Feeling like your writing time keeps getting chipped away by the holiday chaos? This post explores how to reclaim your creative space with a personalized mid-holiday writing retreat. Between Christmas and New Year is the perfect window to refocus, recharge, and write your heart out—without leaving home.
The indie publishing world has fractured into a thousand niche markets, and the old one-size-fits-all advice just doesn’t cut it anymore. To thrive now, you need two things: a platform that keeps your readers close, and an experimental mindset that helps you navigate the mountain of conflicting advice. These aren’t just tactics—they’re survival strategies for the modern indie author.
If it feels like publishing is tougher than ever — it’s not your imagination. The market is saturated, algorithms are pay-to-play, and readers are trained to expect endless content for pennies. But that doesn’t mean you’re doomed. It means the game has changed. And smart indie authors are adapting by building direct reader platforms, redefining success on their own terms, and learning to market without selling their souls. The old paths are gone — time to blaze your own.
October might be here, but it’s not too late to jump into holiday book promotions. If you’re short on time but still want to take advantage of the busiest buying season of the year, here are nine creative, effective ways to promote your books—and get them into readers’ hands before the new year.
The “fast = crap” myth is creeping back into author circles—and it’s time to shut it down. Whether you write fast, slow, or somewhere in between, what matters is craft, not the clock. This post unpacks why speed doesn’t equal sloppiness, how believing otherwise can harm your writing, and what the Artisan Author mindset really means. Spoiler: it’s not “write slow or else.”
If you’re serious about writing — I mean serious-serious — then at some point you’re going to have to give things up. And not just a Netflix show or two. I mean real, soul-wrenching, this-or-that decisions.
I’ve made them. I gave up socializing. I gave up making clothes and jewelry. I took lower-paid jobs so I’d have the energy to write.
Writing takes time. And if your life is already full, then something else has to go. That’s the reality. You can’t wedge a writing career into the margins of a life that’s already packed.
In the early days of indie publishing, simply hitting “publish” could bring in income. Now? Discoverability is a battle, the market is saturated, and writing fiction full-time is a dream that more and more authors are having to compromise. This post digs into why multiple income streams aren’t a failure—they’re the new normal—and how indie authors can adapt without giving up.
Juggling multiple pen names, a production pipeline, and the occasional bout of procrastination takes more than just caffeine and stubbornness—though those help. In this post, I break down exactly how I manage my writing and publishing schedule, from rotating pen names to keeping six+ books in postproduction at once. I also explain why I never write more than one book at a time and how I use a 300-step checklist to keep my head (mostly) attached.
I thought I was stuck at 1,200 to 1,300 words per hour because I had been for years. But I wasn’t. I was just telling myself I was. This month, I’ve finished one book, written another in nine days, and started plotting a third—all while juggling a demanding side gig. If you think you can’t write faster, maybe it’s time to stop believing that.
“At its heart, this book offers a liberating proposal: don’t play the game as it’s currently defined. Walk away from algorithm worship, punishing release schedules, and the grind of selling at 99 cents to churn-hungry subscription readers. Instead, write what you want to write, at the pace that suits you, and charge a fair price for your work.”
