What Is Head-Hopping

Head-hopping occurs when you bounce around from one character’s perspective to another, revealing the inner thoughts and feelings of multiple characters, without a proper scene break or clear signal.

Since it can cause the reader to pull out from the experience, wondering which character they should identify with, it can ruin your scene.

Example of head-hopping:

“Swing. Yay swing,” Brandon said, running toward the playground. Kimball looked at his younger brother running off, sighed, and gave in to his fate: pushing Brandon on the swing forever. Why can’t my brother enjoy the slide more? There goes my idea of working on some homework. When Brandon reached the swing, he climbed in and smirked. There, he could at least climb up. Looking expectantly at Kimball, he said, “Underdog.” Then he closed his eyes and waited, envisioning going high like superman and making all the kids jealous. When it didn’t happen, he opened his eyes and said again, “Underdog.” Kimball knew his brother just wanted to feel normal, so he smiled and said, “You got it, kid!”

At the start of the scene,

we are in Kimball’s thoughts, seeing the scene from his perspective, but then we see it from Brandon’s, as he is proud of climbing onto the swing and envisions flying, and then we are back to Kimball’s.

Switching perspectives

You can switch perspectives throughout the book, but not in a given scene unless you have a clear signal (although keep in mind it is best to stay in the perspective of one character for a good chunk of time before switching).

The scene above was short, so it wouldn’t work to switch perspectives mid-scene.

If you need to switch in the middle of a lengthier scene, use a clear signal. Some authors use *** or other signs to indicate the character switch.

Example of switching mid-scene:

The scene: Phillipe storming into the house of a family having dinner.

Since the author wants the reader to feel the fear of the family, the scene starts in the father’s perspective. In his perspective, we read about Phillipe stumbling in, the dialogue that ensues, and all that initially occurs for several pages. But then when the family realizes the guy is harmless, the author has a clear signal *** and switches to Phillipe’s perspective as he sits down and joins them for dinner.

Again you will mostly want to stay in the perspective of one character for the entire scene.

Occasionally some scenes may need the perspective switch, but you still need to stay with one character for a good chunk of time and give a clear signal.

How Head-Hopping Differs from Omniscient Narrator

Yes, there is such a thing as an omniscient point of view: where the narrator is all-knowing and can report the thoughts and feelings of any character.

But using an omniscient narrator has a different feel; the narrator is distant, giving the report from a bird’s eye view.

The omniscient narrator is not telling the story from a character’s perspective.

Example from The Scarlet Letter:

“Hester Prynne set forth towards the place appointed for her punishment. A crowd of eager and curious schoolboys, understanding little of the matter in hand, except that it gave them a half-holiday, ran before her progress, turning their heads continually to stare into her face and at the winking baby in her arms, and at the ignominious letter on her breast.

“It was no great distance, in those days, from the prison door to the market-place. Measured by the prisoner’s experience, however, it might be […] agony from every footstep of those that thronged to see her, as if her heart had been flung into the street for them all to spurn and trample upon.”

In this scene, the narrator takes us from Hester’s experience, to the schoolboys’ thoughts in the crowd, and then back to Hester’s experience.

However, this is not head-hopping but rather an omniscient narrator.

While we learn of Hester’s experience and the schoolboys’ thoughts, we see it at a distance. We are not intimately in the perspective of Hester and then the perspective of the schoolboys; instead, we are seeing the thoughts and feelings of the characters from the narrator’s perspective.

So we didn’t change perspectives; it is all still the narrator’s. The narrator just happens to have the ability to report on the thoughts and feelings of all characters.

If we were instead to use third-person point of view (the narrator telling the story not from their bird’s-eye perspective, but rather from the intimate viewpoint of one character) in this passage, it would result in head-hopping.

Rewritten with head-hopping example:

Hester walked towards the place appointed for her punishment. She was determined not to let anyone see any emotion. Without looking at the crowd, she held her head high and walked straight down the middle. She saw the schoolboys who ran ahead of her, but she paid them no attention. One eager schoolboy stared at her. So this is why we have a half-holiday? he thought.

His friend next to him said, “Hey, did you see the big letter on her breast?”

“Yeah. It’s there because she was bad.” He wasn’t exactly sure what she had done, but his mom told him to stay away from her so it must be pretty bad. She didn’t look like a bad lady, though.

Hester wondered if the people could hear her heart beating and could feel the pain that went into each step. While she kept her face expressionless, she couldn’t completely still her heart. The marketplace seemed even further than she recalled.

In this example, the narrator is not at a distance, describing the scene as they see it and reporting on the various characters’ emotions and feelings.

Instead, we are seeing the scene from the perspective of a particular character, in their voice, but then the perspective changes mid-scene, creating head-hopping.

If it is truly an omniscient narrator, it would be a distant narrator voice, not a distinct character voice.

How to Avoid and Correct It

In an attempt to avoid it, with each scene

• Decide who will be your viewpoint character

• As you write about the other characters in the scene ask yourself, Would my viewpoint character know this information without being in the other character’s head? Would this be something my viewpoint character could see and report on?

For example: If your viewpoint character is Jim and he is in a scene with Pam, he can see Pam’s hand shaking as she writes her signature and conclude that she feels nervous.

So that information about Pam can be told from Jim’s perspective.

But Jim wouldn’t be able to say that Pam is worried her boss will find out that her son is the one who pulled the prank.

Correcting head-hopping

Most likely you will have instances of head-hopping in your first draft. It is a pesky thing, tricky to spot, and an easy trap to fall into.

As you go through your self-editing, just note when something occurs that the viewpoint character would not know about and either delete that part or reframe it from the character’s perspective.

Practice scene:

Jim reassured his boss it wasn’t Pam. The thought of shy Pam doing anything that outrageous almost caused him to laugh. But he dutifully took the sworn statement to Pam’s desk. Gosh, she is beautiful. Pam took the clipboard and with shaking hands, she signed her name. Reassuring herself there was no way they could connect it to her son, she willed her heart to stay still. She hoped Jim didn’t see her shaking hands and jump to the wrong conclusion. Jim took the clipboard, walked over to his boss, and said, “There are you happy?”

Fix #1: Deleting the information he wouldn’t know:

Jim reassured his boss it wasn’t Pam. The thought of shy Pam doing anything that outrageous almost caused him to laugh. But he dutifully took the sworn statement to Pam’s desk. Gosh she is beautiful. Pam took the clipboard and signed her name. Reassuring herself there was no way they could connect it to her son, she willed her heart to stay still. She hoped Jim didn’t see her shaking hands and jump to the wrong conclusion. Jim took the clipboard, walked over to his boss, and said, “There are you happy?”

Sometimes it works to just delete the information. But in this scene, we need to know Pam is nervous, so reframing it would be better.

Fix #2: Reframing it from viewpoint character’s perspective:

Jim reassured his boss it wasn’t Pam. The thought of shy Pam doing anything that outrageous almost caused him to laugh. But he dutifully took the sworn statement to Pam’s desk. Gosh she is beautiful. Pam took the clipboard, and her hands began to shake. Covering her hand with his, Jim said, “Don’t Worry. We all know you didn’t do it.” Pam looked up at Jim, wide-eyed and panicked. “Ignore him and just breathe.” Jim took the clipboard, walked over to his boss, and said, “There are you happy?”

In fix #2, we learn that she is nervous. We don’t know why, so the author will need to reveal that later since Jim cannot determine the why. If it is important to know why she is nervous in this scene, then the author will need to rewrite the scene using Pam as the viewpoint character.

Let’s talk about something that is important to get right: chapter hooks.

Yawn! That’s a boring opening. All I did was tell you what the chapter is about.

How about this one?

If your opening doesn’t grab someone, the rest of your craft never gets a chance to matter.

You need better hooks.

Honestly, social media hooks are the death of me. I can’t capture attention in three seconds flat. Luckily a book gives you a little more breathing room than a TikTok caption. But you have to earn that attention, chapter after chapter.

Okay that is much better!

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What Actually Makes a Hook Work

A strong hook:

• Asks a thought-provoking question

• Drops a powerful quote

• Shares an interesting statistic

• Delivers a startling fact or bold statement

• Tells an exciting anecdote

• Paints a relatable scenario that speaks to your reader’s pain points

Notice that first one says thought-provoking question, not just any question.

When I taught eighth grade, my students loved opening essays with gems like “Have you ever heard of Michael Jordan?” or “Do you like to play Minecraft?”

Yeah … those aren’t hooks. A yes-or-no question causes readers to just shrug and put the book down.

And if you’ve ever opened a chapter with a great quote, then followed it up with content that doesn’t speak to the quote: The quote alone won’t save you. You can’t just drop a quote in and call it good.

One quick clarification too, since I see this mix-up often. A quote sitting at the top of your chapter, separated from your content, is called an epigraph and is not your hook. So if you use epigraphs, don’t think you don’t need hooks.

What this looks like in practice

You can combine hook types, like a thought-provoking questions and quote.

Brad Montague said, “Dreamers are many, but doers are few.” What separates the dreamers from the doers? How can you actively become a doer? You have been told all your life: create a goal, act on it, then create another goal, and act on it, etc. This constant path of creating and then acting will mold you into the person you want to become, bringing lasting happiness.

Or use just one:

Quote:
Steven Spielberg said, “Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.”[1] As Steven noted, cell phones can negatively affect adults who have not had the time to mature and develop their story, so imagine how much this affects the life of a young teenager.

—Notice how I didn’t just drop in the quote. My sentence afterward is about the quote and keeps the momentum going.

Question:

• “While cell phones are becoming a given in teenagers’ lives, are they doing more harm than good?”

• “What would you do if you could play God for a day? That’s exactly what the leaders of the tiny island nation of Guam tried to answer.”[2]

[1] “Spielberg in the Twilight Zone,” Wired, June 1, 2002, https://www.wired.com/2002/06/spielberg/.

[2] “Essay Hooks Ideas,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Psychology 225, accessed October 22, 2025, https://online225.psych.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/225-Master/225-UnitPages/Unit-03/PSY-225_Gernsbacher_Hooks.pdf.

Since people are wired to love stories, anecdotes always win unless they’re too long and readers lose patience waiting for you to get to the point.

A bold statement can work too, especially when it pushes against something your reader already believes. Telling someone that everything they’ve learned about productivity is wrong does more to hook them than gently introducing your topic ever could.

Two Real Examples of Weak Hooks (And How to Fix Them)

Example 1

“Do you know how to achieve your goals? If you don’t, I will walk you through the five most important steps to achieving your goals.”

Technically, this opens with a question, so someone followed the rule, right? Except it’s a yes-or-no question, and goal-setting content is everywhere. Nothing makes the reader want to keep reading.

A stronger version might lead with a startling fact: ninety-two percent of people never achieve their New Year’s resolutions, and it’s rarely about laziness.

Or it might lead with a sharper question, like asking whether the real problem isn’t motivation but strategy.

Example 2

“Communication is important in relationships. Without good communication, misunderstandings happen and conflicts arise. In this chapter, we’ll discuss how to communicate better with your partner so you can have a healthier relationship.”

This reads like a high school thesis statement, technically correct, completely forgettable.

Compare that to opening with a scene: a woman yelling “You’re not listening!” while her partner sits there genuinely confused, certain he was listening.

Readers can picture that moment, and it does more in three sentences than the original paragraph does in five.

[1] “Essay Hooks Ideas,” University of Wisconsin-Madison Psychology 225, accessed October 22, 2025, https://online225.psych.wisc.edu/wp-content/uploads/225-Master/225-UnitPages/Unit-03/PSY-225_Gernsbacher_Hooks.pdf.

Conclusion

Pause at the end of your first paragraph, or your first few, in every chapter and ask whether you’ve actually hooked your reader. If you’re not sure, that’s usually your answer.

Add in a good hook.

Also note the type of hook you’re using. If every single chapter opens with a question, your reader will start to feel the pattern, and patterns are the opposite of surprising. Mix it up.

Now go hook in those readers.

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I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What’s your favorite type of chapter hook: a question, a story, a surprising fact, a quote, or something else?

• Have you ever stopped reading a book because the opening felt slow or uninteresting?

• Which chapter in your current manuscript has the strongest opening, and why do you think it works?

You know the saying, you can’t fix something if you don’t know what’s broken? Is that a saying … I swear it is, but maybe it’s not. I know my weakness is fact-checking. Ha!

But the point is, in order to fix something, you have to know what’s wrong. You may know your weaknesses in a broad sense: I’m bad at dialogue, or I can’t seem to organize my ideas clearly. But get specific on what your weaknesses are; the more specific you are, the better chance you have of spotting them and fixing them during your self-editing.

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1. Know Writing Craft

Read blogs, books, and social media posts; listen to podcasts; attend writing groups. As you do so, you’ll learn what makes for good writing in your genre. With each new craft tool you learn, assess whether you do it well or not.

In my Self-Editing Essentials for Fiction book, I cover 29 craft topics, and in the nonfiction version, I cover 21. These are not a complete list, especially in the technical section dealing with grammar and punctuation. But it’s a good starting point.

2. Mine your feedback history

If you’ve ever shared your writing with beta readers, critique partners, an editor, or a writing group, you have data.

Go back through every note you’ve received across multiple projects and look for commonalities.

For example, fiction writers might find that multiple readers have flagged the midpoint dragging before the act two turn, or that the villain’s motivation doesn’t hold up, or that the romantic tension resolves too quickly.

Nonfiction writers might notice that readers consistently say the main point is hard to find, or that the case studies feel surface-level, or that opening chapters lose them before the good content starts.

If you haven’t shared your work widely enough to have this kind of feedback history, that’s worth noting too—outside readers are one of the most reliable diagnostic tools available to any writer.

In writing my books, I had one beta team member point out that I use “you” when it’s implied. For example, After you finish X, you can do Y could become After you finish X, do Y. Now that might seem minor, but dropping the implied you does strengthen my writing. It’s more concise and feels stronger.

Once he pointed that out, I see that in every piece I write: social media posts, blogs, newsletters. It wasn’t on my radar before, but now I try to edit it out (I edited it out of four sentences in this blog).

3. Run your manuscript through a writing analysis tool

Several tools can scan your manuscript and surface patterns for you.

ProWritingAid is the most versatile option for both fiction and nonfiction writers. It runs 25+ reports covering style, readability, grammar, and consistency—including overused words, clichés, and sentence variety and rhythm. It integrates with Word, Google Docs, and Scrivener, so it fits wherever you already write.

AutoCrit is built with fiction writers in mind, though it handles nonfiction as well. It flags overused words, repeated words, redundancies, and clichés, and highlights patterns like passive voice and places where phrasing starts to lose impact. It also checks dialogue for natural flow, tone consistency, filler phrases, and repeated tags and compares dialogue style across scenes, helping you spot when your characters start sounding the same.

What makes these tools genuinely useful for pattern-finding is that they work across your whole manuscript at once. A word or construction you’ve used 60 times reads fine in any individual sentence. Seeing it flagged 60 times in a single report makes the habit impossible to ignore.

As with any tool, they have their limits, so use your human judgment. To be very clear, I’m advertising their use for finding your overused word choices, patterns, etc., not for any other use case, though they have other uses, but that’s for another topic.

4. Read your work against published books in your genre

Pull two or three books in your genre that are similar to your book’s purpose and goals and have been well received. Read a chapter of one, then a chapter of yours. Do this several times across different sections.

This comparison works because it removes you from the vacuum of your own manuscript. Now you’re not asking “is this good?” in the abstract; instead, you’re seeing concrete differences between your choices and the choices of writers whose work is landing with readers.

You’re not looking to imitate just to identify places where the gap between their work and yours is consistent enough to point to a weakness in your writing style and approach.

5. Ask readers the right questions

Many writers ask readers, “What did you think?” and get feedback that’s either too vague to act on or too focused on personal preference to reveal actual weaknesses. The fix is to ask more specific questions before your reader ever opens the manuscript or the portion of writing you’re sharing with them.

Ask fiction readers to

• flag any moment they felt bored, confused, or emotionally disconnected

• tell you the moment they felt most invested and the moment they almost put it down

• describe your main character in three words without looking back at the text

Ask nonfiction readers to

• summarize the main argument of each chapter in one sentence after finishing it

• flag any place they felt the logic didn’t hold or they needed more evidence

• say where they skimmed

Specific questions produce specific answers. Those answers, mapped across multiple readers, show you exactly where your writing is losing people, and that’s where your weaknesses live.

Revisit those flagged spots and note any similarities in the writing approach and style in those passages.

6. Look at your first drafts alongside your revisions

If you save your drafts (and you should), comparing an early draft to a later one reveals what your instincts produce before your craft kicks in. Those first-draft instincts are where your deepest habits live.

Note what you’re fixing and improving often during your revision stage. Did you add in several transitions (nonfiction), did you insert more interiority (fiction)?

What to do with this information?

Create a personalized self-editing checklist. Yes, this is for the self-editing phase. Sure, as you become aware of your weaknesses, they may crop up less often in your drafting naturally.

But don’t focus on and worry about them during drafting. If you’re noticing your weaknesses during drafting and stopping and fixing them, this can lead to stronger imposter syndrome or frustration.

So the point of knowing your weaknesses is to create a list of what to look for when revising another piece of writing or further revising your current one.

This list may change over time, as you add new weaknesses you spot and remove ones you no longer struggle with.

But with a list, your self-editing will be more focused, and thus, your published writing will be stronger.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What strategy have you tried before?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Think about the last book you couldn’t put down. Was the main character sitting around waiting for things to happen, or were they out there making terrible, brave, desperate choices that kept you turning pages at 2 a.m.?

I’d guess the latter because dynamic characters keep readers invested, as they shape the plot. Dynamic characters want something, make choices, cause consequences, and change because of what they experience. That doesn’t mean they always make good choices. Honestly, it’s often more interesting when they don’t. But they need to make choices that feel believable and tied to who they are.

A strong main character is dynamic in two key ways: they have agency, and they experience growth. Those two elements work together to create a character who feels like a person instead of a prop.

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Start with What Your Character Wants

Before your character can drive the story, you need to know what they want.

The character may not fully understand their own desire yet or may say they want one thing when they’re really chasing something deeper. But as the author, you need to know the larger desire underneath their choices.

For example, I want to communicate better, succeed professionally, improve my relationships, and prove myself. But underneath all of those smaller wants, my main desire is to feel worthy, loved, and respected.

That deeper desire matters because it gives the story direction. Without a clear goal, characters wander. Things may happen around them, but readers won’t feel the same pull because they don’t know what the character is reaching for or what might be lost if they fail.

Then once you know the larger story goal, zoom in closer. What does the character want in this specific scene?

Scene-level goals are usually smaller and more immediate. They might want to

• get information

• avoid a confrontation

• impress someone

• hide the truth

• escape danger

• protect a friend

• win an argument

Whatever the smaller want, it should connect in some way to the larger desire driving the story.

This doesn’t mean you need to announce every goal outright. Please don’t have every character walk around declaring their emotional motivation like they’re in a therapy intake form. Readers can pick up on goals through thoughts, actions, dialogue, and subtext.

The key is that the goal should be clear enough for the reader to feel the character moving toward something overall and in each scene.

Give Your Character Agency

Once your character wants something, they need to act on it.

Agency means the character helps drive the story forward. They don’t just observe the plot, getting dragged from event to event while everyone else makes the important decisions. They make choices that affect what happens next.

These decisions should grow out of their goals, worldview, emotions, flaws, fears, and circumstances. They don’t need to make perfect choices. Real people rarely do. But they should make choices that feel true to who they are in that moment.

Readers can usually sense when a character makes a decision only because the plot needs them to.

• If the cautious character suddenly charges into danger for no reason, readers notice.

• If the loyal character betrays someone without enough internal conflict or motivation, readers notice.

• If the character agrees to everything and never pushes back, readers notice that too.

A character without agency makes the story weak, regardless of how exciting the plot is.

Imagine a story where a woman gets promoted because her boss calls her, goes to a party because her neighbor invites her, meets a man because he approaches her, goes on a date because he asks, orders what he suggests, walks where he wants to walk, and becomes exclusive because he brings it up.

Technically, things are happening, but she isn’t really doing anything.

She has no clear desire, takes no meaningful risk, and makes no choice that changes the direction of the story. The plot happens to her instead of because of her.

Now compare that with a character who wants the promotion and has been fighting for it. She chooses to attend the party because someone there could help her next career move.

She talks to the man because he challenges her in a way that intrigues or irritates her. She chooses the date despite her reservations and suggests a walk because she wants to ask him something away from the noise.

Same basic events, but now she has agency, and that change alone makes the plot more engaging.

Reaction still counts as agency

Sometimes writers hear “your character needs agency” and think that means the character must initiate every major event. Not true.

Characters can react to circumstances and still be active.

A murder, betrayal, job loss, natural disaster, illness, war, invitation, accusation, or shocking discovery may happen to them, but then what do they do?

Do they choose to run, fight, investigate, hide, confess, manipulate, protect someone, sacrifice something, seek revenge, or tell the truth?

To have agency, they need to cause things to happen whether that’s from a choice or a reaction to a circumstance.

This is especially important at turning points. Your character may be forced into a situation they didn’t choose, but they should still make a deliberate decision about how to move forward. That decision should create consequences and lead to the next stage of the story.

Passive characters can still be active in the plot

Some characters are passive by personality. They avoid conflict and let people talk over them, freezing under pressure.

That can absolutely work.

But passivity as a character trait is different from passivity in the plot.

A character who chooses silence to avoid confrontation is still making a choice. And if that silence affects what happens next, the character has agency in the plot.

Maybe their refusal to speak up

• causes a misunderstanding

• allows someone else to gain power

• protects them temporarily but costs them later

It’s not a problem to have a quiet, hesitant, conflict-avoidant character. As long as their choices to be that way affects the story.

A passive personality can create a fascinating arc when the character’s avoidance has consequences and eventually forces them to confront what they fear.

Give the Character Growth

Agency keeps the story moving, while growth gives it meaning.

A main character should be different at the end of the story than they were at the beginning. But “growth” doesn’t always mean they become better or happier.

A character can become more confident, wiser, braver, or more honest.

They can also become jaded, crueler, defeated, corrupted, or more committed to a destructive belief.

Both positive and negative arcs can work beautifully. What matters is that the transformation is meaningful.

For example, a character might move from insecure to confident as they learn to trust their abilities or from kind to jaded after repeated betrayal.

A naive character might become wise. A hopeful character might become defeated.

That change is where much of the emotional weight of the story lives. Because readers aren’t only asking, “What happened?” they’re also asking, “What did it do to this person?”

Character growth reveals theme

Character arc and theme are closely connected.

Your theme is the bigger idea your story explores: justice, forgiveness, identity, power, grief, courage, truth, belonging, ambition, or any other human question at the center of the book.

Your character’s arc makes that theme visible.

If the story explores justice, the character should collide with justice in a way that changes or challenges them.

If the story explores trust, the character should be forced to confront what they believe about trust.

If the story explores power, the character’s relationship with power should shift, deepen, or decay.

That doesn’t mean the book needs to preach. Theme is more powerful when readers experience it through the character’s struggle rather than being told the lesson.

Imagine a lawyer who takes on a major case, discovers uncomfortable evidence, faces pressure from his firm, strains his marriage, sees flaws in the justice system, wins the case, and then realizes his client was guilty.

That sounds like plenty of plot.

But if he returns to work unchanged, with the same assumptions, blind spots, and approach to the next case, the story may feel hollow, as the events didn’t do anything to him.

Now imagine that after the case, he proposes a new review process at his firm. The partners push back. He pushes harder. It costs him a friendship and threatens his standing at work. Now he has to decide what kind of lawyer, and what kind of man, he wants to be.

That shift brings the theme forward. The story is now about integrity, truth, ambition, and the cost of doing what he now believes is right.

That’s what character growth does. It shows readers what it all meant.

Dynamic Characters Make Stories Matter

A dynamic character doesn’t need to be loud or constantly in motion. They don’t need to win every argument, make flawless decisions, or transform into the best version of themselves by the final page.

But they do need to want something.

They need to make choices.

Those choices need to affect the story.

And by the end, the journey should leave a mark.

When your character has both agency and growth, readers can feel the difference. The plot becomes a meaningful journey shaped by desire, pressure, consequence, and change.

That’s the kind of character readers remember long after they close the book.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What examples do you have of your character having agency?

• What is your character’s growth arc?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

You know that sensation when you’re reading and you can’t quite relax, even during a quiet scene? That low-level unease that keeps you glued to the page? That’s microtension—and without it, even your most dramatic scenes will fall flat.

Conflict and microtension are related, but they’re not the same thing. Conflict shapes what’s happening in the scene. It gives the character an obstacle, problem, or opposition. Microtension shapes how the moment feels as the character moves through that conflict. It’s the emotional texture of the scene.

In other words, while conflict and stakes define the scene’s obstacle and why it matters, microtension defines how it feels as it’s happening.

And many writers miss that how it feels piece.

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What Microtension Looks Like on the Page

Let’s take a simple example: a job interview.

The goal is to get the job.

The conflict might be that the interviewer asks unexpected questions that expose the character’s weaknesses.

Now let’s add microtension:

• She forces a smile but knows her palms are slick with sweat.

• The interviewer’s kind tone clashes with his sharp questions.

• She laughs too loudly after a joke that wasn’t funny.

• A voice in her head whispers she’s ruining her one chance.

The scene has the same conflict and goal, but the added microtension makes it come alive.

How to Create Microtension

Before we dive into the how, note that microtension is not a substitute for scene structure. If a scene doesn’t have a clear goal, conflict, stakes, and purpose, fix that problem first. But when a scene is structurally sound and still feels dull, microtension is often the missing ingredient.

So with a structure in place, build in microtension.

Start by asking, What does this character want right now, and what’s keeping them from getting it?

Yes, that sounds similar to how we think about conflict—but here, we’re zooming in to the moment-to-moment experience of that struggle.

Once you’re there, start layering in tension using a variety of techniques:

• Cause something to feel slightly off—body language that doesn’t match dialogue, a pause too long, an unspoken thought that shifts the tone.

• Include references to something in the past (this morning, years ago, whatever) that makes the reader curious.

• Have characters act and speak in ways that contradict their goals and desires.

• Have characters misinterpret their own emotions.

• Let conflicting emotions sit side by side; think pride under fear or affection under anger. (Readers can sense that complexity even if you never name it.)

• Allow a character’s emotional state to influence how they perceive and describe their surroundings.

• Create dialogue exchanges with contradictory ideas and needs, interruptions, clipped responses, or silence.

• Hint at deeper, unspoken feelings beneath the surface of the conversation.

• Describe the setting in a way that builds tension.

• Have the setting and scene be contradictory to the character’s mood.

• Make one character uncertain or suspicious of the other.

You don’t need to use all of these at once. Microtension works best when it’s layered in naturally, moment by moment.

Small changes, big impact

Microtension is so powerful because it doesn’t require a complete rewrite. Often, it comes down to small, intentional shifts.

Examples:

Example 1
Original: Tariq said, “I’m not angry,” and went back to eating his food.

Revised: Tariq said, “I’m not angry.” He stabbed his steak and cut it into smaller and smaller pieces until his knife had nowhere to go.

Now we have body language that doesn’t match the dialogue—and that tension pulls the reader in.

Example 2
Original: “It’s official, Mom. I dropped out of college, and I’m touring with my band.”

Renata smiled.

Revised: Renata smiled. A genuine smile. Her son, a successful musician? Under the table she pressed her thumbnail into her palm until she felt it.

Now we have conflicting emotions working at the same time.

Example 3
Original: David sat in the hospital waiting room.

Revised: David sat in the waiting room. Someone nearby was eating chips, the crinkle of the bag loud and steady, and he couldn’t stop counting the seconds between each one.

Now the setting is doing emotional work.

Conclusion

Because it taps into emotional tension, microtension keeps readers reading even when “nothing is happening.” Without it, scenes move too smoothly and everything lines up too cleanly.

This can cause readers to disengage, even if they don’t know why.

But before you start adding microtension everywhere, make sure your scene is already structurally sound.

You need:

• A clear goal

• A meaningful conflict

• Real stakes

• A reason for the scene to exist

If those pieces aren’t in place, start there. But if your scene is structurally working and still feels flat, add in microtension.

To do so, look for places where something could feel slightly off, a second emotion could sit under the first, or a character could misread what they’re feeling, etc.

You don’t need to overhaul the scene. Just add a few moments of friction that transform how the scene feels on the page.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• Have you ever read a scene where “nothing happens” but you still couldn’t stop reading? What do you think created that feeling?

• Which microtension technique do you think you underuse most in your writing?

• When your scenes feel flat, do you tend to add more plot—or look at how the moment feels?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

One benefit to self-publishing is it doesn’t take as long as traditional; however, that doesn’t mean it’s quick. Not if you want to do it right.

So how long does it take? You know how I’m going to answer this, right?

It depends.

Favorite answer.

The more helpful answer is: Longer than most authors think.

Many writers assume that once the manuscript is finished, they’re just a few weeks away from publication. But self-publishing involves far more than uploading a file to Amazon. Editing, proofreading, cover design, formatting, metadata, launch prep, ARC reviews, and marketing all take time.

In fact, in my publishing roadmap, even the “minimum recommended time frames” are described as just that—minimums.

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The Short Answer

After you’ve written your first draft, a bare-minimum self-publishing timeline is 3 months. That said, that timeline can feel rushed, especially if you’re hiring professionals, doing multiple editing rounds, or planning a thoughtful launch.

Key dates

Publication day is when you hit publish and make the book available to your launch team. Launch day is when the book is promoted publicly.

Some key steps should begin well before publication:

• Start looking for an editor at least 4 months before publication, especially if you’re getting separate editing rounds

• Start looking for a proofreader at least 2 months before publication

• Start looking for a cover designer at least 2 months before publication

• Start looking for a formatter or interior designer when you know roughly you’re your editor will be done (Note: you don’t wait for the editing to be done; you just need to know a rough start date for your formatter/interior designer)

• Start drafting your author bio and book description at least 1 month before publication.

• Marketing groundwork and publishing setup both begin about 3 months before publication

So yes, it’s possible to move fast. But if you want a smoother process, more margin, and fewer last-minute problems, a longer runway is usually better.

A realistic self-publishing timeline

Phase 1: Finish the draft and self-edit

Before you send your manuscript to your editor, get your manuscript as strong as you can on your own.

This stage often takes longer than authors expect because finishing the draft is not the same as finishing the book. After you’ve finished the draft, give yourself some distance, then start your self-editing. Fresh eyes will catch what tired eyes won’t.

If you rush this step, every later step gets harder, slower, and more expensive. Ask me how I know?

I wrote two books on self-editing, and guess what? I didn’t give myself distance before self-editing. Oh, the irony! So I did more self-editing after the design was complete, and you guessed it, that cost me. It cost me $1,800 to be precise.

Phase 2: Professional Editing

This is often the longest stage, depending on how many rounds you’re getting. For context, it typically takes three or more weeks to edit a 50k-word manuscript in one round. Then you need to spend time reviewing edits, responding to queries, and revising afterward. Then it goes back to the editor for another round (or not if you only got one round).

That means editing isn’t just one appointment on your calendar. It usually includes:

• finding the right editor

• waiting for an opening in their schedule

• the edit itself

• your revision time after the edit

• possibly another round of editing after that

And if you do multiple services, the timeline stretches fast. An editor will need those three weeks or so to do the developmental editing round, then you revise, then they need another two or three weeks to do the copyediting round, then you revise, etc.

Editors run their business differently so the timeline depends on the services they offer. My combined package includes both types of editing in the first round, and then a second round, either a full-pass or clean-up pass. So this can reduce the time it takes, but then it’s also not as good of quality as getting the types done separately.

Phase 3: Proofreading and cover design, and interior design/formatting

These steps often overlap, but they still need breathing room. Your cover designer can be working on your cover during phase 2 (professional editing) or while you’re getting your book proofread. But the interior design/formatting can’t start until the book’s content is finalized. And then you may want a proofreader after the design as well to check for design issues.

I’d plan for at least two weeks for proofreading. As for design, if it’s a simple formatting job, it could be done in a week. But if you have more complex design and multiple formats (print, ebook), then the design process could easily take three weeks or more.

Then take into account time spent reviewing the design to check for any errors, then time for the designer to implement your changes into the designed file.

You don’t want to rush this. A professional cover, readable interior, and final proof pass matter because they affect whether readers buy, enjoy, and recommend the book.

Phase 4: Publishing setup and launch preparation

This is the stage authors often forget to plan for. You can start the setup three months before publication by making decisions like distribution strategy, ISBNs, and imprint planning.

Then two months before, you can start into your launch preparation, and two weeks before you set up your metadata on the platforms you’re publishing on.

In this stage, you’re juggling things like:

• launch team setup

• ARC distribution

• review collection

• podcast and blog outreach

• preorder scheduling

• author platform updates

• metadata and category decisions

• launch event planning

In other words, the manuscript may be nearly done, but the book launch machinery is just getting started.

Phase 5: Publication day

This is your soft launch. You don’t advertise your book yet. Only your launch team members know it is live. This buffer can be incredibly helpful for catching issues, gathering reviews, and making sure everything is actually working before the wider announcement.

I recommend a two-week soft launch.

Phase 6: Launch

Now you’re actively marketing and promoting your book. It’s available to the public. And there’s plenty to do post-launch. So the full publishing timeline shouldn’t end here. However, this was just focusing on timeline to publish.

Looking back, this puts the timeline for a 50k-word book at about 3 months at the bare minimum, with 4 to 6 months being more realistic for many authors.

What affects timeline the most?

A few things can dramatically shorten or lengthen the process:

• How polished your draft is: A cleaner manuscript usually means fewer revision rounds, fewer delays, and lower costs.

• How many professionals you hire: If you hire separate specialists for editing, proofreading, cover design, and formatting, the result can be excellent—but it also requires more coordination and more lead time.

• Whether you’re trying to launch strategically: If you want reviews, a launch team, preorders, outreach, and a real marketing plan, you need more time than someone quietly uploading a book with no launch plan.

• Your own revision speed: Editors and designers have timelines, but authors do too. If it takes you a month to work through edits, that changes the timeline.

• The complexity of the book: A simple ebook-only novel usually moves faster than a nonfiction book with tables, callout boxes, images, permissions, back matter, and print editions.

Conclusion

Self-publishing can move quickly, but good self-publishing takes planning.

If you want to avoid panic, costly last-minute fixes, and an overwhelmed launch season, don’t wait until the manuscript is “done” to start planning.

Start backing up from your ideal launch date as early as possible.

And give yourself more time than you think. Better to have extra time than to rush.

If you want the full step-by-step publishing process, service-provider guidance, and timeline recommendations, check out my Publishing Roadmap.

And if you want help organizing your deadlines, budget, tasks, and launch details in one place, my Author Management Tracker was made for exactly that.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, learn about helpful author resources and learning opportunities, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• Before reading this, how long did you think self-publishing would take?

• Which stage feels most overwhelming to you right now—editing, design, or launch prep?

• If you’ve already published, what part of the timeline took longer than you expected?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

I’m currently in the middle of my soft launch—meaning my books are live, but only my launch team knows they exist. For two weeks, they’re the ones purchasing, reviewing, and helping build momentum before I announce the books publicly.

My soft launch was very strategic and thought-out, but you know what they say about the best laid plans . . .

Some of the lessons below are things I knew going into the launch and handled well. Others are things I learned because I was in the middle of it—refreshing dashboards, second-guessing decisions, and reminding myself (repeatedly) to take my own advice.

If you’re planning a book launch—or someday will—consider this your friendly field report from someone actively living it.

These lessons aren’t in any particular order.

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1. Don’t rush your launch

I tell my clients this all the time.

Don’t rush editing just to meet an arbitrary deadline. Don’t force a timeline that your book isn’t ready for. Give yourself margin.

And then …  I turned around and did exactly what I warn against.

I had a launch date in mind that was far too soon after finishing the manuscript. I wanted to ride the momentum of November writing month and still catch that New Year’s goals energy. So I went for February. In theory, it made sense.

After getting some timeframes from my interior designer, I pushed back the launch by 10 days.

But guess what? My book still wasn’t proofread in time.

Instead of pushing the launch again, I made a decision I thought was low-risk: I published a temporary version during my soft launch, assuming only my launch team would be buying during that window. I told them upfront the book was still being proofread and that I’d send the updated version shortly.

No big deal, right?

Except people outside my launch team bought it.

And for a book about self-editing, that’s … not a great look.

I’d already pushed the soft launch back by ten days and felt silly doing it again, so I stuck to the date. But this was a clear reminder that rushing, even when you’re experienced, creates unnecessary stress and complications.

Lesson learned (again): Timelines need to be realistic and don’t matter as much as a quality product.

2. Collect reviews ahead of time so you can stagger them

This is one thing I’m genuinely glad I did right.

Instead of asking everyone to post reviews all at once, I collected reviews ahead of time using a Google Form. That gave me a live spreadsheet of who had submitted, who hadn’t, and where they agreed to post.

This decision paid off in several ways:

• I could send personal reminders to people who hadn’t submitted yet (which works far better than generic nudges).

• I could stagger reviews throughout the soft launch instead of getting a brief spike and then nothing.

• I could maintain steady momentum, which is far more valuable to Amazon’s algorithm than a single burst.

I divided submitted reviews into batches and emailed each group when it was their turn to post. I sent out a new batch every two days. I used Yet Another Mail Merge connected to my Google Sheet that had all the submitted reviews, so each email automatically populated the reviewer’s name, platform(s) they agreed to post on, and review text.

For me, it was literally select the current batch number to hide all other rows, then send the templated email. For them, it was literally copy and paste.

Easy peasy.

Meanwhile, throughout the launch, I continued gently reminding launch team members who hadn’t submitted reviews yet that they still could.

3.  Amazon will test your patience (so don’t sweat the small stuff)

This was a surprise lesson. One that drove me up a wall. If you’re not so type A like me, it mught not bother you as much, but the fickle nature of Amazon drove me nuts.

For one, I assumed that if launch team members bought the book (it’s $0.99), they’d automatically receive the verified purchaser badge on their review.

Nope.

After some digging, I learned that reviewers had a better chance of getting the badge if they waited at least a day after purchase before posting their review. So I updated my email templates with clearer instructions.

It still wasn’t foolproof, but it significantly improved the odds. Then I realized they need to open the ebook and swipe through a few pages, so I adjusted the instructions again.

Verified purchaser reviews give more visibility and trust. Some say this doesn’t matter as much, but it’s still a nice to have. If you’re running a launch team, this small timing tweak can make a real difference.

But the biggest way Amazon tested my patience is there doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to when a review is published. Some posted immediately, some took hours, some took days, some are still pending.

Really it shouldn’t matter. As long as all the reviews, or a good chunk of them, are posted before I announce the books are available to the public, then that’s what matters.

I know this, but I still was refreshing the page every hour or so and freaking out when no new reviews were displayed.

I worried reviews had been rejected and would never post, and I wouldn’t hit my goal of number of reviews posted despite having enough submitted ahead of time.

Then magically midway, a ton of reviews came through, and I finally relaxed. I wasted way too much time worrying about these things.

4. Bestseller status is nice, but shouldn’t be your main goal

This is another one I knew ahead of time, and it’s a good thing I did. I was already stressing enough over delayed reviews, I didn’t need to stress over this too.

Yes, hitting #1 in a category looks exciting, but it’s also incredibly fleeting.

To hit #1 in two of my three categories, I needed at least ten purchases in a single day. So not much. I could have stacked my first batch to make that happen, but I chose not to.

Who cares that more than ten of my launch team members bought the book on the same day?

Real success isn’t being #1 for twenty-four hours. A true bestseller sells consistently over time. So, I guess I could say my book was a bestseller, but it means nothing. I just had enough people on my launch team to get sales during those weeks.

Right now, during my soft launch:

• My Self-Editing Essentials for Fiction book has hit #2 in one category and #3 in another.

• My Self-Editing Essentials for Nonfiction book has hit #3 and #5.

Who cares?

That momentum is temporary. What matters far more is:

• Consistent purchases over time

• Reviews spread across the launch window

• Long-term social proof

So instead of chasing a badge, I staggered reviews to signal to the algorithm that these books have steady interest and are building credibility with real reviews. This will matter a lot more in the long run.

I doubt my book will be a true bestseller, but by not chasing a temporary badge, I have a better chance at it.

5. Use a book description formatting tool to save yourself the headache

Amazon formatting is … an experience.

I resubmitted my book description more times than I care to admit, trying to get spacing between paragraphs and bullet points. Plain text didn’t work. HTML line breaks didn’t work. Nonbreaking spaces didn’t work.

I know html code, but I couldn’t get it to work.

Each failed attempt required waiting for approval just to see that nothing had changed, so that was also a waste of time.

I found Kindlepreneur’s Amazon Book Description Generator and copied the code it produced. It still had some issues with spacing after the list, but it had the spacing correct now before the list. Since I know some html, it was an easy tweak to get it to work.

If you value your time (and sanity), use a tool built for this instead of trial and error.

6. Emotional book descriptions convert better than keyword-stuffed ones

I guess I can’t really say I learned this yet. I have no idea if my book description will convert, as I haven’t announced the books to the public yet. It’s just my launch team buying, and they would buy no matter how lame my book description is.

And it was that: lame. When I published the book, I had a book description stuffed with keywords. I was so proud of how I had fit so many in there naturally.

But it was … boring. It listed pain points, but it didn’t make you feel them.

This became super clear when I looked at a book that had launched at the same time as mine and covered the same topic. Yep!

Of all the dumb luck. My topic hadn’t been covered in years, and now not just one, but two people launched books that covered the same topic.

I read their book descriptions and panicked a little. Theirs weren’t just informative; they were emotional. They spoke directly to the reader’s frustration, fear, and self-doubt.

So I rewrote my description.
Then rewrote it again.
And again.
And again.

At least seven versions later, it finally clicked.

Compare these two versions:

• “This book will help you have fewer DNF readers.”

• “If your plot sags in the middle, your characters feel flat, or your scenes lose steam, readers won’t stick around. Agents won’t either.”

Same pain point. Very different impact.

People buy based on emotion first. So while keywords matter, they shouldn’t drain the life out of your message.

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<h2> 7. Prepare for your public launch

By the time your soft launch starts, your essentials should already be in place: lead magnets, forms, email sequences, links.

But the soft launch window itself is gold.

Use it to:

• Draft compelling social media content

• Create A+ Amazon content

• Identify reviews that can’t be posted on Amazon and repurpose them as editorial reviews

• Write down lessons learned (hello, future blog posts and social media content)

• Reach out to podcasts, bloggers, book reviewers, etc. to get out there

Conclusion

Launching a book is equal parts strategy and surrender.

You plan carefully. You do your homework. And then you accept that some things (looking at you Amazon included) are outside your control.

Keep your goal in mind: gain momentum and credibility for your book and learn enough along the way to make the next launch even smoother.

And if nothing else? Take comfort in knowing that even editors sometimes have to relearn their own advice.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What was the most surprising lesson and why?

• What do you hope for your launch?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Online authors share their journey. You know the one:

I had an idea.
I wrote every morning.
The book poured out of me.
And then … magic.

This is not that post.

This is the one where we talk honestly about time, money, and why writing a book is one of the scariest, and most meaningful, things you can invest in.

Because writing a book is expensive. And not just financially.

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The Time

So far, my time investment looks like this:

• 57 hours writing 93,000 words

• 51 hours editing

• 24 hours marketing

My drafting time is on the low side. Some of the content came from my existing blogs, which saved me time on the drafting side, as I already had the content written.

Real writing speed

My writing speed worked out to 1,630 words per hour. This is not a realistic benchmark. I already had some of the content written, and I have years of writing and editing experience. Most writing coaches and publishing resources estimate that drafting new content typically falls somewhere between 500 and 1,000 words per hour, depending on the writer, genre, and level of complexity.

At that pace, writing a 93,000-word book would usually take 93–186 hours—and that’s before editing enters the picture.

The editing reality most writers don’t expect

Many authors don’t realize until they’re in it:

You will often spend as much time—if not more—editing your book than writing it.

And that’s not a failure. That’s how books are made.

Self-editing is where you grow the most as a writer. It’s also where you save the most money.

That’s the heart behind my guides: I want authors to self-edit confidently, not blindly or fearfully, and to walk into professional editing prepared instead of overwhelmed.

With that said, my self-editing time is also very much on the low side.

My self-editing process is incomplete, and I used AI to help me edit (you can see my blog about how I used it here), so I could preserve my editing brain for client work.

I’ve only completed:

• A content and organization pass on both guides

• A writing pass on my nonfiction guide

I have not yet:

• Done the writing pass on the fiction guide

• Done the technical pass on either book

That’s not because those steps aren’t important. They are.

But I was on a crunch to get the manuscripts to my editor. And I plan on doing more self-editing after I get the manuscript back from my editor.

This is backwards for most authors. Don’t follow my lead here.

I can do this only because I’m an editor. I know what “good enough to send to an editor” looks like. I also know how to revise effectively after professional feedback.

Most authors need more self-editing before handing a manuscript off, not less.

That reality is actually one of the biggest reasons I wrote these books in the first place.

Real editing speed
If I had completed all my self-editing passes, and not used AI as and editing partner, a fair estimate for self-editing a 93,000-word manuscript would be 120–250 hours—because editing a book thoroughly often takes as long as writing it … and sometimes longer.

Marketing time

Because finishing the manuscript is not the finish line.

So far, I’ve spent 24 hours on marketing-related work, including:

• Creating the free gift

• Writing the free-gift email sequence

• Setting up and emailing my launch team

• Preparing the ARC

• Creating my podcast one-sheet

• Building my media kit

• Selecting titles

• Looking for comp covers I like and don’t like

• Creating my books’ landing page

And I’m not done.

Marketing isn’t something you “do at the end.” It’s a parallel track that demands real time, energy, and planning—especially if you’re publishing independently.

The Money No One Likes Talking About

Now let’s talk about the part that makes most writers uncomfortable.

If I value my time at $25/hour—not my client rate, but a realistic pocketed hourly rate after expenses, taxes, and nonbillables—then:

• 132 total hours × $25/hr = $3,300

Add in my estimated publishing and marketing costs:

• $8,000 (editing, design, setup, marketing, etc.)

That puts my total investment at: $11,300 before a single sale

Now let’s do the math no one wants to do.

• At $5.99 for the ebook → I need 1,887 purchases to break even

• At $14.99 for the paperback → I need 753 purchases

And guess what? I plan on giving the book away for free to several people. It’s part of my marketing strategy.

If you’re an indie author, you already feel the gut punch coming.

Because most authors sell fewer than 250 copies over the lifetime of a book.

On paper, this does not look like a smart investment.

So Why Am I Doing It Anyway?

This is from my hear.

I’m doing this because:

• I believe in what I’m creating

• I believe in authors who want to learn, not just outsource

• I believe clarity is worth investing in

• I believe writing tools should empower, not intimidate

• I’m backing my own voice.

• I’m willing to do hard things without a guaranteed payoff

• I’m finally putting real skin in the game

And I’m okay with the fact that the return on this investment may not be immediate—or even purely financial.

Some returns look like:

• Better writers

• More confident self-editors

• Fewer authors feeling lost in revision

• A body of work that reflects what I care about

That matters to me.

And, yes, I do hope for an ROI in terms of

• More clients

• More newsletter subscribers

• Speaking offers

But those outcomes can’t be the only reason to do the work.

Conclusion

If you’re a budding author, I don’t share these numbers to scare you.

I share them so you can make informed decisions, set realistic expectations, and stop feeling like you’re “doing it wrong” when the process feels heavy.

Writing a book is an act of commitment—to your ideas, your growth, and your willingness to keep going even when the math doesn’t look friendly.

And sometimes, that commitment comes before the results.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What’s one writing goal you’re pursuing—even if the math doesn’t make sense yet?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

• What’s one writing goal you’re pursuing—even if the math doesn’t make sense yet?

• What part of the writing process surprised you the most—the time, the money, or the emotional weight of it?

• Have you ever committed to a project knowing the ROI might not be immediate (or financial at all)? What kept you going?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

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A couple of weeks ago, I opened one of my own books to start self-editing it—the fiction self-editing guide I’d sent off to my beta readers. I hadn’t looked at it in a while, intentionally, because distance is a beautiful thing. But then I scrolled a few pages and… panic.

Not mild panic. I’m talking: What have I done? Why did I think this was a book? Who approved this? (Me. I approved it.)

Everything suddenly looked wrong. The concepts weren’t well explained, the exercises weren’t good. And the worst part?

Since it was still out with my beta readers and I didn’t have their feedback yet, I turned to AI.

I told it: “Be brutally honest with me. I can take it.”

And it came back with something like, “Katie… it’s good. Really good. Better than many books on the topic.” Then it gave me some clear suggestions—nothing dramatic, just thoughtful tweaks.

Exactly the grounding I needed until the actual humans get back to me. (Don’t worry—I trust them more. Promise.)

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The Wicked Meltdown

But the spiral didn’t stop there. Because then I watched Wicked Part 2.

And friends… I ugly-cried. Full meltdown.

Somewhere around the midpoint, I had this sudden gut punch: Oh no. I’m her. I’m Elphie.

Not Glinda. Never Glinda. I’ve never been the sparkly “it girl.” I was voted “Most Teaseable,” for crying out loud. I have elbows that jut out at angles nobody asked for. The idea that I—me—am writing two books, trying to scale my business, trying to build something big and meaningful… who do I think I am?

The little girl inside me, the one who has always struggled with confidence, had opinions. Loud ones.

Meanwhile, my adult self saying affirmations and trying to convince my nervous system that I do have what it takes. My husband believes in me. My clients believe in me. The evidence is all there.

But that doesn’t make it believable to the person it matters most: me!

Kick Imposter Syndrome to the Curb

Imposter syndrome will show up. It’s just part of being human, but the best wait to defeat is to just keep going.

I’m still writing these books. I’m still showing up. I’m still building the business I believe in. I’m still dreaming those big, slightly ridiculous, audacious dreams. I’m still doing the work, even on the days when my confidence is somewhere under the bed with all my kids’ lost knickknacks.

Because the truth is… I can do this.

And so can you.

If you’re an author, editor, creator—whatever flavor of “maker of things”—and you’ve had your own spiral recently, this is your deep breath.

You don’t need to be the “it girl.” You just need enough courage to keep going.

And not even a lot of courage. Just enough for today.

That’s what I’m doing. That’s what you can do. And that’s how the big dreams get built, quietly, steadily, by people who aren’t Glinda.

I’m cheering you on. And I’m right here, elbow-angles and all, figuring it out beside you.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• When did imposter syndrome last crash your party?

• What dream are you still chasing even though that little voice keeps asking, “Who do you think you are”?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

As a former English teacher, I understand the power of writing and its connection to thinking. So I don’t discount the arguments that using AI to help one write will make them lazy and lead to brain atrophy (especially for young developing brains).

But like most things, it isn’t black and white. It depends on how and when you use it. I feel no shame in sometimes completely turning my thinking over to AI.

Being an editor is a highly cognitive job, being a mom to three young kids is … well, if you know, you know. It’s okay to give my thinking muscle a break sometimes.

That said, AI often helps me think even more deeply. I’ve strengthened my problem-solving muscles by learning how to prompt AI more effectively. Some of the output from AI has helped me learn and understand things I didn’t before. And then, of course, I always analyze the output for effectiveness. Analysis is a great brain-exercising skill. Anyway, I could go on and on about this topic, but that isn’t the point of this blog.

As a reader, I appreciate well-written content. So I don’t discount the arguments that AI produces horrible writing. The problem with that argument is, without disclosure, you may not realize AI “wrote,” or helped to write, a well-written social media post or blog.

Most, if not all of us, can recognize poor AI writing. It has a recognizable cadence and pattern. So people use those as examples as “proof” that AI can’t write and can only produce slop. However, I know some great writers on LinkedIn who use AI, and it doesn’t sound like AI.

As an editor and supporter of authors and writers, I understand the frustration and fear of people cheapening your skillset by saying a computer can do it. I faced my first dry spell of my career because of that very thing. We can only hope that soon those who think this will realize how much the creative world needs humans.

And then, of course, there’s the fear of having your copyrighted work used without consent or compensation. Personally, I’d be flattered if someone wanted to use my work to train the model, but I’m not the norm.

As a human, I acknowledge the carbon footprint and energy consumption issues, though I admit that one is harder for me to relate to. I should care more about the environment.

In essence, AI has problems. Major problems. I completely understand those who say they would never, ever use AI to help them write. I’m just not one of them.

I recently finished the first drafts of two manuscripts: Beacon Point’s Self-Editing Guide for Nonfiction Authors and Beacon Point’s Self-Editing Guide for Fiction Authors (titles are subject to change, and let’s be honest, probably will … I suck at titles and headlines), and I did use AI. Definitely not to write the books in their entirety. I wrote the majority of the words, but AI drafted some sentences and paragraphs verbatim.

So let’s dissect the six ways I used it and which cases needed a disclosure.

Disclosure:

I wrote every single word of this blog post. Just wanted to clear the air there. Yeah, I know, I’m not the best writer. I wish I were as good as the real writers I know. I’ve always hesitated to call myself a writer. I’m more comfortable in the editor role. But hey, someone’s gotta write books about editing, right?

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1. Brainstorming Additional Topics

My self-editing guides contain a variety of editing topics grouped into four passes. From my years of editing, I had a good idea of what topics I wanted to put in each pass.

To start, I added topics that I already had blog posts on (repurposing for the win) and grouped them in the correct pass. Then I listed additional topics that I knew were essential and had planned on writing a blog post on someday.

I had a good outline, but I wanted to ensure I hadn’t missed anything really crucial. So I asked AI. It gave me some great additional topics: scene entry and exit points (fiction), microtension (fiction), ensure accurate reading level (nonfiction), and maintain consistent tone (nonfiction).

I couldn’t use all its ideas (and quite frankly, I wouldn’t want to use some of them); that would make for very long books, but I picked those ones, and the books are better for it.

Disclosure: Using AI to generate topic ideas is widely accepted without the need to disclose. Ideas can’t be copyrighted, and I could have found the ideas in an internet search—just would have taken longer and wouldn’t allow for a back and forth.

2. Clarity Checks

While I’m using beta readers who will do this much better than AI, I wanted to have a cursory check for clarity on especially difficult concepts. So I fed each chapter with a difficult concept to AI and asked it to be brutally honest and tell me if the concept was clear to a brand-new writer and not condescending to an experienced writer.

After the analysis, I went in and made clarity corrections.

Disclosure: I didn’t disclose when I used AI to flag unclear sections, as it was just giving me feedback, not generating content.

A few times I was just stuck on how to make it clearer, and so I just asked AI to do it. This is a tool I wish I had when I was a teacher. Sometimes I just failed to explain something the way a particular student would understand.

After reading the output, I either used its output to write something different—but it gave me the idea—or I used just some of its output. Occasionally, I used its answer entirely. However, since the original input was my writing, the output still contained many of my words and was completely my idea.

Well, we now enter territory that could necessitate disclosure. But here’s the dilemma, I can’t mark it in the text. That would be ridiculous. Passages could end up looking like this:

➜But here’s the “problem: I can’t exactly insert a note every time AI helped” (AI). That would be ridiculous. “You’d” (AI) end up with “passages that looked” (AI) like this:

If you couldn’t tell, I asked AI to rewrite the previous paragraph but retain some of my original words.

The disclosure argument

Some would argue that in this situation one should put a disclosure in the front of the book that AI helped write the book. But what does that mean “helped”? It’s too vague, so some readers may question whether I’m an authority on the topic at all, thinking AI wrote most or all the book, which isn’t remotely true.

My hours spent writing this book shouldn’t be discounted because AI massaged some of the language here or there. I can ethically say I authored these books.

Disclosure: When the AI flagged a passage as unclear and provided suggestions, I either used its output to write it in my own words, used some of its suggested text, or used its suggestion entirely. Since the original input was my own writing, I didn’t disclose each occurrence of this use.

3. Checking for Tone

Occasionally, I worried my tone sounded wrong. Was it too harsh? Did it sound too lectury?

My husband and best friend have helped me see that sometimes the words I use express a tone—and, thus, a message—I didn’t mean. I’m always baffled. How did they get that? You’d think being someone who works with words I would know this, but hey, we all have our strengths and weaknesses.

I used AI in the same way I did for #2. Just an analysis in some cases; massaging the wording in others.

Disclosure: When the AI flagged a tonal issue and suggested a fix, I either used its output to write it in my own words, used some of its suggested text, or used its suggestion entirely. Since the original input was my own writing, I didn’t disclose each occurrence of this use.

4. Acting as a Line Editing Partner

AI can’t edit as well as a human, and I’m not just saying that because I’d like to keep my job. But it can be an effective partner with a human who does have that skillset.

I fed it the lessons from my nonfiction guide that deal with line editing (strengthening word choice, ensuring good sentence fluency, and eliminating weaker verbs) so it had a great knowledge base to work with. Then I asked it to flag instances of weak writing (e.g., using expletives like “there are” or “there is”—a topic specifically mentioned in my guide) and offer a suggested fix. Sometimes I used the fix it gave me; sometimes I tweaked it; sometimes I wrote my own. But it was nice to have it flag the spots I needed to focus on.

It’s hard to edit your own work. But, wait, aren’t your books teaching authors to do that very thing: edit themselves? Yes, but before you engrave a scarlet H on my forehead for hypocrisy, let me explain.

Self-editing is valuable for three reasons: It strengthens your writing ability, reduces your cost of professional editing, and ensures a higher-quality manuscript after the editor finishes (an editor can only take it so far).

I’m a great editor, and I spend a good chunk of my day editing, so I get plenty of practice strengthening that muscle (e.g., I just edited out four uses of expletives, “there are,” “it is,” etc., in a manuscript I’m editing).

Plus, I didn’t just say, “edit this for me.” Nope, I still spent 53 hours editing my two books. I just used it to help me spot line editing-type issues since it’s harder to spot them in your own work.

Using AI as my line editing partner also will help me achieve the other two reasons: lower editing costs and result in a higher-quality manuscript in the end.

So why can’t you just skip the grunt work of self-editing and have AI edit for you? I mean, you could. It would improve some things, but you could do better.

I didn’t skip the grunt work entirely. I used AI as a partner.

And the important part here is, I’m an editor, who

• knows how to prompt AI to edit effectively (I took two courses on it)

• knows what output to straight-up ignore, what to tweak, and what to use wholesale

• fed it my guides as a knowledge base

Is it as good as me? Heck no! Most likely, I have more areas of weaker writing in my drafts than it flagged for me. But it was good enough when used in conjunction with my brain and my skillset.

So I used AI to help with the self-editing.

And maybe you can too. If you have the editing skillset (which you will be better at this skill if you read my books once they’re published) and know how to prompt AI effectively, then go ahead and use AI to help you with your self-editing. It’s only as good as the user using it, though. So you do have to know how to use it well; otherwise, it isn’t even an effective partner.

And absolutely don’t rely on it as the only editor. It doesn’t replace a professional editor. I’m paying for an editor for my books too.

Disclosure: I didn’t disclose each specific instance where I use AI as a self-editing partner. It would be annoying to cite which sentences AI helped me with. And this is how it is with a professional editor: Authors often use my entire suggested edit, and they didn’t need to credit me for having written the words, sentences, and paragraphs.

5. Expanding and Drafting Some Content

After writing the first draft, 8 out of 49 total lessons (across both guides) felt incomplete. I could have researched some more to complete them on my own. And I would have except … well, AI can do it faster. Of course, faster isn’t always better, especially when it comes to writing and editing.

There’s something to be said about struggling and wrestling through what to write. About researching the topic further. I taught this very thing to my students. And I had plenty of those moments in writing my books—don’t want my brain to atrophy.

But after editing all day (working in the business) and then spending my free time working on my business (I’m going through huge business growth right now) and writing these guides until midnight, I did ask AI a few times to expand on what I had, then I edited it from there.

But even when I did that, I didn’t outsource all my thinking. I still had to analyze the output, decide if it fit my understanding of the topic, and add in my own ideas here and there. I didn’t just copy, paste, and call it a day. I often had follow-up prompts, asking it to rewrite what it had written to include specific concepts or to strengthen and expand on certain areas with my own ideas.

One topic was new to me. AI had suggested it (see use case #1). So I read several blog posts on the topic to understand it. After doing so, I worried the content would sound too much like those other people’s blogs since they were fresh in my mind. So AI drafted it, I edited its output, then added an entirely new section to it to complete the chapter.

The disclosure argument

Okay now we’re getting into the territory of entire paragraphs potentially coming from AI.

A few of my social media posts have been like 80 percent written by AI but 90–100 my ideas. I feed it the initial very rough, rough draft of the post, just dumping all my ideas, and then it writes a cleaner draft, which I then edit. And I don’t disclose this. But I’m also not profiting off my social media posts like I could with the book. So, yes, better to be transparent.

Disclosure: Where applicable, I added this as a footnote: “Portions of this topic  were drafted with AI assistance, then I edited and reviewed the output.” With the one it initially drafted, I had this footnote: AI initially drafted the main portion of this lesson, then I added to it and edited its output

6. Creating Example Exercises

Each topic in the guides has a “Self-Editing in Practice” section—an example passage for readers to practice revising for the topic, followed by my revision.

For some topics, I wrote the “bad” version example. I had the idea for it and did it.

For others, I already had examples from my clients’ work (I got full permission). In those cases, I had written a blog post on the topic soon after editing that book, so their manuscript was fresh on my mind.

So that left several without a practice example, especially in the fiction guide. I’ve edited nearly 300 books at this point, so I can’t remember which manuscripts contain a perfect example for a given topic that I could use with permission.

I’m an editor, not a fiction author. I’m better at improving what’s already there than creating from scratch, especially when the creation needs to be an example of something specific without being too obvious.

So I turned to AI.

I fed it the entire lesson and asked for a “self-editing in practice” example. To get a decent or great example, I often had to give it follow-up prompts because its first iteration made the issue too glaringly obvious.

This isn’t self-editing for kindergarteners.

In some cases, I went through up to ten iterations before copying and pasting the example in. It was my knowledge and understanding of the topic guiding AI to produce good examples. For the less complicated topics, the output was fine on the first try. But for the most part, on its own, AI couldn’t have produced what ended up in the book. It needed guided prompts from someone with a deep understanding of the topic.

Disclosure: AI wrote some of the “bad” examples in the “self-editing in practice” sections. All such instances are noted with “Generated by ChatGPT” or “Generated by Claude.”

Additionally, I acknowledged this in the introduction,

“The ‘Self-editing in practice’ sections came from various sources:

• My original examples

• AI-generated examples from ChatGPT or Claude (always noted)

• Examples from previous clients’ manuscripts (anonymized and used with permission)”

How Not to Use AI

While I consider the above uses of AI productive, not every approach to AI passes the same test. I’ve seen firsthand how overreliance can ruin a book.

Earlier this year (2025), I was hired to edit a nonfiction manuscript that had so obviously been entirely written by AI. Maybe a few sentences were the “author’s,” I don’t know. But the use of AI was rampant, and the book was bad. It was all theoretical, not practical, very repetitive, and not at all enjoyable to read.

Every other sentence followed an “it’s not this; it’s this” pattern, and lists of three were everywhere. And em dashes up the wazoo. None of these alone indicate AI; it was the sheer number of them.

*Side note: Every single em dash in my blog (and the vast majority in my book) I placed intentionally, not because I copied and pasted from AI. But when they’re sprinkled in where they don’t belong and used like the only punctuation that exists, then … um, yeah. That can be an indicator.*

This is NOT good writing. I nearly cried trying to edit it. The content was meaningless. I won’t get into the weeds of how I ended up with this job in the first place. But suffice it to say, it was the most painful thing to read, let alone edit.

I edited another nonfiction manuscript that wasn’t nearly as bad. It was clear this author had actually put some thought into it. I think the previous one had just said, “Write a book on this topic.” This author had some of their own stories in there, real actual applicable ideas, etc. But, again, the overuse of the AI cadences and writing style made it difficult to enjoy reading it.

Then I had someone contact me on LinkedIn who hired me to read his novel that was entirely generated by an AI he had built. He wanted to know if it was readable and marketable as is. I bet you can guess the answer.

I had to use AI to help me “read” the whole thing so I could analyze the plot arc. And by that, I mean after chapter 8, I gave up and asked it to give me bullet points of events for each chapter (with permission). I couldn’t read it anymore because the writing was not enjoyable, and I was so confused about what the heck was going on. But I wanted to report on AI’s ability to follow a plot structure.

For any of you who are curious to learn what AI did well and what it did not, you can read my report here.

Bottom line: Don’t use AI to write an entire book or to handle all your editing.

If you have a skillset, like editing or writing, AI can be a powerful partner to augment that skill. If you don’t, your prompts—and therefore your results—will be poor.

Like most tools, AI’s value depends on the person using it. Hopefully, sharing my process helps you find your own balance between creativity, authenticity, ethics, and efficiency.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• Which use case do you disagree with? Why do you feel it crossed a line?

• Where’s your personal line for disclosing AI help in a book?

• Which use case would help you most right now?

• What’s a “never do this” AI rule you’re adopting for your own writing?

Publishing your book is exciting. The indie publishing world is full of talented, trustworthy professionals who can help you polish, publish, and promote your book, but it also has its fair share of shady operators who promise the world and deliver heartbreak (and empty wallets).

I’ve never been scammed by an author service, but I have by a third-party ticket site. They disguised themselves as the official venue, hiding behind fine print and legal loopholes that made them seem legitimate. It was a frustrating reminder of how easy it is to get tricked by something that looks professional.

So how can you tell the difference between a legitimate author service and a scam? Let’s walk through what to look for before you sign on any dotted lines.

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Resources to Help You Vet Others

Before you do anything else, run the company or individual through two key watchdogs for the publishing industry:

• ALLi’s Watchdog Desk: The Alliance of Independent Authors maintains a regularly updated Watchdog list that rates publishing services as Excellent, Recommended, Caution, or Watchdog Advisory.

• Writer Beware: A long-standing and respected site run by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association that tracks scams, questionable practices, and complaints against author services. Visit Writer Beware to search their archives or contact them with a concern.

These two resources alone can save you a ton of grief. If a service has a poor reputation with either, that’s a major red flag. To search for a specific service on Writer Beware, navigate to the blog and use the search function. As for ALLi, you can click on “View the Services Ratings Page” or the “See Our Contests Ratings” to search a company or individual and see if it’s on their watchdog desk.

You can also ask your author community. Indie authors are some of the most generous people around. If you’re considering a formatter, cover designer, marketer, or publisher, ask for experiences in Facebook author groups, on Threads, or in other writing communities.

If you don’t have an author network, you can also browse recent posts in reputable author Facebook groups like 20Booksto50K® or Self-Publishing Formula’s community to see what others are saying about specific services.

Look for patterns in the responses. After all, one negative comment might not mean much, but if you hear repeated issues about missed deadlines, surprise fees, or low-quality work, trust that pattern.

What to Check for

Even if you have others helping you vet, it’s a good idea to know what to look for.

Check their website

A legitimate business should have a website that looks professional and provides clarity. I do know some reputable editors who don’t have a website. So this isn’t necessarily a red flag, but if they don’t have a website, pause and do some more digging.  As you review their site, ask,

• Is it clear what they do? Reputable services describe their offerings in detail, no vague “publishing help” or “marketing solutions” without examples.

• Are there real examples of past work? You should see a portfolio, testimonials, and/or client book covers.

• Do they link to real people? Google the names of those who provided testimonials or who authored books they claimed to have worked on and ensure that person is real, did write the book they claim, etc.

• Is contact information available? A website without an email address or form (just a “buy now” button) is a red flag.

• Does the individual or company have a presence anywhere else? Besides their website can you find the person or company on social media, in the news, as a guest blogger, mentioned on other sites, etc.? Google the company’s name or individual’s name plus the service they offer [example: for me, Katie Chambers editor]. If the only result is their website, then this could be a red flag. Legitimate service providers often are found in other directories, mentioned by colleagues, etc.

Check their social media

Social media can be revealing. Do note that some legitimate service providers aren’t on social media, and that’s fine. If they are, however, this is another avenue for vetting them. When you check their socials, look for:

• Consistency and longevity. Has this person or business been posting for a while, or did their account pop up last week? If it is new, that isn’t necessarily a red flag. They might be new to the business, and that’s fine. This is just one thing to look for.

• Engagement. Do they interact with followers and other industry professionals authentically or are there engagements just always sales pitches?

• Community connections. Legit service providers often tag or collaborate with other known names in publishing. If they don’t, this isn’t necessarily a red flag, but it is something to look for.

Don’t fall for scammy marketing

If something feels off, pause before paying. Pressure tactics (“this offer expires tonight!”) or overly emotional appeals (“we just love your book and want to publish it right away!”) are both manipulation techniques used by predatory companies. Be wary of anyone who guarantees bestseller status or charges a very high fee and accepts anyone—those are common hallmarks of vanity presses.

You can absolutely trust your gut, but back it up with research before committing.

Check their contract and payment terms

Before paying, always get a written contract or agreement that clearly outlines what’s included in the scope of work, the timeline, payment terms, refund policies, and who owns the rights to the final product.

If the contract lacks detail on exactly what you’re getting, when a payment is due, when the delivery date is, etc., then make sure that is added to the contract before you sign.

If you disagree with one of the terms or don’t understand it, speak up and ask. It’s in your best interest to understand the contract you’re agreeing to.

Want Vetted Recommendations?

If you’d rather skip the stress of vetting altogether, I’ve done the homework for you. My Next Steps in Publishing packet lists trusted, vetted service providers I personally recommend to my clients. It also gives you tips for each required step and optional step in your publishing journey (including how to DIY, what you should never DIY, what to look for when hiring someone, etc.). You can purchase it anytime, or if you’re one of my editing clients, it’s included free as part of your project package.

It’s my way of helping you move confidently from editing to publishing without getting burned by bad actors in the industry and without too much of a steep learning curve.

Conclusion

The self-publishing world is full of opportunities, but you need to protect your hard work and wallet. With a little research, community input, and trusted guidance, you can avoid publishing scams and find professionals who’ll help you shine your beacon brightly—safely and successfully.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What publishing service providers do you recommend?

• What publishing service providers do you not recommend?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

You’ve worked hard to gain unique insights in your field of research, and now you want the world to learn about it. But how can you cram years of discovery into a piece of writing that makes sense to people who know nothing about your field?

If you aren’t sure where to begin, you’re not alone. Writing for other experts and academics is not the same as writing a book or other content for non-experts.

It can be hard to decide:

• what to include and what to leave out

• what to explain and in how much detail

• who you want to read it

• what you want to accomplish

Here’s the trick: you need to figure out the last two points before the first two. Many researchers get this wrong. It’s not about what you want to tell people—it’s about who wants (or needs) to know what.

So the first question you need to answer is, who are your readers? That answer will guide everything that comes after.

Are you writing a book for

• scholars in your field

• people who might benefit from applying your research findings in their lives

• people who are interested in your field but don’t know much about it

• people who work in a field where your research is relevant

Once you know who you’re targeting, you can write directly to those readers.

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Writing in Plain Language

You’ve probably heard the term “plain language” before, but you may not really know what it means. In 2023, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published a global standard for communicating in plain language. Spoiler alert: it’s not about reading grade levels or “dumbing down” your writing.

Under the standard, the four governing principles of plain language are:

• 1. Readers get what they need

• 2. Readers can easily find what they need.

• 3. Readers can easily understand what they find.

• 4. Readers can easily use the information.

With your target audience in mind, follow the tips below to implement the four plain language principles.

Readers get what they need

Giving the reader the information they’re looking for, and nothing else, should be a priority. Resist the urge to include everything you find interesting or important. Focus on your readers’ goal—why they specifically would pick up your book. Give them the information to accomplish it, without overwhelming them.

For example: let’s say you have been studying the effectiveness of lavender as a mosquito repellent. Your readers want to know whether it works, but they likely won’t care about the processes you used to extract the lavender from the plants for your research (unless it’s something they can do themselves). They also won’t care about the fifteen other herbs and flowers you tested that had no effect on mosquitoes.

Deciding what not to include can be really hard for subject matter experts. Getting an outside perspective is useful to help you figure out what is relevant to readers. Find some people who are part of your future readership. Ask them what they would want to know about your topic and how they think your insights could be useful to them.

Readers can easily find what they need

Writing in plain language isn’t just about the words you use or how long your sentences are. It begins with how you structure your writing.

Does the information flow in a logical order for readers? Is it broken up into small chapters and sections so they can find the bit they’re most interested in reading? Have you provided a useful table of contents and maybe an index so people can look for specific information?

Readers can easily understand what they find

This is where your wording and sentences need some attention. The “curse of knowledge” means that the more you know about a topic, the harder it is to relate to readers who know little or nothing about it. Avoid assuming that “everyone knows this.” Either replace or explain field-specific terminology.

For example, if I were to explain clear writing by discussing misplaced modifiers, noun chains, adverbial phrases, independent clauses … are you still there?

Give early drafts of your work to readers from outside your field. Ask them to highlight terms they aren’t familiar with and passages they found hard to understand. Professional editors will also help you identify places where you are being too technical or using unfamiliar terms. But getting early feedback before you send your work to an editor will save you time and money by getting you closer to a readable manuscript.

Readers can easily use the information

What are your readers hoping to accomplish by reading your work? Is it a how-to or self-help book that they want to use to make something happen? Should the information change or inform their opinion about something? Are you hoping to influence their lifestyle or their values? Do you want to pique their curiosity?

Keep the goal of your writing at the center of the process. If you find information in your manuscript that doesn’t help accomplish that goal, put it aside for a different project. Your job is to use your vast knowledge to help make things happen—and the more focused you are on that goal, the more likely your readers will be to get on board with it.

Ready to Start?

To turn your research into a book that people will actually read, do the following:

1. Identify your target readers.

2. Define their goal (why they will read your book).

3. Build an outline of chapters and sections structured to make sense to your readers.

4. Check that everything you included is tied to your readers’ goal (take out anything that isn’t).

5. Write your first draft.

6. Edit to remove academic jargon or technical language, and make the sentences and paragraphs easier to understand.

7. Work with an editor to polish it with your readers in mind.

Ready? Go write a book!

Meet the Guest Blogger: Michelle Waitzman

Michelle Waitzman is a plain language consultant, trainer, writer and editor. She specializes in making complex information easier to understand. Michelle lives in Toronto, Canada with her husband and their two rescue dogs, Marlowe and Nuka. She is the author of four non-fiction books.

Contact links:

Website

LinkedIn

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What’s the hardest part for you: deciding what to cut or making the language accessible to non-experts?

• If you could explain one insight from your research to a curious neighbor, what would you say first?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Rule #1

When you’re listing hyphenated compound adjectives that share the same ending, you can drop the repeated word but must keep the hyphen followed by a space. Do not use in a single entry

• first- and second-grade students

• pre- and post-workout snacks

• a stain- , wrinkle- , and odor-resistant fabric

• a five-by-eight foot rug (single entry)

Rule #2

Use the suspended hyphen in the second pair if the first word or prefix repeats.

• state-owned and -operated hospitals

• over- and underfed cats

Practice

Add in hyphens as needed and delete the repetitive part of the compound.

1. We need both full time and part time employees.

2. The recipe works for both eight and twelve inch pans.

3. This applies to both pre tax and post tax calculations.

4. They have awards for worst looking and worst sounding band.

5. The bank offers 15, 20, and 30-year mortgages.

6. Consider both short term and long term investments.

7. All the first and second-grade students have the same recess.

8. The start-up produced the highest priced and highest rated medicine on the market.

9. She’s both well educated and connected in the industry.

10. She plans on taking a three to five year gap before starting college.

Answers

1. We need both full– time and part–time employees.

2. The recipe works for both eight– and twelve–inch pans.

3. This applies to both pre– tax and post–tax calculations.

4. They have awards for worst–looking and worst –sounding band.

5. The bank offers 15– , 20– , and 30-year mortgages. (note the space before the comma)

6. Consider both short– term and long–term investments.

7. All the first– and second-grade students have the same recess.

8. The start-up produced the highest–priced and highest –rated medicine on the market.

9. She’s both well–educated and –connected in the industry.

10. She plans on taking a three–to–five–year gap before starting college. (single entity)

Middles are always a bit hard to nail. Beginnings are kind of clearer, and writers usually know where their stories end, but those middles can get really tricky. It’s difficult to keep that tension going—to keep the story moving forward at a good pace. To have the readers on the edges of their seats the whole time with those one-more-chapter feelings.

But luckily, I have some tips to help.

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Climbing a Mountain

Think of the main conflict of your story as a mountain peak. The story is always heading toward that one spot. But getting there requires climbing that mountain, and that’s where the chapters come in.

Every single chapter should be like taking a step toward that mountain peak. Obstacles and roadblocks can get in the way, but every step should be in the direction of the mountain peak.

When pacing slows, and tension falters in a story, it’s usually because the chapter doesn’t take a step forward. Instead, it takes a step sideways or backward. Or it doesn’t take a step at all. It’s not as focused around the main conflict.

What to Do When You’re Stuck

When you’ve hit a stump of how to take a step toward that mountain peak, and you aren’t sure what to do, you can try these tips.

Write an outline of where the book is going

Often, it is easier to start from where the book ends and then work backward from there to see what steps need to be taken.

Write a list of each chapter from the ending back to where you are now and mark how each chapter should advance the plot (so you don’t lose track). Sometimes, working the problem from a different angle (backward to forward) helps to see how to get to that mountain peak.

Ask some questions

• What’s the worst thing that can happen to my protagonist(s) right now?

• What could stand in their way even more to up the stakes?

• If you’d like a softer plot, what’s something that can really inconvenience my protagonist(s)?

Another way is to think from the point of view of the antagonist(s).

• Can the antagonist(s) be doing anything else to put more pressure on the protagonist(s)?

• Can even a third party or the government/a job/a power over them come in to put more pressure on the protagonist(s) from a different angle?

Those questions can be building blocks to help add twists into the story or to complicate the plot line even further and up the stakes.

Talk with a close writer friend

Bounce ideas off of each other. A good human conversation can be where creativity blooms and thrives. Sometimes, we can’t see what’s holding our stories back, but other writers can help us see it by looking at our story from another angle.

Emphasizing Those Steps Up the Mountain

What if every chapter you have is taking a step toward the mountain peak, advancing the plot every step of the way, but the story still doesn’t feel like the tension is high in the middle?

You can work with this in a few ways.

Write a list of how each chapter takes a step up that mountain

For example, following The Hunger Games:

• Chapter one — Sets up the reaping, and Prim’s name is drawn

• Chapter two — Katniss volunteers for her sister, and Peeta’s name is also drawn

• Chapter three — Katniss says goodbye to her family and gets mockingjay pin (rebellion symbol)

• Chapter four — Katniss vows to not get close to Peeta since he’ll have to die for her to see her family again but reaches an understanding between Peeta and Haymitch before arriving at Capitol

• Chapter five — Katniss and Peeta create a hefty impression on the Capitol with matching costumes featuring synthetic flames but are now under the Capitol’s eye even more

When everything is listed out, it can be easier to spot which chapters aren’t advancing the main plot or aren’t pulling as much weight as the others. It’s there that you can identify which chapters to focus on.

Ensure each chapter emphasizes the main plot at the end

Leave the readers with the highest note of tension—instead of letting the tension resolve or instead of letting the chapter skip away to a new scene at the end.

Letting the tension resolve brings the height of your tension down. So, even if the chapter just had a big tension-full moment, if the tension has eased some by the end of the chapter, some of the stakes are gone, and there’s not as much to push the story forward into the next chapter. To really get that one-more-chapter feeling with readers on the edges of their seats, don’t resolve anything at the end of chapters.

And when the last paragraph or the last sentence or two jumps ahead to what’s going to happen in the future, it can take the readers out of the story as well. Instead of being immersed in the moment of the scene, they’re thinking ahead. It’s like having one foot in one room and another foot in the next room over. The readers are not fully committed with both feet in the same room. They’re not fully immersed in that one room, that one scene. Therefore, staying in the moment gets them to more likely have that one-more-chapter feeling.

What you leave readers with—whether it be the ends of paragraphs or the ends of chapters—is naturally emphasized. Those moments stick out to the readers a lot more. Take advantage of that to emphasize the tension at the end.

Deepen the internal conflict alongside external obstacles

While you’re focused on getting your protagonist up that mountain, don’t forget about the emotional and psychological climb happening inside of them. Each external obstacle should also force your character to confront something within themselves—a fear they’ve been avoiding, a belief that’s holding them back, or a flaw that keeps tripping them up.

Going back to The Hunger Games example, when Katniss volunteers for Prim, it’s not just about surviving the Games. It’s about her wrestling with whether she can trust others and what kind of person she wants to be.

This internal journey creates a second layer of tension that keeps the readers invested even when the external plot might slow down. When both the external and internal conflicts escalate together, readers get that deeper emotional investment that makes middles feel just as compelling as explosive endings.

Slow down the important moments

When the stakes are high, go deeper into those moments as well. Show the characters’ emotions and reactions a bit more. Show the details of all that’s happening around them more.

Slowing the pacing around important moments can help build the tension because when a story slows down, it’s a signal to the readers that something important is about to happen. It also immerses the readers in the characters’ shoes even more, letting them feel and see every little thing the characters do, which tugs at their emotions and builds the tension.

Remember the Mountain

With art, there are always different pieces of advice to play with and try out for your own novel. But when building that middle of a story out, remember the mountain peak the story is heading for.

I hope these tips help!

Meet the Guest Blogger: Robin Leann

Robin LeeAnn is an editor who runs Dragon Editing Services, which offers manuscript evaluations, developmental editing, copyediting, and proofreading for SFF books. She also has a monthly giveaway to edit a query letter for LGBTQIA+ and/or disabled writers for free.

Contact links:   Website || Linkedin

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What tip can you implement in your manuscript and how?

• Where do you feel stuck? Ask for help here.

• Do you outline to keep tension high, or do you write by instinct?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Subject-verb agreement is one of those basic grammar rules: the subject and verb in a sentence must agree in number, singular or plural.

It’s so basic you think you should never get it wrong, but some sneaky instances can play “gotcha.”

Ah … gotta love the English language.

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The Basics of Subject-Verb Agreement

If the subject is singular, the verb must be singular. If the subject is plural, the verb must be plural.

Singular: The editor reviews the manuscript.
Plural: The editors review the manuscript.

Note that, yes, regular verbs take an “s” for singular.
“Reviews” is singular, and “review” is plural. Silly verbs being backward.

Most native English speakers naturally get basic subject-verb agreement correct:

Basic examples

The cat sits on the windowsill.
The cats sit on the windowsill.

She works late every night.
They work late every night.

These feel natural because there’s nothing between the subject and verb to confuse us. It seems straightforward and simple.

Where Things Can Get Tricky

While the concept remains the same, some constructions can make it a bit tricky.

“Of” phrases acting as distractors

When there’s a prepositional “of” phrase between the subject and verb, it’s easy to accidentally match the verb to the wrong noun.

Examples

Incorrect = The stack of papers are on my desk.
Correct = The stack of papers is on my desk.

The subject is “stack” (singular), not “papers” (plural). The prepositional phrase “of papers” is just describing the stack.

Incorrect = The editor of three bestselling novels were interviewed yesterday.
Correct = The editor of three bestselling novels was interviewed yesterday.

Again, “editor” is the subject, not “novels.”

So if you see an “of” phrase, look to the noun before the phrase. That is the noun you need to agree with in number.

Compound subjects

When you have two subjects joined by “and,” you usually need a plural verb. After all, it is now talking about more than one thing. Or is it? If the compound subject refers to a single thing or person, use a singular verb

The editor and the author are meeting tomorrow.
Coffee and chocolate make everything better.

The “and” is joining two different things, so need a plural verb.

Peanut butter and jelly is my favorite sandwich.
The CEO and founder of the company is speaking today.

The subject is one single thing despite the “and.”

When compound subjects are joined by “or” or “nor,” the verb agrees with the subject closest to it:

Either the editor or the authors are responsible for this mess.
Either the authors or the editor is responsible for this mess.

In the first instance, the subject closest to the verb is “authors,” so need plural “are.” In the second, “editor” is now closer to the verb so need singular “is.”

Collective nouns

Collective nouns (team, family, committee, staff) can be tricky because they can be either singular or plural depending on context.

If the group acts as one unit, it is singular. If each group member is acting individually, then it is plural.

Acting as one unit:

The team is ready for the presentation.
The committee has made its decision.

Each member acting individually:

The team are arguing among themselves about the strategy.
The committee are divided in their opinions.

You can also rewrite these to avoid the awkwardness: “The committee members are divided in their opinions.”

Indefinite pronouns

Some indefinite pronouns are always singular, some are always plural, and some depend on what follows them.

Yay for randomness.

Always singular: anyone, everyone, someone, no one, anybody, everybody, somebody, nobody, anything, everything, something, nothing, each, either, neither.

Correct = Neither of the proposals is acceptable.
Incorrect = Neither of the proposals are acceptable

Correct = Each of the editors has a different style.
Incorrect = Each of the editors have a different style.

Always plural: few, many, several, both

These ones aren’t tricky. Those are standard plural words.

Depends on context: all, any, most, none, some

Earlier I said to ignore “of” phrases and agree with the word before it. BUT … gotta love the but, when one of these indefinite pronouns comes before the “of” phrase, you look to the noun in the “of” phrase to agree with.

All of the coffee is gone. (coffee = singular)

All of the editors are here. (editors = plural)

Inverted sentences

Sometimes the subject comes after the verb, especially in questions or sentences starting with “here” or “there.” So you have to look after the verb to find the word to agree with (the subject).

There is a problem with this chapter.
There are several problems with this chapter.

Here comes the editor with more revisions.
Here come the editors with more revisions.

Incorrect = There’s three reasons why this won’t work.
Correct = There are three reasons why this won’t work.

I catch myself using “there’s” with plural subjects in casual speech all the time. It sounds natural, but it’s technically incorrect in formal writing.

This gets even trickier when you have compound subjects following “there is” or “there are.”

Incorrect = There is a laptop and two notebooks on the desk.
Correct = There are a laptop and two notebooks on the desk.

Even though “laptop” is singular, you have a compound subject (laptop + notebooks), so you need the plural verb.

Amounts and measurements

When talking about amounts as a single unit, use singular verbs. When talking about individual items, use plural.

Five dollars is not enough for lunch.
Half of the manuscript is complete.
Five coins are scattered on the desk.
Two editors are working on this project.

My Personal Strategy

I double-check sentences with compound subjects, collective nouns, and indefinite pronouns. And I pause at those inverted sentences.

When I’m editing and something sounds off, I try to identify the true subject of the sentence. I mentally cross out prepositional phrases and other distractors to see if the subject and verb still agree.

“The stack of papers are on my desk.”

Nope, that doesn’t work. “Stack” is singular, so it needs “is.”

I also read sentences aloud when I’m unsure. Sometimes my ear catches what my eyes miss.

Conclusion

Subject-verb agreement isn’t the trickiest grammar rule out there, but it’s one where small mistakes can slip through if you’re not paying attention. The key is recognizing the situations where errors are most likely to happen and double-checking those sentences during editing.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• Which subject-verb agreement rule trips you up most often?

• What’s your trick for catchy the sneaky ones?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Publishing has transformed dramatically in the last twenty years. What was once a narrow, gatekept-path through agents and publishing houses has become a broad highway paved with possibility. Self-publishing has enabled thousands of writers to bring their books to life on their own terms. But just because anyone can self-publish doesn’t mean it’s the right path for every writer.

So how do you know if self-publishing is the best fit for you?

Let’s break down the key factors to consider—financial, personal, practical, and emotional—so you can make a confident, informed decision about your publishing journey.

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Financial Considerations

In traditional publishing, the publisher covers the costs of editing, design, marketing, printing, and distribution. With self-publishing, you’re the publisher—which means you front the expenses.

The necessary self-publishing costs:

• Editing (developmental, copyediting, proofreading): $1,000–$6,000+

• Cover design: $200–$1,000

• Formatting (for print and ebook): $50–$300

• ISBNs and barcode (if in the US and buying through Bowker): $125 for one or $295 for ten

• Self-publishing platform and distribution: KDP is free but takes 30% of ebook and 6% of paperback revenue. IngramSpark is a one-time $49 enrollment fee, and then they take 14% for pint books and 40% of ebooks. Smashwords is free, then they take 25%.

May not be necessary but may need self-publishing costs:

• Print production: Print-on-demand through Amazon is free. Outside of that, it runs $4–$10 per book.

• Interior book design (for print and ebook): $200–$3,500+

• Marketing and ads: Highly variable, $0 to thousands per month

• Audiobook production: $300–$6,000

• Illustrations and images: $60–$300 per illustration. $600–$10,000 for children’s picture book

• Index: $2.60–$6.00 per indexable page

• Translation: $800–$10,000+

• Author website: Created by a professional would be around $1,500–$4,500

Yes, you can self-publish on a shoestring budget, but the results usually reflect that. Publishing a high-quality, professional book typically costs at least $2,000–$4,000, depending on word count and genre. So ask, Do I have the budget to invest in this book the way it deserves?

If not, are you willing to save, scale back, or learn to DIY some of the tasks? And by learn to DIY, I mean really learn how to do it, not just say you can and then do it poorly. That might mean taking courses, reading how-to books, etc.

Learning Curve

Self-publishing is more than writing a book and uploading it to Amazon. It’s a full-on crash course in:

• Publishing platforms (like KDP, IngramSpark, Draft2Digital)

• Print-on-demand logistics

• ISBNs and copyright registration

• Book marketing strategies

• Amazon SEO and metadata

• Author branding

• Launch planning

That doesn’t mean you have to learn it all today. But you either need do to be willing to learn or pay for  someone who already knows.

If you enjoy researching and acquiring new skills, self-publishing offers a rich world of discovery. But if the idea of learning Amazon’s metadata system or email list building makes you want to cry, you need to build a strong support team before diving it.

That’s the nice thing about self-publishing. You don’t have to go it alone. You can work with professionals or learn from other authors.

But either way you’re sacrificing something: either time to learn or money to have others do it for you.

Your Book Sales and Income Goals

Self-publishing can be lucrative, but it’s rarely quick or easy. Often you won’t see a monetary ROI until your second or third book.

Self-publishers get a much higher royalty rate—typically 60–70% for ebooks and 40–60% for paperbacks, depending on platform and distribution choices. Compare that to traditional publishing, where you may earn 5–15% of print sales and 25% of ebooks (after your advance is earned out).

That said, many self-published books sell fewer than 100 copies. Without name recognition, a large audience, or a marketing plan, your book may be beautifully written and professionally packaged yet invisible in the sea of 4,000+ new books published every day.

To sell books consistently as a self-published author, you need:

• A clear audience (know who your book is for)

• A marketing strategy (email list, social media, Amazon ads, book launch plan)

• A long-game mindset (sales often come months after publication)

If your goal is to build a long-term author career, be recognized as a thought leader, book speaking gigs, or generate passive income, self-publishing is a smart investment. But if you’re writing only one book not to get speaking gigs or as a calling card for your business but rather hoping for mainstream bookstore distribution and a monetary ROI, those are often easier to access through traditional routes.

Personality Considerations

Self-publishing isn’t for everyone. It demands more than just writing chops. The most successful indie authors tend to share a few key personality traits and soft skills:

• Self-Motivation: There’s no agent, editor, or publisher setting deadlines for you. You need to manage your own time and follow through—without external pressure. Essentially, you need to be a go-getter.

• Resilience: You’ll face challenges—tech issues, slow sales, harsh reviews, unexpected expenses—so being able to bounce back and keep going is vital.

• Flexibility: You’ll likely make mistakes. Algorithms change. Strategies evolve. You need to adapt and adjust instead of throwing in the towel.

• Business Mindset: Self-publishing is running a small business. You don’t have to love spreadsheets, but you do need to think in terms of return on investment (ROI), target audience, and long-term planning.

• Curiosity: The publishing world is always shifting. Staying curious and open to new tools, trends, and techniques helps you grow as an authorpreneur.

If you’re naturally proactive, adaptable, and eager to learn, self-publishing could be a great fit.

Pros of Self-Publishing

Self-publishing is not for the faint of heart, but it is a viable route with some great perks you don’t get with traditional publishing.

Creative control

Self-publishing gives you total creative control. Want a pink cover with sparkles? You can have it. Want to keep a scene that your editor thinks should go? You’re the ultimate decision-maker.

Some authors find this deeply empowering. Others feel paralyzed by decision fatigue.

So ask, Do I want the final say in every aspect of my book, or do I want a team to make those decisions for me?

Of course, you can opt to just trust your professional editors, book designers, etc. and let them make the decisions.

This is the ultimate plus of self-publishing: you get final say. This isn’t the case with traditional publishing.

Ownership and licensing

In self-publishing, you retain full rights to your work, unless you sign them away to a third-party service (always read the fine print!).

This means:

• You can adapt your book into an audiobook, film script, or workbook.

• You can revise and re-release new editions.

• You can republish the same content in different formats or languages.

• You can even pull the book from sale entirely.

In contrast, traditional publishers usually acquire exclusive rights for a period of time (or indefinitely), and they control many decisions about adaptations, pricing, distribution, and marketing.

If owning and protecting your intellectual property matters deeply to you, self-publishing gives you maximum control.

Quicker timeline

Traditional publishing takes time, often two to three years from finished manuscript to bookstore shelves.

Self-publishing is significantly faster. Depending on your editing, design, and launch prep timelines, you could publish a book in a few months.

This flexibility is especially helpful if:

• You’re writing about a timely topic.

• You want to publish multiple books a year.

• You’re building a content-driven business (like coaching, courses, or speaking).

• You’ve already spent years writing and don’t want to wait anymore.

Just remember: faster isn’t always better. Quality still matters. Rushing through editing or cover design can hurt your book’s reception and long-term sales.

But if you value speed and independence, self-publishing puts you in the driver’s seat.

So Should you Self-Publish?

Self-publishing may be right for you if you’re:

• Willing to invest a significant amount (or are willing to save/invest/DIY) for it

• Curious and willing to learn

• Not hoping to see an immediate monetary ROI

• Writing as part of a long-term career (meaning multiple books) or business endeavor (a one-off book to get you speaking gigs and clientele)

• Self-motivated, resilient, and have a business mindset

• Willing to run a small business and market yourself

• Wanting full creative control and ownership

• Wanting to publish faster than the traditional route allows

It may not be right for you right now if you’re

• Hoping to get your book into bookstores without a sales track record

• Not great with self-discipline or technology

• Unwilling to invest time, money, or energy into marketing

• Unwilling to invest time, money, or energy into producing a high-quality book

• Think you can just DIY everything and don’t need any professionals or support

There’s no shame in deciding self-publishing isn’t your thing. And remember: you’re not locked into one path forever. Many authors pursue hybrid careers, self-publishing some books and traditionally publishing others.

Your publishing journey is yours to define.

Conclusion

Self-publishing isn’t just a backup plan anymore. For many authors, it’s the best and most empowering way to bring their books to life, connect with readers, and build a sustainable writing career.

But it’s also a business. One that requires time, energy, investment, and a deep well of persistence.

Before you commit, give yourself space to explore your options, build your knowledge, and clarify your goals. With the right mindset and support, you can publish a book you’re proud of and maybe even build a career you love.

Resources for You

If you do decide to self-publish, check out my resources to help you with this.

• Publishing Roadmap (Free for Beacon Point clients, $8.99 for non-clients): This comprehensive guide will walk you through every step that comes after drafting your manuscript, along with vetted service providers for each step.

• Author Management Tracker ($29):  The Publishing Roadmap is the what. Now this tool helps you do it, as you track deadlines, manuscript progress, budgets, professional editing and design tasks, beta reader feedback, marketing outreach, launch team coordination, and publishing and marketing tasks—all in one place.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• What part of the self-publishing journey excites you the most and what feels the most intimidating?

• If you’ve already published (or are planning to), what made you choose self-publishing?

• Which of the key traits or skills mentioned in this post do you already have and which ones do you want to strengthen as you move toward publishing?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Whether you’re writing a nonfiction book, crafting a blog post, or submitting a paper for school, there’s one rule you should always keep front of mind: give credit where credit is due.

Plagiarism isn’t just an academic offense. It’s a breach of trust between a writer and their reader, and it can carry serious consequences: from damaged reputations to legal trouble.

The good news? Avoiding plagiarism is simple once you understand what requires citation and how to credit your sources properly.

I won’t address how to format your sources because that depends on which style you’re using, but let’s talk when you need to cite, different citation methods, and how AI fits into all this.

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When to Cite?

Plagiarism is using someone else’s words, ideas, or work without proper acknowledgment. It can be intentional—like copying a paragraph from a website into your book without citation—or unintentional, like paraphrasing a source too closely or forgetting to include a citation.

Plagiarism includes:

• Copying exact wording from a source without quotation marks or citation

• Paraphrasing a source’s idea or structure without credit

• Presenting another person’s original insight as your own

• Using media (like photos, charts, or AI-generated graphics) without proper attribution

Even if your intent isn’t malicious, failure to cite your sources properly is still plagiarism. Thankfully, a few simple habits can help you avoid it entirely.

1. Direct quotes

If you quote someone word for word, you must use quotation marks (or block formatting) and include a citation. This is true whether it’s a sentence from a famous speech or a line from a blog post.

If it’s someone else’s words, you need to give them credit.

2. Paraphrased Ideas

Even when you put something into your own words, if you learned it from a source, you need to cite it.

Example paraphrased idea

Original quote: “People tend to retain more when they read physical books than e-books.”

Paraphrase: Studies suggest people may retain more information from physical books than from digital formats.

That paraphrase will still need a citation.

Paraphrasing without citing still counts as plagiarism. Rewriting doesn’t erase the idea’s origin.

3. Statistics and Data

Numbers almost always require citation unless you got the data yourself through your own survey and research.

According to Pew Research, 81% of Americans own a smartphone.

This requires a citation. Yes, you identified Pew Research in the text, but that is only part of the citation. More on this in the “Types of Citations” section.

4. Images, Tables, Charts

Visuals sometimes need attribution too, so always check the licensing.

If the image or graphic is in the public domain or released under a Creative Commons Zero (COO) license, you typically don’t need to cite it.

As for other Creative Commons license, check the details as some require credit and others don’t.

If you pay for an image, then you definitely need to give it credit. If it is free, it may come with restrictions on commercial use. It may be free to use, for example, on your website, but require purchasing or appropriate credit if used in a published book.

With that said, it never hurts to give the creator credit. If I were to use any image, table, or chart in a published work, regardless of licensing, I would at least credit the creator. I may not need a full citation, but I like to acknowledge the creator.

How Does AI Fit into This?

The rise of generative AI tools has made content creation faster, but it’s also introduced new ethical and legal gray areas. Using AI writing without credit is technically not plagiarism in the traditional sense; however, if you’re its output in a published work, passing it off as your own can be ethically questionable.

Whether AI use is considered okay or not depends on how you use it and the context.

• Academic writing: Many institutions treat unacknowledged AI use as a form of plagiarism. Check your school’s policy. You definitely can’t use AI to write your entire paper. Sorry, not sorry, students!

• Blogs: If you’re using AI to brainstorm or refine your ideas, you don’t need to disclose. If AI writes the initial draft and you edit it and add in your voice and expand on areas, some readers feel you should disclose that it was AI assisted; others, don’t. So know your audience and move forward with integrity. If you copy it verbatim, you need to make sure the output wasn’t from another source or that is plagiarism in the strictest sense.

• Books: If you’re using AI to brainstorm or refine your ideas, you don’t need to disclose. If AI writes parts of the book, disclose that you used AI to assist you in writing the book in the front matter. Do not have AI write an entire book and pass it off as your own.

• Freelance writing or content work: Some clients want transparency about AI usage, while others prohibit it entirely. Always clarify.

• Social media posts: You don’t need to disclose your use here. The level you use AI is up to you and what you feel is still true to your authenticity and integrity. However, make sure the output doesn’t closely match an existing work.

If your content is heavily AI-assisted or AI-written, best practice is to disclose it, especially in nonfiction, journalism, or educational settings. Readers appreciate honesty.

AI scenarios

Scenario 1: You’re struggling to figure out how to explain a high-level concept. So you ask AI if your content in a given section is clear enough that a 12-year-old with no background would understand it. That isn’t plagiarism and doesn’t need to be acknowledged. It is helping you determine if it is clear, and it is giving you ideas for if it isn’t, but the words are still your own.

Scenario 2: You wrote a blog, and you asked AI to give you to write an example of the concept you’re teaching. Then you copy and paste that example into your blog (I have done this). You can decide to give credit if your audience would care (I credit it), and you have to give credit if you discover the output closely mimics something that is already published.

Scenario 3: You use AI to help you with copyediting your book. I don’t feel you need to disclose this. If it helped you put in a comma or two, that’s not a big deal.

Scenario 4: You asked AI to rewrite an entire scene or section or two or three. Disclose it at the beginning of your book that you used AI to help you write parts of the book.

Bottom line: AI doesn’t technically plagiarize in the traditional sense, but it can output content that’s too similar to copyrighted material. For example, if you ask an AI to write “in the style of Malcolm Gladwell,” you might accidentally echo his sentence structure or concepts too closely. Always review, fact-check, and revise AI-generated content to make it your own.

Types of Citations

You can cite sources in several ways, and the best method often depends on your writing context.

1. In-Text Citations

This is the most common method in academic and journalistic writing.

A brief parenthetical reference appears right in the sentence or paragraph with the full citation information given in a words cited/bibliography at the end.

In-text: “Climate change has accelerated in recent decades (NASA).”

Bibliography entry: NASA. Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet. Accessed January 10, 2025. https://climate.nasa.gov/.

In-text citations are concise, but can interrupt the flow in creative or narrative nonfiction. I do not suggest them for non-academic base books. The casual reader may be put off by the “too academic” look.

2. Footnotes

A small superscript number appears after the cited content, with the full citation at the bottom of the page.

“He coined the term ‘emotional labor’ to describe workplace empathy.¹”

Full citation at bottom of page: 1 Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 7.

Footnotes are great for books because they let you give credit without breaking the narrative flow. They also allow space for commentary or extra info.

3. Endnotes

These work like footnotes, but all notes appear at the end of a chapter or book rather than at the bottom of the page. This keeps the page clean but makes referencing slower for the reader.

This also works great for books. It just depends on whether you want to avoid page clutter or not.

What Needs to Be in a Citation?

You don’t need to memorize citation formats and how you format it depends on what style guide you use.

For example, citing Arlie’s book looks a bit different with each format

CMOS footnote: Arlie Russell Hochschild, The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983), 7.
APA: Hochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart: Commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press.
MLA: Hochschild, Arlie Russell. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. University of California Press, 1983.

So for purposes of this blog, don’t worry about the format. However, you do need to collect the right information to create a citation regardless of format. In general, a full citation includes:

• Author(s) name

• Title of the work (book, article, blog post, video, etc.)

• Date of publication

• Publisher or website name

• URL (for online sources)

• Page number (for print sources, if quoting)

Some citation styles may ask for additional info like access dates or DOIs. Just keep in mind: the more details you gather up front, the easier citation will be later.

Conclusion

Citing isn’t just about following rules—it’s about showing integrity. When you cite, you’re telling your reader, I’ve done my research. You’re elevating others’ ideas while contributing your own. And you’re building a relationship with your audience based on honesty.

Whether you’re drafting a novel, writing a business book, or posting a thought-provoking blog, keep a simple principle in mind: If it didn’t come from you, cite it.

Your future self (and your editor) will thank you.

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings,

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• Do you feel AI use in a blog should be disclosed?

• What type of citation do you prefer—in-text, footnote, endnote—and why?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

You might be thinking, What do scenes and sequels have to do with each other? However, if you’ve ever struggled to write satisfying character arcs, construct a gripping plot, or ensure tight pacing, then you’re in for an authorial treat. Today we’re talking about scenes and sequels as defined by master writer Dwight Swain: story units that are active and reactive, respectively. These terms have different definitions than you might expect, but recasting them can offer a fresh perspective on your story beats. Understanding scenes and sequels and how to use them effectively can radically transform your draft with tools that ensure powerful prose from start to finish.

Redefining Terms: Scene and Sequel

When it comes to “scene,” we usually think of a story moment that occurs in a fixed location and time. However, for this fresh new perspective, we are transposing it into the context of story construction. Think of a scene as an action unit in that construction—a character is acting, pushing forward, making things happen.

Our second recasting is “sequel.” Rather than referring to the next book in a series, sequel in this instance is a reaction unit. These units are quieter, more emotional, and reflective. Don’t worry if you don’t have the hang of these yet—we’ll go into more detail on each.

The Three Parts of a Scene

Keeping in mind that scene is the action unit, it requires three essential components: goal, conflict, and disaster. Each part of a scene is active and moves the story forward, and these elements should be intentional, connecting to what’s come before and developing the character on the page.

Goal

You’ve likely heard that a good scene has a goal, and that advice holds true here as well. In this case, the goal doesn’t have to be directly connected to your character’s book-sized goal, but it should be a mini goal that moves them closer to achieving it. For example, your main character might have the goal of pulling off an incredible heist, but to get inside, she’ll need to steal a security card. Obtaining that card is a mini goal that supports her bigger goal.

Conflict

As a writer, it’s your job to make life difficult for your characters. They should encounter obstacles that prevent them from getting what they want, and these obstacles can reveal their limitations or the flawed beliefs they hold at that point in the book. In the case of our master thief above, the conflict might be a change to the patrols or a new surveillance system. Perhaps our thief failed a job in the past by losing her nerve, and everything is stacking up in a way that makes it look like that may very well happen again.

Disaster

The third part of a scene should feature an unexpected turn so that something worse happens to complicate your main character’s goal. If the protagonist fails, this is the “No, and . . .” that piles on to the problem. For example, maybe our thief gets caught by a guard who happens to be her brother: “No, she doesn’t get the security card, and she’s going to have some explaining to do at Thanksgiving.” Even if she does succeed, a disaster must follow. This is the “Yes, but . . .” that shows the problem is even bigger than expected, such as “Yes, our thief has successfully hacked into the surveillance system and gotten inside, but she finds her ex-partner and lover with the card in his hand.” As a caveat, some scenes can end positively and without a disaster, but if you take this route, you should be setting your character up for an impending disaster, providing a hook that keeps the reader curious about what’s going to happen next.

As you can see from these three elements, each part of a scene should be active. The character is moving and pushing the story forward through their actions. They are progressing towards a small goal that ultimately serves their bigger goal, experiencing setbacks as well as victories.

The Three Parts of a Sequel

Where scene pushes the plot forward through action, sequence is that vital reaction, where the character reflects on the disaster that’s come before, figuring out how to respond or think about what’s happened. Sequels are an opportunity to reveal your character’s inner life and themes and connect them to the plot of the book. Like a scene, a sequel also has three main parts to consider.

Reaction

First, the character should experience emotions connected with the disaster. How do they feel about what’s happened? What do they think about it? The impact of the disaster and how it appears in the sequel is the way readers relate to the main character. Here, they have space to empathize, relate, and connect to what’s happening with your character. In our example, readers can relate to her, whether she’s frightened by, furious about, or tickled by the turn of events.

Dilemma

The dilemma of the sequel refers to the new problem presented by the disaster. Because of this change, your character faces something new, and they have to figure out what to do about it. Here, you can tap back into internal motivation, flaws, desires, or fears of your main character. What parts of the problem are most important to your main character? Perhaps our thief is worried about her family learning about her moonlighting as a criminal, or maybe she’s worried about losing prestige in a guild. Maybe she needs to pay a debt with the money from her massive heist, or she wants it to fund an animal shelter. Regardless of what you choose, this dilemma tells your reader a lot about what your character cares about and what’s important to them.

Decision

While still part of the sequel, this element signals the return back to the action. Your character must make a decision about what’s happened and what they’re going to do now. They might decide that they need to do something different, or they might decide to try again regardless of their failure. In our example, our master thief may decide to try and make a run for it, talk it out, or get the card another way. The following scene would show her taking whatever action she chooses.

Using Scenes for Revision

With a solid understanding of scene structure, you can use it to guide your revision. We’ll look at each part again and ask questions that can point you to an area in need of strengthening.

Goal

• Does your character have a strong goal in this particular story beat?

• Does it connect with their larger goal in any way, or are they off on a tangent that doesn’t have a clear link to what they want?

• Does the scene goal make sense at this point in the story?

You may benefit from digging into the goal component of your scene and find ways to align this action unit with the rest of the story as a whole. What could your character want or need here that moves the story forward?

Conflict

• Are the obstacles well suited to frustrate, stymie, or block your character specifically, or are they insignificant or relatively easy hurdles to overcome?

• Do the obstacles reveal aspects of the character such as their limitations, weaknesses, or misbeliefs?

• Is the conflict directly challenging your protagonist, or is it more of a problem for someone else?

This element is a great place to talk about stakes—what kind of risk is your character facing? What can they lose? Can you make those stakes higher and more meaningful?

Disaster

This element can be the trickiest of the three, but it’s essential to establish it well so the reader keeps turning pages. If your character has been tossed out of the frying pan and into the fire or thrust into a completely unexpected situation, readers will want to know what’s going to happen next! To dig into this element, you can consider what changes at the end of the scene.

Is there new information, a new arrival, or a new complication? If the character simply achieves what they set out to do after overcoming obstacles, checking off their to-do list, there isn’t much to keep the reader going. The disaster connects this scene to the overarching goal, and whether your character finds victory or defeat, this element ensures their resolve is tested even more. This element should also demonstrate that your character can’t go on this way. Even if they succeeded this time, their old patterns, beliefs, or habits won’t allow them to achieve what they want in the long run.

Using Sequels for Revision

Sequels are necessary units to follow scenes because they allow the reader to understand and reflect on the action from the character’s side. They are a breather, a cooldown, an oasis. It’s easy to write action, but it’s even easier to skip over reflection to keep the action going. However, sequels don’t need to be long to be effective, and your reader—as well as the heart of your story—will benefit from well-timed ones. Sequels often mark important turning points, such as when your character steps away from their normal world, endures the emotional fallout of the crisis, or realizes a lesson in the climax.

Reaction

Reactions tell us so much about a character, and it’s helpful to put these emotions and thoughts into the context of the whole to evaluate them.

• How big of a response is needed for the disaster?

• Is it appropriate for the character at this point in their journey?

• Are they overreacting or underreacting?

• Are they regressing to an earlier state, or is the reaction slowing down the action when your character really should keep moving?

Dilemma

• Does the new problem exacerbate a wound your character already has, or does it bring up something totally unique?

• Does it deepen the reader’s understanding and allow them to connect to the character as well as the bigger themes of the book?

• Is too much exposition needed to explain why this is a problem for your character?

• Above all, the best question to ask here is this: Is this actually a real problem?

If the solution is too easy or doesn’t really impact the characters, a different challenge might be called for to strengthen the story.

Decision

The decision in a sequel should be clear and indicate what your character is going to do next given the circumstances. To use this component in revision, you can ask questions about the plan of action. Given what’s come before,

• Does your character’s decision make sense?

• Have they learned from previous attempts to achieve their goal?

• Are they trying something else or simply trying again?

• Which one fits better with where the character is in their journey?

Scenes and Sequels Create Pacing

All genres have expectations when it comes to scenes and sequels, and the word count you dedicate to each one influences how the reader experiences the flow of the book. For example, romances do have scenes and action, but they almost always have longer and gentler sequels that allow readers to step inside the main character’s emotions, dwelling on the relationship’s ins and outs. Adventure novels and thrillers, on the other hand, should feature short and sweet sequels that give readers a breather before the next explosion or twist in the case. Your personal writing style will also influence the length of scenes and sequels in your book.

For revision on the macro level, try highlighting your scenes and sequels in two colors and then zoom out to view the manuscript in terms of these story units, both action and reflection. If you have long stretches of scenes with no sequels—or vice versa—you might consider adding a few to improve pacing. Too much action and no reflection can create a breathless and even confusing reading experience. Too much reflection and not enough forward movement can create a muddy, overly introspective read. Remember, your book’s genre and your own writing style can guide you here.

Final Thoughts: Don’t Move Bricks—Build a House

Reconsidering scenes and sequels can revolutionize the construction of your book by revealing weak or missing elements. Both offer ways to strengthen your story beats, and both provide valuable ways to engage your reader. To go back to our opening image, think about how these story units can shape your story. You’re stacking bricks, not moving separate bricks—your character shouldn’t merely be facing disaster, thinking about that disaster, facing a different disaster, and then thinking about that. Each unit should build on the last one, developing the story with each scene and sequel into a captivating book.

Meet the Guest Blogger: Jackie Peveto

Jackie Peveto is a passionate writer, editor, and artist. She is co-founder of Ground Crew Editorial, working with independent authors and traditional publishers, including Penguin Young Readers. Drawing on her teaching experience and a master’s degree in creative writing, she supports writers by volunteering with SCBWI and the Mixed-Up Files of Middle Grade Authors.

Contact links:

Website

LinkedIn

Facebook

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• What questions do you have?

• Have you ever thought about “sequel” as a reaction unit before? How might this new definition change your approach to story structure?

• Can you think of a scene from your current WIP that could be strengthened with a clearer disaster or a deeper sequel? What would you change?

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?

Rule

Use commas to set off nonrestrictive elements (extra information), but do not use commas with restrictive elements (necessary information).

Terms to Know

Restrictive: A word, phrase, or clause that is essential to the meaning of the sentence.

Nonrestrictive: A word, phrase, or clause that can be removed without changing the basic meaning of the sentence.

Examples

My sister, who lives in Seattle, is coming to visit.

→“Who lives in Seattle” is extra information (nonrestrictive), so it is surrounded by commas. Unless I had more than one sister, and that was identifying which sister.

The students who studied passed the test.

→“Who studied” is necessary to identify which students, so no commas are used.

The red car, dented on one side, sped away.

→“Dented on one side” is not essential, so it takes commas.

Anyone arriving late will not be admitted.

→“Arriving late” is necessary to know who is affected, so no comma is used.

The author, known for her thrillers, just released a children’s book.

→“Known for her thrillers” is extra information—commas are needed.

Books that are overdue must be returned immediately.

→“That are overdue” is essential to know which books—no commas.

My uncle who lives in Boston is a firefighter.

→“Who lives in Boston” is necessary to identify which uncle

My car, which I bought last year, already needs new brakes.

→“Which I bought last year” is nonessential—commas are needed.

→The guests sitting near the window ordered dessert.

“Sitting near the window” tells us which guests—no commas.

Practice

1. My neighbor who just had a baby is exhausted.

2. That movie which won three awards is overrated.

3. My brother a talented musician just released his first album.

4. Employees working overtime must report to HR.

5. The cat curled on the couch looks cozy.

6. His laptop having broken in two needed replacing.

7. The woman wearing the green scarf waved at us.

8. Ms. Gonzalez who teaches chemistry is retiring.

Answers

1. My neighbor who just had a baby is exhausted. (restrictive – no commas)

2. That movie, which won three awards, is overrated. (nonrestrictive – commas)

3. My brother, a talented musician, just released his first album. (nonrestrictive – commas)

4. Employees working overtime must report to HR. (restrictive – no commas)

5. The cat curled on the couch looks cozy. (restrictive – no commas)

6. His laptop, having broken in two, needed replacing. (nonrestrictive – commas)

7. The woman wearing the green scarf waved at us. (restrictive – no commas)

8. Gonzalez, who teaches chemistry, is retiring. (nonrestrictive – commas)

You’ve written the book. You’ve hit “publish.” You may have even done a happy dance (which I strongly recommend). But now what?

If you’re picturing yourself endlessly posting on social media and feeling more “meh” than “motivated,” take heart: there’s another way to get your book in front of readers. It’s called boots-on-the-ground marketing—and it’s just what it sounds like. You, out in the world, making real-life connections that spark curiosity, build community, and (yes) sell books.

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Define What Success Looks Like

Do not measure your success by other’s metrics. You wrote and published a book, which is already a huge accomplishment.

Marketing it can feel defeating, so you need to get clear on what success is for you. Don’t get defeated if you don’t sell 100 books on day one. Success is not always achieved right away.

And success is not the same for everyone. You don’t need a bestseller sticker to be a successful author. Maybe you want to sell 500 copies in your first year. Maybe you want to grow your email list, land podcast interviews, or simply have more readers in your niche. Whatever your goal, name it—and then celebrate the heck out of it when you reach it.

Confetti optional. But encouraged.

Ready to Lace Up Those Marketing Boots?

Use these grounded, effective strategies to get your book into the hands (and hearts) of readers either for free or little cost:

1. Be a guest on podcasts

Podcasts are one of the best ways to reach new readers. But don’t just pitch every show under the sun. Find podcasts where the audience would actually be interested in your book—and be a great guest by tying your topic to their focus.

To find podcasts, you can use any of the podcast matching services available:

• Podcast Bookers

• PodMatch

• PodPitch

Pro tip: Create a podcast one-sheet with a professional headshot, your book’s cover image, a short-and-sweet author bio, potential interview questions (they will most likely not read your book, so give them questions), and potential interview subjects

2. Get media-worthy with a press kit

Want a journalist, blogger, or bookstagrammer to feature your book? Make their job easy. A well-crafted press kit makes you look like a total pro. Include:

• A high-quality headshot

• Your book cover

• A press release about the book

• A short author bio

• A one-sheet with talking points, blurbs, or endorsements

• Links to purchase the book and find you online

Then, pitch yourself to bloggers in your genre, local newspapers, indie book reviewers, or online media outlets. Just like with podcasts, make sure their audience is your audience.

3. Speak on author panels or as a solo presenter

Panels and presentations are a great way to share your expertise and your book. Don’t wait to be invited—pitch yourself! Connect with authors who already have a platform or reach out to local bookstores, festivals, or libraries and suggest a themed panel or solo presentation.

Do you write cozy mysteries? Pitch a panel/presentation called “Murder, Mayhem, and Muffins.” You get the idea.

Where to pitch
Bookstores: Many independent bookstores host regular author events, panel discussions, or themed series. Check their events page or social media to see what kinds of panels they’ve hosted in the past.

Libraries: Libraries love author events and community engagement. Some host annual or seasonal author days, and others are open to organizing a panel around a theme.

Online literary communities and conferences: Virtual conferences are still very much a thing! Try:

• Facebook groups or online forums for your genre

• Digital writing conferences and author summits

• Membership-based communities like Authors Guild, SCBWI, or ALLi

Writing conferences: Search for local writing conferences. They will call for speakers and have a formal application process months before the conference.

Literary festivals and book fairs: These often have formal application processes, usually months in advance. Look for:

• State and regional book festivals (like the Texas Book Festival or Miami Book Fair)

• Genre-specific cons or gatherings (like Bouchercon for mystery authors)

• University or college literary events

4. Write a companion article or essay

If your book covers a topic with broader appeal—grief, travel, parenting, identity—you can write a related op-ed, essay, or article and pitch it to an outlet your readers already love.

The key? Make sure the outlet’s audience matches your ideal reader. Then sneak in a book link in your bio.

5. Plan a reading

Readings can be live or virtual (Zoom works too), but here’s the truth: live readings sell more books. Just be sure there’s not a competing event in the area—and that your event actually sounds fun. Wine and words, anyone?

You can pitch your local indie bookstore, library, or coffee shop. Or? Organize your own event from scratch if none exist. Librarians and bookstore owners will often say yes when you make their job easier.

6. Hit the local event circuit

Check out the events page of bookstores, libraries, and book festivals near you and see if you can get a table or booth at the event (this strategy does cost). No event listed? Offer to create one.

And if your book has a specific theme, consider a non-book festival! A novel with horses? Try a horse festival. A memoir about your time in the kitchen? Food festivals, here you come.

Pro tips for buying a table/booth at the event

Invest in

• Swag (optional, but fun)

• A table display

• Postcards with a book excerpt and QR code to buy

• A warm smile (always free)

Other little-but-mighty ideas

• Donate a copy to your local library. Libraries love local authors. (So do patrons!)

• Support your indie bookstores. Attend events. Shop there. Build relationships.

• Look for the “Author Info” page on bookstore websites. That’s where you’ll find their guidelines.

• Ask about consignment. Most bookstores will either buy directly from Ingram or offer a consignment split (usually 60/40).

• Keep a stack of postcards (excerpt from your book with QR code to buy) on hand—because you never know when someone will ask about your book at the dentist’s office

Final Tips

Don’t engage in any marketing strategy that you hate. If you hate marketing, you will burnout quickly.

And don’t try to do it all. Instead, pick five marketing methods that actually sound fun or fulfilling. That might be:

• Two podcasts a month

• Quarterly library readings

• One op-ed pitch

• A local author panel

• A fall book festival

Marketing doesn’t have to drain you—it can connect you to readers who love what you love.

Conclusion

You don’t need to shout on social media to get readers. You need a goal, a few solid strategies, and the courage to actually show up. In person. In real life. In front of your people.

And when you do? That’s when the magic happens.

Boots on the ground, and beacon in the sky!

To get notified whenever I publish a new blog, learn useful writing and publishing tips from other professionals, get discounts on my resources, see what I’m reading and recommending, and learn when I have editing openings, sign up for my newsletter.

I’d love to hear from you. Comment below using any of these prompts to guide you:

• Which boots-on-the-ground strategy are you most excited to try first?

• Do you have a podcast one-sheet or press kit? Drop it here in the comments. I’d love to check it out.

• What is one thing you did professionally or personally today that you’re proud of?