Last March, I shared with everyone via my Patreon how I went about journaling, planning my week, and organizing tasks. I also included a video, showed off my various journals, showed off a new planner I had, and had a very color coded and organized system for tackling all of the things I concern myself during the week. If you think I still journal/plan that way, you’re crazy pants. Original Posts: Step 7 : Journaling Step 8 : Social Media Now, part of this is because life is busy. Part of this is because I’ve moved onto different journals. And

Part one : Budgeting Are we going out of order? Yes, but this is important information, and I need to share it all. If you have looked at my Author Stats posts, you have seen my budgeting spreadsheets, so part of this you’ve seen before, but I actually want to go into depth on how I organize it and why, but also what I haven’t been doing but should have been doing.  I recently had a conversation with a CPA about what in all I have, and in turn, found out so much more about what I’ve been lacking, but

Let’s talk going wide! (from the perspective of an author who is NOT) Now, depending on who you ask, “going wide” means different things. The general broad term means simply that your book is available on multiple different platforms, rather than via one place of production. This does NOT mean widely distributed, which we will come back to in a moment, but instead is about the SOURCE of production. For many indie authors, myself included, that one source is Amazon. Amazon has my ebooks, my paperbacks, and through ACX, my audiobooks. Many people will say that being wide means ebooks

When you eventually reach the point of talking to book bloggers, publishing groups, social media influencers, and other authors, you might be requested to provide something that I rarely see anyone ever talk about: a media kit. What is a media kit? I’m glad you asked. The short answer is, it’s a package containing all relevant information which someone might want and need to know about you and your brand. And in particular, when this comes to authors, this means they want to know about your books. Now, before anyone starts getting overwhelmed, I’m going to go ahead and show

This is going to be a giant walk through of three different things which I don’t necessarily think NEED their own individual posts, but they might need their own videos, but I’m going to give a walk through of each of these three items, and if y’all have questions or concerns, please ask and I will make a video walking through each of these if need be! Welcome to THE OTHER STUFF!  When it comes to Amazon, they love to make things extra confusing and difficult and give you ten thousand options with no easy way to process any of

Let’s talk about ARC Readers and how to find them. For those who do not know, ARCs are Advanced Reader Copies, meaning, they are advanced releases of your upcoming novel. Typically, you would want to send these out approximately two to four weeks before the release date, although in traditional publishing, these can sometimes go out two to three months before release. WHY SEND OUT ARCS? ARCs can be sent out with a variety of different goals in mind, but the main one is to have people talking about your book before it’s actually released so there is excitement on

The most basic thing I can say about formatting is… find a program that works for you, and stick with it. Not really, but also sort of really. This is going to be a long one, and to be honest, my current feelings on this subject are somewhat wonky, but here we go! Formatting can be something you hate. It can be something that exhausts you. It can be draining and impossible. It can also be something you accept and let go and just allow it to happen. It can even be something you throw money at in order to

Am I going mildly out of order once again? Yes, but because this post has been highly requested, we’re going to go ahead and slot it in right here. Why? Because… y’all asked. There’s no reason other than that lol.  But also, this title is a lie. Sort of? I don’t know. Basically, this right here is all about how to plan your publishing schedule. This means for your first book, and then, for all of the works beyond.  Just… stay with me here. Elle’s Project Planner  ALSO OPEN THIS LINK IT’S AN ELLE FREEBIE BUT DON’T DO ANYTHING WITH

Alright, so you have your pre-order done, and it’s time to start promoting your book. You now have a link with which people can pre-order your book, and even more than that, add it to their wishlist and their TBR!  Now, there’s a few things you need to do before you go any further and start promoting it… UPLOAD YOUR BOOK TO SITES It’s time to start getting your book onto some book reviewer sites. By having them already uploaded to these sites, and doing it yourself, you make sure that the information is correct, AND, you can have people

Welcome, Welcome, to setting up your pre-order. In order to set up your preorder, you will need the following things: Book Title Series Title Book Release Date Book Cost Book Cover* Book Blurb* Please note, those last two are not actually requirements, however, I do strongly recommend them. Either way… let’s get this show on the road. It’s going to be a lot of images. A lot. But, I’m going to show you everything step by step. Please note, this is Part 1 of Pre-Orders. Part 2 will be about the promotion of your pre-orders, how to announce, etc. Also,