarks

Basically, the lesson here is to spend a little bit of time learning how to set up your formatting options, at least as much as you can do with your device. Apps on mobile devices such as tablets and phones can be more restrictive for formatting setups than laptops or desktops. It’s probably a good idea to indicate to your editor or beta reader that you may have been doing this work in an app on a mobile device, because then they know what to look for in fixing it.

Play with your formatting and understand it. Your editor will thank you—and you may save yourself a little bit of money in the long run.

Joyce in ski gear, including goggles and helmet at the snow, pine tree background.

About the Author -Joyce Reynolds-Ward

Joyce Reynolds-Ward is a speculative fiction writer who splits her time between Enterprise and Portland, Oregon. Her books include THE MARTINIERE MULTIVERSE series (Amazon, Kobo, Apple, B&N), THE MARTINIERE LEGACY series, KLONE’S STRONGHOLD, THE NETWALK SEQUENCE series and GODDESS’S HONOR series. Joyce has edited two anthologies, Pulling Up Stakes (2018), and Whimsical Beasts (2019).

Besides writing, Joyce enjoys reading, quilting, horses, skiing, and outdoor activities. She has been a member of Soroptimist International of Wallowa County since 2017.

Total Page Visits: 2987

Becoming an Indie Author (Part 2: Book Launch)

July 8, 2022 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Having covered the steps of the editing process, setting up your author platform and choosing distributors in this blog, it’s time to talk indie book launch tips. On to self-publishing step 8!

8. Book Launch (Marketing Plan)

Your marketing plan depends on publishing on KU or publishing wide, and your goals. For KU you’ll want social media posts, perhaps a paid cover reveal, a giveaway and or other to ‘generate buzz’ about your book. Your goal will be to chase a good Amazon ranking on launch day.

If you plan to publish wide, Amazon rankings won’t matter so match, but you’ll still want to do a cover reveal and spread the word about your book. If you’re aiming for a softer launch, this blog detailing Emma Lombard’s marketing plan and experience is worth a read. Whether you choose a buzz filled hard release, or a soft release, many things bellow will need considering.

Research Marketing Mistakes to Avoid

To put it bluntly, from reading, viewing and talking to fellow indies, it seems that paid advertising offers many ways to set your money on fire. Step one to avoid that seems to be take a course before spending money you don’t intend to lose on Facebook or Amazon adds. For any other paid services, I highly recommend talking to other indies to see what they recommend based on their experiences. If you don’t have many to talk to, read the article bellow.

Resources: 17 Author Tips and Biggest Blunders by Emma Lombard.

Set Up Pre-orders

You may want to set up pre-orders (especially for a book 2 or later, in which case do so before you publish book 1, so book 2’s preorder is in book 1’s back matter when its first published). You’ll also need a pre-order if this is your first book, as you can’t set up author profiles or put your book on review sites to start gathering reviews until you have a purchase link.

This can take the pressure off leading up to launch today, because setting up the pre-order means having the blurb, keywords, categories, meta data and price all set on retailers well in advance. (Uploading all this stuff for stores is unpacked in step 12 below). Having a pre-order means you can share an active purchase link when you do your cover reveal on social media and in your newsletter too. And on any social media posts leading up to launch day.

Book Links For Pre-orders. Before posting pre-order links, use booklinker to generate a link that will take people clicking on it to the Amazon store selling in their local currency. If you’re releasing wide, use bookstoread to create a link to a page displaying icons linked to your book’s page on each retailer your ebook and paperback are available at.

Grow Your Newsletter

Consider newsletter swaps with writers in the same genre, writing for the same audience age. Building your list means more people to tell when your book drops. Your reader magnet can get its own landing page on BookFunnel, where you can join group promos. I suggest choosing the promos with the most participants in your genre. This maximises your chances of the download page with all participating author’s reader magnets getting you the most amount of sign ups.

Story Origin is another good site for swaps, though the group promos hear tend to be smaller, so I find it best for swapping directly with authors (each author displaying the reader magnet’s cover and link in their newsletter, instead of a group landing page image, blurb and link).

If you write SFF, here’s a facebook group for organising swaps with SFF authors (though you may want to file it for it for later as these FB lists seem to be 2k+). If you don’t write SFF, its worth searching for FB newsletter swaps in your genre. This is something you can put more focus on after the book is out if you run out of time beforehand (which I had to do after releasing Manipulator’s War.)

Also: Keep Subscribers Engaged. Here’s some content ideas from Bookfunnel to help with that.

Multi-Author Promotions

Again, this is something I’ll keep in mind for later, but you may like to consider Social Media Author Hops with other authors. For a Facebook example. see this guest post by Anna Campbell). If you’re on Book Funnel, here’s a FB Group for organising multi-author promos.

Resources: Designing Your Own Virtual Book Tour Basics.

Reviews and Blog Tours

Reviews don’t just show potential readers what they may enjoy about your book, getting enough of them makes you eligible to be featured on Bookbub, and can make your book more visible on Amazon (displaying it as an ‘also bought’). But don’t pay for reviews. Amazon don’t like that and I know people who have been rigorously policed by them, losing reviews Amazon suspect they paid for.

The alternative I’m finding works well is blog tours. This isn’t paying for reviews, its paying for a tour organiser to make your book accessible to reviewers and or book bloggers, and for your book (and sometimes you as an author) to be featured on blogs and or social media.

Which tours are worth the cost? I’d say the ones that get reviews, though reviews may not be guaranteed. Rachel’s Resources has been recommended to me by indies who were happy with reviews they received. Itsy Bitsy has landed between 19-30 reviews on Amazon, Goodreads and Bookbub for my first two books and I was very happy with Colleen (the organiser, who runs a tight ship).

Promotion Sites & Paid Newsletters

Check out platforms which host giveaways, or promote books. Group giveaways are a good way to grow your newsletter or Bookbub following, depending which of the two readers are required to do to enter the giveaway. Sites like BookSweeps or Prolific Works may help.

A relatively safe way to spend money when you’re still learning how to market books wisely can be paying for a feature in newsletters. First: ensure you did get critical reader feedback on your blurb, that your cover is genre-appropriate and up to scratch (for more see part 1 of this blog) and your price appropriate. Any of those three needing work can still waste money (I know because my first paid newsletter was an expensive way to sell 0 books).

Again: ask people publishing in a similar genre what they’ve had success with, or read this post of paid newsletters Nicholas Erik has had good experiences promoting a range of genres in.

Advertising

I’ve seen so many authors say that Facebook adds or Amazon adds ‘don’t work for them’, yet for some authors they seem to be AM-A-ZING. I haven’t tried either, but the fact people have designed week long courses and written whole books about one or the other tells me that if you plan to use either without thorough research —you’re wasting money. Even with study, you may still find one, the other or both just aren’t your jam. So proceed with caution (and see the free courses linked below).

Measuring Sales
Book Report is handy for this, and syncs with Amazon Kindle to analyse your sales data.

Press Kit
Its not like a newspaper, or magazine is going to interview me, random indie author is it? But they may (as Emma Lombard can tell you). And if they do and they ask you questions, do you know what you’ll say? If they want easy access to pertinent info, do you have a page on your website they can refer to, to check any details and ensure their interview article is accurate?
For an example press kit, see mine.

Marketing Resources

Facebook Group 20booksto50k is a great space to discuss and learn to market indie books. Wide for the Win is a great starting point if you publish wide.

Free Courses: 5 Day Amazon Add Course, by Dave Cheeson (Kindleprenuer).

Starting From Zero, with David Gaughran.

Google Air, free Google add workshops (you have to register using your Google account.)

Wondering about sales trends? K-lytics is a handy (free) blog to follow, though their paid services are expensive.

9. Set up Author Profiles (Goodreads, Bookbub, Storygraph etc)

To seek reviews, you need an author profile and your book’s information up on review sites. Your book needs to be on sale or pre-order to do this. For Goodreads, you have to add your book to Goodreads first, then you can claim your author profile on it. This is worth doing early on, as reviews can be uploaded to Goodreads well before launch day. Tip: get your betas to add their reviews when they finish reading your late draft.

On other sites, you simply need to sign up, add a purchase link for your book, a profile photo, fill in your bio etc. I suggest using the same profile photo and short bio for all these sites, your website, social media etc., so people you ‘meet’ on any digital space recognise you on others.

If you seek ARC reviewers, I suggest giving them your Amazon, Goodreads and Bookbub profile links, and encouraging reviews on all three. Bookbub reviews may one day help you become eligible for a coveted Bookbub feature.

I have author profiles set up on Amazon, Goodreads, All Author (purely to enter their cover of the month contest), Bookbub and Storygraph —another review site, popular because it isn’t Amazon affiliated, unlike Goodreads. (The Amazon and Goodreads links above are to instructions to set up your author page while the All Author, Bookbub and Storygraph links will take you to the sign-up pages for those platforms).

10. Update your Socials

Now is a good time to put a book banner on your website’s header and a cover, blurb and pre-order or purchase link front and centre on your site’s home page. It’s also a good time to place a book banner as your social media cover image and to do and pin a post about your upcoming release (this may be your cover reveal).

11. Get Your Street Team Set Up

A ‘street team’ for a traditionally published author may be a large group of people excited about the upcoming book, formally organised on a Discord server, or other digital space. It probably has an application form to join and hundreds of applicants. It will definitely be an organised group effort to ‘generate hype’ about the upcoming book.

For debut indie authors, your ‘street team’ may simply be a few friends you privately message for help spreading the word about your book. Ideally, it’s (and in my experience it works well to have) a mutual indie support group, which helps in any (or all) of the below three ways. Yes, I have an Indie Author Discord for this. Feel free to reply to this Blue Sky post, this Mastdon post or use my contact page if you’d like an invite link.)

Social Media Boosting

True, social media is primarily for socialising, not selling and buying stuff. But you want help telling everyone you’re been interacting with on social media (and ideally potential readers beyond those people) that your book will soon be released. I suggest doing this by creating or joining mutual support groups of indie authors writing similar genres likely to be read by your potential readers. Before Twitter died, dm groups there were useful for this. Depending which social media your writing community is on, this may vary. I tend to use the Discord mentioned above for social media boosting now, with my writer friends scattered across Instagram, Blue Sky and Mastadon.

Blog Visibility

I’ve heard that blogging is more useful for promoting non-fiction books, and may have little impact with fiction. But my first interview was met with a detailed reply from someone I didn’t know on Twitter, who had read and enjoyed the interview. Blog reach may be small, but a lot of indies I know are interviewing each other about writing, life and their books. Again, ideally the people you interview and are interviewed by, write similar books and have a similar audience to you, the goal being getting your name and book’s existence out there and helping them do the same.

Reviews

Ask people interested in your genre if they’d like an ARC (advanced reader copy) for free, in exchange for an honest review (ideally posted on launch day or soon after on retailers, Goodreads and Bookbub). Your ‘review street team’ may include finding ARC readers on Booksprout, a subscription service with a monthly fee. I paid around $12 a month for a few months, getting 1 or less reviews, then cancelled, but others have done better). Or Netgalley, one off or monthly subscription service, price on request, also used by trad publishing, though I haven’t investigated this yet).

If you’re releasing a fantasy book, this FB group for finding beta readers and reviewers may help you get more ARC reviews (I got one from there).

How do you reach people for social media support and author interviews?
Hopefully, your social media networking since step 2 has led you into author groups, or built you enough of a following to organise your own, or your newsletter has enough reach to do so. If not, again, SFF authors feel free to reply to this Blue Sky post or use my contact page to join my Discord for help with this.

12. Format Your E-book (+paperback if applicable)

Paperback

Perhaps ironically, I found formatting paperback (in Word) easy. You choose your paper size (I chose 5.5 by 8.5 for my YA Fantasy, a common size), set your margins (do this early because when I changed them last, Word re-inserted page numbers into the front matter). I followed Chloe Alice Balkin’s youtube tutorial, using ‘layout,’ ‘page breaks’, ‘next page’ to add page-number-free front matter, created styles in Word for front matter, back matter, titles, chapter headings, chapter header art, dingus and for body text.

Then I saved the Word doc as a pdf and the book was uploaded to Amazon without mishap. (Ingram Spark warned my chapter heading art, author bio pic etc could cause print issues, but they didn’t).

Ebook Formatting (in Word)

This I found fiddlier. If you format a paperback yourself in Word, mistakes can insert random blank pages throughout the book, or splice content across pages.

Don’t

-Hit ‘enter’ for page breaks (your book may format without page breaks, and for multiple pov books this will present to readers as head-hopping.)
-Let Word generate a Table Of Contents for you (there are many ways this can go wrong).

-Leave any images without a style (my chapter header images were displayed on separate pages to chapter headings when I converted to epub because of this).

Do

–Use a tool to do the formatting for you. Reedsy’s tool is popular. Draft2Digital will format your book for you (though check it, as it couldn’t handle the chapter header art in mine). If you’re a Mac user willing to pay a one off fee, Vellum is very popular (no, I’m not an affiliate for them or anyone else linked in this post).

–OR Use a Style Guide. Smashwords Style Guide is good, but wordy.

Formatting In Word
-Use styles for EVERYTHING (headings, copyright page, all images, body text etc).
-Manually create your contents page by bookmarking each chapter and linking the bookmark to the chapter heading on the contents page. (Smashwords Style Guide, page 20 has a video showing you how).

-If you’re wide, upload your interior file everywhere at the same time. Kobo and Smashwords spotted issues with my ebook that Amazon didn’t, while Ingram noted potential paperback issues Amazon didn’t. Cross-checking issues each distributor and or store spots, then making final tweaks, can help you give a better-formatted version to all of them.

–get proofs for every format on every store/ distributor to ensure they turn out ok. (Kobo converted my Word doc to epub without mishap, but Draft to Digital had one issue throughout, while the Smashwords epub conversion was so bad that I converted the epub myself (using Convertio).

Front Matter Tips

-Keep it short so readers can get to the book and the online look inside feature shows the opening pages.
-Look at the copyright notices of other indie books to help you phrase yours.
-Mention other or upcoming titles on your ‘also by author ____’ page.
-Include a digital table of contents in ebooks.
-Consider a map and or personis dramatis for epic fantasy or similar, so readers can see where things are happening and check who is who as they read. (I kept both as front matter when a reviewer said they didn’t notice the dramatis personae until the end and would have used it sooner had they known it was there).

Back Matter Tips

-Link to your website, newsletter sign up and if you like, your social media/ Goodreads/ Bookbub.
-You may like to politely ask for reviews, but only include an Amazon link for reviews in the Kindle ebook. Apple will reject your book if it has an Amazon link in it. Tip: link to Goodreads/ Bookbub or Storyorigin in review requests for all non-Amazon stores, seeing as none of those review sites are store competitors (this means you can have the same file for all non-Amazon stores).
-Write a book 2 blurb and include in the ebook a pre-order link to book 2.

Formatting Error Checklist

Is your front matter free of page numbers?
Does your ebook contents page display appropriately and do its contents link correctly to pages?
Does your epub have random blank pages anywhere?
Are your front and back matter spaced as you wish?
Are your chapter headings (and images) spaced appropriately and consistently?
Does your back matter only contain links to Amazon in the copy you’re uploading to Amazon? (Other stores may reject interior files with Amazon links).
Does your Ingram Spark file only contain black and white or greyscale text, styles and images? (NB: They’ll warn you off colour, even colour overlaid with greyscale, but my colour overlaid with greyscale chapter header art, author profile pic etc. printed fine).

13 Uploading your Book

Meta Data

If you’re going wide, I suggest creating a file that has all the meta data you’ll need to copy and paste everywhere you upload your book (your name, book name, genre, categories, tags, blurb, contributors, ISBN etc).

Choosing Amazon Categories.
Check which categories your comp titles are listed under using this category checker.
Have a look at which sub-genre/ fiction headings match your book using Book Industry Study Group’s List.
Check the number of competitors in relevant categories. Standard advice says ‘pick obscure categories you can rank in.’ But my best rankings (in the US) weren’t in completely obscure categories. On the US store they were:

Elise's Amazon rankings.
130 IN Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Fiction (Kindle
383 in Teen & Young Adult LGBTQ+ Fiction (Books)
919 LGBTQ+ Fantasy (Kindle)

Amazon will let you choose three categories, and insist you answer whether your book is 18+ or not before letting you do so. (They used to give you two categories, then let you email requesting 8 more, but that’s changes in 2023).

Bad category news: every Amazon national store has different categories, so you’ll have to contact them telling them the exact category string for EVERY store you want categories on. NB: English language categories aren’t just on the US, Canada, UK and Australia. India and Germany’s categories are also in English, Germany being where I initially had the second highest no. of clicks.

Choosing Amazon Key Words
Use ‘incognito’ mode on your browser, then on Google, Goodreads or Amazon, type your genre and audience age, and see which search terms your browser suggests (popularly searched ones) and which are relevant to your book. You’re not limited to 7 of these —jam as many as you can fit into Amazon’s 7 key word boxes. Also, there’s no need for key words to repeat your category, title or subtitle.

Pricing

To determine a price in any currency, this article outlines factors you may like to consider.
My best advice:
-Get on the Amazon store of each region of the world it sells to (Important NB: a reasonable $US price converts into what Brits consider to be a too-expensive UK price, so don’t just let retailers convert international pricing from Us dollars, check which pricing appears reasonable by currency and national store).
-Search books of your genre and audience age and note pricing.
-Get an idea of cheap prices, moderate prices and outrageously expensive prices (you will see the latter, especially for traditionally published ebooks).
-Observe whether you think a book is indie or traditionally published and how prices vary because of that.
-Check how many pages a books has to get an idea of a reasonable price for a 70k vs. a 100k+ book.
-Choose a price taking the above and your personal publishing/ marketing goals and factors in the article linked above into account.
(Standard indie prices seem to be $4.99 US for ebook and they were $14.99 for paperback. But post-pandemic supply chain chaos and supplier pricing increases has put costs up, mostly forcing indie authors to increase prices so we don’t publish paperbacks at a loss).

–Check the profit margin in every currency. Does it leave you room to put the book on sale without losing money? In the UK, books are so cheap that you may struggle to discount your book there and still break even. But if you aim to make the smallest of profits on every sale (as opposed to freebies), you’ll need to check regular vs. sale price profit margins carefully.

Sale Pricing

If you’re discounting your pre-orders or book, don’t just change the pricing in KDP’s or any other distributor’s dashboard. Sale prices are entered separately. On KDP, as with categories, go to your KDP dashboard. Select ‘help,’ ‘contact us’ at the bottom of the menu, then ‘pricing’ and read the information.
NB: if requesting a price match you’ll need to have links to the Apple/ Barnes and Noble/ Kobo price for each countries store you want price matched on Amazon.
Wide NB: we have to request price changes manually and Amazon won’t always agree to the price we want, even when we advise them what its already set to on other stores. But the bonus we get is that on DraftoDigital and Kobo direct (and possibly other stores -I’m not sure), we can schedule sale prices start and end dates ourselves, in advance.

Uploading

To Distributors. Before you upload your book to any distributor, be clear about which distributor you want to send your books to which retailer (or other distributor), so you don’t double up.

Upload To Libraries. If you’re American or Canadian, you can upload your books to the Indie Author Project to get your book into libraries in both countries. And yes, you’ll earn royalties -see the FAQ page.
Fellow Australian authors, we can register our books at the National Library of Australia Legal Deposit. We can register to be compensated for having our books in libraries via Australia Lending Rights Schemes, if you register your book within 5 years of its publication date.

Local Brick and Mortar Stores. This involves being bold, but I’ve spoken to indies who’ve told local booksellers they’ve published a book and the booksellers wanted to see it (yeah, carry it or have a photo of your cover on your phone) and then stocked it on consignment (meaning they pay you if it sells, and hand it back to you if it doesn’t). So it pays to be bold! To help you prepare to approach book shops, here’s some comprehensive (Uk sourced) advice on Getting Your Book into a High End Store.

14. Cover Reveal

Post your cover on your social media, share it in your newsletter and share it on any promo sites you’ve joined which feature cover reveals, such as xpressbooktours. You may wish your cover reveal to be the first of a series of social media promo posts counting down to launch day, featuring teasers, character introductions, ARC review snippets etc and containing or naming the location of your pre-order purchase link.

15. Release Day

Put purchase links on your site and author profiles. Post your launch day post on social media (a selfie with an author copy goes down well) and interact with everyone who replies. I hope it goes well for you!

(And if you’d like to join an Indie Author Discord to discuss any of the above, let me know by replying to my posts about it on Blue Sky on Mastodon, or via my contact page.)

Acknowledgements

I learnt A LOT of the above from conversations with and between the following indie authors:

Cheryl Burman, Historical and SFF author.
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Chloe Alice Balkin, Speculative Romance
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Cartoon of Chris with a green mo hawk, raised left brow, holding glasses on the end of his nose. — Chris Vandyke, SFF Author
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Bitmoji of Brown, shoulder length haired, black round classes waring Becky waving. — Rebecca Jonesee, Romance
website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Dreena Collins
(Jane Harvey)
Website
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook

Waist to head shot of K.W. wearing a black training top and cap with her long blonde hair in a pigtale, and a white-toothed smile. — K. W. Kenny, YA Fantasy Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Jay Veloso Batista, Fantasy Author. Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Leia in a fluffy purple hat, blue eyes on camera, pink lips smiling. — Leia Talon, Fantasy author.
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Lily holds her light brown hair back and gives a toothy grin. — Lily
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Total Page Visits: 4524

Becoming an Indie Author (Part 1/2)

May 1, 2022 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

You’ve written a book, you’re considering self publishing and you wonder what it involves. In short: a lot! This post is a concise summary from editing, through self publishing and book launching, with many links to tools and information to help you along the way. It contains almost everything I’ve learned from indie author discussions in a Self Publishing Twitter group by Cheryl Burman, and what I’ve learned while self publishing my first book.

I’m Writing/ Have Drafted My Book, What Now?

1. Craft Knowledge

If this is your First book, and or you haven’t already researched how to develop your characters and plot, or read up on story structure, now is a a good time! Make notes to help get your head around character development, story structure and how they intertwine. Then use your notes to write character and plot focused outlines or revision/ structural edit lists to address potential character/ plot holes in your draft.

Resources to Help: KM Weiland’s Blog Series’: Developing Character Arcs, Story Structure and Scene Structure.

2. Start Building Your Author Platform: Social Media

Yes, I’m talking about social media before you’ve even edited your manuscript, let alone have a book seeking a publishing path. Why? Because it takes time to grow a following. And the writing and editing stages are great opportunities to get to know fellow writers, build friendships and learn from each other. This is also the time to begin describing interesting features of your book and start generating interest in your story!

Post about the contents and the experience (or process) of writing your book. Talk to other writers on a social media platform of your choice’s #WritingCommunity (my favourite being Blue Sky. I’ve also heard good things about Instagram’s, though Twitter’s is clearly dying with the site). Connect with people you share interests with on social media (local interests, genres, themes that inspired and tie in to your story etc).

To begin with —pick ONE social media you feel is a natural (or least uncomfortable) fit for you. Get comfortable calling yourself a writer there, and publicly interacting as one. (FYI: there’s no such thing as an aspiring writer. If you write —you ARE a writer!). Experiment, and learn the ropes of your first platform. Then start on a second platform. (Unless you’re bursting with restless energy *waves* and would rather choose the chaotic path of tackling multiple things at once over the easier one *waves again*).

Resources: Social Media for Writers, Facebook For Authors by Jane Friedman, #WritingCommunity Hashtags Twitter & Instagram, Blue Sky Newby Guide.

3. Critical Readers

Get at least three beta readers (if you can find more, I’d do so) to comment on how they find your characters, plot, pacing, story tension ect. If all they say is, ‘this is great and I liked this bit,’ I’d be asking, do my betas have the: Experience and ability to critically evaluate my story?
Willingness and time to honestly comment on things they find problematic (or less than ideal) as a reader?
Communication skills to spell out how any particular aspect of my writing confused, bored or otherwise put them off?
Or do my betas think I only want encouragement (or a positivity pass), as opposed to constructive feedback to help me grow as a writer and to ensure my story is clear and engaging to unfamiliar readers?

If you suspect any of the above is an issue with one of your beta readers, I’d get another/ an extra beta reader. I wouldn’t be satisfied readers will be satisfied with my book until I’ve had that rigorous critical reader who pulls me up on every potential crease, tear or hole in the reading experience. —And I’ve repaired and ironed those things accordingly. Having attempted that for Manipulator’s War, I’ve now got reviews complimenting things (pacing and characters) the reviews may have complained about, if not for my critical readers.

Resources to Help: Finding Critical Readers, Mentors & Editors.
Checklists to aid Critical Reader feedback: Chapter one, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3.
Self Editing advice: Developing Characters, Scene & Line Edit Tips.

4. Editing

Consider your goals for this book/ series and your budget. If you can’t afford an editor, get a second round of critical readers to comment on your post-beta-edited draft. Then, if you’re happy with it —get other, sharp eyed people to proofread it.
If you can afford an editor, consider which type(s) of editing you can afford: developmental (structural), stylistic (line editing), copy editing (word level technical & factual edits) and proofreading. Manuscript Critiques/ Reports can be pricy, but are a cheaper alternative to (prohibitively expensive for most people) developmental edits. Bear in mind, some freelance copy editors charge by the hour instead of by the word. So if you tend to write fairly clean 100k books for example (like me), paying by the hour is more affordable and better value for money.

Resources: Different Levels of Editing and Critical Reader Services by editor Amelia Wiens (who did my manuscript critique) and 5 Things Authors Need to Know Before Hiring an Editor.

5. Decide on Cover Art

In choosing an artist or creating your own cover, research current covers in your genre and audience age. You want a cover design that clearly says to the reader “this book is (insert your genre)”. You also want a design that appeals to readers of that genre in ways they’re used to seeing. Pay attention to current trends in your genre, by researching new releases and studying their covers. For example, dark covers are a thing with YA Fantasy at the movement, and if characters are on epic fantasy covers — they’ve got weapons. So my cover for Manipulator’s War is dark and features weapons.

Creating Your Own Cover

Remember that you need copyright permission for the art and fonts you use.
These fonts are public domain and free on Google. You can also purchase fonts from Creative Market.
You’ll find free public domain images on Pixaby, Smithsonian Open Acess and paid ones on Shutterstock. To make the most of those resources, you may like cover design support from fellow indies via FB Group Book Design 101 and feedback on your cover and blurb from FB group Indie Cover Project.

Blurbs

Traditionally published authors will have honed their pitches near to perfection. Their blurbs will have had a LOT of critical feedback, editing by a literary agent, and possibly by an editor before a back cover exists to place those blurbs on. So for your blurbs to compete at online retailers —hone your pitch craft! You can get pitch critiques from the facebook group Author Unleashed, which focuses on this skill and on my Authoring Discord. You’ll find my best advice for writing an engaging blurb in this post.

Cover Artist

Manipulator's War Cover
Left: portrait of young Heir Ruarnon, their hair braided back, eyes outlined with kohl, wearing fitted bronze armour, a bronze disc kilt, holding a helmet in their left hand and leaning on a spear with their right, which pierces the ‘A’ in the title.
Right: Red glyphs outline a stone archway, through which fire arrows rain down on torch-lit battlements atop a castle, at night time.
Bottom text: Elise Carlson, Ruarnon Trilogy Book 1 — Cover by GlintofMischief.

If hiring a cover artist, check the contract to see if you own the art, and if you need to pay the artist fees for using the art in your merchandise, on your website and in any promotional graphics you make. If you’re unsure which of multiple pieces of concept art to use for the final cover, try posting a poll on social media and or consulting your newsletter subscribers. In considering cover artists, you may also like to ask how they work, and how much your cover design can change within the negotiated price.

For example, my cover artist Judah (GlintofMischief) and I built a set of Pinterest pins as well as discussing my cover, and I reviewed multiple concept sketches before we chose (and modified) the published cover. I also chose my fonts, and designed the glyphs on Manipulator’s Wars cover.

If you want to be actively involved but don’t have the skills to produce your own cover, check you’re hiring an artist as prepared to work collaboratively with you as Judah is with me. If you’ve got Indie Author friends, I suggest beginning your cover artist hunt by asking them (or tweeting) for recommendations.

6. Choose Your Distributer(s)

Kindle Unlimited or Wide?

In choosing a distributer, you’ll have to decide whether you want your ebooks available on Kindle Unlimited (where readers pay a monthly rate to access Kindle’s library, as opposed to buying your ebook, and you are paid per page read). This means your ebooks are exclusive to Kindle. Alternatively, your books can be sold in multiple digital spaces —publishing wide and available on Kindle, but not Kindle Unlimited. Wide vs. Exclusive: A Tale of Two Marketing Systems by David Gaughran is a good resource to help you weigh factors and understand both options. If you’re considering wide, I highly recommend the Facebook Group Wide for the Win, who discuss marketing strategies and have information threads on publishing wide.

Publishing Wide, Distributor Factors to Note

Do you want to publish ebook and paperback or just ebook?
Do you want pre-orders? Again —ebook (and paperback)?
How do you feel about managing multiple dashboards on difference distributors/ stores?
Do you want your book to be distributed to libraries as well as stores?
Do you want access to retailers in-house promotions?
Resource: Why Ingram Spark expanded distribution for print books is preferable to Amazon’s, including ISBN advice, by Eric V. Van Der Hope.

Ingram Spark

Allows paper back preorders via Amazon (KDP/ Amazon only allows ebook pre-orders).
-Lets you order paperback author copies before publication, (Amazon doesn’t).
-Requires you to purchase an ISBN for paperbacks.
-Distributes ebook and paperback globally, but multiple sources I’ve read discourage using their ebook distribution.

Draft 2 Digital

D2D charges a 10% commission and has paperback distribution in beta, using Ingram Spark print books.
In-house Apple and Kobo promotions are available via D2D (and not otherwise unless you go direct to these retailers).
DraftToDigital is now merged with Smashwords, so having books on D2D distributes all the same locations as Smashwords (whose dashboard I found horrendous to use, so I’d go with D2D if you’re considering either). Also, D2D now uses Ingram Spark’s infrastucture to publish paperbacks (I also find Ingram’s dashboard unfriendly to use, so in future will Ingram for paperbacks).

Distributer Links: Kindle Self Publishing, Ingram Spark, Draft2 Digital.

Going Direct, Some Considerations

By going direct, I mean which stores will you create an account with and upload to directly? In answering that, I’d consider:

Which stores dominate and have the most reach generally?
In which countries do you want to sell your book in and what are the biggest retailers in those markets?
Which retailers have the biggest share of the market in your home country?
Does the store you’re considering pay in your local currency? (Being based outside the US can be a disadvantage here).
What do other indies have to say about their experiences with specific distributors? Have they had issues, what kind and how did they find customer service/ support?

Amazon is obvious for market share and reach. Googleplay store is hardly a leading book retailer, but they’re Google, so that appeals to some indies. (They were unable to verify my Aussie bank account, which is why I’m not direct with them). Barnes and Noble are another logical choice for popularity in America and an indie friend said the standard of their print books was better than Amazon print books for her book (they only pay Australians in US dollars and the currency conversion fees may be higher than my earnings, so I’m not direct with them). Beyond that, I’d be considering the questions above to decide who to go direct with.

Imprints: do you Need or Want One?

Amazon will display information about your book to potential readers, including ‘publisher.’ If you don’t want Amazon to display ‘publisher (insert your legal name)’, I suggest creating an imprint. Mine is Faraway Fiction Press. I’ve registered it as a business name with the relevant Australian body for tax purposes and it has its own website (to reserve and link the .com domain name to my books).

Resource: For info on the benefits of having your own press, see this post by David Wogan.

ISBNs: Do you Need or Want them?

Many retailers offer a free ISBN, which can only be used for your book at that retailer. So if you use free ISBNs, your ebook will be registered under a different ISBN at each retailer, and that ISBN will link back to that retailer. If you purchase and choose to use your own ISBNs, each format needs its own ISBN, but you can use the same ISBN for your print or audio or ebook at different retailers. ISBNs are free in some countries (Canada and Sweden among them), and are best purchased by their official seller (Bowker) in the US, Australia and elsewhere.

NB: If you distribute print books via Ingram or DraftoDigital paperback, you must purchase an ISBN. If you only plan to have print books on Amazon, you may prefer to use free ISBNs for everything. Which ISBNs are best —free or paid— depends on which factors you prioritise: saving money, having sequential ISBNs pointing back to you instead of a retailer or other. Many indie authors seem happy with either option.

7. Extend your Author Platform

Website

I suggest setting this up after social media because imposter syndrome is real, and hopefully having been on social media and presented as a writer for at least a few months (I was on social media over a year before I took this step), you will find it more natural to write an author bio and present yourself professionally as an author on your site. Blogs are optional and of course take more time, but they bring a lot more traffic to your site than an author name and book title no-one has heard of, so I recommend them.

If you decide to have a blog, I recommend drafting posts ahead of time. (I teach full time, so I write most blogs in the summer holidays, then edit and publish them once a month).

Resources: Author Website Set Up Tips, Unpublished Authors and Websites by Jane Friedman, 100 Unpublished Author Blog Ideas by Mixtus Media.

Once your site and social media presence are established, its a good time to think about your newsletter. If you only have time for a blog OR a newsletter, here’s a post by Jane Friedman weighing pros and cons of having only either. If you start a newsletter, you’ll need a reader magnet. A 10-20k short story, maybe the origin or background story of a central character or a subplot you had to edit out of your novel can work nicely for this.

To build your subscriber base, I’ve found Bookfunnel group promos get the most sign ups, while it seems that for direct newsletter swaps between authors (each author sharing the other’s reader magnet in an agreed upon newsletter), Story Origin has a lot of authors and authors with larger lists.

Resources: Not sure what to say in your newsletter or where to promote it and how? I’ve blogged ideas in Author Newsletters: the Basics. See also Unpublished Author Newsletters by @LombardEmma.
For newsletter providers and more information, see Jane Friedman’s Newsletters for Authors Getting Started Guide.

Part 2

I suspect that’s more than enough information to get you started, and possibly enough to make your head spin, so I’ll end this blog here. Part 2 is packed with ideas and resources for your book launch and initial marketing plan, author profiles, formatting and uploading your book and tips right up to launch day.

Acknowledgements

I learnt A LOT of the above from conversations with and between the following indie authors:

Cheryl Burman, Historical and SFF author.
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Chloe Alice Balkin, Speculative Romance
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Chris Vandyke, SFF Author
Website
Facebook
Instagram

Rebecca (white) smiling in a cafe seat, wearing rectangular rimmed glasses, her hair dyed light brown. — Rebecca Jonesee, Romance
website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Dreena Collins
(Jane Harvey)
Website
Twitter
Instagram
Facebook

K.W. in a black cap and black sports top, standing before boulders (she's white, blue eyed and blonde haired). — K. W. Kenny, YA Fantasy Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Jay Veloso Batista, Fantasy Author. Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Leia Talon, Fantasy author.
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Lily, poet & kidlit author
Website
Twitter
Facebook
Instagram

Total Page Visits: 2914

Why I Chose to Self Publish

January 5, 2022 / Elise Carlson / 0 Comments

Birds eye view of a market table lined with books and prospective browsing buyers. — Photo credit: Maico Pereira.

Self Publishing wasn’t the first publishing path that appealed to me. Nor were small presses. Like many writers, I figured I’d need a literary agent, because they’re the gatekeepers of middling to large publishing companies and because I didn’t know much about book marketing. Then I worked with multiple critical readers, discovered how difficult it is to know when you’ve finished editing, and figured an editorial agent would do nicely. But when I really thought about it, I was facing down all the usual querying obstacles, plus a couple of large experience-related and some personal ones. The following are the factors I weighed and measured before deciding to self publish my first trilogy.

The Early Querying Journey

It was fine at first. As anyone whose pitched an 80+ thousand word novel will tell you, writing 280 character tweet pitches is HARD. As is writing a query pitch. And a synopsis. All were challenges. I like challenges, and learning. I quickly found these things worked better when people helped each other. So I created a query letter critique group, which quickly became five Twitter DMs, each with five writers trading query letter feedback.

I made a Twitter DM for discussing querying, and another for tweet pitch critiquing and supporting each other in pitch parties (there were 3 of those at one point!) Then I consolidated query package feedback and query discussion onto a Craft & Querying Discord. I met fellow querying writers, we shared our journeys, helped each other hone our querying craft, and encouraged each other with the uphill struggle that is querying.

By the time I made my first foray into the querying trenches, I’d spent three months talking to querying writers. I was well aware I may need to send out 50 queries to get a few full requests. Later, I realised I could send out 100 queries and still get very few full requests, and no offer of an agent contract.

I saw friends write entertaining stories, with well rounded characters, querying till they ran out of agents to query (over two or three years), shelve book that book, write the next and query it. Yes, a very small minority did sign with agents and a few with a small press, but over a two year period, the vast majority didn’t.

Killer one: Time

I spent YEARS writing and more YEARS editing. I was studying full time and am still teaching full time. I’ve lived and worked overseas and generally done a lot. It doesn’t leave much time for writing.

By the time I’d pantsed a trilogy, re-written it, read up on writing craft and worked with critical readers -and completed a structural edit based on a manuscript critique- I was TIRED. It had taken 20 years for a series of novellas to become a fully drafted, near query-ready trilogy (with a second trilogy not far behind). So how did I feel about waiting years before someone else let me publish? Not very motivated.

If not for lockdowns bringing most things writing related to a grinding halt for me (yes, I queried in 2020), I’d intended to query at least 50 agents, over 6 months to an absolute maximum of two years, then move on. But the pandemic hit, lockdowns dragged on and it took me 1.5 years to query 19 agents and 14 presses. It was taking too long. I’d worked too hard, I just wanted my books published already!

Killer two: Interest

By this stage, I’d critiqued over an estimated 200 tweet pitches and probably around 50 query letters). I’d learned loads about what makes a good pitch. As much as I could from querying this particular novel, and I had a second ready. So I started pitching wip two in pitch parties and continued to hone my skills. But the issues I had with my pitches and queries now weren’t about general pitching skills. They were how best to pitch, in one case, a multi-pov, portal, epic fantasy in which writing only one pov in a query or synopsis felt like pitching a (misleading) book fragment. Compared to the first three months of query writing and critiquing, I was learning next to nothing. And because of that, I was losing interest.

Killer three: Patience and Tolerance

Here’s where my querying story differs. In my state one year teaching contracts are FAR more common than ongoing positions. So, almost every year, for 8 years, I’ve filled in the same bloody paperwork. I’ve updated the same six, single page mini essays, updated the same interview notes, and spent HOURS looking at potential jobs, schools etc. How does this relate to querying? Its a LOT like searching for agents. Do we have the same goals? The same work ethics? Will my style of teaching go well with this school/ my personality and writing style match this agent?

Querying is a numbers game, but so is continuing to have a job as a teacher. I forget how many jobs I applied for before getting my first. 50? 60? It was similar the second year and the third. By the forth (year in a row), I reached burn out after applying for 80 jobs that year alone. I went from enjoying reflecting on my teaching practice, to fed up. From hopeful and curious about where the next job was, to stressed about facing potential unemployment every year, while writing student reports, because job application season coincides with the busiest time of the teaching year.

Burnout and Swearing Time

In year four of job re-appling, I thought, fuck this shit, I want to go the Europe and travel. I calmed down, thought it through and moved to England, which has a serious shortage of teachers (understandable, given their system is brilliant at chewing teachers up and spitting us back out again). I went through agencies who found schools for me, and didn’t have to apply for as many positions.

When I returned to Australia, I applied for around 20 positions. In my eighth year of reapplying (yep, my eighth year in a supposedly professional job of proving I’m worth continuing to employ), I realised I was beyond burnt out, and past caring. I had so little interest in the reapplication process that I seriously considered leaving the profession, despite that I love and am just as passionate about teaching as I am about writing.

I didn’t leave teaching. Instead, I moved to New Zealand, where an agency asked my criteria for schools and handed my resume (yep, just a resume!) to four schools, the first offering me a job. This is when I began querying. The process of endlessly trying to make teaching application paperwork perfect, of spending countless hours researching who to send it to annually, the enormous investment over a period of weeks (usually 2 to three months) over eight years of teaching, was day one of querying for me. So my tolerance for doing the same shit over and over and getting the same results was low from the outset.

Killer Four: Marketability and Motivation

I may be wrong here. It may be that my YA Fantasy Manipulator’s War is sufficiently ‘fresh’, and ‘unique’ and ‘stand out’ enough for a literary agent and sizeable publisher to think it will sell. (Getting an honourable mention in the YA category for Pitch It may indicate so.) Maybe my writing craft and querying skills don’t do the marketable idea of my novel justice, and that’s why all 19 agents (yes, that’s not many) gave me form rejections. Maybe that’s why I had to pitch in around 15 pitch parties before getting my first (and second) literary agent like. But setting aside that YA Fantasy is very competitive, and visibility at pitch parties is almost winning the lottery in itself, my gut always said ‘prince’ (even a nonbinary one) + ‘war’ =’insufficiently original and marketable’ to appeal to a literary agent or sizeable publisher.

Yes, the right literary agent for it may exist. Yes, if I send enough queries, I may get lucky enough to one day query that agent. But in the face of waning interest for the process (a point I’ve reached with teaching twice, and overcome), with my impatience to have a book out, my intolerance of monotony and potentially endless waiting, doubt and lack of motivation tipped my scales for this trilogy well onto the side of ‘nope’.

Killer Five: the Need to Achieve

If you’re querying and plan to do so longer, I recommend also pursuing writing related things that let you experience a sense of achievement. Write a short story (and submit to anthologies!) Start your website, or a blog. Kick off your newsletter! Whatever you choose, make it something writing related you can point to and say: see? Finished! Because a novel without a literary agent or publishing contract can feel unfinished, and can make you feel like you aren’t achieving anything.

I didn’t set out to develop my author platform for this reason. Having moved back to Australia to spend lockdown with family, my personality clash with remaining indoors and extreme cabin fever made me so restless and unfocused that I couldn’t focus on wips. Building a website? Easy! Writing blogs? -perfect length! As for an author newsletter, I figured I needed to develop my voice in speaking to people as an author, and getting used to writing one would help me overcome imposter syndrome. So being me, I took on the website, blog and newsletter all at once (NB: don’t be me. Do one thing at a time -its much easier!).

Developing my author platform was fun, and engaging. It was new and novel and most importantly (as a former technophobe) it was a challenge which involved learning to do lots of new things. I was motivated and happy again, just as I’d felt when I began querying. But for me, the sense of achievement at having developed a blog, newsletter and website made me question. I wondered, why should I spend more time, effort and energy querying with (likely) no book to show for it, when with my blog and newsletter established, my next big step could be self publishing and having books to show for it?

Personality Factors

In considering which publishing path is right for you, I think personality is an important factor. The first time I considered that, I immediately thought: I’m adventurous, impatient, restless and a very sociable person. My personality is perfect fit for self publishing. My love of challenges and learning positions me well to learn to self publish, and book marketing clearly poses challenges and opportunities to learn new skills. In January 2021 I was thinking, is traditional publishing the right path for me on personality grounds alone? No. I’ll need to get lucky, because I have no desire to stick around for the numbers game of querying.

Industry Factors

What I say here is my personal -and not hugely informed impression- which is that the pandemic seemed to throw a spanner in the works of traditional publishing. I saw one agent talk at a conference where he said his agency quietly shut their doors to queries while editing with existing clients in 2020, then remained closed while putting those clients on submission in early 2021. I wondered, is this a shit time to be querying?

Then there are the issues of labour and supply shortages, (more details in this blog by Kathryn Rusch), which again make me think now is not a good time to debut in traditional publishing. In a few years, after I’ve self published my YA Fantasy trilogy? Then I’ll sniff the air, see what’s happening and maybe reconsider.

Alternatives? Small Presses?

Back in January I thought: let’s give small presses a shot. From conversations I’ve had with many people who enjoy fantasy, my YA Fantasy does have reader appeal. Perhaps a small press focused on fantasy and more willing to take a risk on a debut book than literary agents and big publishers, was a good idea. If I signed with a small publisher, I would still have an editor (and wouldn’t have to pay them out of my own pocket). I’d get to work with people with more editorial and marketing experience than myself. I assumed those conversations could be invaluable as a newbie author. And as a sociable person whose worked in close collaboration with colleagues in my varied teaching roles, I liked the idea of working with a small team to bring my book into the world.

How many presses did I query? At final count, 14. Why? Well, I was busy moving house, starting a new teaching job, then learning to teach students via video call over multiple lockdowns, which became a second big lockdown. It was exhausting, it was all consuming and 2021 wasn’t the right time for me personally to query.

The return to teaching on site was so hectic I figured I might as well throw out a final round of queries while I waited for the school year to end, and the time, headspace and energy to self publish. The summer school holidays (January) would be the best time to self publish my first book. If I didn’t do it then, I’d have to wait another YEAR to take control of when my book FINALLY became available to friends, family and colleagues I’ve been telling about it since FOREVER.

Do I Self Publish?

It would be a LOT to learn. LOTs of work. But I like learning. And challenges. I find them stimulating, interesting and energising. Everything that querying no longer is to me- self publishing is likely to be. Sure, I’ll probably make hardly any money and most likely won’t sell many books. I don’t care. I understand that you need a good back catalog to make money self publishing and that takes years, spending money and serious work. I’m prepared to tackle that. And I love teaching too much to give it up, so I’m not relying on writing to pay my bills or put a roof over my head. (I’ll be relying on teaching to pay for covers and editing very soon).

The thing that appealed to me most about self publishing, was that after two years getting my books and then query package to the best standard I could get them, self publishing is efficient. It moves fast. I could choose to make my book available in a matter of months, instead of waiting unknown years, over which I have no control, for other people to make that happen. After all the uncertainty covid brought into our lives, having the ability to make the decision to publish -and when- had more appeal to me than ever.

But what about the two years I spent honing my pitch craft and supporting other writers to hone theirs? Well, it should put me in good stead to write book blurbs, and advertising copy for my books. No skills will go to waste! (And yes, maybe I’ll query another trilogy/ series in future and have a head start in writing queries for them).

If I Self Publish, am I Quitting?

I once had this idea that I ‘wasn’t a quitter.’ The things is, we don’t always choose what’s best for us. I slogged through a job once, for as long as I could stand it. The day I handed in my resume, I could not stop smiling! I was so happy! Only then could I admit how much I hated working there!

Why did I ‘quit’? Because staying on would have meant killing myself trying to please people I believed were holding me (and everyone else) to ridiculous standards. They seemed to expect that we overwork ourselves (8am to 10pm Mon to Fri or spend all weekend working too), to the point we were under constant stress, always tired, didn’t have the energy or time to enjoy life. tI at least, was putting my mental health on the line for that stupid job.

Having had that experience with non-writing work, I don’t see choosing an alternate publishing path over querying as quitting. I tried a path for a particular trilogy. It wasn’t for me or that trilogy. Now its time to move forward on the path that lets me do just that.

Conclusion

For me, for my first trilogy, at this point in time: self publishing is the option I feel happiest and most motivated about. I can’t wait to dive in! (and probably will have by the time you read this.) Will I query something else in future? I’ve also written a MG Fantasy that’s high concept, and I feel is much more marketable. It will take time to hone its pitches (the one thing I haven’t done is paid critiques or querying workshops- which I would like to attend).

But in a couple of years, having brought closure on a trilogy I’ve worked on and off for over twenty years by self publishing it, and finished editing the SciFi Fantasy trilogy I’ve worked on, and off, for the same length of time, maybe I’ll query again. If, with rest, closure and the achievement of having published my first trilogy balances the above factors above the right way, and querying books appeals in future, yes, I’ll consider it.

Choosing Your Publishing Path

If you’re debating publishing paths, I suggest talking to other writers. Find out which personality factors, motivations, experiences and book goals led (or are leading them) to a particular path. Consider which of those factors do or don’t apply to your personality, skill set, lifestyle, book and goals, and to what extent. When you weigh everything up, which publishing path do you feel will best meet your needs? Your books needs? Is it one path for now, different paths for different books, or do you lean strongly to a single publishing path for everything?

2023 Addendum

Its been two years. book #1 and #2 are out in the wild, and book #3 (War in Sorcery’s Shadow) is set to join them in April 2024. Since going indie, I’ve seen a lot of anecdotal evidence of marginalised authors being gate-keeped out of traditional publishing. I’ve heard of the Great Resignation hitting editors at major publishing houses and seen literary agents posting about taking on a third job because agenting and their second job isn’t earning enough to pay their bills. The latter two seem to mean that manuscripts need to be close to publishable standard at the time of querying, requiring less input than in previous years from agents and editors alike.

Yes, a few more of my friends have signed with literary agents over the past two years. For the rest, it still seems an exceptionally competitive, soul destroying time to be querying, and traditional publishing still seems to be in a state of crisis, or at least a huge mess. With the death of Twitter seeing pitch parties suspended, post-poned or leaving the platform (updates on those in this post), even my idea of pitching my more marketable MG contemporary fantasy has little appeal.

Having heard mostly very bad news about the state of traditional publishing since before the pandemic, this queer, neurodiverse author currently feels that the best publishing path for their future books is indie. I’m now planning to self publish my middle grade Fantasy and YA SciFi trilogy, then review the state of trad publishing again in 2027/28, when I hope to begin writing a new series (I suspect I’ll be fully committed to staying indie by then, but never say never.)

Total Page Visits: 3779

The ‘Small Amount of Time Daily’ Model

Some of Us Cannot Spare a Small Amount of Time

Need Solid Blocks Of Time?

Do What Works For You

When Did I Do All The THINGS?

Blog?

Newsletter?

Write the Next Book?

Getting Marketing Goals Into a State to Determine WHEN To Do Them

Example: Breaking Learning Bookbub Ads Into Sessions

1: Research

2: Design Ads

3: Compare My Ads to Successful Designs & Revise

4: Test & Compare Results of My Own Ads

Repeat As Needed

When Might You Do All The THINGS?

1: Choose Your Focus

2: Block Out Other Comittments

3: Identify Your Authorly Time Slots

4: Choose a Thing ( big picture focus) for The Year

Further Reading (Above Links & More Resources)

Neurodiverse Communication

Rehearsing Conversations

What are You on About?

Why Can’t People Just SAY what they MEAN?

I Say What I Mean

Tone

Leading Conversations

Reciprocity In Conversation

What are Social Graces?

1. I don’t like eye contact.

2. I don’t do small talk.

I’m Thinking…

Hyper Focus

What’s the Point?

Logic and Decision Making

Why did you change that?

Memory

Sensory Needs

Its Too Bright

Its Too Loud

Other Areas

Difficulty Maintaining Friendships & Holding Down Employment

Creativity

What Now?

Further Reading

Engaging Readers (of Your Novel)

Ground Zero

Characters & Status

Showing Feelings & Developing Feelings

Thoughts That Heighten Feelings

Non-Verbal Emotion Cues

Side Character Agenda

Character Internal Development

Story Foreshadowing & Tension

Tracking Foreshadowing

Character Foreshadowing

Third Party Development In Stories

Further Reading

Sustainability & Cross Posting Problems

Sustainability Becomes Rockstar Status/ Snobbery

Building Loads of Social Media Followings: does it Actually Work?

What’s your Preferred Mode of Operation?

Are You on the Right Social Media For You?

Boundaries: Use-ability

Boundaries- Ill Fitting Platforms

Boundaries: Personal Comfort (In my case ND comfort!)

Boundaries: Ethics

Maximising Social Media: Integrating Interests

Other Communities & Special Interests

Facebook

Blue Sky

Reddit

Hashtags, Instagram & Mastodon

Pick ONE Creative Community

Delete Your Twitter

Its not 2022 Anymore

Choose ONE Twitter Alternative

Exception: Communities Its Effortless to Pop in and Out Of

How Many Social Media Platforms are you Active on Now?