How To Buy A Book

Over the years, many people have asked me: “What’s the best way to buy a book?”

And of course, I always tell them, “Buy it from me right now,” because if they go home without buying a book, chances are, they’ll never buy it. But if I don’t have any books on me, or the question has come digitally, my answer is always, “Get it on Amazon.”

But lately, I’ve been seeing a lot of posts on social media encouraging people to avoid Amazon at all costs. To never buy books there. Instead, they recommend, buy from your local bookstore. (You can read my Facebook response here.)

I always get really frustrated when I see these messages, because in truth, local bookstores are rarely willing to carry my books. Which means that if a reader ONLY buys from a local bookstore, they’ll never buy my books. Or the books of most indie authors.

The question of the best way to buy a book is complex, and in order to make that decision, it is important to understand the way the entire industry is currently constructed. To make a fully informed decision about buying a book, you need to know where your money goes.

First, the major players:

• Authors

• Editors

• Agents

• Publishers

• Distributors

• Booksellers

Every single person in this list is out to make money. While some individual people value art or communication or voice or free speech more than money, the truth is, if a person (or group) wants to continue publishing book after book throughout their career, they need to make money in order to survive in a capitalist world.

And when you, a book buyer, are paying for a book, there are a good number of different places your money can go.

So, below, I’ve laid out the complicated structure of the traditional publishing industry and the indie industry, for those of you who want to know more about how it works.

But if you’re just here to know what to do and you don’t want to think about it, let me give you a few quick tips.

First: just buy the book. If you are looking at a new book (used is a different story), holding it in your hands or about to click “buy",” and your thought is, “I wonder if buying it now is the best way to support the author?” the answer is “Yes.” If a reader walks away from a book, the chances of them remembering to buy it later is very, very low. Just buy it.

Otherwise:

If you’re buying from a traditionally published author:

• Buy the pre-order whenever possible. Think of it like voting. The publisher uses pre-order sales for all kinds of decisions, like marketing, distribution, and whether or not to publish that author again.

• If you can’t buy the pre-order, buy it from a local indie bookstore or directly from the publisher.

• Amazon should always be your last choice.

If you’re buying from an indie author:

• Buy it direct. If the author has the book available on their website, either in hardcopy or ebook format, buy it directly from them. That way, they get 100% of the profit from it.

• Buy it on their preferred retailer. Some authors only use Amazon. Others would rather you bought from Kobo or iTunes.

• Support their kickstarters and Patreons. $1 a month for a year costs you $12, but makes a significant difference in the life of an artist. Here’s my Patreon.

How do you know if it’s an indie author or a trad published author? That’s a good question. Many indie published books nowadays are the same quality as trad published. Better even.

Check the copyright page. Trad published books always have a ton of extra info that indie books don’t—about the publisher, the imprint, addresses, all that jazz. Indie books only list the copyright under the name of the author or their own imprint. Once you’ve read through a few, you’ll start to see the pattern.

Buying A Book From A Traditionally Published Author

Traditional publishing is what most people still think of when they talk about publishing. In the trad world there are the Big 5 and then a slew of smaller imprints and presses.

The Big 5 are:

• Penguin/Random House

• Hachette Book Group

• Harper Collins

• Simon and Schuster

• Macmillan

The large majority of the books you read in school or college, and buy in bookstores are published by the Big 5 (used to be the Big 6 until a few years ago).

The process looks something like this:

1. An author writes a book.

2. The author writes queries and submits them to agents.

3. Eventually, an agent agrees to represent them.

4. The agent submits the work publishers.

5. Eventually, an editor agrees to buy the rights to the manuscript.

6. They sign a contract.

7. Then the book (sometimes) gets published.

There is a lot of variation to this process. Sometimes the book isn’t written yet when the author starts querying. This usually only happens in the non-fiction/academic world. Sometimes the author meets an agent at an event and the agent agrees to represent them, no querying needed. Sometimes the author can query editors or publishers directly, no agent needed. Sometimes, even if all of the other steps have been completed, the manuscript never gets published.

A few of the pros of traditional publishing:

• Reach: trad companies have huge networks, both for marketing and distribution. If they decide a book is best-seller worthy, they have the resources to put thousands of dollars behind marketing it, making it possible for an author to skyrocket to the top of the bestseller lists.

• Distribution: trad companies have a massive distribution network. They have relationships with major bookstores like Barnes and Noble, and all of the indie bookstores as well. They can also get books into libraries and schools across the country, in a way that is extremely difficult for indies to do.

• Prestige: there is a lot of prestige associated with being trad published—it’s like you have been “chosen.” Many authors are willing to give up all of their rights and royalties, explicitly for this.

• Agents: who doesn’t want a dedicated cheerleader? Someone who loves your work, is always encouraging you to keep going, and also does work on your behalf.

• No upfront cost: if a publisher asks you to pay to submit to them, they’re probably a scam. There are no upfront costs in trad publishing (unless you count money lost by not publishing sooner, or the time involved in the process), and there is a possibility of an advance. That said, advances aren’t what they used to be. You can check out #PublishingPaidMe on Twitter if you’re curious to know more, or you can just check out the spreadsheet.

• Marketing aid: don’t get me wrong—most trad authors still have to market their own books. But, they will have access to their publisher’s marketing team, and as their book grows in popularity, the publisher is much more likely to offer more and more support so they can make more and more money.

[Side note: this article at Well-Storied presents a pretty solid overview of the pros and cons of trad publishing.]

Now for the cons of trad publishing. One of the biggest reasons authors choose indie over trad is the time this process takes. It can literally take years to go from a completed manuscript to a published book.

Another reason is the contracts. Most contracts don’t offer advances, and if they do, advances need to be paid back by book sales before the author even sees a cent of royalties. Some authors are even required to pay back the advance regardless, which makes it more like a loan than a salary. And if their book doesn’t make back the advance, the publisher probably won’t publish them again. Not to mention, the author typically only receives between 3% and 15% of the royalties—which means the agent, editor, and publisher are splitting the remaining 85% - 97%.

Contracts also tend to be a rights grab. A publisher wants as many opportunities to make money from your work as possible. This means, they want to own as many different types of rights to your book as possible, including e-book and print rights, rights to other language editions, rights to audio book editions, rights to special editions, TV & movie rights, and merchandising rights. There are a lot of great books on this topic if you’d like to learn more.

A couple notable examples:

• JK Rowling actually maintained the merchandising rights to Harry Potter when she published. This is one of the main reasons she’s a billionaire. [ABC]

• Recently, Brandon Sanderson launched a Kickstarter for a specialty, limited 10th anniversary edition of his Way of Kings series. The Kickstarter is now over $6 million. The reason he was able to do this, was because he retained the rights to special editions of his work. [Source]

The worst thing about trad publishing in my opinion, is that is run, owned and operated primarily by white, cisgender, able-bodied people, and up until the last twenty years or so, white men specifically. Which means that the work that was selected to be published was and is chosen primarily by one demographic of people and filtered through their lens and view of the world. The result of this is that they published far fewer authors of color, women authors, disabled authors, and LGBTQ authors than white male authors.

“The most recent 2015 study by Lee & Low, the largest multicultural children's book publisher in the country, determined that 79% of the overall publishing industry (including executives, sales, marketing and publicity, and reviewers) was white. While cis, white women have a higher level of representation here than in other aspects of the industry (they make up 78% of people working in publishing), the overall industry is 89% straight/heterosexual, 96% non-disabled, and 99% cisgender.” [Bustle]

This has a ripple effect throughout book publishing, from what authors get published:

“The 2018 State of Diversity in Romance Publishing report, released annually since 2016 by Bea and Leah Koch, owners of romance bookstore The Ripped Bodice, found that for every 100 books published by the leading romance publishers in 2018, only 7.7% were written by people of color. That compares to 6.2% in 2017 and 7.8% in 2016.” [Bustle]

…to what topics get published:

“Parrott says she sees publishers shying away from creating more inclusive books for children, opting instead for anthropomorphic animals and machines because they are afraid to make a mistake.” [SLJ 2020] 

…to who gets awards, reviewed by major reviewers, and subsequently, distributed to bookstores and sold… which means that traditional publishers are controlling what books people read. [Vida]

Consider this graphic which Lee and Low released this year:

This is a survey of the publishing industry—the gatekeepers. And the gatekeepers are not representative of the authors and writers that are out there telling stories.

There are writers of every race, every gender, sexuality, nationality—every possible demographic you can imagine—it’s just that the traditional industry isn’t publishing them.

The key thing to remember here is that traditional authors don’t have any control over their work once they’ve signed over the rights to the publisher. They can ask, request, beg—even hire a lawyer. But once the contract is signed, what the publisher does or doesn’t decide to do with the book is not up to the author.

This includes things like where it’s being sold, how much it’s priced at, whether it’s part of programs like Kindle Unlimited, etc. Once the contract is signed, it’s out of author’s hands, unless they decide to take up the mantle of marketing it on their own.

So what do you do if you want to buy a book from a traditionally published author (remembering of course, that it’s the publisher making the decisions)?

Well, first off, pre-order their book if at all possible. Pre-ordering tells the publisher that people are interested in the book. It’s often used as an early indicator of whether a book will be successful or not. So if a book gets a lot of pre-orders, the publisher is more likely to stock more copies of it and put more money into marketing it.

Similarly, if a bookstore sees that a book has a lot of pre-orders, they’re more likely to order copies of the book to stock and sell, which means more people will see it, which means more sales.

A traditionally published author might only make a few cents from your purchase of the book, but those cents go back to paying back the advance, or to helping the author make a living. Not to mention, every little bit is like a vote. You’re telling the publisher, “I value this author and their work, please publish them again.”

If you can’t pre-order the book, the next best thing you can do is buy it new. Buy it from an indie bookstore if you want to support bookstores in your community, or buy it directly from the publisher. Amazon should be your last choice.

Just remember that every single entity that stands between you and the author takes a cut of that sale: the publisher, the agent, the editor, the distributor, the bookseller. So the more people are in the way, the less money the author makes.

Buying A Book From An Indie Author

In my opinion, Amazon was one of the greatest things that ever happened to the publishing industry.

Of course, indie booksellers and traditional publishers disagree with me on this. But they’re wrong. Here’s why:

Amazon enabled authors everywhere to put their work directly in the hands of the reader. It enabled authors of every nationality, race, gender, ability, sexuality, etc. to say, “You know what, traditional publisher/agent/editor who doesn’t think I’m worth publishing? I don’t need you.”

If you’re a fan of free speech, Amazon’s disruption of the market was one of the best things that’s ever happened, right up there with the invention of paperbacks.

Now, let me just say that I think Amazon is terrible in a lot of ways. They treat their employees terribly. They are a behemoth and a monopoly that needs to be regulated and may need to be split apart.

But they have made a huge and significant difference in the publishing industry, specifically for authors.

So, when someone says “Don’t buy from Amazon!” it always makes my stomach hurt a little. There are so many authors whose only avenue for sharing their work is Amazon. That doesn’t mean it has to be this way, but most authors are one-person teams with limited time and limited resources. So to boycott Amazon, means to boycott them.

And so many indie authors are, in fact, authors of color, LGBTQ authors, authors with disabilities, and other authors who are underrepresented in literature, that by completely boycotting Amazon, you’re saying that the authors who have chosen to use Amazon as their main avenue of making money, are worth less than everyone else.

The truth is, though, you don’t have to buy from Amazon if you really don’t want to. So let me give you a quick run-down of the choices facing indie authors, and subsequently, the choices facing readers. Because once again—it all comes down to where you want your money to go.

First, a high-level overview of the indie publishing process:

1. It begins with a completed manuscript, just like in traditional publishing. But that’s about where the similarities end.

2. Next, the author hires their own editors and designers. Common ones include: copy-editor, proofreader, cover designer, paperback designer, and e-book designer. Which ones the author chooses depends on their budget and what skills they have themselves. To hire all of these for an 80k word paperback & e-book is going to cost the author somewhere in the range of $2000.

3. Next, the author chooses a printer. The two main printers are Amazon (Kindle Direct Publishing) and IngramSpark, though there are other smaller or local printers available (these options tend to be more expensive, especially where shipping is involved).

4. Next they choose their distributors. Distribution of paperbacks is typically done either through Amazon or Ingram specifically, or direct by the author, meaning they list their books for sale on their website and then do all of the shipping and handling themselves. They may also opt to go to events and sell the books in person. This is time consuming and will significantly drive up the cost of their product, so not all authors choose to do this.

   Ingram is the only distributor that offers wholesale and library options, but to do this, authors must decrease the cost of their product. And just because a book is available for wholesale and library distribution, doesn’t mean booksellers and libraries will actually buy the books. Marketing wholesale is a whole other can of worms.

5. There are many, many, many options for e-book distribution. Authors typically make one of two choices: to distribute exclusively with Amazon or what we call “going wide” (in other words, distributing books at all retailers).

   Amazon is the top e-book distributor. They control roughly 80% of the market. This is why authors feel like they have to publish through Amazon.

   The other major distributors are Barnes&Noble (Nook), Kobo, iTunes, and GooglePlay.

   1. The benefits to being exclusive with Amazon are significant. They offer several free marketing programs that authors can participate in to distribute their books to a larger audience. The author’s books can also be part of Kindle Unlimited, which is sort of like a Netflix for readers. And, if authors decide to use Amazon ads for their work, they get double the bang for their buck—they can use ads to draw in both KU users and regular buyers.

   2. Going wide means that the author has the potential to hit every single possible market, not just Amazon. This strategy is particularly important for those who want to reach international audiences. Kobo controls 25% of the market in Canada, for example. The challenge with going wide is that it is a lot more work, managing a lot more accounts and platforms, as well as developing different marketing options for all of those markets. Many authors use an aggregator such as Draft2Digital to help manage that, but then the aggregator takes a cut of sales.

As you can see, the process is difficult. The decisions the author has to make are difficult. There are many different directions they could choose to go.

A few pros of indie publishing:

• Rights: the author gets to keep all rights to their work. That includes every physical edition (paperback, hardback, special and limited editions), merchandising, TV & movies, other language, audio, video games—whatever you can think of. The author can choose to keep or sell those rights.

• Control: an indie author has complete control over the story, the editing, the quality of the product, their business model, marketing, events, engaging with readers, and pretty much every other angle you can think of. I know authors who hand bind their own books. Others hire local printers. Others use print on demand. Some choose to only make e-books available, and skip the paper versions entirely. Some write to market, and can pivot on a whim. It’s because they have complete control.

• Time: an indie book can be written and published in a month (depending on the author and their process). There’s no waiting around for agents or publishers or anybody else.

• Royalties: an indie author gets to keep all the royalties. If they sell direct, that’s 100% of their earnings. Amazon takes 30% of most e-books, so the author gets to keep 70%. Other distributors might take a cut as well, but regardless, the author gets to keep the majority. There’s no middlemen to get in the way.

  In fact, I make more money when you buy an e-book from me than most traditionally published authors make from a hardcover. If you buy a $20 hardcover and the trad author gets 8% of that—that’s $1.60. If you buy a $3.99 e-book from me, I get $2.70. If you buy my $3.99 book on Amazon, and I use Draft2Digital as my aggregator—I still get $2.39.

When you buy from an indie author, you cut out most of the middlemen. You can buy more books, spend less money, and the author will get more. Keep in mind that buying a more expensive book does not mean that more money goes to the author.

So, if you’re looking for the best ways to buy a book from an indie author—buy direct. Buy on Amazon. Or buy on their preferred retailer (if you know what that is). Regardless of which option you choose, the author will retain the majority of the earnings.

The Stigma of Indie

I do want to address the stigmas associated with indie publishing. I’ve had people say to me “Oh, so you’re not a real author,” when they find out I’m an indie author. Or claim that all indie books are bad products or poorly written or full of errors. Or that indie authors are vain and impatient, unwilling to work within the system.

Honestly, believe what you like.

But it’s not true any more.

Plenty of systems have been put in place to increase the quality of indie books. Amazon now has a system to review a book for errors. And readers can report errors to the platform if they find them in a book. Of course, this is a double-edged sword, because some reviewers report stylistic choices instead of errors… but I digress.

The review system has been hugely helpful. Reviewers will write, “this book is poorly edited” and then if several other reviewers confirm it, people stop buying it, its ranking plummets, it stops showing up in search. Again, this can be a double-edged sword for authors, and it doesn’t always work properly, but it’s helpful for readers.

In addition, there has been a push in the indie community as a whole to hire editors and book cover designers. There has been a push within the community for indie authors to hold each other accountable.

I’d also like to point out that there are plenty of traditionally published books that have errors and typos. I like to circle them in red pen because it makes me feel better, lol. There are plenty of traditionally published books with bad covers or bitmappy illustrations. And there are plenty of trad books with terrible stories or poor printing quality.

I'd also like you to consider indie creators in other industries. Would you refuse to eat food cooked by a local restaurant that isn't a big chain? Avoid listening to music that isn't backed by a major label? Refuse to buy art from a painter who doesn't work for Target or Home Goods, or isn't showing in a major gallery? So why then, only read books by traditionally published authors?

The stigma, while it has begun to fade in recent years, is real. But it doesn’t have to be.

On Indie Bookstores

Readers tend to love indie bookstores. As well you should. They are wonderful additions to the community. They have events. They engage with readers and encourage reading. And they are run by people who are obsessed with books and reading.

Indie bookstores are a small business, just like authors. And indie bookstores and indie authors are, well, usually in conflict with each other.

Because we are competitors.

In my experience, it is a rare bookstore indeed that is willing to stock an indie author’s books. When they do, it’s because the books are by local authors. I have actually had an indie bookstore owner tell me to my face that they wouldn’t stock the books of any author who works closely with Amazon.

I get it. Amazon has put thousands of indie bookstores out of business.

But I also struggle with the hypocrisy of a small local business encouraging their community to “shop local” but then only selling books published by the Big 5.

There a few points of contention between indie bookstores and indie authors:

• Indie authors publish primarily through Amazon, which is the biggest competitor of indie bookstores

• Only a small portion of indie authors sell their books at wholesale cost, which an indie bookstore needs in order to make money selling indie books

• Indie authors control their own work, editing, and design, which means extra steps on behalf of the indie bookstore to ensure quality

• Indie bookstores are gatekeepers between the author and reader, and one of the main reasons indie authors went indie in the first place was to avoid gatekeepers

So, by all means, support your indie bookstores. But remember that the indie bookstores rarely support indie authors. And that’s okay. They exist to serve a specific purpose, and that purpose is not to serve indie authors.

But when you’re talking about where and when and how to buy books, please don’t leave indie authors out of the conversation.

The Plight of the Author

I’m going to risk sounding like a whiny child for a moment here.

I just want to make it clear that authors have gotten the short end of the stick for decades when it comes to publishing. Whether they’re working with a trad publisher and getting miniscule portion of the profits, or have published indie and had to deal with social stigma against indie publishing, or behemoths like Amazon who we rely on for distribution pushing us around, stuffing our books in a dungeon, or banning us without telling us the reason why, all most authors want is to write books and share them with people.

The industry likes to tout major authors with huge names as being success stories that everyone can strive for, but the truth is, the majority of authors never “make it.”

Think of all of the famous authors you know who are currently alive. Now think of all the famous musicians you know who are currently alive.

Tell me: which list is longer? And by how much?

Obviously, this is only a very unscientific anecdotal test. But there is other data out there. Out of all 2,825 billionaires in the world, only two of them are authors (and one of those inherited her billions; also, there are over 45 thousand writers in the US alone—you can do the math on your chances here). And there are fewer than 20 authors who have made over 100 million. Compare that to musicians: 3 billionaires, and dozens who have made over 100 million.

There are only 9 authors who have sold more than a million copies of a book: JK Rowling (the only author to have become a billionaire from books and related income), Stephen King, Dan Brown, Stephanie Meyers, Stieg Larsson, Philip Pullman, Julia Donaldson, Khaled Hosseini, and Fielding. [Source]

Meanwhile, Barnes and Noble was just bought for $638 million (and is probably worth a lot more). Amazon is worth billions and Jeff Bezos is set to be the world’s first trillionaire by 2026—and he started his path with us. Authors. Indie publishing. E-books.

The system has never been for us. We’ve always been at the bottom of the food chain.

Most authors make pennies on the hour for their labor.

And when we complain, people say, “well, you should write better books then,” or “You’re doing it wrong,” or “that’s what happens when you’re running your own business—tough luck.”

Everyone wants to make money off of us, which means no one wants to pay us.

But guess what. We’re going to keep doing it anyway. Because most of us are not in it for the love of money. We’re in it for the love of writing, storytelling, and art.

But that doesn’t we aren’t going to fight back either.

My brother, who is a music producer in Nashville, and I have had many conversations comparing the indie publishing world to the indie music world. There are a surprising number of similarities, it’s just that indie music is 10 or 15 years ahead of indie publishing. But the thing I hate the most is people who will go nuts for indie musicians, turn around and talk shit about indie authors.

Being indie isn’t easy. You work all the time. You have to suck up every loss. There are always people who hate your work, or even hate you specifically.

But I think most of us are going to keep doing it anyway.

And if you’re a reader, a person who loves books, and who cares about authors and the industry enough that you’ve made it this far in my blog post, lol, thank you.

Thank you for reading.

Thank you for buying books.

Thank you for caring enough to learn how it works.

And know, that no matter how you choose to buy a book, the large majority of authors are grateful for your support, one way or another.

On Street Harassment

TW: harassment, street harassment, assault, swearing

I’ve been thinking a lot about street harassment lately. And the reason I’ve been thinking about it is because I haven’t been experiencing it. And the reason I’m not experiencing it is not because the world is becoming a better place or because people are becoming kinder or because I’m getting older. No—it’s because I don’t leave the house anymore.

That, and this story came across my feed recently:

I don't talk about this stuff much because it's stressful and I hate having to defend my experiences—like, "No, I know what I heard. Yes, he used that language to speak to me. No, I wasn't imagining that guy following me for a half mile through the park. Yes, I made a point to walk in a public area and was staying alert to my surroundings. No, it wasn't after dark. No, I wasn't wearing anything inappropriate..." (as if any of that really matters).

I also don’t like to talk about it because it makes everyone feel sorry for me, and they’re all apologetic and stuff—but it’s not like anyone does anything about it. It’s not like men go home and have heart-to-heart conversations with their friends about stopping the behavior. The police can’t do anything. And it’s not like the government cares.

[Though this is not to discount the efforts of organizations such as this one who work specifically on this issue.]

But this kind of incident has happened to me my entire life to the point that I can't even remember most of them. It's just normal. The first time I remember it, I was 14. And it has happened to me in NH, MD, NY, NC, ME, AK, Jamaica, and Scotland (just based on memories I have right off the top of my head) so please don't try to tell me it doesn't happen "where you live" or "in your community."

I have even been inappropriately grabbed (and kissed) in church.

And I doubt this will change in my lifetime. What I'd really like to see is more people believing that it happens, and that it happens all the time, even if it doesn't happen to them. And I'd like to see more men talking about it with each other, and having the guts to tell the mouthy ones to STFU—even if they're a complete stranger.

My favorite thing about quarantine is that I don't get called "bitch" every other day anymore--because I don't leave the house anymore.

A few things men have said to me just this year (all before quarantine started, mind you):

• Bitch

• You should smile more

• You want a piece of me in you? (actually, this one happened in May, on my first attempt to go for a walk after lockdown started)

• Look at that ass/tight ass/etc.

• You need a ride?

• Where you going? want company?

• I'd hit that

• Hey hot stuff

• You got a boyfriend?

• Take your shirt off

• Show me your tits (yelled at me out of a car window despite Josh standing next right to me)

• Also had a guy grab my thigh at Walmart with Josh standing right next to me

A few other experiences from past years that have really stuck out to me:

• "Hey, pretty lady." (I ignore) "You look at me when I'm talking to you, bitch!" (Anchorage, AK)

• The kid that rode past me on his bike, did a full up-down look and then 180, and proceeded to ride his bike behind me for three full blocks until I turned around and confronted him (Baltimore).

• The kid that walked up to me and said, "May I give you a compliment?" (stunned silence from me taken as "permission")-- "you have a tight ass" and then he ran away (Baltimore)

• The guy that stalked me in the park for almost a mile as the sun was setting, and only wandered off when I panic-knocked on my friend's door—and I was so scared, Josh had to come get me in the car even though I was less than a half mile from home (Baltimore)

• The three guys in a pick-up who yelled at me out the window while I was walking and when I didn't respond, said, "Why do you have to be such a bitch?" (Dover, NH)

• The dude that pulled over every day for three days in a week to ask me if I needed a ride when I was walking to work, and then proceeded to drive along very slowly beside me to "chat"—and I had to start driving to work again because he had figured out my schedule. (Dover, NH)

• The three dudes that asked me if I wanted to come hang out with them by their car on the side of the road while I was trying to go for a run (Kingston, NH)

• The guy on the highway playing "footsie" or "tag" (not sure if there's a term for it) with me by speeding past me, slowing way down, forcing me to pass him, and then speeding past me again—same pattern for almost thirty minutes (I literally thought I was going to die) (Rochester, NH) —this also happened to me in Bath, NY when I was 17, and a few times when I was driving back and forth between NY and NC in college

• "Wow, you look so old and pretty for your age" (Bath, NY and I was 14)

• The old dude that grabbed me, hugged, and kissed me on the forehead despite my attempts to get out of his grasp (Kittery, ME)—this one was in a church

... the more of these I type out, the more come to mind, but I'm going to assume you've gotten the point.

And I know the urge is always to say, "I'm so sorry this has happened to you," but please don't. This has happened to nearly every woman in some capacity, not just me. "Sorry" doesn't really mean anything any more.

I know I can't speak for all women, but based on my own experiences and those of other women that I've talked to, it is probable that if a woman sees a male-presenting stranger coming toward her for no reason, the assumption is almost always that he is a potential threat.

Even you.

And I definitely do: all strange men are threats. I don't care how nice you think you are.

There is nothing you can do to change that.

So what can you do? Leave her alone, don't comment on her body or appearance, stay away from her, mind your own business. Call out your friends who are being dicks or who engage in or encourage this type of behavior. And ask if she needs your help before you intervene on her behalf (unless it’s obvious that she’s in trouble).

Anyway, I wrote a poem about this after a stressful incident this summer when I was in a place where I thought I was safe, but turns out I wasn’t.

I don’t usually share my (rare) poetry unless it’s silly, but I decided maybe it would be worth sharing this particular piece.

We Are Not Safe In The Streets

[Note: the things in the poem are incidents which have either happened to me personally, something that I witnessed, or which someone has shared with me during a conversation about this topic.]

How To Figure Out Your Target Audience for Authors

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If you’ve been doing this author-ing thing for at least a few minutes, you’ve probably run into the advice: “know your target audience.” Whether you’re trying to write to market, setting up your social media, building a newsletter list, or choosing a cover design, this advice seems like it is constantly rearing its ugly head.

I have a few thoughts, of course, but if you’re looking for really solid, actionable, tactical, tangible things you can do to narrow down your audience as far as possible, BookBub has a really good article and you should check that out. After all, they have a lot more experience with the process than I do, as narrowing down audiences is really their thing.

But I do think that writers, especially ones who are just starting out, tend to agonize over this question far more than is necessary.

Yes, know your audience. But I don’t think you need to know everything about your audience all the time. As authors, particularly indie authors, we have to remember that we are just one person. Or maybe two if we have a PA or spouse to help. We can’t do everything all the time.

Which means, it is important to ask first, “Why do I need to narrow down my audience?” and then “How narrow?” So, for example, if you are trying to write to market, it’s critical to know your audience. You need to understand the market and understand exactly what different types of readers are looking for. But, if you’re trying to decide which social media platform to prioritize as the next step of your marketing, does it really matter what income level your readers are? Does it matter what they do for a living? Does it matter if they have a college degree or not?

The truth is, you can always add another social media platform later. You can always narrow down your audience more. You can always do more. So my first tip for writing your ideal target audience description is this:

Start wide.

Start with a wide understanding of your audience. For example: what genres do they like to read? This is probably the easiest audience descriptor.

You don’t want to be writing books for sci-fi readers using romance techniques. Similarly, you don’t want to be marketing romance books to sci-fi readers.

So you might begin your target audience description with a statement like this:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys sci-fi and fantasy.”

[Note: I’ll be basing all of the examples in this post off of myself, my books, and my audience.]

You should also think about the way they like to experience stories. It’s less important to target a sci-fi movie watcher or TV buff than someone that likes to read.

“My ideal target audience is a person who reads books.”

How do they consume their books? E-book? Paperback? Audio book?

These things matter to your production choices and your marketing tactics. You don’t want to market an e-book to audio book listeners. You don’t want to market a paperback to people who prefer e-books.

“My ideal target audience is a person who reads e-books.”

This matters because it can help you determine where you’re going to market your book, whether you’re going wide or staying in KU, and figure out where your readers buy their books.

So a general target audience might look like this:

“My target audience enjoys scifi and fantasy, reads, and prefers e-books.”

And this is a really great place to start. If you think this is all you need for whatever question you’re trying to answer, then just start here. After all, as I said earlier, you can always come back later and define your audience more.

But, if you want to deeper than this, then your next step is to:

Draw some conclusions.

Just with this basic, wide audience, you can begin to make some sweeping generalizations. A person who reads sci-fi and fantasy probably also watches TV shows and movies that are sci-fi and fantasy. Perhaps they attend comic cons and wear shirts featuring their favorite characters or slogans from their favorite series.

A person who reads e-books is more likely to hang out online. They probably spend time on social media, or platforms like Goodreads or Wattpad. They are more likely to sign up for services like Freebooksy or BookBub than someone who only reads paperbacks.

A person who reads paperbacks, on the other hand, is more likely to walk into a bookstore or a library (at least when there isn’t a pandemic). They are more likely to order signed copies or come to an in-person book signing.

A person who listens to audiobooks is more likely to be signed up for services like Chirp. They’re more likely to prefer longer books so they can get more out of their audible credits.

All of these details can be used to find your audience, to know where to market, and to decide how to spend your time and money.

And honestly, this amount of information is probably enough to do most of the things you want to do. A wide audience with a few conclusions drawn can help you set up Facebook ads, figure out what content to publish on social media, and keep writing books in your genre.

Your target audience may now look like this:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They hang out sometimes on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts, and they are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting.”  

Yes, I jumped to a bunch of conclusions based on my own experiences with people I know. But honestly, at this point in my career, this can provide enough direction for most of what I do. And digging down to develop a completely thorough description of my ideal target audience isn’t really going to help me that much more, and it will use up time that could be spent writing.

Look at other authors like you.

The other most helpful thing I think an author can do is to look at other books and authors who are similar to you, and figure out what else their potential audience is reading. We all think we’re special and unique, but I guarantee you that there is someone else who writes something similar to you.

Start with the authors who are super famous and you want to emulate. For my first series, that was Terry Pratchett and Douglas Adams. If there is a writer that your readers compare you to, start there. For my fairy tale series, this was the Lunar Chronicles series by Marissa Meyer. You can also start with your genre or sub-genre. For my monster series, I classified it as post-apocalypse. Or maybe review your BISAC categories or Amazon keywords.

And then look around.

Browse Goodreads lists. Check out the Amazon bestsellers in those categories. Sift through the reviews of the top books—what other books are readers comparing those books to?

Eventually, your audience can look begin like this, but with as much detail as you want:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They hang out sometimes on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts, and they are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting…

…and they also enjoy books such as: [insert list of list of books and authors here] Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine; the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers; Ash by Malinda Lo; and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.”

Again, you can stop here if you want. This is a really good picture of your ideal audience, honestly. It will give you a good place to start for choosing what to write next, figuring out what social media content you want, determining which formats you want to release your book in, and doing the research for most different types of paid advertising.

Or, you can keep going and narrow it down even more.

Sift through your data.

If you have a website, a social media page, a newsletter, published books, or have run any ads, you have data. All of this data can be used to get a closer look at your current audience. It may not be a perfect match to your ideal audience, but it’s a good element to add.

Reviews

Let’s start with your reviews.

Reading reviews sucks, I know. But try to focus on the 4- and 5- star ones. You want to know what your audience likes, not what they don’t like.

Here are a couple of mine from my book, Midnight Wings, that give me helpful information about actual, real-life reviewers that could potentially apply to my ideal reader:

This review indicates that this reader was a regular reader who went through a reading slump. Perhaps my ideal reader is one who reads several books per month. The reader also indicates that they love fairy tales and retellings (and in fact, most of my reviewers on this book confirm this same thing, even in the lower star reviews), and spends time on Instagram.

This review confirms that the reader enjoys fairy tales and retellings. But the reviewer also suggests that they liked the twist are excited that this book is part of a series. So perhaps I can add into my target audience description that they like twists and read series as opposed to standalones.

This reviewer reveals that they enjoyed the Lunar Chronicles, which is a very helpful tidbit that I have used many times over in my marketing. They also revealed that they prefer character-driven stories, or at very least that this was one thing they preferred about this book.

So let me pause here for a moment and update my ideal target audience description:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They hang out sometimes on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular scifi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts, and they are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting, and they enjoy books such as: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine; the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers; Ash by Malinda Lo; and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

They spend time on Instagram, prefer series to standalones, like fairy-tale retellings, and enjoy character-driven stories.”

Keep in mind that these last two paragraphs would really be more specific to my fairy tale series, and less relevant to my monster or soft sci-fi series.

Website Data

Next, take a look at your website. Most website platforms offer analytics; you can also set up Google Analytics if you want to. I have both.

I’m not an expert at analytics, but here are a few things to look for:

• Your top pages

  • Mine are: 20 Weirdly Specific Words, Home, How To Write Taglines For Authors. The important thing for me to notice here is that these are author-specific pages, not reader-specific pages. I probably wouldn’t use these to add nuance to my target audience description.

• Where your audience is primarily coming from

  • Mine come from (this year):

    • Google search and direct traffic

    • Mobile and Desktop

    • Chrome, Safari

    • iOS and Windows with Android as a close third

    • Facebook as my top social media traffic driver, though I’m also getting a surprising amount of referral traffic from tumblr

• Days of the week where you get spikes

  • Most of the spikes I’ve had this year have been Thursday, Friday, or Sunday

• Geography—countries and cities where you’re getting the most traffic

  • For me, it’s the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia; and in the US, it’s mostly from CA, WA, MD, and NY.

• Keywords people are using to find your site

  • Mine are mostly “specific words” or “oddly specific words,” and “tagline for writers,” both of which point to two the specific blog posts listed above, and “ariele sieling” (Again, I probably wouldn’t use this information as part of my ideal target audience description.)

Facebook, Amazon, and Other Platforms

Facebook has this convenient feature on your public page called “Insights.” In the left-hand column is a button called “People.” You can find a lot of information about the people following you—gender, country, city, languages they speak. My audience is 65% women, mostly ages 35 – 54, from the United States.

You can also find out what content is resonating the best—my top video this year was for my launch of Hook’s Regret. The second video was an interview I did with the I Thought Ladies. I can also see that my audience is more likely to comment or react to photos rather than videos or links.

You can extract similar information from Instagram and MailChimp. You can dig around and look for patterns on your Wattpad or on Goodreads. You can sift through the data Amazon or Facebook provides when you run advertising.

And each time you draw a conclusion, you can add it to your picture of your idea target audience:

“They live in the United States, primarily CA, WA, MD, or NY. They are mostly likely a woman between the ages of 35 – 54. They speak English. They enjoy images on social media more than videos or links. They tend to spend more time online later in the week, Thursday - Sunday.”

Again, you can stop here if you want to. This is a lot of information. It’s not the end-all be-all, of course. But it’s a really good start, and should give you more than enough information to really craft social media content and the like.

Do external research.

Now that you know what you think your audience should look like, and have a picture of what your current audience does look like, it’s time to take a look at industry trends and other authors’ audiences.

I want to talk about the romance genre for a second here. Did you know that the biggest genre in fiction is romance? It’s a billion-dollar industry, and it is now primarily run by indie authors.

One of the things about this specific genre is that romance readers know what they like, and they are voracious. As in, they read a lot. They talk to each other. They leave reviews.

And as a result, there is a ton of data out there.

According to the “Romance Book Buyer 2017: A Study by NPD Book for Romance Writers of America,” the marketing focus should be on younger readers, who are:

”…diverse in sexual orientation and in ethnicity; more male; frequent readers; listening to audiobooks; reading e-books on smartphones; shopping at a greater number of online retailers; and extremely engaged on social media and willing to experiment with new authors.” [Source]

(Members of RWA can access this entire study.)

All I did to find this was google “understanding romance readers,” and voila!

The RWA (before it’s epic collapse at the end of 2019) was one of the biggest and most influential organizations in the book industry. There are thousands of romance writers and millions of romance books. Romance readers are known to be voracious, reading ten or twenty (or more!) books per month. Which has led to a lot of interesting strategies that romance writers use to access their audiences.

My point here, is that because the romance genre is so big and influential, many of the marketing strategies floating around the aether come from them. And those strategies were developed because they know their audience.

But it gets a little tougher if you’re a scifi writer. Or fantasy, mystery, thriller, horror, memoir, self-help, or whatever.

I can’t post pictures of scantily clad men and have that turn into actual book sales. I’ve also found that repeated posting in reader groups doesn’t work for me. Creating a FansOnly account is probably not going to get me new readers—it might make me money, but it doesn’t really fit my brand lol. Sexy tips and tricks aren’t going to make the type of reader I’m looking for hit buy.

So what other information is out there to help figure out your ideal audience?

Well, you can talk to other authors, for starters.

Join some Facebook groups and start engaging. Ask other authors what their target audience looks like. Ask them who follows them on Facebook or what their website traffic looks like. You can also do a little stalking (figuratively, I mean!). Join some reader groups. Sift through the group members. Pay attention to conversations. Look for trends.

You can also go to comic cons or events focused around your genre (post pandemic, of course). Talk to people. Be friendly, not creepy. Ask them if they like to read and what types of stories engage them. Take notes.

Sift through posts on relevant hashtags on Instagram and Twitter. Look for conversations about books, tropes, market trends. Follow bookstagramers and book bloggers. See what readers are saying about books—but also pay attention to their other interests. Do they like cooking? Dogs? Gardening? Hiking? Civil War reenactments?

Buy industry publications. Jane Friedman puts out a monthly newsletter called the HotSheet about what’s going on in the world. The Pew Research Center regularly releases new reports on a wide variety of things. Check out research from the Association of American Publishers or the International Publishers Association. Bowker puts out a report every year outlining trends and patterns in book sales and reading. (Though, keep in mind, some of this information costs money.) Follow Mark Coker, Joanna Penn, Kristin Katryn Rusch, David Gaughran, Mark Dawson. Listen to podcasts, read articles, follow influencers in the publishing industry

The information is out there—you just have to pay attention and take notes.

Ask.

How can you really, truly know who your audience is if you don’t ask them?

When I was ideating on the concept for this post, I decided to pick my spouse’s brain. He works for UnderArmour, and I wanted to know what types of things a big company might do to figure out their target audience.

His answer: Consumer Insights Survey. Big companies will often hire out third-party consultants to dig deep. They will survey thousands of potential customers to determine who they are, what they do, where they live, how much money they make, and what their interests are.

And while it is much more difficult for an individual writer to do something like this (you should be writing!), it is certainly possible.

You can always pay someone to do this for you. Otherwise, the simplest method would be to create a survey using a platform like SurveyMonkey or MechanicalTurk, and spread it around to as many people as possible. Post it on social media, send it to your newsletter, email it to people you know, ask other authors to share it with your audience (they’re more likely to do this if you offer to share the results with them)—and in fact, you could even get together with a few other authors and all do this together.

Don’t lose sight of the main point.

As you do all of your research, no matter how deep you decide to go, never forget that the #1 most important characteristic of your ideal target audience is this: they like your books. They like books like yours.

Know your own books. Know what’s unique about them and what’s similar to other books. Know the common tropes. Know your main character. Have your blurb and your elevator pitch crafted perfectly. Make sure you have a cover that represents your genre, your style, and your brand.

Make sure the story is a good story. Well-written. Edited.

And make sure that all of the things that you choose to do—your social media posts, paid ads, videos, website, public appearances—point back to your books.

My ideal target audience description:

“My ideal target audience is a person who enjoys science fiction and fantasy books, and reads primarily on an e-reader.

They sometimes hang out on social media platforms, enjoy watching popular sci-fi and fantasy TV shows and movies (like Doctor Who or Marvel), and may sign up for services like BookBub or Freebooksy. They sometimes go to comic cons and wear nerdy shirts. They are interested by unique content, and will mostly scroll past if my ads and social media content are the same as everyone else’s.

They are less concerned with aesthetic, and more concerned with me and my work being interesting, and they enjoy books such as: Ella Enchanted by Gail Carson Levine; the Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyers; Ash by Malinda Lo; and Goose Girl by Shannon Hale.

They spend time on Instagram, prefer series to standalones, seek out fairy-tale retellings, and enjoy character-driven stories.”

They live in the United States, primarily CA, WA, MD, or NY. They are mostly likely a woman between the ages of 35 – 54. They speak English. They enjoy images on social media more than videos or links. They tend to spend more time online later in the week, Thursday - Sunday.

Mostly, they like books like mine. Books with engaging, interesting, female main characters. Books that explore ideas, my own thoughts, and the universe. Books with vivid descriptions of the natural world, and books that try to pick apart what the role of humans is in a world that is so much bigger than us.”

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Developing Unique Social Media Content for Fiction Authors

Social media—a great tool and a terrible cesspool. It is a fascinating microcosm of existence, one which I have to take regular breaks from because it is stressful and overwhelming.

But social media, despite it’s many (MANY) flaws, is a fantastic tool for reaching an audience. It can be difficult to sift through ALL the people to find the RIGHT people, but the truth is: there are people on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram who would enjoy reading your work if they knew about it.

The trick is, of course, finding them.

There are many, many strategies for using social media effectively. There is advice out there on frequency of posting, times of day to post, which platforms for which type of content, how to most effectively use the tools each platform offers, advertising on those platforms—all kinds of things.

But the one thing that has always been most elusive for myself and many other fiction writers I know, is content.

It can be extremely difficult to come up with unique content, and it’s frustrating because it seems like it shouldn’t be. After all—we’re writers! We’re creative! Why does it seem so impossible?

I personally have been developing social media content for years (for myself, companies I’ve worked for, and clients). The first thing that I had to get over was the idea that it should be easy. It’s not. The second brain block I had to get over was that people cared. They don’t (at least not until you start posting something they actually want to see). And the third hurdle I had to make was the idea that it’s enough to post a lot of content, because eventually someone will get someone’s attention. That is false—quality over quantity, always. Especially when you’re all on your own and don’t have a team to manage it all for you.

A few things I’ve learned:

• People don’t care about my content unless they get something out of it.

• Content that engages people but doesn’t make them curious about me as an author is not helpful and wastes my time.

• The number of likes (on a post or a page) is ultimately irrelevant—what matters is the quality of engagement. Shares and comments are 1000x better than likes. As a social media user, I like people’s content all the time just to make them feel good—not because I care about what they’re posting. Not everyone is like me, of course, but the point here is that every user is different and has different goals and reasons for using social media. Hence, quality of engagement is the best indicator of whether content has value or not.

So, the trick is to create unique content that is not just a copy of someone else’s content, but a true reflection of you, your brand, and your books.

So that’s what I’m going to talk about today.

First, please be aware:

There is no magic formula.

Sorry to disappoint. What content you produce will depend entirely on you and your books. However, I do think there are a few best practices, and I’m going to throw out as many examples as I can think of throughout this blog post, with the hope that something (anything!) will trigger that creative switch in your brain, and at the end of this, you go AH HA, and all your problems are magically solved. If this does not happen for you, I humbly apologize. ;)

Following this introductory section, you will find three steps, then several examples, and then a few more strategies and other ways to think about it.

Step 1. Know your genre and audience.

Alright. You probably hate this piece of advice by now (because everyone says it all the time), but it’s really crucial.

So, why is it important on social media?

One billion people use Facebook. One billion people use Instagram. 330 million people use Twitter. 2.95 billion people worldwide use social media [Source].

I know I said at the beginning that there are a lot of people on social media that would really enjoy your books. But the majority of people won’t give a crap. Even if they read your book they probably wouldn’t like it. Sorry if that sounds harsh, but focusing on getting everyone to read your book is only going to waste your time and money, and be very disappointing. One of my first one-star reviews on Goodreads was from a historical romance reader who for some reason decided to read a monster-apocalypse and then give me two-stars because it wasn’t historical romance.

And let’s say you are one of the few people in the world who’s book everyone will like. Well, there’s no disadvantage to starting small. You’ll garner a group of early super-fans who will pull in their friends and family and your book will take off all on it’s own, right? Starting with a targeted, focused approach makes sense in every scenario.

For the rest of us who didn’t write the next Harry Potter or Eat Pray Love or The Bible, the majority of people in the world probably won’t like your book, and that’s okay. We don’t care about the majority of people. We care about finding the right readers.

In 2018, Washington Post reported that only 18% of Americans over the age of 15 read for pleasure [Source]. And out of that 18%, the majority of them don’t read in your genre.

So the trick becomes to narrow down your target audience to find not just readers in your genre (although that’s a good start), but to also find readers who enjoy your specific type of style, voice, sub-genre, and themes.

But you can’t find them if you don’t at least have a general idea about who they are.

So, what does this have to do with social media content? Well, the content that you produce is going to resonate with certain people, and not with others. So you want your content to be relevant to the same people who are going to read your books.

I could post pictures of hot guys on my social media all day, and probably get a lot of romance readers to follow me. But guess what. I don’t write romance! So my social media content would be irrelevant to the scifi readers I’m trying to engage with, and might actually turn them away.

Step 2. Focus on your value proposition (unique or not).

When you write the blurb for your book, what is the main point of the book? What makes your book unique? What makes it stand out from other books in your genre/the world? When you write your ad copy for Amazon ads, what is that one line that you always put at the beginning? What are the stakes? What is the one thing that will make a reader pick it up and try it out?

For my monster apocalypse, I often use the phrase, “monster apocalypse.” Why? Because I know people like apocalypses already (zombie, nuclear, environmental, disease, alien)—but the “monster” part is what makes it different. I also tend to use the phrase “Set 40 years post-apocalypse” because most apocalypse stories are told as the world is ending, not so much later.

Another way to look at this is exactly the opposite: what concepts in your book will make your reader feel comfortable? What details will remind your reader of other books that are similar, or something more popular than your own book but in the same genre?

For my fairy tale series, I often go with “A fairy-tale retelling of Cinderella.” I’m not talking about what’s unique about it—I’m talking about how it’s the same as everyone else’s. Yes, another fairy tale retelling. And yes, I’ve done Cinderella again.

Why? Because I know that’s what this particular audience is looking for. They want another fairy tale retelling. There can’t be too many fairy tale retellings as far as they’re concerned.

Okay, so what does this have to do with social media content, you ask?

Because you want to develop content that will engage with readers who are interested in similar things to your “unique” value propositions or to the “comfort” value propositions. What similar ideas can you draw from? What interests would a reader of your work have besides your work?

Step 3. Think about emotional impact.

First off, how do you want your reader to feel at the end of your book? Whether or not they will is mostly irrelevant (unless you’ve written a bad book) because everyone is different. But what is your intention?

Do you want them to feel happy? Satisfied? Scared? Powerful? Excited? Horny? Battle rush? Focused? Motivated? Awwww? Warm and fuzzy? Angry?

If you need help, you can use the Pluchik Wheel of Emotions:

Or this helpful list for putting words on emotions from Hilary Jacobs Hendel (and there are tons of lists like this one if this one doesn’t do it for you—just Google “lists of emotions”):

Once you’ve figured out how you want your reader to feel, apply that same concept to your social media posts. Ask yourself, “how will this post make a person feel? Is it relevant to the emotional impact of my book?” (Note, it doesn’t have to be the same, but it should at least be relevant. If you write HEAs, you probably want to avoid posting dark and depressing memes.)

There’s a reason romance writers post so many pictures of hot, sexy people on their feeds, or quotes from the steamiest parts of their books. It’s because they’re targeting a specific emotion: they want their reader to feel horny or satisfied or anticipatory—and those types of posts create those feelings in the viewer. Which means that hopefully, over time, a social media user who wants to experience more of those emotions via reading will say, “Well, if this author’s social media posts match their books, I’m going to love them.”

The catch is that the emotion the social media posts evoke need to align with the book or else the reader will be disappointed. Like the person who gave me a 3-star review because they thought my books were going to be about a dark sea-faring apocalypse, not a hopeful land-lubber apocalypse. Their expectations didn’t end up matching the book.

Examples of Social Media Content That Match The Book

Next up, examples! Examples are honestly the hardest part. I don’t want to steal any other author’s hard work, so I’m going to make these up off the top of my head, based on some things I’ve done, some things I’ve seen other authors do, and just random whatever pops into my head.

These examples are not designed to tell you what to do, just to give you a starting place to brainstorm your own social media content. If I had to categorize most of what talk about, I pretty much focus on:

• Images

• Discussions

• Questions to ask your audience

• Themes

• Articles

But keep in mind, you can also do stories, videos, group stuff, games, giveaways, Live events, and all kinds of things on social media. It’s all about what you like doing and what you’re comfortable doing—and of course, what platform you’re on.

A Romance Novel with an HEA and a Motorcycle Gang

Audience: romance readers, probably women, that like motorcycles

Unique value proposition: It’s set on a small island in the Caribbean, as opposed to a small US town

Comfort value proposition: Girl next door trope, enemies to lovers trope, motorcycle romance

Emotion: happy, horny, and satisfied

Ideas for social media content:

• Pictures of motorcycles

• Pictures of hot dudes/women on motorcycles

• Pictures of the Caribbean (or whatever island the book is set on)

• Discussions about vacationing in the Caribbean (invite audience to share their experiences)

• Posts about other motorcycle romance books

• Pictures of author on a motorcycle/in Caribbean

• Invitation for fans to share pics of themselves on a motorcycle

• Discussion of enemies to lover trope/girl next door trope

• Discussion of cruising in Caribbean

• Invite audience to discuss brands of motorcycles

• Invite audience to share their best motorcycle/cross country trip experience

• Why are motorcycles sexy discussion

• Quotes from book about sex/motorcycles/tropes

• Quoted reviews of book, book cover, the usual

A Scifi Horror Novel set in Space with Aliens & a Lot of Death

Audience: dark scifi/fantasy readers, 50/50 men women

Unique value proposition: author has degree in Biology, made aliens super realistic, no FTL

Comfort value proposition: outer space & spaceships, explores the frailty of human existence, existential philosophy woven through

Emotion: thoughtful, curious, fear, horror

Ideas for social media content:

• Images of space from NASA

• Discussions of biology, zoology

• Images of the real-life biological creatures/concepts used to create aliens

• Any sketches done of said aliens or world-building

• Map drawing

• Share other books by authors who have done similar things

• Discussions of favorite space travel TV shows

• Discussions of alien depictions in TV shows (that you both like/don’t like)

• Discussions of representation of FTL spaceflight/time dilation

• Ask audience if they think aliens are real

• Images of yourself doing real-life biology work (if you have any)

• Any philosophical discussions based off of some of the questions in the book (i.e. is everything just a giant simulation? why are we so tiny in comparison to everything? human ego in relation to the natural world)

• Music that you think reflects the overall feeling of the world you’ve tried to create

• Quotes from other authors who explore some of the same philosophical concepts as your book—Pascal for example (“Let man, then contemplate the whole of nature, in her full and grand majesty, and turn his vision from the low objects which surround him…” -Pensees”

• Quotes from book that demonstrate descriptions of aliens, descriptions of world, philosophical discussions

• Book cover, reviews, the works

Historical Fiction set in 1920s Los Angeles with Coming of Age Arc

Audience: people interested in history, anti-racism, and personal growth

Unique value proposition: MC is a Black woman who becomes a doctor, vivid descriptions & imagery

Comfort value proposition: flapper period, feeling like you get to experience that time period

Emotion: anger, sorrow, thrill, suspense, satisfaction, hope for the future

Ideas for social media content:

• Images/drawings of clothes from the era

• Historical photographs or articles about era

• Things you learned as you did research for the project

• Picture of you dressed in garb from the era

• Discussion of coming of age trope

• Discussion of readers’ own coming of age stories (what was your tipping point when you finally realized you were an adult)

• Discussion of race in the 1920s and now

• Discussion of what conceptions/misconceptions people have about the 1920s/ race/ flappers/ prohibition, etc.

• Quotes from book that focus on descriptions of the period or illustrate the challenges the MC faced

• Black Lives Matter, anti-racist educational content

• Content focused on unlearning and becoming a better person

• Philosophical discussions of how understanding the past can help influence the future and the individual decisions we make

• Discussion about the lies society taught us during our own coming of age period

• Discussions of the history of medicine, what it looked like in the 1920s vs now

• Discussions about “what makes you angry,” “what gives you hope for the future”

• Articles/posts about the impact of history and the way that we understand history

• Book covers, reviews, all that jazz

Cozy Mystery with a Bakery & Cats

Audience: mystery lovers, women, happy people

Unique value proposition: set in a bakery that focuses entirely on round food, features a mortician turned baker

Comfort value proposition: cozy murder mystery with cats

Emotion: satisfaction, warm & fuzzies, curiosity, excitement

Ideas for social media content:

• Pictures of cats

• Cat memes

• Memes about cozy mystery TV shows

• Recipes of round baked goods

• Pictures of cakes, muffins, and delicious things of that nature

• Bakery pinterest boards

• Bakery playlists

• Ask audience to share their favorite recipes of round food

• Ask audience to share their favorite cat picture of the week

• Discussions of favorite mystery books/TV shows/movies

• Quotes from book that focus on baking, mood, cats

• Pictures of author’s cats/cooking

• Live videos of cooking (“Author’s Murder Mystery Cooking Show”)

• Blog posts about weird things my cat did this week

• “Tips and tricks” on knife usage as if from your mortician MC

• Book covers, reviews, and the works

Urban Fantasy Thriller with Witches, Mythical Creatures, and an MC Who Likes to Paint Their Nails

Audience: young adult, women, and Neil Gaiman fans

Unique value proposition: the mythical creatures are takes on traditional ones, but all mixed somehow with dogs and the MC keeps finding cursed items

Comfort value proposition: always happy endings and lots of mystical, mythological creatures

Emotion: excitement, fear, cheerfulness, satisfaction, curiosity, mystical-ness

Ideas for social media content:

• Mystical, foggy stock photos with quotes from books photo shopped over them

• Sketches, drawings, photo-shopped concept illustrations of mythical creatures

• Articles about said mythological creatures by other people

• Sketches/concept illustrations of cursed objects

• Discussions of mythological creatures

• Live video series where each one you talk about a mythological creature used in your series

• Discussions of the way old myths are used in pop culture

• The philosophy of mythology—what are old myths supposed to teach us or how are they encouraging humans to behave

• Videos of cats

• Cat memes

• Discussions of witches, modern & historical

• Recipes for spells to cleanse a house of spirits or bringing peace into a home

• Mystical music or playlists

• Mood boards on pinterest with lots of foggy streets and candlit vigils

• Pictures of fingernails done interestingly—either the author’s or partner with a fingernail person

• Custom fingernail mood boards to match the book

• Author’s fingernails custom painted to look like the MC’s

• Discussions/ blog posts/ re-shared content of interesting fingernail painting design

• Discussions of other books that feature mythical creatures

• Ask audience to share their nails/cats

• Polls on most interesting historical witches

• Discussion of any weapons used in book

• Pictures/stories about historical cursed items in museums

Non-Fiction Books

Now, I know I said this article was for fiction writers, but just in case there are any non-fiction writers here—I want to say that it might seem hard, but you actually have a world of content to pull from to create social media fodder. You can totally use the system outlined above, but you can also just focus on the actual content of the book and use that as a basis for your social media.

If your book is about science—anything, literally anything from that field is relevant. If your book is about animals [or a specific animal or species]—share articles (research or otherwise) about animals, pictures of animals, other books about animals, recent news stories about animals, scientific diagrams of animals, drawings you or your kid or your class did of animals.

If your book is self-help—every chapter in the book has content. Talk about philosophy, post pics of inspirational quotes, write short posts about other influences in the topic. (Body positivity? Write about Jameela Jamil or Jessamyn Stanley or Tatyana McFadden. Over-coming alcoholism? Write about Annie Grace or Catherine Gray.)

If your book is how-to—literally write about how to do the thing. Share strategies from the book. Share articles you wrote or someone else wrote about the topic. Share short quick tips. Share testimonials. Share personal anecdotes of how your own life changed using the strategies in the book.

If your book is memoir, share content about the place you were. The time period. The overall theme. The concept. Coming of age in the 1960s? Share content about the 1960s, coming of age, the politics of the time. Road trip across the US? Share pics of all the places you visited (even if you have to buy stock photos) or write anecdotes about your experiences in those places, or tips for sitting in a car with another human for three weeks. Personal experience with abuse or depression? Share resources for getting out of a situation, working with a therapist, or finding help.

A Few Extra Strategies for Developing Social Media Content

All of the stuff above, I came up with off the top of my head. But I assure you—it’s much harder when I’m doing it for my own books. And I think the reason for this is that I know everything about my own work, and it can be hard to figure out what content to prioritize—what will people actually find engaging?

It can also be difficult to figure out what to save as a surprise in the book, and what to be open about. But the truth is—don’t get too hung up on spoilers. Obviously don’t tell everyone the main plot twist at the end, but it’s not going to ruin the book if they know what the monsters look like beforehand. It’s not going to ruin the story if they know the main character sucks at decision making, or that the universe itself is an upside-down version of our reality. And these details are what engage the curiosity of potential readers and may eventually cause them to pick up a copy of our book and read it.

So a couple extra tricks:

Ask.

Even if you have a small audience, ask what they like. Ask what discussions they have enjoyed having in the past. If you have a few readers, ask what they liked about your book. What concepts they found interesting. What their favorite parts were.

No response to your queries? Never fear. You can still…

Experiment.

I’d argue that you have no idea if something will really work until you try it. We all get excited about an idea or a strategy, but the truth is, just because you’re excited about it doesn’t mean anyone else will be. Likewise, you might think an idea is terrible, but it might be the one thing that takes off. So don’t be afraid to try something, and don’t be afraid to quit doing something that doesn’t work.

I did a series of “Question of the Week” posts for about 6 months, and I almost never got replies. So I quit doing it.

My monster drawings, on the other hand? Almost always get a series of likes or hearts, and almost always get at least a few comments. So I keep doing it. And I built an entire Patreon around it.

Keep doing the stuff that works, quit doing the stuff that doesn’t. Don’t get hung up on an idea and waste half your life doing it.

Brainstorm.

Pretty much all of the stuff I listed above is just an extended brainstorming session, right? But here’s the thing—there are tons of brainstorming strategies available for all different kinds of people with all kinds of different brains.

What brainstorming strategies work for you? Bubble maps? Singing? Sketching? Writing on the wall? List-making? Poetry? Here is a list of 15 brainstorming methods from HubSpot. Do whatever brainstorming method works the best for you.

Here’s what I did for my fairy tale series. I made a bubble map, starting with my main concept, and brainstorming as many ideas or concepts that could be made into social media content as possible. I won’t use all of these, but it gave me some ideas for future blog posts, as well as some ideas for some images I could post that are relevant and related to my work.

At the end of the day, just post stuff. Or don’t.

You don’t have to use social media to have a successful career as an author, no matter what anyone says. There are hundreds, maybe even thousands of different ways to market your book, and if you hate Facebook (or Twitter, Instagram, Wattpad, Tumblr)? Don’t use it. If you don’t want to spend time coming up with social media content? Don’t bother.

Your best marketing strategy is always writing the next book. And if that’s all you want to do—do that.

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Writing Tips Weekly

Strategies for Productivity For Writers

Right now, at this very moment, I am not feeling very productive. I have a project (more like 12 projects) that I want to work on, but every time I pick one and get started, I either get distracted on Facebook, or I end up staring at my screen for twenty or thirty minutes and accomplishing nothing.

So, right now, at this very moment, I am utilizing one of my many strategies for jump-starting productivity, by picking a project that I kind of already half-started, and just going for it, even though it has nothing to do with the projects that are currently at the top of my list to work on.

I’ve had the idea for this blog post for about two months now, based off of a conversation my friend Ali and I had, where she asked me what strategies I use when I’m feeling less than productive. So I started listing them off… and listing and listing and I discovered that I have a rather large number of strategies and sub-strategies that I use.

I want to make it clear that not all of these strategies are created equal. Some of them work for me on a regular basis (like sprinting), while others (like yelling at myself until I start working) have worked for me exactly once. I would guess that the effectiveness of a strategy will depend on the person—their working habits, their environment, and their personality.

This picture has nothing to do with anything, but I found it while browsing a free stock photo site and decided it needed to be on my blog somewhere. Alternatively, consider it a metaphor for unpacking why you’re feeling unproductive or distracted. Take a closer work at the “inner workings” of yourself to figure out whats “making you tick (or not tick)” to help you “get back into gear.” Ok, I’m done now lol

In addition, I think it’s helpful to consider why you are lacking productivity. In my experience, being productive isn’t the problem. It’s not discipline—after all, I’m doing what I love. I want to do this work! Most of the time, my “lack of productivity” is actually something else—I’m hungry, have too many ideas, distracted, or anxious. It’s the same with writer’s block. Most of the time, being “blocked” is really not about the writing at all, but about me.

I’ve ranked these strategies according to what is most effective for me, but you might rank them in a completely different order, or never use some of these, or use strategies that I haven’t included.

My method for choosing which strategy to use in the moment is to start with the top strategy and use that; if that doesn’t work, I do the next one or the third one, and after that, I kind of pick randomly based on my mood and what I’m trying to get done.

1. Doing Sprints

If you are not familiar with the concept of sprinting, it basically means that you set a timer for a short period of time and try to write as many words as you can during that time. I tend to prefer somewhere between 15 – 30 minutes, and I usually land on 20 minutes. I find that an hour is less of a sprint and more of a 5k, and longer than that is like a marathon. Shorter than 15 minutes is just annoying, personally.

Sometimes, I also use sprints for doing other stuff. I call them focus sprints, and I aim to focus for 20 minutes or whatever amount of time. I might say, “I do not want to write these emails, but I need to, so I am going to set a timer and do just this for the next 20 minutes.”

I also use a sprinting bot to help in my Discord server. In the server, many of us sprint together at the same time, which provides a little bit of social pressure to do the work and stay focused. Participants simply input their beginning and ending wordcount, and the bot does the work. If I’m doing a focus sprint, I just input random things, or I might attribute a value—say, 50 for every email I send, or for every page I edit—and then I just start at 0 and do my own math.

Sprinting has helped me write hundreds of thousands of words, and I will swear by it as an effective strategy until my dying day.

2. Goal Setting

This is more of a long-term strategy, but it can also be used in the short term and mid-term. So, for example, I participate in National Novel Writing Month and their Camps every November, April, and July. I set a goal of anywhere between 30,000 and 50,000 words, and I do everything within my power to achieve it. I’ve only failed once so far—and I still landed at 42,000 words in a month. I have also set more minor goals; for example, the NanoWriMo site has a badge you can get if you update your wordcount every day. I’m bad about that, so last time, I made that my goal. Another time, I made finishing the book I was working on my goal, no matter what the wordcount was. I’ve also set editing goals.

In the short term, I find it really helpful to set next-day goals. So I might say, “Tomorrow, I need to send out three emails, write 2k words, and post to my Patreon.” That gives me a very clear path to follow, even when I’m feeling distracted. I even sometimes do this within the day—I might say, “In the next hour, I am going to write 500 words or create a graphic” or whatever.

When I set these goals, I usually give myself permission not to finish, though I know that some people need the opposite to be true.

Once, I sat down with someone that was helping me with some goal setting. And after I wrote out what I wanted to accomplish, he said, “So, you’re going to finish these by the end of the year, then?” And I said, “that’s the goal.” To which he replied, “Well, are you or aren’t you?”

I think he was just trying to be motivating, but it really annoyed me, because the whole point of goals is that they should be a stretch. They should be something the requires you to have to work at it, to try, to be consistent and dedicated—not something that you can achieve by staying up late the night before the deadline. So I tend to make my goals possible to achieve, but difficult, and then even if I don’t actually achieve them, I’ve still made significant progress as part of the process—basically, I’ve still been productive.

3. Keeping Track

I think keeping track is really important, especially with ginormous goals like writing a novel. I have several different ways of doing this:

• Spreadsheets

• Reports

• Journal

• Check-ins

Spreadsheets are great for things that involve numbers. For example, in the past I’ve tracked how many hours I wrote, what project I worked on, and how many words I wrote or how many pages I edited. It gave me a good sense of my speed as well as kept a running tally of how much work I’d gotten done.

I also now write up quarterly reports where I look at the last three months sales, words, publications, etc. No one actually reads the reports except my spouse, but just the act of doing it gets me excited about my projects and how far I’ve come since the last time I wrote one. Even if I’m doing worse, it still motivates me to do better, and usually after working on one, I’m raring to go.

Another related sub-strategy is my “Encouragement Binder.” I have a physical, three-ring binder, in which I print and paste demonstrations of my progress. I might book cover images in it, newspaper articles, screenshots of my most popular social media posts, printouts of fan emails—and then if my lack of productivity is the result of feeling like the work I’m doing is pointless, I can just flip through my Encouragement Binder for a small emotional boost.

I also have a couple different types of journals. I don’t write every day, but I like to check in periodically and see what was going on last time I wrote in it, and then add a few more details of things that I think are important that happened in between. If I’m struggling to write, sometimes I will just pull out one of my journals, write a few sentences, and that was all I needed to get the engine to restart.

Regular check-ins are basically just moments where I sit down and make a list. This is a super helpful strategy for me in the moment when I’m struggling with temporary distractions. I will make a list of all the projects I’m doing including writing, editing, marketing, publishing, and anything else, and I will highlight the ones I’m most excited about. Often, I will even post my list in my Discord server to add a little social pressure to get the work done.

Alternatively, I will go back to a list I already made and check off anything that I’ve finished. Frequently, what happens is that I see something on the list that I forgot about, get super excited about it, and then am ready to jump on board that project immediately.

That’s literally what I’m doing right now. I couldn’t focus on the projects that actually have deadlines, and so I scanned a list of other things I could work on and was like—this one! Blog post about productivity.

I’ve been working on this for 30 minutes now, and have 1300 words written—so I’d say that this strategy was a success. [note, wordcount might be different after editing]

4. Tangible Stuff

I’m a big stuff of real-life tangible stuff. I know a lot of people use tools like Trello or Google Docs to organize and keep track of themselves, but I really like binders (like my Encouragement Binder). I have a Project Binder where I make a new sheet for every project I’m working on. It has a checklist for everything that needs to get done on the project. I also have a Marketing Binder, an Ariele University Binder, and a Patreon Binder, as well as several world-building binders.

Now, I know this sounds more like an organization strategy than a productivity strategy, but it’s both, I swear. On one hand, it means that I never do the same work twice. On the other hand, if I’m feeling slow and sluggish, I just pull out my checklist and voila! I check off a few things and suddenly it makes me feel re-invigorated about the project.

I also really enjoy stickers. Sometimes I make sticker-charts, and every time I accomplish a thing, I get a sticker. Right now, I have a piece of paper on my wall that is split in half, with one half labeled “2k Days” and the other half labeled “15k Weeks.” Every time I write 2k in a day, I get a sticker; every time I get 15k in a week, I get a sticker. It makes me feel good and want to keep going.

In fact, I can already put a sticker on for today, because I wrote 2.5k on a project before this, and now I am… checking… 1600 words into this blog post, which puts me at 4.1k words for the day (that’s 2 stickers!), and less than 2k away from my daily goal.

Tangible strategies go a lot deeper than just sticker charts, though. For example, one of my favorite options is drawing. If I get stuck, I just draw a picture of the scene I’m working on. It takes my eyes off of the computer for a moment (and Facebook, as it turns out), and helps me refocus on the actual story. I keep all of these drawings and put them in world-building binders. I also have a chalkboard wall where I can write, scratch, scribble—sometimes a simple realization about my project can reinvigorate my inclination to work all over again.

Writing by hand is also helpful at times. I usually hate writing by hand because it’s too slow, but sometimes slowing down really helps me shift my focus back into the story and start to feel excited about it again.

You can also make binders, write your plot out on a chalkboard, make something out of clay, roll dice, clean your office—these sorts of things can often give your brain just the right amount of space to get rolling.

5. Freewriting

I hate freewriting. Hate it. Alas, it works. One of the reasons I get distracted is because I don’t know what to do next in a story. I don’t know where it should go, or what the next words should be—some people call this writer’s block. So, what I’ll do is sit down at my computer (or by hand, if you want to double-down on strategies) and just write whatever comes out of my head. Usually it’s really, really, really stupid. For example, “I hate freewriting because it’s boring and uninteresting, but I really need to get started actually writing because all I’m doing is wasting time and Askari needs to get to the next scene…” and that’s all it takes for me to suddenly know what to write.

Similar to free-writing (but different), sometimes I will try to take an alternate angle on a project. So, I might imagine I’m being interviewed on a TV show or by a reporter, and they will ask me questions about what I’m doing and working on. Sometimes I imagine it’s the future, and the reporter asks me how long it took me to complete the project, and I answer, “Several months. In fact, there was one week in mid-June when I couldn’t get anything done...” and I make up a whole story about how I got started again. This works surprisingly often.

Imagining the future can also help, by picturing where I’ll be when I have ten or twenty or fifty books out, or when I have my first TV show premiere launching.

6. Rewards

When I was little, my mom kept a jar of M&Ms on the back of the toilet for potty training. Anytime we used the toilet properly, we got candy.

Giving yourself rewards for answering 10 emails or writing 1k words might seem ridiculous, but it really can help. Sometimes, acknowledging your distraction and promising to give it to yourself later is all you need. For example, all I want to do right now is play Elder Scrolls. I’ve promised myself that if I can hit 6k for today, then I can play for a couple of hours this evening. Honestly, half the time I don’t even take myself up on the rewards—but just having them in the back of my mind can help.

I use food, stickers, movies, TV time, social media, and all kinds of things to motivate myself to keep going. Sometimes, I’ll even bribe myself with another project—“If you write 2k on this project, Ariele, then you can work on that other one, too.”

One thing to remember about writing books is that it’s a marathon every time. There aren’t very many mini goals on the road to focus in on, which means there aren’t very many things to reward yourself for accomplishing. So just setting up the smaller goals and celebrating those can go a long way towards helping you stay motivated for the long haul.

7. Positive Affirmation and Self-Care

I’m sure you’re familiar with this as a common psychological tactic designed to restructure negative brain processes—like thinking, “I am strong, I can achieve my goals” when actually you’re kind of feeling like a failure. Here’s a link to a helpful article about positive affirmation.

Well, guess what—the same tactics work when you’re feeling distracted!

The first step: identify the feeling.

Is it really distraction? Or are you just labeling it as distraction because you can’t focus? You might actually be feeling sad, hungry, bored, anxious, depressed, nervous, or any other emotion—even positive ones like happy or excited. Any emotional state can be distracting.

Once you’ve identified the feeling, then you can decide how to respond to it.

For example, if you’re hungry—eat! Problem solved. If you’re sad, maybe take a few minutes to acknowledge why you’re sad, write a little bit about it, and then try working again. If you’re anxious, try to think about why you’re anxious, and if you can’t let it go, then engaging in some self-care might actually be more productive than sitting and staring angrily at your computer monitor.

One big distraction for me is anxiety caused by a messy desk, but often I don’t even realize it’s bothering me. My desk gets messy really slowly—like I cleaned it this morning, but there are a couple of books and some headphones still out of place, and while they’re fine for the moment, I might set down a piece of paper and an empty bottle and a couple of dirty dishes, and I’ll start to feel… just off. Like something isn’t right. But if I recognize that feeling, then I know all I have to do is clean my desk or office, and I’m on track all over again.

Taking stock of how you feel, identifying those emotions, and then dealing with them, can often enable you to be far more productive than just ignoring them or trying to work despite them.

Another example: I was feeling bad about one of my Land of Szornyek works in progress. I didn’t realize it at first, but every time I sat down to work on it, I got anxious. And it was the project itself causing the problem. So, once I realized it, I got up and wrote on my chalkboard wall: “I love my universe. It is great. It is exciting. It has value. I want to FINISH it.” Now, every time I walk by it, I read it and think, “Yes!” and slowly get more and more excited to finish the project—and in fact, I did finish the next book and publish it.

As part of this, I will also indulge new ideas. Sometimes, a new idea is bugging and bugging and bugging me, distracting me to the point that I can’t finish anything else. I then take a deep breath, open a new word doc, and write about it. I usually give it between 2k – 5k words, enough to really get a handle on whether the idea has merit or is just being annoying. Then, I can go back to what I’m supposed to be working on, knowing that the idea will be there when I have time for it.

8. Location, location, location.

Sometimes things start to feel the same—boring, dreary, same old, same old. So one thing I like to do is switch it up. This might be as simple as going into the bedroom and sitting on the bed with my laptop on my lap. Or writing on the couch with a notebook and pen. Sometimes I might go to the park or a café somewhere. I even sometimes will move around all the furniture in my office or house. Once I even moved around all my furniture, decided I didn’t like it, and then moved it back. It was a lot of work, but then it turned out all I really needed was to clean my office.

Another, even simpler thing is to change up something that’s always been the same—like a poster on the wall. A candle on your left—move it to the right. Or actually light it, if it’s one you don’t like. Rip a picture out of a magazine that you like and hang it on the wall beside your desk.

Even intentionally making the smallest change can sometimes shift your brain into gear.

9. Abstinence

Sometimes I simply get tired. I know that the popular advice write now is that we should all be writing every day, or at very least, every week. But sometimes, not allowing myself to write is actually more effective—so long as I start back up again. Not writing for a period of time, a few days or a few weeks, causes the creative pressure to build and build and build, and when I start back in again it all comes rushing out.

I think short breaks can really help, too. Going for a walk or a run, taking a shower, reading a book, or meditating—simply giving yourself permission to relax and your brain room to breathe can really help. I think there comes a point when I try to force productivity out of myself, that it actually causes the opposite to happen, and my productivity worsens over time. So plan in breaks, plan in vacations, and remember that it’s okay to not be working all the time.

Your creativity isn’t going anywhere, and neither are your ideas. They’ll be there when you’re ready to start back up again.

10. Permission to be distracted

I think one of the most helpful things I’ve done is given myself permission to be distracted by things. Sometimes, I allow myself to be distracted by another project or organizing or world-building. But I also have a list of things that I am always and forever allowed to abandon my work for:

• Other story ideas (for up to 5k worth of words)

• Cats

• Birds

• Food

• Exercise

• Daydreaming

• Plants

This list changes over time, but I think it’s important to remember that my brain is a brain, and it will get distracted… and that’s okay.

Ultimately, the most helpful thing I’ve ever done is to experiment. If I can’t focus, I’ll say to myself, what should I try? And then I might try one of the things I’ve mentioned here, or I might go online and Google “Tricks to be more productive” or “how to stop getting distracted all the time” and I’ll let myself get distracted trying to figure out how to stop being distracted.

And what works for me has changed over time. Sometimes sprinting (though it is my #1) just doesn’t work. Sometimes what I need is a nap and a meal. Or a chance to work on a different project. Or time to answer a bunch of emails so I can stop feeling stressed about the fact that I haven’t been emailing everyone back. Or just a few minutes to check Facebook or Instagram or whatever.

There’s no one right answer. But once you’ve decided you want to be more productive, you’re already on the right track.