Author’s Note: I originally outlined this as a single article, but the information and insights available—even condensed—started to push the word count into “novella” ranges. Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2 coming next week!

A few years ago, I had a very lucrative ghostwriting contract that paid for everything I needed, started paying off debt, and bootstrapped my indie bookstore when I moved from Chicago back to Iowa.

It was nice. It was a decent income as incomes and freelance work goes. After a lifetime of growing up in financial instability and impoverishment that followed me well into adulthood, I finally felt like I could breathe.

Like I could finally invest in myself as an author: get all the resources, subscribe to whatever I needed, start planning out a little warehouse situation for my physical stock, maybe even finally delve into paid advertising.

Until the morning I received my last paycheck.

With the single paragraph informing me that—despite looking forward to the next projects as we’d discussed the night before—they were canceling my contract effective immediately.

No warning.

No severance.

No consideration for the fact that they’d all but demanded I make their publishing house my full-time focus (I still have that message where the Supervising Editor literally said so, verbatim).

Everything that happened afterward was like watching the dominos of my life fall at an accelerating rate: I lost my home, I lost the first location for the bookstore, I lost roughly 90% of my personal belongings in both scenarios because hahahahahaha the two landlords ended up being a lot closer connected than I ever knew (that could write its own cozy mystery novel, I swear), and my best friend of 20+ years who’d been my roommate and business partner literally packed up and left.

I’m not saying this to throw a pity party for myself. Promise.

I’m sharing all this to emphasize that I truly, deeply, from experience that cripples a lot of people and damn near crippled me, know this to be true:

You can be a successful independent author on an exceptionally tight budget.

The economy—at least in the USA—is terrible. The job market is worse, especially for creatives and writers who the AI programs are trying to take advantage of. The listings on LinkedIn are nauseating. Bills keep piling, prices at the café where we need a desperate little escape keep going up, and I’m seeing people asking all over social media and the news, “What can we do in times like this?”

I asked myself the same question. The answer that whispered back?

Write.

You can lose everything, but you can’t lose your stories. No one can take that from you.

I rolled with it. For the first time in my life, I shifted my full-time focus into my authorship.

Which kinda felt like a terrible joke because I didn’t have a single dime to bootstrap this endeavor at all. And I knew from firsthand experience as both an author and an editor that publishing is not something that can be done completely free—in fact, it can get very, very expensive!

So as you’re reading this article and taking notes from this list, please keep in mind that what I’m about to share with you literally, genuinely comes from the kind of experience and budget that cannot afford anything more. I’m not someone with a W2 who’s “broke” after expenses are deducted from a still-decent paycheck.

When I say, “broke”, I mean scraping the bottom of the barrel because I ain’t got much, but I got determination.

What’s available for FREE

I’ll frame it in a note/disclaimer: you don’t have to keep everything at the free level forever, if you don’t want to. One day you might be rolling in more than enough dough to treat yourself and your authorship to some higher-tier, higher-budget luxury and there is nothing wrong with that!

But until that day comes?

Free is where it’s at—and where stability can still happen while you get your Organic Marketing figured out.

Email Marketing: Kit (formerly ConvertKit)

You do have to specifically request The Newsletter Tier. Make sure if/when you sign up, you’re specifically on this tier; you might have to contact Customer Service just in case there’s a hiccup (it’s happened; they’re awesome and will get you fixed up ASAP).

Kit’s Newsletter Tier is 100% FREE and includes:

• 10,000 subscribers

• 1 basic Visual Automation

• Unlimited landing pages & forms

• Unlimited email broadcasts

• Audience tagging & segmentation

• Sell digital products & subscriptions

The only feature I wish was included but currently isn’t is the Poll. You can, however, use pollkit.co to embed simple polls for free up to 5 uses and then super duper affordable (like, $2 or $10 for a pack) poll options if/when you need more.

Because Kit has been around for so long, it plugs into everything everywhere without the need for external hookups like Zapier. It’s a clean, easy-to-use interface, the emails can be as plain or as gorgeous as you want them to be, and tracking performance is so incredibly detailed as well as easy to understand.

My one beef with them is that upgrading to a Paid Plan drops from 10k subscribers to 1k before the “pay more while you grow more” grossness kicks in. I did contact them directly to suggest smoothing out the transition better—but honestly, if you’re not running a giant empire that needs multiple automations and native polls and other features? Newsletter works beautifully right where it’s at.

Graphic Design: Canva

This is one that you’ll want to upgrade once the budget allows (more on that in Part 2), but you can still get a lot done on the Free Tier. I’ve designed my book covers and social media graphics during months I couldn’t swing the $16, and as long as I don’t need to download a transparent PNG, I’ve been able to manage just fine.

Canva is what I like to call a “craft table”: upload your graphic assets and assemble them on a size template like you’re scrapbooking. Snip a corner here, rotate a graphic there, jazz up a basic font to look cool—please for the love of everything STOP USING CINZEL DECORATIVE—and badabing!

There’s your Instagram post.

Or email newsletter header.

Or new logo.

Or maybe even your next book cover.

Link in Bio: Beacons

Read this before you pass judgement: their URL was beacons.ai long before they actually implemented Artificial Intelligence into the platform. I think it may have been the country code? Like .ca or .uk? I don’t know the details. I just know that everyone reading this needs to know I am not promoting an AI platform or genAI usage.

What I am definitely recommending is the most beautiful and easy-to-use Link in Bio solution I’ve tried and tested in the past few years and happily, currently use for $0.

According to their Pricing Page, here are just a few of the “standout features” on the Free Plan:

• Customizable link in bio

• Daily-updating media kit

• Sell unlimited digital products

• Create affiliate links

• 9% seller fees

• 50 email sends per month

• Smart Reply IG auto-DM

• Real-time analytics

Here are the features I’ve found and use that make it stand above everything else I tested, including Canva, LinkTree, website-specific options, and others:

• Free website included (with easy templates!)

• Design features and flow options are robust

• Yes, there’s an AI assistant, but it’s super new and easily ignorable (sorry, cute little beaver!)

• Tracking social media performance is crazy easy and I find myself using Beacons to do that more than Meta

• Did I mention the customization is insane? Does that count under “Design Features”?

I’ll mention here that the 9% seller fee seems awfully high—because it is—BUT I’ve never actually “felt” it, if that makes sense. The ebooks sold through my Beacons shop paid out roughly the same (maybe even a little more?) than if they’d sold on Kindle. But also: you don’t have to use Beacons for direct sales if you don’t want to. Direct Downloads are easy to set up as $0, or you can simply add external links to wherever you want people to go! Such as…

eBook Delivery Management: StoryOrigin

I’m never going to shut up about StoryOrigin.

Mainly because of the way it treats authors of all budgets with the same respect and consideration whether you’re on the Free Plan or (very affordable) Paid Plan. Or have been on the Paid but something in life happened and you have to slide down to Free for now.

On the Free Plan, you get:

• Ability to integrate email marketing services (including Kit!)

• Unlimited Direct Download file delivery

• Tech support for readers

• Universal Book Links (UBL)

• Facebook tracking pixel

• Amazon affiliate tags

• Word Count Goal Tracker (it’s fun! I’m currently using it to kick my rear into gear!)

And like I mentioned earlier, if something happens and you’re suddenly broke, you’re not going to lose your confirmed and scheduled group promos/book swaps. This platform honors your commitment, and that’s something I have mad respect for.

Point of Sale: Square

Whether you’re starting off with only ebooks (aka “digital downloads”) or planning to do wholesale, book fairs, etc., Square is the go-to free solution for processing payments and handling every aspect of the retail process.

You can genuinely use Square for free and get a ton of resources at your fingertips without upgrading to their paid tier, Square Plus (I’ll be talking about that in Part 2):

• Direct Downloads/Ebook sales

• Service & Wholesale Invoicing

• Sales Tax collections & calculations

• Point of Sale available for both Android and iPhone devices, as well as tablets

• Basic website for e-commerce (without custom domain)

• Digital receipts w/ customizable options

• Basic inventory tracking

• Sales Reports

There’s more, but this is what I can think of off the top of my head!

I use Square for both my Author Life and my bookstore, Fae•ble—and after trying out so many other options, like Shopify, I can wholeheartedly confirm that Square (and Square Plus) outperforms all of them when you’re looking at that ROI.

Office Software: GSuite

I talked about this in my other article, “I Turned My MacBook Into A Publishing Powerhouse”, so I won’t spend too much time reiterating the features and benefits here, other than to say:

It was designed to be the free version of Microsoft Office.

Boom. That’s all you need to know. It’s compatible with everything, has a ton of plugin options available (such as ProWritingAid and Grammarly), and if Office can do something, GSuite can do it, too.

What I like in particular about GSuite is that it is compatible across devices: Android, Windows, iPhone, iOS, it doesn’t matter. You can communicate in real time with your editors if they use it (I did and still do for the occasional client) right there in the documents regardless of whether they use the same system as you or not.

For a deeper dive into the other 100% free office software solution provided by Apple, check out that article! You can also share projects and work in tandem with other users, but you both do need to be using Macs/iPhone/iPad for that to work.

Editing Software: ProWritingAid Everywhere

Full disclosure here: I don’t really use PWA for reports or “voice/genre check”. This may be a super neat and useful aspect for other authors, but I’ll only dip my toes in out of curiosity more than need.

What I do use PWA for is to constantly check my writing as I go, from spelling to punctuation to grammatical usage whether I take the suggestions or not.

On the Free Tier (called “Everywhere”), the little arrow toggle on the side of whatever screen I’m writing in turns red when it tracks a mistake, and green when it scans the project and figures it’s pretty much good to go. It might offer actual suggestions or flag something as “I will tell you what I think you should fix once you start paying me”, but either way I find it to be super useful.

When you do get a “premium suggestion” alert (usually appearing as a brightly colored underline), you can utilize that as a way to check your phrasing, hyphen use, or whatever you suspect might be wrong with what’s underlined. Sometimes I figure it out and the alert disappears. Sometimes I think the passage is perfectly fine and PWA can just deal with it.

No matter what, I’m always able to challenge what I write with basic self-editing checks and it does help keep the copy clean for later editing.

Another fun reason to use PWA: the community! They have fun writing challenges and contests, a badge-earning gamification to encourage you to hit your goals, and their NaNoWriMo program looks intense. These are all features on the browser-based dashboard, and available to all users including the Free Tier.

Organic Marketing

This encompasses everything from email newsletters to blog posts to social media curation, and it’s something I need more and more authors to focus on while pointedly ignoring the siren song of paid advertising.

Organic marketing is FREE.

And it should be your #1 Priority right after establishing your brand/brand image (because you need that figured out in order for the Organic Marketing to work!).

It is completely free to post on Instagram, Facebook, Threads, TikTok, even SnapChat and a few others I’m not thinking of but ya’ll know are out there. You don’t have to be super fancy, but you do need to have a plan—or even a plan to make a strategy to formulate The Plan—so consistency drives people to you and readers to your books.

Here’s the kicker: until Organic Marketing is generating consistent, monthly book sales and growing your readership at the rates you expect Paid Ads to perform, those Paid Ads will not actually work.

If your author platform isn’t solid and established and curated enough to generate sales without spending a dime, it’s not strong enough to support the traffic flow paid ads will give. They will give it, but people want to see a finished building, not signs pointing to something still under construction.

By focusing on making Organic Marketing do what you need it to do (make those sales), you’re also finding all the little pitfalls and whoopsies that would have cost you hundreds upon thousands of dollars during a paid campaign. By the time your monthly sales are consistent, the ROI on paid advertising has a far better guarantee to be substantial instead of soul-sucking!

What’s Free After One Payment

Sometimes it’s just a matter of a single licensing fee to get access to a valuable resource forever—and I think we can agree, that still beats out monthly subscriptions! Here is my list of resources I gladly paid the one-time fee for and have zero regrets:

Author Website: Substack

Yes, you read that right: my actual, full-fledged author website is right here on Substack. You are reading this article inside it.

It came down to needing the social and professional validity of an official website while not having the budget for a monthly subscription to something like Squarespace. I love Squarespace and would have kept it, but let’s be honest: it’s a pretty penny out the pocket.

But as I was looking for a way to subsidize my website needs on the nonexistent funds in my bank account, I also realized I needed to find a way to eliminate some of the burnout that comes with running my author career and that Organic Marketing stuff. When I came across Substack and took a close look at all the features, I realized it could (and now does) do all these things for me in one easy go:

• Blog articles

• Email newsletter

• Community building & nurturing

• Podcast hosting

• Video hosting

• Easy web design

It only costs $50 to add a customized domain to your Substack account. After that, you never have to pay a single fee again. Ever. For anything. No matter what life and money is like month to month, I live without the anxiety of “what if it shuts down because I’m broke?”

I also live in a much better mental headspace of having condensed the blog articles with my general email newsletter, both of which boost SEO & discoverability but also helps nurture my growing readership. I’m able to participate in group promos and newsletter swaps like everyone else, but instead of an automatic integration, I just download the CSV file of captured emails (all with the consent and approval for subscription, per regulations) and upload it to my dashboard. That sends a Welcome Email just like any other newsletter sequence, and I’m all set!

For those of you wondering: I use Kit exclusively for my ARC team. I might do a whole separate article on that…

A quick note I want to make on this: Substack was created for writers. Your website, wherever you place it, should showcase you as a brilliant author/writer. Agents look for that, contract clients look for that, publishers and booksellers look for that, even your readers want to know more about what’s on your mind and see your expertise in action. So it does make industrial sense to utilize a platform built for writers to help build your authorship!

Okay, another quick note: I’ve seen some people bemoan Substack for “catering to right-wing radicals” or whatever. It doesn’t actually cater to anyone in particular. Everyone is allowed a space for their voice whether you love it or hate it—and honestly, if you don’t like how loud someone is being, just ignore them. Or be louder. Any given platform will swing in a particular direction if everyone on the opposite end jumps off. Want to balance it out? Maybe even tilt it your way? Hop on. Add your weight and your voice. Don’t let bullies win the playground.

Book Formatting: Vellum

I’m specifically pointing at Vellum and not anywhere near Atticus for two reasons:

1. Vellum gives you full access for FREE and only requires payment when you’re ready to generate (aka export/publish) your book. Atticus doesn’t let you inside to see what it’s like at all, which always makes me nervous.

2. From what I’ve heard consistently over the years, I’m right to be nervous: Atticus is notorious for glitches, bugs, slow loading, and a slew of other issues that makes me wonder of the nonexistent free trial is on purpose.

The price for Vellum—which is exclusive as a desktop program to Macs; PC users can use this workaround in a browser—is admittedly high at $299.99 and can scare away Broke Authors pretty quick. I totally understand that.

PRO TIP: Hang around for the Black Friday Deals. I can’t remember how much the full price was two years ago, but I do remember only paying around $175 on Black Friday/Cyber Monday, and I got the money to do it by trading the exact funds for editing services.

I’m telling you, this is something you want to find a way to get the money for at any price because once you have it, you’ll wonder how in the world you got this far for so long without it!

A few features you need to know about:

• You can directly export from Scrivener into Vellum and only need to make minor adjustments in the formatting (like artistic customizations, clean up chapter titles, etc.)

• You can add forced edges so your paperbacks print with designs on the outer edge

• You don’t have to worry about margin sizes or “did I forget something in the Front/Back matter?” Everything is either preset or available in what I refer to as my “dropdown checklist” in the top menu bar, from Title Page to Prologue, About the Author, Epilogue, Learn More, etc.

• It’s very easy to create a gorgeous layout and very, very difficult to mess it up

• One click can generate EPUBs and PDF for every major eReader platform and printed edition you need: Apple Books, Google Books, Nook, Kindle, Kobo, and Generic

Manuscript writing: Scrivener

I used to roll my eyes at everyone who swore by this software.

I was a fool.

A damned fool.

Listen: I think I was more frustrated by not knowing how to use it—and not having the patience to learn at that time—than finding any actual fault in it. I came to this conclusion one day while I was still on their exceptionally generous 30 Day Free Trial (they don’t count the days by the calendar, but by your actual usage days; I had mine for 2 whole years) and I decided to just sit down, play around, and see if I could figure out the most basic use.

Oh.

Oh…wow.

Next thing I knew, I was handing over the $50 for the lifetime license (yes, you read that right) and I’ve never looked back except to laugh at Damned Fool Pre-Scrivener Nikki and wave my significantly improved outlining skills in her face.

Because that’s the one biggest thing I’ve noticed other authors mention about Scrivener that no other word processing software does (for a one-time fee): you can outline, write chapters, change your mind, and move it around. Just grab that chapter folder and drag it to a better spot. Not sure about a scene but also don’t want to delete it? Grab the card it’s in and move it to a side folder.

To give you an even better idea of how immensely valuable Scrivener is to the modern author: almost every other software program designed for authors is also designed to work seamlessly with Scrivener. It’s almost like there’s some unspoken (or maybe spoken over coffee) rule that if you’re going to offer something for authors to use, it better work with Scrivener or else!

I’m going to have a whole separate article deep-diving into Scrivener, so I’ll leave it at this for now: if you’ve been on the fence but haven’t actually tried it, use my link and get those 30 Days locked in. Hit up YouTube for tips and tricks to customize your experience. Weep for the days spent without this Godsend.

Paperback printing: Quill and Courier

Now this is “Per Book” in terms of one-and-done fees, but listen:

If you’ve been wanting to offer wholesale to bookstores at way better terms than Ingram while also enjoying the low Author Copy pricing like KDP, this is the printing platform for you!

Based in Minneapolis, Minnesota and run by a husband/wife team, Quill and Courier offers unlimited revisions and edits for each book title you upload after paying the initial $25 that covers the time and care these real humans (not automated machines) put into verifying your uploaded files are correct and compatible.

I’m going to address what I’m hearing pop up in my head: “But aren’t IngramSpark and KDP free to upload? Why would I pay someone for that?” And you’re right to wonder!

Here’s why I am recommending Quill and Courier anyway:

• KDP is not the way to go for bookstore wholesale. Full stop. It’s not just about printing quality or “stick it to the ‘Zon”, but more about respecting the way retail businesses need to be able to place reorders whenever they want with as little friction in the middle as possible. And yes, a lot of indie booksellers won’t even touch something printed by Amazon.

• IngramSpark is free to upload, but after a certain period the revisions can cost anywhere from $25-$50 per revision (meaning, if your new version is messed up but you paid for the new upload, you’ll have to pay again and again until it’s right). Their author copies and shipping rates are also pretty freakin’ high compared to both KDP and Quill and Courier.

• If you’ve ever received shipments from either IngramSpark or KDP, you know what it’s like to suck in a deep breath and try not to scream at the damage to the packaging and books. Or maybe you did scream and the neighbors understood. Quill and Courier, though? My books always arrived double or triple-layered in packaging so secure, I’m pretty sure my UPS guy could punt it into the garden and those books would be fine.

The other super awesome feature of Quill and Courier is their wholesale program: you can offer your books to bookstores at an actual 50% discount exclusive to retailer accounts that gives the retailer the full discount (none of this “make it 55% but haha we only give them 40% if we like them” bulls***) and you earn way more in royalties while also not having to package or ship the books yourself.

A Note About Lifetime Licenses

When you can swing it, do it.

Programs like Scrivener and Substack make it easy with that $50 price tag. Everywhere else either doesn’t offer Lifetime Licenses or does but at a pretty hefty cost.

But here’s what I’ve learned from living a predictably unpredictable life:

If you grab the Lifetime License when you have the money, you’ll be saving Future You during times when you need it but can’t afford it.

That’s what happened to me with PublisherRocket, Vellum, and Scrivener. I bought all three when I either had plenty of money to do so or an opportunity to make it work (that editing request came up right when Black Friday was around the corner). When times hit super hard lows, I still had my writing software, my formatting software, and a way to maximize sales potential with keywords and market research.

Here’s a list of software programs I definitely plan on grabbing Lifetime Licenses for and you should consider for your When I Can List, too:

• Plottr—I’m going to do a whole deep dive on this and compare it to other options in a separate article! Suffice it to say, there are particular reasons why this one makes my brain the happiest

• ProWritingAid—Okay yes I do want the extra features because I’m bougie; I’m just able to live without them for now

• Scapple—this one is only $25, so an easy buy; I’m just not used to it enough yet to make it an immediate investment. It’s the official Literature and Lattes companion to Scrivener and can be used instead of Plottr, but I feel like $25 is okay for a lifetime of “maybe I’ll eventually use it”, right? Right?

Identify Your Money Pits

I’m gonna be real with you, and a little bit harsh:

Some of ya’ll are spending way too much money in all the wrong areas.

Now, it’s going to be different for every person based on things like personal income, publishing strategy (i.e. ebook-only or also bookstore retail?), and, surprisingly, genre—which has proven to be a much larger deciding factor than one might think at first glance.

But there are a few things I’ve noticed are consistently invested in by authors who also take to social media to complain about how expensive everything is, what little money they’re making after doing so, and then reject the much less expensive necessities because “I can’t afford anything else right now”.

Here’s a quick way to determine where your money pits are:

1. How much are you spending on it per month?

2. If you were unable to afford it and it shut off tomorrow, is it easily replaceable by another cheaper/free resource?

3. Are you using it because it’s genuinely giving you an amazing Return On Investment (ROI)? Or only because everyone else swears by it?

These are the questions I was forced to ask and answer when my Author Budget went from a couple hundred dollars per month to zero. And here are the money pits I found sucking up the last of my savings if I didn’t get rid of them first:

BookFunnel

There’s no Free Tier. At all.

Just a constantly-increasing subscription fee.

There’s also no forgiveness on the platform for sudden budget cuts that might happen mid-group promotion, which means that if your bank account suddenly drops below $10 and you can’t swing a new month of this platform, any group promos and newsletter swaps you signed up for are completely inaccessible and you can kiss your required performance rep goodbye. I had this happen once and the group promo host was not kind or understanding when I was able to slide back in and tried apologizing for the hiccup.

StoryOrigin, however? I ran into the same situation and was pleasantly surprised to discover I could still participate in the confirmed group promos and swaps even though my account had to slide back into the Free Tier. I couldn’t join new ones until I paid the $10, but I was at least still able to fulfill my commitments.

A lot of other features authors tell me they “need” BookFunnel for are available completely free on at least 2-3 other platforms I’m going to share both Parts 1&2.

The one point a group of authors made about BookFunnel that is totally legit as to why you might need to use it: genre focus.

As a fantasy/romantasy author, I had a difficult time finding things to participate in—but I did notice, as these authors pointed out, a strong focus in more contemporary and “real world” genres, like LGBTQ+ Romance, literary fiction, etc.

{Almost} Every Email Marketing Platform

I loved FloDesk back when it was a flat fee for unlimited everything. It made sense, it was beautifully unique, and I loved how pretty my emails looked when I used it for my editorial company.

Now it’s tiered like everywhere/everyone else…except one, which I’m going to get to in a moment.

Here’s my beef with email marketing platforms: they ask for a lot and give very little—unless you’re super tech savvy and/or have the time/patience to learn Klaviyo inside and out to make that horrendously high expense print money for yourself in return (I mention this because there are some brilliant author geniuses out there who do actually do this with Klaviyo; I am not one of them).

Microsoft Office

Shhhhhh.

I need you to listen to me very closely, and believe me when I say this. Just nod and agree, because it’s true.

You don’t. Need. Microsoft. Office.

You don’t. You really, really don’t. I haven’t found a single thing that suite offers that can’t be found elsewhere for free. If you can think of one, please let me know in the comments and I’ll either admit I didn’t come across that or I’ll share with you a free alternative you haven’t heard about until now.

Yes, I understand addiction is hard to kick. Yes, I know other addicts demand people use this so they can keep using it.

No, it is not a requirement for your author career and it is definitely not giving you the ROI that justifies the monthly or even yearly expense.

Adobe Creative Cloud

I’ve found free alternatives for almost everything in this software suite. I’m only saying “almost” because I don’t do heavy photography editing so I haven’t tested other platforms/software against Lightroom.

Against Photoshop? I can name two off the top of my head that do the same job for free (GIMP and PhotoPea), and skimming through one of the Facebook Groups I’m in brought up a dozen other options. InDesign causes more problems in book formatting than it solves unless you’re a super experienced pro at it, and even then one of my amazing formatting friends noticed a simple sneeze could throw off the whole layout. Not worth the headache, in my personal opinion.

Kindle Unlimited

If you’re currently making thousands of dollars per month from having your books on KU, go ahead and skip this part. I do understand that it can work for some.

Some.

If you’re new to indie publishing or you’re not but you’re also not currently making a a full-time income on KU, do yourself a favor and DON’T DO IT.

I had my books on KU for a considerable period and can honestly say I’ve made way more money being off it than when I was on. Like, pay-the-bills and go-out-to-eat kind of money.

Why?

Visibility.

You can’t share your books as freely. Heaven forbid you get pirated—the powers that be over at Amazon literally do not care if your work gets stolen, only that it’s available somewhere other than KU (I know because I asked them directly). Goodbye, account. Goodbye, platform. And the real kick in the teeth is that this “exclusivity clause” only exists on this platform feature in particular and only applies to indie authors despite them saying it’s for everyone.

Don’t believe me? Go look up any trad author name you can think of right now. See where those ebooks are available. I’ll bet you a coffee you’ll see “Kindle Unlimited” and then a list of other eReader sites, too.

I’ll keep my rant against KU short and end it with this: the fact that I can accurately describe how KDP Select/KU treats indie authors with the exact same phrasing as what’s used to describe an abusive relationship should have everyone deeply concerned and lobbying Amazon for better terms.

Paid Ads

This part kind of piggybacks on KU because whenever I’ve asked someone how they got to making a full-time income on KU, the answer always always always involves an iteration of the phrase: “I pay for advertising”.

But I’m going to reiterate what I said earlier, which was also the best piece of advice someone gave me years ago that I can 100% confirm is true:

Don’t pay for advertising until your organic marketing is already performing at the level you expect paid ads to give.

If you’ve been throwing money at paid advertising and it’s just not doing what you need it to do, it’s time to close the window, tuck that money away for later, and do a hardcore deep dive into your branding, your messaging, your communications, and figure out your best Organic Marketing Strategy that will print that money you’ll need when you’re finally ready to invest in pushing your strategy further—not replacing it.

What’s coming up in Part 2:

I’m bracing myself for the need for a Part 3, but hopefully I can get it all in next week (or if you’re reading this way in the future, next article). I’m just eyeballing my Freeform outline board and thinking that might be something to consider…

You do have to be a Paid Subscriber, but hey.

Listen.

I’m stuffing that Section full of templates, spreadsheets, trackers, swipe files, everything. If I use it and it works, it’s going up in there. I kinda feel like $5/month for access to a nonstop flow of useful stuff—and also all my books, which are usually $5/book anywhere else—is a pretty sweet deal, yeah?

“The Broke Author’s Guide to Running the Business: Part 2” is going to go deeper into some hard truths and helpful tips/resources:

• What’s a Non-Negotiable Expense (go ahead and buy your torches and pitchforks; I know ya’ll are gonna have something to yell at me on this one but I’m still gonna say it)

• What’s Negotiable, But Worth Every Penny (aka Even If There’s No Way, I’ll Freakin’ FIND A Way Because They’re So Valuable)

• How You Can SAFELY Shave Costs (and not accidentally implode your authorship by knocking out a support beam that you thought was only decorative)

I hope this article helped shed some light on things you might have missed before—and if you have any questions or additional insights, I’d love to hear them in the comments!

Yes, I know.

I had to. I couldn’t resist.

It’s only the middle of June and in the span of maybe just two weeks, the book world has been rocked by:

• Allie Rose Co. attempting (and failing) to trademark the commonly used phrase, “Hot Girls Read”, after claiming that “no one to [her] knowledge was using it”

• Ivory Chapters LLC attempted to trademark the other commonly used phrase, “Blind Date With A Book”, but that was almost immediately challenged by the legal team of the American Booksellers Association and is pending review (last I checked a couple of days ago)

• Alexander Larman, an author of historical biographies and U.S. Books Editor for The Spectator, published a disparaging article against the Romantasy genre, “It’s time to turn the page on ‘romantasy’”, and filled his argument with…very, very inaccurate assumptions about the genre

While I was spinning Ye Olde Rolodex on subjects to write about, I realized there’s an overlapping topic woven throughout everything going on right now, and it’s this:

We need to talk about “ownership”

I woke up one morning with Journalist Nikki at the helm of my brain.

For some quick background context: I’ve been writing since I was 11 years old, and became the youngest journalist/editor on the high school newspaper at 14, which quickly turned into a periodic publishing feature in the city newspaper by 15. I underwent formal training for all of it, and even though fiction is my wheelhouse, sometimes the old itch to rush into a crowd of protesters or confront a rising politician with hard questions—notepad and pen in hand—resurfaces and I just…I gotta do it.

Which is why I chugged a mug of iced coffee, sat down at my laptop, and sent a list of questions to Allie Rose Co. to get some insights and clarification regarding the trademark issue. And then, after some further thinking (and massive support on Threads), emailed her attorney and the U.S. Trademark Office for general insights as to how it’s possible to claim ownership of a common phrase.

It’s not. I don’t need a response (and I didn’t get any, so there’s that…) to know that the answer to “how is this possible” is “it’s not”. A quick trip to the patent office’s informational website confirmed the public’s suspicions.

Something else surfaced during the research, however. Even though I quickly determined there wouldn’t be a forthcoming deep-dive exposé into the process behind the trademarking, my gut felt like something else was going on underneath the soil.

I posted a poll on Threads and continued talking to readers, authors, and small businesses in the book community to see what, out of all of it, really bothered people the absolute most.

The answer?

Ownership.

The fact that someone, anyone, claimed ownership over something that did not belong to them, was not created by them, and had only recently been discovered by them—and it was allowed because no one in a position of authority did any actual fact-checking.

I wanted to go on a rant about how this is ironic considering the same community loves to superimpose what’s allowed/not allowed by authors based on skin color, but that’s a whole other article for another time.

Although I am very irritated to have to mention that despite my adamant refusal to make anything a “race/ethnicity issue”, there’s no ignoring or denying a very clear pattern in the demographic of who keeps trying to claim ownership over public language. In fact, if I had the extra time, I could probably come up with a very interesting research paper on the almost predictable connection between social media influencer culture, trademark attorneys, and American-white women who adhere to a very specific “look” and “lifestyle ideal” that led to this whole mess.

(Before you leap to broad conclusions about trademark attorneys on social media, I am very happy to inform you that the vast majority of the search results produced BIPOC women who are sharing legal facts and insights!)

I also realized, as I typed that paragraph above, that this is exactly what got people so peeved about that Op-Ed article.

What is “up” with people claiming authority—which can be a type of ownership—over things that don’t actually belong to them?

The average romantasy novel revolves around the usual contrivances of every romance novel ever written, but with a fantastical spin. Virtuous maidens, heaving of bosom and pure of heart, fall in forbidden love with Heathcliffian figures, who are often minotaurs, vampires or werewolves. There are invariably goblins and dragons, who can also engage in sexual congress… (https://spectator.com/article/time-to-fall-out-of-love-with-romantasy)

I’m not saying anyone can “own” a genre.

What I am saying is that if someone—an expert, no less—is going to levy an opinion on a genre of literature outside their own scope of experience, they should be conducting considerable more research than this guy. If he’d written an article about something problematic in historical biographies, or opinion-focused journalism, or anything within what he’s expressed in his professional profile(s), I’d take that far more seriously and trust it because that’s his wheelhouse.

And heck, if he’d read a substantial amount of contemporary Romantasy novels before publishing that article—and still held the same opinion—I think a lot of us wouldn’t be as put off by his statements. Mainly because they’d be far more accurate to the actual genre content and not constantly compared to fantasy novels that are not, and never will be, categorized as Romantasy.

“Hold on, Nikki. Why did you say ‘contemporary’ Romantasy?”

Because that right there?

That’s the issue with the genre as a whole: it isn’t new.

It’s been around for…millennia, honestly.

For a bit of framework to this, I did a quick Google search (which seems to not be happening as much lately? Is it just me?) to grab a publishing industry agreed-upon definition of the actual term, “romantasy” and found this summary from Penguin House:

Romantasy is a fusion of romance and fantasy, where both elements are essential to the story. In these books, the worldbuilding and the relationship develop side by side, each shaping the other as the plot unfolds.

Rather than treating romance as a subplot, romantasy places it at the centre. The emotional stakes are just as important as the external conflict, whether that be a war between kingdoms, a magical threat or a struggle for power. (https://www.penguin.co.uk/discover/articles/romantasy-guide)

{Side Note: That’s actually a great page to bookmark for anyone who wants to learn more about the genre!}

So, to keep this article short enough to (hopefully) fit inside an email and at least keep your attention, here is a list of literary works that have been Romantasy since before Gutenberg invented the printing press:

• A Midsummer Night’s Dream

• Almost every Arthurian tale pre-dating Le Morte D’Arthur, which has been confirmed to be “fan fiction” of the original stories passed down from the 9th Century

• Greco-Roman myths such as Eros & Psyche (the predecessor to Beauty & the Beast)

And then there’s the classics that became popular with the printing press, primarily the stories gathered and compiled by the Brothers Grimm. I really want to slide Hans Christian Anderson into here, given the later adaptation of The Little Mermaid by Disney, but the original versions of his work are more accurately classified as Tragedy than Romantasy.

I know there’s going to be people dissenting this article with “well, actually…” and I’m gonna stop ya right there: I know that the term “romantasy” is a new word to enter the lexicon of the English language and publishing world. The establishment of the word’s definition is new. The category in bookstores both online and brick-and-mortar is new, the marketing push is new, et cetera.

But what it is? The actual existence of the material?

It’s been around since long before any of us were born, and it’s going to continue to be around long after. There’s no “turning the page” on something that has been woven into the tapestries of cultures around the world in both oral tradition and printed editions, and it’s awfully presumptuous to declare a need to end it.

Because…why?

A woman-owned bookstore was painted pink?

Words are easy to craft, easy to utilize, and easy to immortalize. With the right strategy, they’re also fairly easy to monetize.

So it wasn’t as surprising to read a “lawyerfluencer” (I made that up; I might trademark it) explain in a post that owning the phrase, name, etc. that your brand uses all the time is “the best way to secure your brand”. Monetize those words, Boss Babe! “Scale your business” and make people pay for the privilege to utter your catch phrase/name/logo!

When I read Larman’s bio, it took only one paragraph to see the concern tilling the soil of that whole viewpoint: he writes in a genre readers don’t exactly camp outside bookstores to acquire. Money isn’t being thrown at Historical Biographies the way it’s practically raining down upon Romantasy novels.

It’s easy enough to successfully pitch a manuscript of that caliber to a publisher (from what I’ve been told), but try getting the general public excited about Lord Byron’s abusive philandering in the same way that makes them stampede brick-and-mortar bookstores for the newest installment of The Empyrian series. It makes sense that a subconscious fear of being irrelevant—and potentially dropped by the publisher if sales don’t remain consistent—could lead to a rather uninformed, heavily biased opinion against the attention-stealing genre.

The lesson to learn through all this “bookish drama”: you own your words, and no one else can tell you to stop using them.

I write Romantasy because I’ve experienced things in my life that no one believed ever happened. My voice was silenced. My abuse was minimized. My trauma was scoffed at and even questioned as “just a nightmare” as if the scars inside my body came from some Dream Sequence like Dorothy at the end of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.

But I refused to let it all fester in the pit people tried to bury it in. I figured, since it’s so unbelievable…why not write it all out as fantasy fiction?

The romance comes into play as a simultaneous proclamation to someone I really, really hope has been reading and following along—and as a message to an alarmingly large amount of people who think having a Villain Origin Story gives someone the right to be a villain.

At the end of it all, is personal vindication and self-imposed vigilante justice worth losing the one(s) you love?

Or can you love someone so much, it overrides every ounce of pain and suffering, makes you turn away from vengeance, and actually ripples a series of changes throughout the world…even if there’s a chance you’ll ever see them again?

These are the questions I personally think no other genre fully explores as deeply as Romantasy.

And whether you’re “hot” or not, it’s definitely worth the read.

While doomscrolling on Threads for some author/bookish hot topics, I came across a great question asked by someone in the market for a new laptop:

“Is productivity better from paying $2000 for a Mac instead of a $500 PC?”

(Or something super close to that; I’m paraphrasing.)

In the comments of that thread popped up another brilliant question that had me writing 5-6 back-to-back responses excitedly explaining my answer to it: “How are MacBooks beneficial for author productivity?”

I promised that commenter, after realizing just how much info I was trying to cram into Threads’ tight word count, that I would write an article on Substack to explain my newly developed setup so anyone with a Mac/MacBook—and anyone currently shopping options and debating between Apple tech and the PC route—can get a deep-dive look into how and why I’ve turned away from external add-ons and made my MacBook Air a “publishing powerhouse”.

Affiliate Notice

Some of the software programs I recommend below include affiliate links that will monetarily support me—a fellow indie author—should you decide to go ahead and give them a try.

I do want to make it super clear, here: I NEVER recommend something I haven’t already tried myself and fallen in love with!

Yes, over time I might change my mind (more on that later, promise) but I’m a stickler for transparency when it comes to product and service recommendations. If I feel iffy about it, I won’t mention it until it stops being “iffy” and is either fully loved or hated.

(Also: links to book promos—like freebies and sales—are at the very bottom, so make sure to check those out!)

A Note For PC Users—And Why I Switched To Apple

I will mention anywhere a tool can be used on PC computers.

But if it’s something exclusive to Apple, I will try to make recommendations for popular PC options so you can check them out. I haven’t tried some of those, so proceed with caution (i.e. Atticus if you can’t use Vellum).

Many years ago, pretty much from my sophomore year in college (2008) all the way up to 2019-ish, I was an avid PC user. HP and Toshiba were my two favorite laptop developers, and I do see the value in being able to fully customize the hardware if you’re into that!

For me, though, I needed a type of streamlined function and visual aesthetic, or “sensory smoothness” as I like to call it, which Apple seemed to give that I wasn’t finding in the PC world.

Then there was the price tag reality, which I think everyone needs to pay attention to a lot closer than we usually do: most PC laptops are designed to need replacement roughly every 2-4 years (during “my time”, the average lifespan of a Toshiba was 2 years, but I hear there’s been improvements). Meanwhile, a $2000 MacBook is designed to last a minimum of 10 years and can push up to 20 with regular software updates and basic care. So even though the sticker price seems dramatically different up front, I’d still be spending the same amount of money and going through laptops—and creating waste—one after the other by sticking to a PC.

At the time of writing this, my cybersecurity expert stepfather is still using his MacBook Pro from back when they first came out. He’s found no need to replace it.

My first immediate discovery when I powered up my refurbished MacBook (bought on Amazon) after years of PC life was how much more most of the software I’d been using suddenly featured—from clearer visuals to smoother interface, to editing functionality that wasn’t in a lot of the “for PC” downloads.

When I was finally able to afford an official upgrade into a new, fresh-off-the-Apple-store-on-Michigan-Avenue MacBook (a dream fulfilled!), my user experience only got better and better. I was able to set up my iPhone, new iPad, and Apple Watch to integrate everything I needed with each other and it didn’t require additional downloads to make them sync.

Did that stop me from constantly searching for new software to download?

Unfortunately, no.

I grew so accustomed to needing everything from external sources that I never thought to actually look at what my MacBook already possessed. I did see the icons for apps that meant nothing to me, and I figured they were probably just some cheap offshoot of the “real goods”.

Nikki, you fool.

You silly, silly fool.

Here’s what I was using as my “author tech stack” from 2020 to roughly 3 months ago:

Hive (Project Management)

After diving into freelance work during 2020, I quickly saw the immense value in utilizing some form of project management software in order to get things done. It’s also something I don’t see too many authors doing, or at least if they are, no one is talking about it. Which surprises me, given just how much dang work we have to do in order to write, publish, and market our work!

Hive is something I fell in love with for its clean interface and ability to transform DMs and emails into projects and tasks. It also had (emphasis on past tense) a robust free plan, only charging should you need to go from an individual use to team use. After trying out several other PMS platforms like Asana, Monday.com, ClickUp, and a few others I’m sure I’m forgetting, I found my heart constantly pulling toward Hive.

And I should note here: I’m “neurospicy”. My productivity, concentration, and overall adherence to a system is GREATLY impacted by color schemes! So while wonderful in function, Asana and Monday.com both made my brain cringe and not want to use. Hive, however, isn’t as reliant on bright colors all over the place—there’s a much broader use of white space and it made the deeper, richer tones feel more like interesting accents than stimulation.

Microsoft Office Suite

Full transparency: I’ve never liked Microsoft Office. Not only has it always required immense monetary sacrifice to use (any ancient ones like me remember the $600 price tag on those CD boxes at Walmart?), there’s always new features and plug-ins added long before I got the original settings figured out.

Plus, I hate the color scheme. I know, it sounds silly, but it just…it’s a turnoff for me. I can’t explain it. Just roll with it for my sake.

But I downloaded it because it’s the software suite book editors swear by, and I was (for many years) editing books, articles, research papers, and other publications that the writers were used to creating on Word. It made sense to, in my own mind, “play along”.

Honestly? I barely ever touched it.

Google Office Suite

This is still my top recommendation for anyone who wants and needs a FREE office suite for writing, charting, and storing across multiple devices. In fact, as an editor I preferred using this so authors could see in real-time where I was, we could converse about notes right there in the margins, and eventually Google introduced a chat feature that made it even easier to communicate within projects.

Adobe Creative Cloud

When I owned and operated an editorial company, I truly wanted to do things right. Getting Adobe’s Creative Cloud made sense for formatting, cover design, and all the things professionally curated in a traditional publishing house. For me, it was a no-brainer.

That price tag, though? Yeesh.

Notion

This is something that was introduced to me by my business mentor back when I left trad work and went into freelance life—and it’s taken me a while to finally figure out most of the features which make it so unique from other platforms.

But it’s insanely useful, and it’s available on browser as well as a direct download to all laptops (as far as I’m aware), so it’s one of those things that made sense to utilize. Plus, it’s got a free tier that gives me everything I’d need it for—and its generative AI option that’s part of the Paid Plan Promos honestly isn’t as great as it wants you to think.

Yes, I tried it. I’m a curious person. And I used to be terrible at building my own spreadsheets, so I figured if I told it what I wanted set up, I’d literally get one “done for me”.

I was not impressed.

Zoom

I had a podcast channel for a short while, and I have plans to make a new one inside my Substack website (eventually). For the longest time, I was using Zoom to record my episodes which I’d then edit with Audacity.

I don’t have much to say regarding either, other than Zoom’s limitations kept getting worse and worse. Methinks someone thought to capitalize on the widespread need for that kind of software, and I went from using it religiously to barely touching it unless someone else invites me into a meeting.

Here’s what I discovered I already had THIS WHOLE TIME—built in, for free, on my MacBook Air:

Notes

I’ve been using Notes since 2019 as a way to jot down quick reminders and sync up with coworkers for shopping lists, promo ideas, etc. I even let my nieces and nephews doodle on my phone and saved each image in a special folder so I’d never lose their artwork.

But not until super recently, and I mean only a few months ago, did I ever actually sit down and really look at what Notes can do.

It’s…essentially Notion.

Now before you go running with that observation, let me clarify: Notion does a lot of things in the platform that Notes does not (my mind is blanking, but I’ve definitely tested a few functions that didn’t work out like I’d expected).

However, if you have a Mac/MacBook and you’ve been using Notion to write down ideas, lists, make basic charts (not spreadsheets; that’s different), and otherwise organize your operations into a sidebar menu version of a 3-ring binder?

This is what Notes can do for you. Natively, for free, and synced across all your devices if you use (or are planning to use) the Apple suite of hardware products. I’m getting into the habit of making pages in Notes for everything I’m usually asked to grab for various platforms and opportunities, like social media URLs and different versions of my Author Bio. The more folders I make for different topics/needs, the more I stack them inside each other for cleaner searching on the sidebar.

And let me tell you: being able to “pin” the most important Notes to the top of the app is such a lifesaver for those times when my brain goes into Panic Mode and cannot be bothered skimming through dozens of folders and files!

Reminders

This is such a blessed, blessed app inside the Apple software suite.

I use it for everything. Publishing deadlines, Substack scheduling (I need to start working on Substack Notes scheduling; more on that in a different article, probably), and even gardening! In one day I’ll get a ping on my laptop/tablet/phone reminding me to draft and schedule an article, send out an ARC newsletter, work on a chapter draft, and check the cucumbers for sprouting.

You can get super thorough on the details, too: much like official project management software such as Asana and Hive, Reminders lets you determine the priority, urgency, and even task dependencies so you can take control of your To Do list without missing a beat.

(As I’m writing this, I just checked my phone and there’s a Reminder pinging for me to write this article and get it posted! Love that!)

One super valuable thing to note: Reminders works both ways in terms of calendar functionality and notation. When you create a Reminder in the app itself with a set date, it automatically adds to iCalendar so you’ll see it there when you open up that application. If you are inside iCalendar, you can click on a date and choose to make the notation a Reminder, which will then automatically add the log to that application.

iCalendar

I’ve already started touching on this a bit, but I’ll go deeper here: this is a fantastic “replacement” for Google Calendar if you’re needing to keep things separate between career functions (i.e. I have my bookstore calendar on Google Calendar; everything author-focused is on iCalendar so my brain doesn’t get the two confused).

You can set Reminders, schedules, block appointment times, color code everything to its category (such as Publishing Deadlines, social media posts, group promos, etc.), and even share certain calendars with your PA/VA for better coordination.

I’m also able to sync it directly to Google Calendar, which is useful for the rare occasion when an external program or cohort only offers certain scheduling functionality with Google but not iCal (it can happen). And when I do need bookstore-related reminders woven into my author records (such as local festivals), I can toggle that integration on or off.

Freeform

Listen.

Listen.

I had no idea what this new app was, and no one told me. Not at the Apple Store, not in any advertisements in my feeds, nowhere and nothing. I just saw a squiggle on some shapes and the name kept making me think of that not-cable-channel on the Roku menu.

Let me tell you.

This app is amazing.

You know how there are so many different ways to map out plot points and project snapshots and almost just as many software programs pitching those exact features as a way to jot down and organize your thoughts like sticky notes you can then click and drag anywhere you want?

That’s this. Right here. For FREE.

I outlined the article you are currently reading in Freeform. In fact, I’ve made a duplicate “template” so future articles can embody the same structure (intro, disclaimers, main points, wrap-up, conclusion, etc.) while giving me the creative freedom to quickly rearrange and color-code ideas as they come up.

I use this in a second window next to Scrivener so every time I think of a new name for a Great House/Minor House in Song of the Sidhe (there’s 300; it’s a lot), I can slap that sticky note on the chart for later. And then later comes, I color-code and click-drag the House Whatever to the right category, add the symbols that notate if we’re meant to hate them or mourn them or cheer them on, and set then it aside.

Made a mistake? Rearrange the sticky notes. Shift the colors. Add more symbols (I call them “stickers” in my head).

This also works great for timelines, if you’re someone like me who is a bit loosey-goosey when it comes to chronological details. I’d be the worst History of the Otherworld professor because honestly, most of it is “roughly around the same time that one guy went nuts and declared war on the squirrels” instead of “Year 1000 BCE” or whatever.

Pages

Think “Microsoft Word”, but prettier. Less complicated. Less clunky.

That’s it. That’s Pages.

A lot of people (myself included) automatically assumed it was only meant to design small business flyers, self-published books, and maybe the odd magazine. While yes, it can definitely do that, I was surprised to discover it’s actually a robust word processor just like Microsoft Word and Google Docs.

I’m drafting this exact article on Pages as I type. I actually draft most of my Substack articles on Pages, as it doesn’t rely on internet connectivity and I live in an area where a simple thunderstorm can wreck havoc on the WiFi. I’ve created a book review templates to use whenever I’m ready to post about what I just finished, and I’m in love with how stinkin’ easy it is to format the header/footer, page numbers, and use both to add copyright marks for anything I need to distribute via PDF, like sample chapters to my ARC team!

Something to note: I’ve had quite a few people claim they also use Pages to create and design social media posts, much like how you would use Canva. I don’t doubt this is possible! I’m just personally a Canva addict and after nearly a decade of using it and storing all my design assets on it, I find it difficult to entertain an alternative.

If you’re just starting out on your new Mac/MacBook and can’t afford/don’t want to use external programs like Scrivener or Word, Pages is your hero.

You can absolutely draft your entire manuscript on this app just like you would anywhere else, then export it or even use the built-in formatting tools to get it ready for publishing.

Numbers

I laugh so I don’t cry about how my spreadsheet-hating self is now entirely dependent upon—and addicted to—spreadsheets.

Personally, I hate Excel. I think it has more to do with hating “computer class” in the late 1990s-early 2000s when moving the mouse wrong could mess up the whole project and don’t get me started on calculating the formulas.

I finally, as a grown adult who learned how to “deal with it”, learned the ins and outs of Google Sheets. I definitely think there’s something to the actual design of the software that eases my brain versus anything/everything Microsoft puts out there—which could be a whole other article about neurodivergent sensory needs in a screen-filled world—because I didn’t find the learning curve nearly as stressful. I caught on pretty quick, actually!

Numbers is the next level down from Sheets. I’m going to be honest there. Once you master Sheets, it makes Numbers feel awfully rudimentary at the onset.

However…

Now that I’ve spent more time in Numbers, I’ve discovered that the “hiccup” has less to do with function/features and more to do with learning where everything is located. I’ve noticed that, across all the Apple software suite programs, functions are listed more to the side than across the top (like GSuite and Microsoft Office). Things I thought Numbers couldn’t do are actually there, just tucked away on the righthand side under buttons that keep the toolkit out of the way until you summon it.

I like that. A lot. Minimal screen clutter makes my neurospicy brain so, so happy.

Books

“But I already have Kindle. I’m good.”

Hold your roll, there.

Here’s the #1 thing Books does that Kindle does not: it lets you highlight LARGE chunks of text out of your ebooks to copy/paste into your spreadsheet for your social media marketing needs.

I don’t recommend this for other people’s books unless you’re helping promote a novel and the quote is maybe one sentence. Copyright respect is important.

But for your own books? This app lets you go off in the ways that Kindle might yell at you for even though you’re the author. I love it: I have my highlighter colors assigned to subject (i.e. “spicy”, “worldbuild”, “character bio”, etc.) and a spreadsheet where I drop those quotes for when I’m ready to start designing posts in Canva and need to pull something quick.

Books uses EPUB files, which is also a nice benefit if you do your own formatting. Vellum gives us basic preview for all the eReader devices like Kindle, Nook, and Kobo, but a quick download of the generic EPUB file can be proofed in the Books app on any of your Apple devices.

Stickies

This is a quickie but a goodie: unlike Freeform’s “sticky notes” that have to stay inside that app and on those specific “drawing boards” you create per project, Stickies are free-floating “sticky notes” you can slap up all over your desktop.

I use mine to keep track of special keystrokes I need to remember, such as:

You can choose your fave color(s), choose a fave font, and keep things cute by arranging them around the desktop in patterns or, like I did, to fit among custom desktop illustrations!

GarageBand

Podcasters, I’m looking at you!

I’ll confess to still being more proficient at using Audacity for audio editing, but I’ve been informed that GarageBand can do all that as much as it’s good for recording the original tracks.

I definitely noticed a significant increase in sound quality back when I was running a small podcast and tested Zoom’s recordings versus GarageBand, making this app my go-to for that function. I wish I had more to share on this, but podcast recording, editing, and producing is time consuming when I’m also writing whole novel series, managing social media and marketing, and running this Substack!

I almost forgot: Font Book

The unsung hero.

The quiet kid in the class who never says a word and yet saves your group project without you even asking.

I can’t believe I almost forgot to mention Font Book—and yet I can totally believe it, because this powerful little thing never “pops up” on the screen like the other apps. In fact, I think I should probably add it to my Dock (another awesome Apple feature for those of us who tend to leave everything open and need better organization).

What does it do? It stores all your fonts, including (and most importantly) the custom fonts you purchase and download online so you can add them to your other software and designs.

What does it also do?

Well, I’m only going to put my own experience here: it helps me remember how to spell That One Font That Was Super Cool And I Bought It Three Years Ago OMG What Was It Called…

Font Book lets your search your entire computer database for every font you’ve ever downloaded (and opened; you do need to open/add the OTF file to the Font Book once you have it) AND it previews how each iteration looks on screen. Bold, italics, standard, semi-bold, all of it.

It also adds these fonts to Word and Pages, with it being sometimes-automatic for Word but predictably needs some assistance for Pages (CLICK HERE for the instructions).

The two features that bring this whole suite together: Hyperlinks & Tags

Apple’s operating system as a whole offers a rather underused system of organization for ALL of your documents, downloads, and files: tags.

You can create tags, name them whatever you want (i.e. a book title), then add that same color-coded tag to everything that has to do with that subject. So now instead of scrolling through 1,675 downloads to find one screenshot of Ithandryll I took 2 years ago, I can go into the Finder’s sidebar menu, select “Ithandryll” under Tags, and as long as I took the 0.5 seconds to tag that screenshot when I downloaded it, I’ll find it under that search easy peasy.

This becomes super useful inside the suite—which hopefully you can now call your “Publishing Office”—because as new things and new projects are generated, you can keep using those tags to quickly find what you need as time marches forward.

Hyperlinks take the majority of these Apple programs and make them quickly accessible inside wherever you want to make your Master Dashboard, whether it’s Notes or Numbers, and also inside your iCalendar.

For example: say you copy/pasted a list of questions from an email about an upcoming podcast interview into Pages so you could write out your answers ahead of time. Once you save that document, you can copy/paste the link and put it inside your Notes where you have other information and files specific to this podcast, interviewer, your book, etc.

For Notion users wanting to shift to the Apple suite, hyperlinks help make your spreadsheets and charts operate in a very similar manner without the endless “nesting doll” effect that used to make me actually lose important information.

What’s worth the download?

Here is my list of software programs I truly believe are worth every penny and do actually integrate beautifully on a Mac/MacBook:

• Scrivener

• Vellum

• ProWritingAid (there is a free version!)

• Adobe Reader

• Audacity*

I write romantasy, urban romantasy, and basically am a fantasy author at my deepest core—which means world-building and character development operates on a level too deep and too intricate to cleanly draft manuscripts on Pages or other word processors. I mention this because I know there are a lot of brilliant authors who write contemporary romance, literary fiction, etc. and have no problems with single-document structures or forging soft-file organization systems inside folders, but the chats I’ve had with several indicated it’s feasible because the storytelling tends to be more direct and “what you see is what you get”.

Scrivener is to writing fantasy what Freeform is to plotting/mapping it all out: I can make notes, change my mind on chapter orders, forget and then remember character and location names, and ultimately let my chaotic mind run wild while still keeping everything inside a container. I can shake it up and rearrange and label and relabel…but never lose track of where I am. If you haven’t tried this software out yet, they offer a FULL 30-day Free Trial that counts actual usage days, not “oh it’s been a month but you only used it that one time, haha sucks to be you”.

Vellum takes what I did in Scrivener and makes it pretty. It can also, after some configuration, automate a lot of the formatting directly from Scrivener into ebook files ready for Kindle, Kobo, Nook, direct downloads, library servers, international servers, and print editions. One click, and my book is ready to fly into readers’ hands. It can be a bit pricey, but if you ride the wait to the Black Friday sale, you can save quite a bit off the top. They also let you download and use every single feature for free; you don’t pay until you need to generate those files. (Atticus does not offer any free trial at all, which turned me off—and I hear nothing but nightmare stories about the constant glitches in that cloud server!)

ProWritingAid has a completely free option to start off with and does not shove AI down your throat when you use it. Sure, there’s constant recommendations to use their (new) AI “assistant” to analyze your work and provide “digital beta reader feedback”, but to fully take that risk advantage, you do have to purposefully select those options. The Everywhere plugin works on every single application where you have the ability to type, and it can be toggled on or off based on your writing flow needs (I tend to turn it off during First Draft so it stops yelling at me).

Adobe Reader is a must to be able to open PDFs easily. That’s basically it. Don’t let them try to rope you into any subscriptions because this is a free, no-strings-attached program independent from the Adobe Creative Cloud.

Audacity gets the asterisk because I’m still learning GarageBand’s full editing capabilities and currently don’t have the time to record anything at all, so… Until that day comes, Audacity remains on my “worth having” because it’s free and the tutorials on YouTube were pretty straightforward. It’s also nice to have in the back pocket in case GarageBand doesn’t do something you need; there’s always a solid chance Audacity will get the job done.

What I’m still exploring

I don’t have much to say about these, other than they do seem worth the time to explore and learn so I can determine if I’m keeping them, buying the license(s), and/or utilizing them as part of my Publishing Office:

• Scapple—this connects directly to Scrivener; otherwise, Freeform works better for me

• iAnnotate—this may become irrelevant if the anticipated update to Scrivener for iPad delivers the features we’re all begging the developers to add

• Journal—I usually prefer to privately journal by hand, but my writing hand was injured and it hurts to write now

• Keynote—not sure what I’d use this for? Maybe a pitch deck for subrights literary agents?

• Publisher Rocket—bought this back when I had that kind of money; struggling to grasp the best usage but that’s on me

What I’ve let go

I really, truly gave these a very long time to see if I’d actually end up using them, especially since I have a bad habit of “not using” simply because I didn’t know how to.

This list comes after finding out I genuinely stopped using them altogether—and the last two I actually moved the sticky notes in my Freeform board from “Still Exploring” to “Let Go” while in the middle of drafting this exact article:

• Microsoft Office

• Creative Cloud

• Kindle (as an annotation/pull quote resource)

• Hive Project Management

• GSuite (as an author; I use this for the bookstore)

• Notion

• GoodNotes

A quick note on those last two:

I genuinely thought I’d still be using Notion because it does do a few things Notes doesn’t…but I haven’t opened that application since switching off into Apple’s suite. That surprised me. I’m still keeping it in the system because at some point, I’ll be creating templates to share with Notion users, but those will still originate and be fine-tuned in my Notes/Numbers/etc.

GoodNotes was my go-to iPad application for everything editorial: handwritten notes, edits, annotations, highlighting PDFs…and then they didn’t just add AI, they shoved it into every corner of the program while ending their “one and done” purchase option. I was devastated. Per their very transparent policy, they do not feed any uploaded documents into their AI, so I did give it a good shot to see if I could just skirt around the new junk. I couldn’t. It felt gross. I still have it on my iPad but only because I’m now a “legacy user” and there are too many archived documents I might need later on to risk losing in the Trash.

What I’ve learned about Budget vs. Function

Just because it looks like you need it, doesn’t mean you do.

I’m talking about all those ads promising fancy features and “your career is suffering without this” warnings for software programs that—let’s be honest—tend to recycle the same thing you probably already have installed in your computer.

For free.

I’m also writing this as someone so deeply broke (I currently possess just enough money to buy exactly one coffee), I get irritated when another author whines to me that their “budget doesn’t allow for such luxury” that’s actually something vital and necessary, like a business domain so their email doesn’t look like it came from a scammer…

Meanwhile, they’re paying for things they honestly may not need, like Microsoft 365.

I’m not saying this to be judge-y (although recent interactions on Threads got me a little salty, I’ll own that), but rather to point out that when the wallet laughs in your face, it’s worth taking a look at what you do already have before grieving the inability to get what you think you need.

And when the opportunity to upgrade knocks on your door, I daresay it’s better to invest in something that gives you everything right away rather than something you have to keep spending money to build.

But that’s just me.

“Where the heck have you been?!”

I knew I was being quiet online—it’s been practically a whole month since my last official post/article/newsletter thin…

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Confession time: I used to hate the concept of Kickstarter.

It boiled down to the fact that unless the goal is completely funded, you get nothing. How unfair is it to be so close, to be maybe $20 away from a career-changing sum, only for all of it to vanish because the timer ran ou…

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If you’ve been wondering, “Where did BumbleBooks go?” The answer is both harrowing and hopeful:

I—as in, my bookstore which I currently operate on my own—didn’t actually go anywhere.

I was forced to relocate, and in more ways than one.

When I started this business, it was with the passion of an indie author who saw (and still sees) the huge gaps where brid…

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I keep saying that bit in front of “author” not to brag, but to encourage as well as remind people that one does not have to belong to a Big 5 Publisher or even do a print run with a smaller house in order for the books to be successful.

Now, am I making a full-time income off my books? Not yet. Still plodding …

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After I figured out she meant in the books, not my village (we have a few here in Amana 😅), I almost instantly knew which spot she was asking about. First book, second chapter, the same scene everyone else seems to have forgotten by the time they get to the second book, Heir of Oberon, in a phenomenon I’ve darn near compared to the Mandela Effect.

Because listen—I’m meticulous when it comes to my writing.

And I’ve not only published a few books, but Ithandryll in particular won both accolades and awards with its debut.

So it’s been puzzling to me how suddenly I’ve been seeing reviews on Goodreads and a couple of other places—as well as it being mentioned in my private Discord server for ARC Readers/Street Team mega-fans—that no one seemed to remember how or when we met Krav.

“It’s at the very beginning of the first book,” I typed back, “where Roxi meets Krav.”

“I looked!”

Hm. Okay… “Remember the creepy brownie fae? The double chocolate chip muffins? Their discussion about Dracula?”

I swear I could see her peering through the screen at me like that one meme of the guy staring hard at the parchment in his hand, even though I was simply watching the three little dots bounce for a moment.

After a little more back-and-forth trying to establish the spot in Ithandryll where I know for sure Roxi goes to a coffee shop in downtown Chicago that’s run by brownie fae, and a hilarious-but-real screenshot from another reader on this Where The F*** Is Krav syndrome (pictured above), I opened up my Kindle app on my phone so I could pinpoint the exact location of the scene/chapter by cross-referencing events around it.

That’s when my stomach dropped.

And also simultaneously threatened to empty itself of church-brewed coffee and the best blueberry cruller I’ve had in ages all over the back of the car.

It’s not there.

I mean it.

The scene—the whole dang scene, practically a chapter unto itself (for a moment I thought it was)—is literally missing from the book.

Every. Version.

Including the stack of paperbacks I’d just sent to a new-to-me bookstore who already exhibited glorious patience when my gold-foiled editions didn’t work out and I had to pull them from my website until I get a better printing option.

It’s been two days since the discovery, and I still feel nauseous writing this out. But I’m doing so, Dear Reader, in the hopes that you can/will learn alongside me one very important life & career lesson:

Everything—even our worst nightmare—can become opportunity.

Done-For-You “Reader Magnets” are easier than we tend to think

If you’re wondering, does this mean Nikki’s going to use this “Deleted Scene” as a way to entice new readers to her books? You’re right on track.

I’m going to do exactly that.

What’s actually going to happen (probably, hopefully) is that in my organic and honest attempt to provide the missing intro for who is Definitely Important In the Series, in a way that will (potentially, hopefully) reach all…eheh, 1000+ people…who have a copy, it will grab the attention of new readers who are ready to fall in love with the Otherworld.

Of course, I am still going to add the scene back into the ebooks on all 25+ platforms and work on making the adjustment in the paperback edition.

I’m not exactly looking forward to that part, though. When it comes to formatting for print, the slightest adjustment can change the page count, cover spine size, the cover design itself, and not to mention the fees involved on Some Platforms (side-eyes IngramSpark) that charge for alterations after an allotted period.

And since none of us discovered this embarrassing gap of story for roughly 10 months, it’s safe to say I’m well beyond that deadline.

So when it comes to marketing your own book, there’s nothing wrong with plucking a random scene from the middle (or the middle of the beginning) and sharing it openly on your platforms: Substack, Instagram, your website, etc.

Think of it this way: whenever you go to a streaming app and let the screen rest on a movie or show while you read the blurb or use the bathroom, it usually starts playing a part of the content, right? You just never see them start at the beginning title/credits/intro narration. It’s always a middle-ish scene that starts somewhere intriguing and oftentimes fades away mid-sentence.

I mean, I know Amazon has that “Look Inside” option, and that’s great.

Here’s a chance for you to create your own version, though—while reaching new readers who don’t use Amazon/Kindle and have been looking for books exactly like yours.

The most important thing of all is to remember the exact phrase one of my amazing readers said to me: “You are literally a single human being.”

Even if you’re not an author/writer, there’s still something to be said about allowing a moment of panic when mistakes happen—but ONLY a moment. A very, very brief moment that must pass so you can get back up and keep going.

Mistakes happen.

Glitches happen.

In a way, complete perfection is almost weird and uncomfortable.

You have to give yourself some forgiveness and grace. Your readers will, your people will, and anyone who doesn’t…isn’t one of them.

Amiright? 😏

News & Updates

• Clearly, there will be a publication of what I’m officially calling “The Deleted Scene”—in the ebooks, paperbacks, and right here in Substack! I’m planning on having the digital side updated/posted by the end of this week. I’m praying that I’ll have paperbacks updated by the end of this month 😅

• I’m slowly but steadily reopening my calendar for editing clients! It’s been working well so far with the handful of recent projects, so I’m confident in moving forward with this announcement:

  • COPY EDITING @ $0.03/word

  • PROOFREADING @ $0.02/word

  • FORMATTING will require a consultation to determine price (don’t laugh—it’s only my own book I skip scenes on 🤣)

  • I also have a deal to help with the cost of Proofreading that will also help you get your book(s) placement in a bookstore (mine), which is honestly a great boost both for your “street cred” and visibility—especially right now with the Autumn and Winter Festival seasons kicking off! Oktoberfest alone brings an average of 40k visitors to the village per year!

  • How to Book (ha, punny!) your service with me: DM me on Instagram or email me at nikki@nikkiauberkett.com

• Are you in the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City/Coralville area? Stop by BumbleBooks/Serenity Sage Herbs & Tea this Saturday, September 13th, for ApfelFest (aka “Apple Day”)! I’ve been brewing heirloom cider from apples grown and picked right here in The Amana Colonies—more specifically, from a tree planted here in 1855 after making the journey from Germany along with the Inspirationists who founded the community. We’ll be part of the “Cider Crawl” here in Main Amana, along with other businesses giving out FREE cups of unique apple ciders! (I’ll even share my recipe…) Also there’s this AMAZING cider donut you must try and those vanish pretty quickly 👀

  

• The 60th Annual Oktoberfest is October 2nd-6th 🥨 The Amana Colonies hosts the world’s third-largest Oktoberfest every year and this one is going to be a blast! I’ll be outside giving away FREE cups of ButterBeer soda from Amana’s very own microbrewery—and selling books, pumpkins, and more in “Cinderella’s Car Lot” 🎃 (it’s my pumpkin patch and of course I made it book-themed)!

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Last week, I was dying in the heatwave that made it impossible to sleep, to work, to spend time in the garden… I swear, I “donated” more blood to the local mosquito population than the Red Cross.

As of yesterday, my feet are cold and I switched the button on the coffeemaker from “cold bre…

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