KL Adams | Updates

Chapter One is live. 🖤

KL Adams — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Unholy Obsession is now on Wattpad.

Jade Bellerose helps women disappear.

Then one of the women she failed comes back to haunt her.

And Oscar enters the picture.

Controlled. Deliberate. Dangerous.

Read Chapter One now:

https://www.wattpad.com/1660769873-unholy-obsession-chapter-1-jade/page/7

#DarkRomance #Wattpad #UnholyObsession #KLAdams #MorallyGray

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Indie Author News: Why More Authors Are Selling Direct

KL Adams — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For most of the last decade, "self-published" has meant "sold through Amazon." That's shifting. A growing number of indie authors are building a second, parallel sales channel: their own storefront, selling directly to readers without a retailer in between. Here's what that actually looks like: the numbers behind the trend, and why it's working for the authors it's working for.

What "Direct Sales" Actually Means

Direct-to-consumer, or direct-to-reader, selling means an author sells books directly from their own website or a dedicated storefront, rather than only through Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or other retailers. Tools like Shopify, WooCommerce, Payhip, Gumroad, and BookBaby's Bookshop platform have made this technically achievable, with no need for an ecommerce background. According to ScribeCount's guide to the space, authors handle their own order fulfillment either by shipping print copies themselves or outsourcing to a service like ShipBob or Printify, while digital delivery tools like BookFunnel handle the ebook side, including reader-facing tech support.

How Many Authors Are Actually Doing This

The numbers, drawn from separate 2025 and 2026 surveys, put actual weight behind the trend rather than leaving it as anecdote. Roughly 30% of indie authors report currently selling direct, with another 30% saying they plan to start within the next year, according to data cited by both MIBLART and ManuscriptReport. Adoption isn't even across income levels, though. Lower-earning authors, those making under $250 a year from writing, rarely sell direct, sticking with third-party platforms for their simplicity and built-in traffic. Mid-income authors, in the $251 to $2,500 range, are the ones actively experimenting with tools like Shopify or BookFunnel. Higher-earning authors, those making $10,000 or more, use a blended strategy, leveraging both direct sales and retailers simultaneously rather than choosing one only.

Why It's Working: The Core Economic Argument

The most consistently cited reason authors move toward direct sales is what retailers don't give back: reader data. A 1106 Design piece on the trend put it plainly: retailers offer reach, but they keep your most valuable asset, customer data, for themselves. Selling direct means capturing readers' email addresses, which authors can then use to build ongoing relationships rather than one-time transactions.

The royalty math backs this up, too. BookBaby offers royalties of up to 50% through its direct storefront, compared to the considerably smaller cut most retail platforms pay per sale. ScribeCount's analysis found that authors report direct sales now account for anywhere from 30% to 70% of total income, a range that's reportedly been climbing.

What Authors Are Actually Selling That Readers Can't Get Elsewhere

A recurring theme across multiple sources is that a direct storefront works best when it offers something genuinely unavailable through retail. The Books Central's trends roundup lists what that tends to look like in practice: signed bookplates, special editions with alternate covers, early access for loyal readers, bundle deals priced better than buying titles individually, and occasionally merchandise built around a book's world, tote bags, candles, that sort of thing. The underlying logic, per that piece, is that readers who love a book want to live in it a little longer, and a direct store is where an author can actually offer that.

Real Examples of the Model Working

BookBaby's own case studies offer concrete numbers. One indie romance author launched her debut novel only through BookBaby Bookshop, ran a two-week coupon promotion to her email list alongside a small, locally targeted Facebook ad campaign, and generated over 200 sales in the first week, all of which were trackable through the platform's built-in analytics. That online buzz was enough for a local bookstore owner to take notice, order wholesale copies, and host a sold-out in-person signing, with direct sales driving traditional retail interest, rather than the reverse. A separate case involved a self-published business author who built a targeted promotion around his industry's annual conference, resulting in sales tracked across more than 20 states and a meaningful increase in email subscribers.

It's Rarely All-or-Nothing

Almost none of the sourcing on this trend frames direct sales as a replacement for Amazon or other retailers. The Books Central's roundup describes the typical setup among authors doing well as a combination: Amazon KDP for ebooks and paperbacks because of its sheer traffic, wide distributors like Draft2Digital or Smashwords to reach other retailers, and a direct storefront through Payhip or Shopify layered on top specifically for the higher margins and reader relationships it enables. BookBaby's own framing echoes this, describing 2026's strongest strategies as ones that combine Amazon's marketplace reach with direct-to-reader sales rather than choosing one over the other.

Worth Knowing Before Jumping In

ManuscriptReport's guide includes a caveat worth sitting with: direct sales genuinely isn't the right first step for every author, and jumping in before there's an audience to sell to can mean a lot of setup work for very little return. Success in this model depends heavily on already having, or actively building, a way to reach readers directly — an email list, a social following, some existing channel — since a direct storefront doesn't come with built-in discovery traffic the way a retailer does. That's consistently echoed across sources: the storefront is the delivery mechanism, not the thing that generates interest in the first place.

Sources:
- Indie Author Magazine, Issue #58, "Building Your Author Business Your Own Way"
- 1106 Design (Substack), "Beyond the Algorithm: How Indie Authors Can Build a Direct-to-Consumer Sales Ecosystem in 2026"
- The Creative Penn, "2026 Trends And Predictions For Indie Authors And The Book Publishing Industry with Joanna Penn"
- MIBLART, "11 Self-publishing Trends in 2026 You Can't Miss"
- BookBaby, "Owning Your Readers: The Future of Book Selling in 2026 & Beyond"
- BookBaby (PRWeb), "BookBaby Bookshop Redefines Author Success in 2026"
- ScribeCount, "How Indie Authors Sell Direct to Readers"
- The Books Central, "Self-Publishing Trends 2026: What Indie Authors Need to Know"
- ManuscriptReport, "How to Sell Books Direct to Readers: The Complete 2026 Guide"

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They Used Real Publisher Names. The Deals Were Fake.

KL Adams — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Fake agents. Real publisher names. More than $164,000 lost before the truth came out.

It's different hearing "watch out for publishing scams" as a general alert. The real impact becomes clear when you read the documented cases by the Authors Guild of how it affects real people. Two cases are worth sitting with, not because they're rare, but because of exactly how far each one went before the author realized what was happening.

The Fake Hachette Employee

Someone claiming to work for Hachette Book Group, one of the world's largest publishers, contacted a self-published author. The scammer informed her that a literary agent had forwarded a copy of her book and that Hachette showed interest. There was one problem the author apparently didn't catch in the moment: she didn't actually have an agent. Having no agent meant her manuscript couldn't have been shared with anyone.

She carried on regardless and ultimately paid the scammer more than $14,000 in charges described as fees for "printing" and additional publishing costs. She discovered the fraud only when she flew from California to New York to meet her supposed Hachette contact in person at Hachette's actual office. When she arrived, no one there had ever heard of her, her book, or any of the employees she'd been corresponding with by name.

The $150,000 Fake Agent

The second case escalated even further. Someone who claimed to be a senior literary agent at PageTurner Press and Media contacted an older writer. The scammer told him that Basic Books, a real and well-known publisher, was interested in acquiring his manuscript.

According to the Authors Guild, public warnings about PageTurner Press and Media were already circulating online by the time this happened. The author made a series of payments anyway to move the publishing process forward. His last payment alone was $150,000. At that moment, a person claiming to be an editorial director at Basic Books called to "confirm" the agreement, probably a second scammer enlisted to make the fraud seem more believable and secure the last payment.

The Pattern Underneath Both Cases

What connects these two cases isn't just the dollar amount; it's the mechanism. In legitimate publishing, money flows from the publisher to the author, not the other way around. Any request for the author to pay fees, whether framed as printing costs, processing fees, or anything else, in exchange for a publishing deal is a fundamental reversal of how real publishing contracts work.

Both scams also leaned heavily on borrowed legitimacy: real publisher names, real imprints, and, in the second case, a second fake person brought in specifically to corroborate the first scammer's story and add pressure at the time of the last payment. That layering, one scammer confirming another's claims, is a recognizable tactic across many kinds of fraud, not just publishing scams specifically.

Why These Cases Matter

Both authors were, without a doubt, diligent enough to eventually uncover the fraud, one by traveling across the country to confirm it personally, the other only after incurring substantial financial loss. That's part of what makes these cases worth reading in detail rather than just hearing about in the abstract: the scams weren't sloppy, and the authors weren't naive. They were targeted deliberately, using real company names and a believable sequence of events, which is exactly what makes this kind of fraud so persistently effective.

Source:
- The Authors Guild, "Avoiding Publishing Scams"

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Indie Author News: The Hybrid Author Is Becoming the Norm

KL Adams — Mon, 21 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

"Indie author" used to describe a method. You self-published, full stop, rather than going the traditional route through an agent and a publishing house. That definition is loosening. A growing thread in indie publishing coverage right now points to something different: authors who move between publishing methods project by project, rather than committing to one lane for an entire career.

What "Hybrid" Actually Looks Like

The shape of it varies from author to author, but a few patterns recur. An author might self-publish an entire series through KDP, keeping full rights, full control, and the larger royalty share that comes with it. That same author might sign a traditional deal for a different project, one where a publisher's distribution network, marketing budget, or editorial support genuinely fits what that particular book needs. Layered on top of both, the same author might run a podcast, a YouTube channel, or serialized fiction on a platform like Substack or Wattpad, content that isn't really a "book" in the traditional sense, but still lives under the same author brand.

None of these pieces are treated as more legitimate than the others. They're simply different tools being used for different jobs.

The Shift From Method to Mindset

What's interesting about this trend isn't the individual tactics; authors mixing self-publishing and traditional deals isn't new on its own. It's the reframing of what "indie" even means. Rather than describing a specific publishing method, it's increasingly used to describe a mindset centered on autonomy, an author staying in control of the overall direction of their career, even when a given project runs through a system, like traditional publishing, that the author doesn't fully control.

Under that mindset, the question an author asks about a new project shifts. It's less "am I a self-published author, or a traditionally published one" and more "which method actually serves this specific book, at this specific point in my career." A debut in a crowded genre might benefit from a traditional publisher's shelf presence. A niche, genre-blending project a traditional publisher might pass on could thrive as a self-published project, tested directly with the readers who actually want it.

Why This Only Recently Became Realistic

A big part of why this shift is happening now, rather than a decade ago, is how much more accessible each individual tool has become. Producing a professional audiobook, running a podcast, building an email list, managing multi-platform distribution — these used to require either a publisher's infrastructure or a level of technical skill and budget most solo authors didn't have. As each of those pieces has gotten cheaper and more accessible on its own, stitching them together into a hybrid career has become genuinely realistic in a way it wasn't before.

A Caution Worth Noting

Accessibility isn't the same as automatic success. One point that comes up consistently in coverage of this shift: just because publishing has become as simple as pressing a button doesn't mean every project should be rushed out that way. The authors building sustainable hybrid careers are generally the ones still investing in craft, quality, and genuine reader connection, regardless of which specific method they're using for any given book, rather than treating any single path as a shortcut around that work.

The Common Thread

Across every version of this trend, the throughline is the same: authors today are increasingly running what amounts to a publishing house of one, choosing traditional, self-published, hybrid, or something else entirely, on a project-by-project basis, with control over the overall shape of their career as the real constant underneath all of it.

Sources:
Indie Author Magazine, "How Indie Authors Are Redefining Publishing and Building Sustainable Self-Publishing Businesses"

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Indie Author News: Lulu's Direct Buy Button Lowers the Barrier to Selling Direct

KL Adams — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Direct-to-reader sales have been a growing trend in indie publishing for a while now, but the setup has always come with a real cost: building a website, integrating an e-commerce platform, handling payment processors, shipping, and sales tax. On August 18, Lulu introduced its new Direct Buy Button to address that friction point head-on.

What It Actually Does

The Direct Buy Button is a checkout link or embeddable button an author can create for any print book published through Lulu, with no need to build a storefront, website, or product listing first. Authors can drop it into a newsletter, a social media bio, a Linktree, embed it on an existing website, or turn it into a QR code for in-person use at events, conferences, or signings.

Behind the scenes, Lulu and Stripe handle the payment transaction, and Lulu handles printing, shipping, fulfillment, and applicable taxes. There's no charge to create the button itself.

Why This Matters for Direct Sales Specifically

Direct-to-reader selling has always offered real advantages: the author keeps a larger margin than a retailer's royalty rate typically allows, and, critically, buyers can opt in to marketing at checkout, giving the author access to contact information for people who bought their book. That reader data is something retailers like Amazon simply don't share back with authors.

The trade-off has always been the setup cost, in both time and technical complexity. A tool that removes the need for a full ecommerce build lowers that barrier considerably, particularly for authors who don't have the time, budget, or technical background to manage a Shopify or WooCommerce store on top of everything else running an author business requires.

Worth Knowing Before Using It

A few practical details worth being aware of: every order is subject to a production delay, a safeguard against accidental or hasty purchases, though authors can adjust that window up to twenty-four hours. And for authors who already distribute through IngramSpark, there's a known pitfall in enabling Lulu's global retail distribution for the same titles, as it can create duplicate bookstore listings.

One observation that's circulated in author commentary on the launch is worth flagging plainly: a direct buy button makes it easier for someone to complete a purchase, but it doesn't create demand on its own. The tool assumes an author already has some way of reaching readers — a newsletter, a social following, an existing audience — since sending someone to an unfamiliar personal website to buy a book is a different ask than routing them through a retailer they already trust. For authors with that audience in place, the reduction in friction is real. For authors without one yet, the button doesn't solve that separate piece of the equation.

Where It Fits Alongside Other Lulu Tools

The Direct Buy Button sits alongside Lulu's other direct-sales options: Lulu Direct's drop-shipping integration for authors running a full Shopify, Wix, or WooCommerce store, and the standard Lulu Bookstore listing, which offers an 80% revenue share with no separate storefront required. The Direct Buy Button is positioned as the lightest-weight of the three, useful for authors who want a direct sales option without committing to a full storefront build.

Sources:
- Lulu, "Lulu's New Direct Buy Button"
- Indie Author Magazine, "Four Ways Lulu Brings Books Directly to Your Readers"
- Margot Conor, "A Lulu Update"

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Indie Author News: Exclusive to Amazon, or Wide? Here's What Each Actually Buys You

KL Adams — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Every self-published author eventually hits the same fork in the road: stay exclusive to Amazon through KDP Select, or go wide and put your ebook everywhere else too. It comes up constantly in author groups, and, like the McFadden advice debate, the discourse tends to split into camps, each convinced the other is wrong. They're not, really. Here's what each path actually gives you, and what it costs.

What KDP Select Actually Is

KDP Select means your ebook is exclusive to Amazon, in 90-day renewable terms. You can't sell it anywhere else, not on Apple, not on Kobo, not on your own website, for the duration of that term. In exchange, you get access to Kindle Unlimited page-read royalties, Kindle Countdown Deals, Free Promo days, and in some international markets, meaningfully better royalty rates than you'd get outside Select.

For genres with heavy KU readership, romance, fantasy, cozy mystery, and thriller, that trade-off can be substantial. KU page-read income alone can represent 40 to 70% of total royalty income for authors in those genres. It's also worth noting that exclusivity applies only to the ebook. Print and audiobook editions are unaffected either way.

What Going Wide Actually Is

Going wide means distributing the same ebook across Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, and others, either by uploading to each platform directly or through an aggregator like Draft2Digital or Smashwords. You lose KU eligibility entirely, but you gain reach into readers who don't shop on Amazon at all, plus something Select doesn't offer: you're not fully dependent on one company's policies, algorithm changes, or royalty rate adjustments for your entire ebook income.

A related third option, direct-to-consumer sales through your own storefront, can be layered on top of going wide (the two combine cleanly), though it can't be combined with Select, since Amazon doesn't allow non-Amazon listings on an exclusive title.

Where Each Option Tends to Make Sense

New authors with no existing audience yet often see real value in starting with Select. The built-in Kindle Unlimited reader base and Amazon's promotional tools can generate early visibility and reviews that a first wide release, with no existing following to draw from, often struggles to get on any platform.

Authors with an established readership, multiple titles, and their own marketing infrastructure — an email list, a social following — tend to weigh going wide more seriously, since they already have ways to drive traffic to other platforms rather than relying entirely on Amazon's internal discovery.

Genre matters too. In heavily read KU categories, exclusivity often earns more than going wide does. In literary fiction, most nonfiction, and children's books, where KU penetration is lower, the math frequently tips the other way.

It's Not a Permanent Decision Either Way

One thing that gets lost in the debate: neither choice locks you in forever. Select is a rolling 90-day enrollment, easy to opt out of at the end of any term. Plenty of authors run Select for a book's early life, then take it wide later once it's built momentum, or do the reverse. It's common enough that many authors describe just running one Select term, then comparing total ebook income against a wide term of the same length, and letting the actual numbers, not the theory, make the call for that specific book.

No Universal Answer, Just a Set of Trade-Offs

Same as the "get it out there" debate: there's no single right path here, and the loudest voices in either camp are usually generalizing from their own genre and audience size rather than describing something universal. What Select buys you is different from what wide buys you, and which one serves a given book depends on where that book's readers actually are, and where you are in building your own audience to reach them directly.

Sources:
- Books.by, "KDP Select vs Going Wide: The Complete Decision Guide"
- AuthorAZ, "Should Indie Authors Use KDP Select?"
- Cambridge Publishing House, "KDP Select vs Wide Distribution 2026"
- Publica.la, "KDP Select vs Wide vs D2C: Decision Framework for Indie Authors 2026"

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Indie Author News: Maybe It's Not One or the Other

KL Adams — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A video made the rounds recently with a pretty direct title: "I'm an Editor. Please Don't Take Freida McFadden's Writing Advice." It's a pushback on McFadden's now-famous stance, the one she's repeated in interviews and on her own website: stop procrastinating, just write the book, put it out there, and fix what needs fixing later. An editor's perspective on that advice is worth hearing, especially from someone who's worked inside traditional publishing and seen what a polished, agent-ready manuscript actually needs to look like.

Equally, I think the conversation is missing a middle option that many indie authors are already using without explicitly naming it.

McFadden's advice isn't wrong,
It's aimed at a different finish line

As an author who has made mistakes since 2009, I can say there's no perfect way to go about this journey. If you have a book and you want to self-publish it. Do it. That is the advice I get when I hear authors like McFadden tell would-be-authors to do it. Jump in. Feel the water. The assumption is that this is the only story the author will ever write. I suppose there is that, like a one-hit wonder. It happens. Freida speaks of her personal experience when she offers advice. After seeing as of today, she has 33 books on the market. I would say she's earned a seat at the table. If that doesn't, she's a New York Times bestselling author. I would say she has earned the right to advise authors.

She wrote from childhood and kept writing while becoming a physician. Before self-publishing, she tried the traditional route: she queried agents, got rejected, and at one point even landed an agent, but that manuscript never sold. Eventually, she decided she cared more about getting her work into readers’ hands than waiting for a publisher. (The Washington Post)

Other authors have similar stories:

Stephen King: The breakthrough came in 1973, about six years after that first professional story sale. Doubleday accepted Carrie for publication. King had already written several novels that publishers rejected, and Carrie itself almost ended up abandoned—his wife, Tabitha, famously encouraged him to keep working on it after he threw pages away. (The Guardian)

J. K. Rowling: She eventually finished Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone and began trying to get it published. She first needed an agent. Christopher Little agreed to represent her, but then the manuscript went through a long string of publisher rejections. The commonly reported figure is 12 publishers turning it down before Bloomsbury finally accepted it. Rowling herself has said she remembers receiving “a good few” rejections, though she doesn't recall the exact number. (The Guardian)

Brandon Sanderson: He wrote Elantris around 2000 and submitted it. One publisher rejected it. He sent it elsewhere and then waited roughly 18 months before Tor editor Moshe Feder contacted him in 2003 wanting to buy it. The publication process took another couple of years, and Elantris finally came out in 2005. (Brandon Sanderson's Bio)

Colleen Hoover: She self-published Slammed in January 2012. At first, it got very little attention. Then she started doing giveaways, reaching out directly to book bloggers, posting teasers, and interacting with readers on Goodreads. By late April, Goodreads’ recommendation system began surfacing the book more heavily. (PW Select)

These authors tell us the path to discovery is not a formula laid out as A + edits + repeat + B + insert your ritual = success. If it were that easy, everyone who desired it would do it. It's different for everyone. And that makes it exciting. When you think about reading, and how easy it is to pass up a good book for a show or sports clip, it is amazing that it still exists as a pastime. If you have a book, you deserve to see how it would go. Maybe you are the next bestseller. Or maybe it does no more but collect dust. Either way, it takes courage to put your work out there.

The Platforms Built for Exactly This

Inkitt, Wattpad, Ream, a personal blog — these all let an author post work in progress, chapter by chapter, in front of real readers while it's still being shaped. You receive reactions, observe what resonates and what doesn't, revise based on real reader feedback rather than guessing alone, and the work remains unlocked as a permanent, reviewable, for-sale product. That's "getting it out there" in the exact spirit McFadden means: stop hiding it, stop waiting for imaginary perfection, but it's not the same thing as skipping editing altogether.

By the time a story that's been tested this way moves to self-publishing, it's already been through a real revision process, just a different one than a traditional developmental edit. Beta readers on a platform, chapter comments, the pattern of where readers drop off or come back for more — that's genuine editorial information, even if it doesn't come with a manuscript letter attached.

There's No One-Size-Fits-All Here

That's really the heart of it for me. An editor coming from traditional publishing is likely to set the bar at the traditional publishing level, because that's the system she knows and has worked within. McFadden's advice reflects a different, now equally legitimate path, one where the barrier to entry is lower, and the room to learn in public is much bigger than it used to be.

Neither is wrong. They're answering different questions. If your goal is a Big Five deal, the editor's caution is sound advice for that specific goal. If your goal is building a readership and a body of work on your own terms, McFadden's push to stop waiting and start putting your writing in front of people, whether that's a finished self-published book or a serialized chapter on Wattpad, is exactly the permission a lot of new writers need to actually start.

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Indie Author News: AI as Workflow, Not Replacement

KL Adams — Mon, 14 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The conversation around AI and publishing has been loud, and much of it has centered on fear, flooded marketplaces, disclosure fights, and bans on award eligibility. But a quieter, more measured narrative has been building beneath all that noise, and it's worth paying attention to: for many indie authors, AI isn't being used to write books at all. It's being used to run the business around the books.

The Shift in the Conversation

Writer and developmental editor Diane Callahan, of the Quotidian Writer channel, touched on this in her 2026 publishing trends discussion, where the conversation moved past the earlier "AI flood" panic into something more grounded: authors integrating these tools into daily operational tasks rather than using them to mass-produce manuscripts. That distinction between AI as a drafting shortcut and AI as an operations tool seems to be where much of the actual, sustained adoption is happening.

Indie Author Magazine's coverage of AI in 2026 describes something similar: thousands of authors using these tools in ways that never touch the manuscript itself, analyzing sales data across platforms, writing book description copy, automating social media scheduling, and handling the operational load that used to eat directly into writing time.

Where Authors Are Actually Using It

The pattern across multiple sources points to a few consistent categories:

Business operations. Authors running titles across KDP, IngramSpark, Kobo, Apple Books, and other platforms are using AI to pull together sales data that used to require manually checking half a dozen separate dashboards.

Short-form marketing copy. Book descriptions, newsletter content, social captions, and ad copy are repeatedly cited as strengths of these tools, precisely because the task is bounded and voice-consistency tools can help keep the output sounding like the author rather than generic AI copy.

Editing support, not editing replacement. Multiple sources draw a clear distinction here: AI tools are described as useful for catching mechanical issues, consistency errors, and prose-level feedback, but explicitly not as a substitute for developmental editing, the structural, big-picture work of story and character that still requires human judgment.

Cover and audio production costs. Several pieces point to AI compressing costs that were once prohibitive for many indie authors, cover concepts that once cost several hundred dollars and are now achievable for a fraction of that, and audiobook production timelines that used to take weeks and are now measured in days.

The Recurring Caveat

Across nearly every source covering this shift, the same caveat appears in some form: the tools are strongest when the author stays firmly in the driver's seat, using AI to execute decisions the author has already made rather than to make the decisions themselves. One piece framed it as the difference between "spell check on steroids" and a ghostwriter quietly wearing someone else's name. Another described the ideal setup as several narrow, task-specific tools working together rather than one tool trying to do everything, brainstorming here, consistency-checking there, formatting somewhere else, each handling one job well.

Why This Framing Matters

The loudest AI conversations in publishing tend to focus on edge cases, mass-produced, low-quality books flooding marketplaces, disclosure disputes, and awards controversies. Those conversations are real, and they're not going away. But they can crowd out a much less dramatic, much more common reality: a large number of working indie authors quietly using these tools the same way they'd use any other piece of business software, to save time on the parts of running an author business that were never the creative part to begin with.

Sources:
- Diane Callahan (Quotidian Writer), "Predicting 2026 Book Publishing Trends"
- Indie Author Magazine, "What's New with AI in 2026 for Indie Authors"
- The Books Central, "Self-Publishing Trends 2026: What Indie Authors Need to Know"
- DougF Books, "Impressive AI For Indie Authors In 2026"

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Why Readers Often Prefer Books Written Now Over Books From 50 Years Ago

KL Adams — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Walk into any online book community, and you'll notice it: readers picking up a beloved decades-old classic and bouncing off it hard, while a book published six months ago gets devoured in a weekend. It's not that older books are worse; plenty of them are genuinely brilliant, but something about how books are written and read has shifted enough that the reading experience itself feels different. Here's a look at what's actually changed.

Pacing Has Fundamentally Sped Up

Books from several decades ago, especially in genres like fantasy and literary fiction, often spent long stretches on scene-setting, internal reflection, and slow-building atmosphere before the plot really engaged. That wasn't a flaw; it was the expectation of the era. Contemporary fiction, shaped by decades of competing with television, film, and now short-form video, tends to open faster and keep tension more consistently present. Readers raised on that pacing often find older pacing feels slow, even when the prose itself is excellent.

The "Show, Don't Tell" Standard Has Tightened Considerably

Craft expectations have shifted noticeably. Older fiction frequently told readers directly what a character was feeling or thinking, sometimes for paragraphs at a time. Modern editorial standards lean much more toward showing emotion through action, dialogue, and sensory detail. Readers who've grown up on decades of "show don't tell" craft advice, absorbed from workshops, editors, and even just years of reading contemporary fiction, tend to notice and feel distanced by heavier exposition, even when it was completely standard practice at the time it was written.

Representation Looks Different

Contemporary fiction reflects a much wider range of identities, backgrounds, and experiences than most fiction did fifty years ago, when publishing was considerably narrower in whose stories got told and how. Many readers today are actively looking for characters, relationships, and perspectives that mirror their own lives or introduce them to lives genuinely different from their own, in ways older books often didn't attempt or didn't get the chance to.

Social Norms Embedded in the Text Have Moved

Books absorb the assumptions of the era they were written in, sometimes deliberately, sometimes without the author even noticing. Attitudes toward gender, race, disability, and relationships that went unquestioned decades ago can read as jarring or uncomfortable now, not because the book was necessarily trying to make a statement, but because cultural norms have simply moved. That dissonance can pull a contemporary reader out of a story that original readers would have absorbed without a second thought.

Discovery Itself Has Changed the Kind of Book That Gets Written

A lot of contemporary fiction, particularly in romance, fantasy, and thriller, is shaped in part by how books get discovered now: BookTok, Bookstagram, reader communities built around specific tropes and emotional beats. That discovery ecosystem rewards books that deliver a clear, identifiable emotional experience relatively quickly. Books from fifty years ago were written and marketed in an entirely different discovery landscape: word of mouth, physical bookstore placement, newspaper reviews, with none of that trope-driven, algorithm-adjacent pressure shaping the writing itself.

Genre Conventions Have Evolved Considerably

Whole genres have shifted their unspoken rules. Romance readers today expect specific structural beats, tension, an emotional midpoint, a satisfying resolution, that weren't standardized the same way decades ago. Fantasy has moved through several major stylistic eras, epic doorstopper worldbuilding giving way to tighter, faster-paced storytelling in many corners of the genre. A reader fluent in today's genre conventions can find the different rhythm of an older book unfamiliar, even when that book was innovative for its time.

None of This Makes Older Books Worse

It's worth separating "different" from "worse." Much of what feels dated in older fiction was at the cutting edge of craft and culture when it was written. The gap readers feel isn't really about quality; it's that reading is a moving target, shaped by whatever a reader has been immersed in most recently. A book written fifty years from now will likely feel just as different to readers then as a book from fifty years ago can feel today. That's not a decline; it's just how storytelling keeps evolving alongside the people who tell and read it.

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Why We Love Morally Gray MCs

KL Adams — Wed, 9 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There's a reason morally gray main characters keep dominating the bestseller lists for dark romance, fantasy, and thrillers. Readers aren't just tolerating them; they're actively seeking them out, sometimes over the clearly "good" alternative. Here's a look at what's actually going on when a reader falls for a character who probably shouldn't be fallen for.

They Feel More Real

Purely good characters are aspirational. Morally gray characters are recognizable. Most people don't experience themselves as unambiguously virtuous; they experience themselves as someone doing their best inside a messy set of motivations, some noble, some selfish, some just survival instinct. A morally gray MC reflects that back in a way a paragon can't. Their contradictions read as honesty rather than flaw.

The Uncertainty Is the Draw, Not the Obstacle

With a clearly good character, the tension in a story usually comes from external stakes: what happens to them. With a morally gray character, the tension is internal too: what will they choose, and will the reader still be on their side afterward? That uncertainty is often the entire engine of the reading experience. It's not a flaw the story has to work around; it's the thing keeping pages turning.

They Let Readers Explore Without Consequence

Fiction offers a rare space to sit inside a perspective a reader would never actually endorse in real life, a killer's logic, a manipulator's charm, a morally compromised choice made for an understandable reason, and feel something for it anyway, without any of the real-world consequences. That's part of what makes dark romance and antihero-driven fantasy so compelling. Readers get to feel the pull of dangerous logic from the safety of the page.

They Complicate the Idea of "Deserving" Love or Loyalty

In romance specifically, a morally gray love interest raises the stakes of the central question: does this person deserve to be loved, trusted, or forgiven, and if so, on what terms? That question is far more interesting than a story where the answer is obviously yes from page one. Readers get invested in watching a character earn something rather than simply possess it by default.

Redemption and Ambiguity Both Have Their Own Appeal

Some readers are drawn to the redemption arc, watching a morally gray character slowly choose better, chapter by chapter, until they have effectively witnessed a transformation rather than just being told about one. Other readers prefer characters who never fully resolve into "good," who remain morally complex through the last page, because that ambiguity feels more honest than a tidy conversion. Both versions have a devoted readership, and a lot of the genre's biggest names build entire careers on one approach or the other.

They Make Villains and Heroes Blur in Interesting Ways

A well-written morally gray character destabilizes the reader's instinct to sort people into clean categories. That destabilization is uncomfortable in a good way; it asks the reader to keep evaluating someone rather than settling into a fixed judgment and coasting. Stories that can sustain that discomfort across an entire book, or an entire series, tend to be the ones readers can't stop talking about.

At the end of the day, morally gray characters work because they mirror a truth: people are rarely simple, and the most compelling stories are usually the ones that refuse to pretend otherwise.

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Book Review: Lights Out by Navessa Allen

KL Adams — Thu, 3 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Okay. I need to talk about Lights Out because I finished it, and I have been thinking about Josh and Aly ever since, in a way that is probably not entirely healthy, but here we are.

If you haven't read this one yet, Lights Out follows Aly, a trauma nurse who has a very specific, very private fascination with masked men online. Then one night, one of those masked men breaks into her house. What follows is dark, tense, occasionally unhinged, and somehow also laugh-out-loud funny, which should not work as well as it does, but it absolutely does.

The Banter Is Unreal

I was not prepared for how funny this book is. Dark romance usually leans hard into brooding intensity, and Lights Out has that in spades, but the banter between Josh and Aly cuts through it constantly, in the best way. It's the kind of dialogue that makes you laugh out loud in a room by yourself and then immediately feel a little unhinged for laughing, given everything else happening on the page. That balance, terrifying one moment, hilarious the next, is genuinely hard to pull off, and Allen makes it look easy.

The Tension Never Lets Up

This is a dark romance in the fullest sense, and the tension between danger and desire is relentless in the best possible way. You know exactly what kind of story you're in from page one: a masked stalker, a woman who's more drawn to that than she should be, and every scene between them crackles with the push and pull of it. It's the kind of read where you tell yourself "just one more chapter" and then look up and it's 2 a.m.

Josh and Aly, Together

What really got to me was the dynamic between them. Josh is dangerous in every way the genre promises, but there's a specificity to how he sees Aly, and to how she refuses to be afraid of him as she's supposed to be, that makes their chemistry feel earned rather than just tropey. Their scenes together are the whole engine of the book. I was rooting for them, in a way I probably shouldn't admit to: a masked home intruder, and yet.

Why I'm Not Rushing Into Book Two Yet

I know, I know, Caught Up is right there. But Lights Out was so good that I'm actually holding off on picking it up for a bit. Some books you want to devour immediately. This one felt more like a really good cookie; you don't want to just inhale it and move on to the next thing; you want to let yourself sit with it a little first. I'll get caught up. Just not yet.

If you're looking for a dark romance that's genuinely funny, genuinely tense, and impossible to put down, Lights Out earns every bit of its hype. Highly enthusiastically recommend.

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Indie Author News: Why Some Authors Are Choosing Kickstarter Over the Usual Routes

KL Adams — Wed, 2 Sep 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Publishing has traditionally offered authors two well-worn paths: land a traditional deal or self-publish. In the last few years, a third option has grown into something authors at every level, from brand-new indie writers to genuinely massive bestselling names, are using deliberately: crowdfunding the book directly through Kickstarter. Here's what that route actually looks like, and how it differs from the other two.

The Traditional Route

A traditional deal means an advance from a publisher in exchange for the rights to the book, along with the publisher's distribution network, marketing budget, and editorial infrastructure. The author typically gives up a significant share of royalties, often around 85%, in exchange for that support and reach. The publisher assumes the financial risk upfront, and the author is paid regardless of whether the book ultimately sells well enough to earn out the advance.

The Self-Publishing Route

Self-publishing flips that structure. The author retains all rights and keeps the much larger royalty share that comes with platforms like KDP, but they also take on every cost themselves: editing, cover design, formatting, marketing, all of it, upfront and out of pocket, with no guarantee that the book will earn that investment back.

The Kickstarter Route

Crowdfunding sits in a different spot entirely. Instead of a publisher fronting the money, or the author fronting it alone, readers fund the book's production directly, before it exists in final form, in exchange for early access, exclusive editions, or bonus content. The author still self-publishes in the sense that they retain their rights, but the financial risk of production is distributed among everyone who backs the campaign rather than resting entirely on the author's shoulders.

It also functions differently as a sales mechanism. A traditional or self-published launch sells a finished product. A Kickstarter campaign sells belief in a project before it's finished; backers are often funding a story they're excited about sight-unseen, based on an author's track record, a pitch, or a concept.

Where Brandon Sanderson Fits In

Sanderson's name comes up constantly in this conversation because his campaigns reframed what crowdfunding could mean at scale. In 2022, his "Surprise! Four Secret Novels" campaign, featuring four Cosmere-universe books he'd written and kept secret during the pandemic, raised over $41 million from more than 185,000 backers, becoming the most-funded Kickstarter project in the platform's history at the time. He's since returned to Kickstarter and BackerKit repeatedly for special leather-bound and collector's editions, each breaking further records.

Notably, Sanderson wasn't leaving traditional publishing behind to do this. He continues to publish his main line of novels through Tor. The Kickstarter route was layered on top, specifically for projects, secret novels, and deluxe editions that didn't fit neatly into his existing relationship with his publisher. He's also been open that one of his goals was testing what a book's sales and distribution could look like with less reliance on Amazon, which accounts for a large share of most authors' sales.

What the Rings of Adventure Anthology Represents on the Other End

Sanderson's campaigns operate at a scale most authors will never see, but the same underlying mechanism shows up at a much smaller level too. The Rings of Adventure anthology, a themed short-story collection by 34 indie authors, is running its own Kickstarter with a funding goal of just $2,500. It's a completely different scale, but structurally the same idea: readers fund the project directly and, in exchange, get early or exclusive access to the finished work, while the cost and risk of production are shared among many contributors rather than borne by a single author or a publisher.

Why Authors Are Weighing This Option At All

A few structural features seem to be drawing authors toward crowdfunding as a real third option rather than a fallback: it lets an author gauge reader demand before committing to full production costs, it builds a direct, engaged community around a project from the very start rather than after launch, and it allows for premium or collectible editions, leatherbound hardcovers, special art, bonus content, that are often too costly or too niche for a traditional print run or a standard KDP release to support.

None of this makes one route inherently better than another. Traditional publishing still offers infrastructure and reach that's hard to replicate. Self-publishing still offers speed and full creative control. Crowdfunding offers something different again: a way to fund a specific project directly with the people most excited to read it, before it's finished, rather than after.

Sources:
- Engadget, "Brandon Sanderson's record-breaking Kickstarter campaign ends with $41.7 million"
- Kickstarter, "How Brandon Sanderson's Kickstarter Project Broke the Bookish Internet"
- Read Indie Fantasy, "New Release Roundup for September 2026"
- Kicktraq, Rings of Adventure Anthology campaign page

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Indie Author News: Reviving Your Backlist

KL Adams — Mon, 31 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

A recent episode of The Indy Author Podcast tackled a topic that eventually touches almost every indie author: what happens to a book after its launch window closes. Host Matty Dalrymple sat down with Jeff Elkins, author of thirteen novels and founder of The Dialogue Doctor, to talk through what it looks like to give older, lightly-marketed titles a second life.

The Assumption Being Questioned

A lot of indie publishing advice over the past decade has rested on a few core assumptions: that Amazon's algorithm only rewards what's new, that a weak launch effectively seals a book's fate, and that the winning formula is to write fast, publish, and repeat, moving on to the next title rather than looking back. Elkins and Dalrymple's conversation pushes back on all three, drawing on Elkins' own experience of returning to books he'd published years earlier and finding that they could still connect with new readers.

Different Approaches Discussed

The episode covers a range of ideas rather than a single formula. Some of what came up:

Marketing the author, not just the book. Rather than treating each release as an isolated campaign, the conversation explores building visibility for an author's overall body of work, so backlist titles benefit from the same platform-building as a new release would.

Finding readers individually across different spaces. This includes both online platforms and in-person interactions, rather than relying entirely on algorithmic discovery to surface a title.

Rethinking what "success" looks like. The discussion probes whether authors must chase large-scale, algorithm-driven reach, often termed "McDonald's," or whether cultivating a smaller, loyal following can also lead to a sustainable career.

Working through the discomfort of self-promotion. The conversation also touches on imposter syndrome, which can make authors hesitant to champion their own older work, even when that work is just as strong as anything newly released.

Why This Comes Up for Authors with Multiple Titles

This is a truly pertinent discussion for authors with multiple books, especially for older works that had minimal marketing at the time of release. It's not a single tactic so much as a broader reframe: a book's launch performance isn't necessarily the end of its story, and there are multiple ways authors are approaching the question of how, whether, and when to revisit older work.

The full episode goes deeper into each of these threads if you want the complete conversation.

Sources:
- The Indy Author Podcast, Episode 350: "Beyond the Launch: Reviving Your Backlist with Jeff Elkins"

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Indie Author News: What Are Book Rights Deals, Anyway?

KL Adams — Tue, 25 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

"Rights deals" comes up a lot in publishing conversations, but it's one of those terms that gets thrown around without much explanation of what it actually means. Here's a plain breakdown of what these deals are, the different types that exist, and what's generally involved, no verdict on what any author should do with that information.

The Basic Idea

When you self-publish, you typically hold all rights to your book. A rights deal is simply an agreement where you license or sell a specific right, or set of rights, to someone else, while keeping the rest. It's not all-or-nothing. An author can license audio rights to one company, keep print and ebook rights entirely to themselves, and separately option film rights to a producer, all on the same book, all as completely separate agreements.

The Main Types of Rights

Foreign and translation rights cover licensing your book to a publisher in another country, who translates it and distributes it in that market. These deals are usually territory-specific and language-specific, so a book could have a French rights deal, a German rights deal, and a Japanese rights deal, each negotiated separately with different publishers.

Audio rights cover audiobook production and distribution. Some authors produce their own audiobooks and keep full control. Others license audio rights to a company that handles production, narration, and distribution in exchange for a share of royalties or a payment.

Film and TV rights typically start as an "option," where a studio or producer pays for the exclusive right to develop your book into a screen adaptation within a set time period. An option isn't the same as a sale, most optioned books never get made into anything, but it's the first step if a project does move forward.

Print and hybrid deals occasionally happen when a successful self-published book draws interest from a traditional publisher. These arrangements vary widely, sometimes covering just print distribution while the author retains digital rights, sometimes covering more.

Subsidiary rights is a catch-all term for things like merchandising, serialization (publishing excerpts or full chapters in magazines or other outlets), audio drama adaptations, and other uses beyond the core book format.

What's Generally Involved

Rights deals are usually structured as licenses with defined terms, meaning the rights holder isn't necessarily giving something away forever. A license might specify a set time period, a specific territory, or specific formats, and it can include royalty splits, advances, or flat payments depending on the deal.

Because these agreements are legal contracts, many authors involve an entertainment or publishing attorney, or a literary agent who specializes in a specific type of rights deal, when a serious offer comes in. Understanding exactly what's being licensed, for how long, and under what terms is really the whole game here, since the language in these contracts can vary enormously from one offer to the next.

Why This Comes Up for Self-Published Authors Specifically

Because self-published authors already own everything outright from day one, there's no publisher standing between them and a rights negotiation the way there might be under a traditional contract. That's simply a structural fact of self-publishing, not a claim about whether pursuing any particular deal is a good idea for any individual author's goals. Every writer's priorities, timeline, and comfort level with negotiation are different, and rights deals are just one of many paths a book's life can take after publication.

Sources:
- The Indy Author Podcast, "Laying the Groundwork for Book Rights Deals with Jane Friedman"

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Indie Author News: Let Readers Decide on AI, Not Gatekeepers

KL Adams — Mon, 24 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Nebula Awards spent one very chaotic day at the end of last year proving just how unresolved the question of AI still is in publishing. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association briefly opened the door to partial AI use in nominated works, with a disclosure requirement so voters could decide for themselves. Within hours, after backlash, they reversed course entirely and moved to a blanket ban: any work that used LLM tools at any point in its writing process would be disqualified outright.

I want to push back on that instinct, respectfully, because I think it gets the solution backward.

Trust the Reader, Not the Gatekeeper

SFWA's first instinct, before the reversal, was actually the right one: disclose the AI use, and let the people voting decide whether it matters to them. That's not a radical idea. It's the same principle that already governs almost everything else readers choose to buy. Nobody bans a book for using Grammarly, Scrivener, or a paid developmental editor. We trust readers to judge the finished work, not the tools that shaped it.

A blanket ban replaces that trust with a gatekeeper's judgment call, and it does it retroactively, applying to the entire writing process rather than the finished product a reader actually holds in their hands. If a story is good, it's good. If it isn't, no amount of disclosure or non-disclosure will save it in the marketplace. Let the sales numbers, the reviews, and the reader response be the verdict. That's a more honest form of accountability than a committee deciding in advance what's allowed to compete at all.

What Gets Lost in the Ban Conversation

The disclosure-versus-ban fight tends to focus entirely on award eligibility and prestige, which is a fairly narrow slice of the actual indie publishing world. What doesn't get talked about nearly enough is what AI has done for the authors who were never going to be in the awards conversation in the first place, because they couldn't afford to publish competitively at all.

Developmental editing alone can run well into four figures. Add a line edit, a professional cover designer, a marketing consultant, and audiobook narration, and you're looking at a genuine barrier to entry that has kept enormous numbers of talented, unknown authors out of the market entirely. Not because their stories weren't good enough. Because the on-ramp was too expensive.

AI tools have dramatically reduced that cost. Editing assistance, developmental feedback, cover concepts, marketing copy, and even voice narration are now accessible to an author working with a fraction of what those services used to cost individually. That's not a shortcut around quality; it's a bridge over the exact financial gatekeeping that traditional publishing has always relied on, and that self-publishing was supposed to dismantle in the first place.

For an unknown author with a real story and no capital behind them, that shift is enormous. It's the difference between a manuscript that never leaves a hard drive and a book that actually reaches readers who get to decide for themselves whether it was worth their time.

Disclosure, Not Prohibition

None of this means transparency doesn't matter. Readers deserve to know how a book was made if they care to know, just as some readers care about a translator's name or whether an audiobook was narrated by a human or synthesized. Disclosure respects the reader's ability to make an informed choice. A ban just makes that choice for them before the book is even written.

The market is already answering this question in real time, genre by genre, reader by reader. Let it keep answering. The books that connect will sell. The ones that don't won't, regardless of what tools sat on the desk while they were made.

Sources:
- Self-Publishing Advice Center (ALLi), "Podcast: Nebula Awards Reverse AI Policy"
- File 770, "SFWA Launches, Aborts LLM Tools Nebula Rule Change on Same Day"
- The Steampunk Explorer, "SFWA Retreats After Opening Nebula Awards to Works Created with Gen AI"

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Indie Author News: Is Your Social Media Actually Worth It?

KL Adams — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

There's a shift happening in how indie authors talk about social media, and it's a healthy one. For years, the assumption was "just be everywhere." In 2026, the conversation has matured into something more useful: which platforms are actually earning their keep, and when is it smarter to just walk away from one entirely?

You Can't Be Everywhere, and You're Not Supposed To Be

The Alliance of Independent Authors put it plainly in a recent piece pulled from their member magazine: spreading yourself across too many platforms is one of the fastest routes to burnout for brief return. The social landscape has shifted hard in the last few years. X has largely emptied for authors. Organic reach on Facebook and Instagram has collapsed unless you're paying to boost. Meanwhile, video has become a genuine sales engine for the right genres, and a newer wave of platforms, Substack, Bluesky, and Threads, has all carved out unique flavors of community.

The takeaway isn't "pick the trendy one." It's "pick the one that actually fits your genre and your energy."

Where Authors Are Actually Seeing Traction Right Now

BookTok is still the heavyweight for YA, new adult, fantasy, romantasy, and romance, built on fast, emotionally hooky clips rather than polished production value. If your genre lives there, a single video can genuinely get meaningful results in sales.

Threads has quietly become a strong option too, less about follower count and more about actual conversation, which suits authors who want real reader connection over vanity metrics.

Facebook groups remain underrated, especially for fiction writers. It's not the flashiest platform anymore, but with billions of people still logging in daily, a well-run reader group can outperform algorithm-dependent platforms simply because the connection is direct rather than filtered through discovery feeds.

LinkedIn, somewhat surprisingly, has become a strong organic-reach platform in 2026, and it's not just for business nonfiction. Long-form, substantive posts do well there, and its user base skews toward people with disposable income and decision-making power, useful if part of your author brand extends into courses, consulting, or nonfiction work.

The Permission to Walk Away

Maybe the most useful shift in this conversation is the growing acceptance that skipping social media, or at least most of it, is a legitimate strategy. Author and publishing consultant Nathan Bransford put it bluntly in his recently updated guide: no author is required to be on social media, and a half-hearted presence won't move the needle anyway. The one non-negotiable, in his view, is a website. Everything else is optional.

That lines up with what a lot of working authors are landing on: pick the platform you'd actually enjoy showing up to, because readers can tell the difference between genuine engagement and a marketing checklist. And increasingly, the smartest long-term move is treating social media as a top-of-funnel tool that feeds something you actually own, your email list, your newsletter, your direct storefront, rather than a channel you're building a career on top of.

Where This Leaves You

If you're feeling social media fatigue, the current wave of advice from authors says that's not a personal failing; it's a rational response to a genuinely fragmented landscape. Pick one, maybe two platforms that fit your genre and your temperament, use them to grow the list of readers you actually own, and let the rest go without guilt.

Sources:
- Self-Publishing Advice Center (ALLi), "Best Social Media Platforms for Authors in 2026: A Practical Guide"
- Nathan Bransford, "A guide to social media for authors"
- BadRedhead Media, "The Best Social Media Channels for Fiction and Nonfiction Writers Right Now"

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, Inkitt, Wattpad, and Ream for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

Check out my Gumroad course.

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Why Developmental Editing Matters (And Why So Many Indie Authors Skip It)

KL Adams — Wed, 19 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you've ever hired a proofreader and called your manuscript "edited," you're not alone, and you're also not quite finished. Developmental editing is the step most indie authors either skip entirely or discover too late they needed. Here's what it actually is, and why it matters more than almost anything else you'll pay for as a self-published author.

What Developmental Editing Actually Is?

Developmental editing happens early, before line editing, before copyediting, before anyone's fixing commas. It's a big-picture pass focused on structure, pacing, character arcs, plot logic, and whether the story is actually working the way you intended.

A developmental editor isn't asking, "Is this sentence clean?" They're asking harder questions: Does your protagonist's motivation hold up in chapter twelve the way it did in chapter one? Does the midpoint actually shift the stakes or just restate them? Is that subplot with your heroine's sister earning its page count, or quietly dragging the pacing down?

It's the difference between polishing a manuscript and actually fixing what's broken inside it.

Why Indie Authors Skip It?

Money is the honest answer most of the time. Developmental edits are more expensive than line edits or proofreads because they take longer and require a different expertise. When you're self-funding a release, it's tempting to assume a strong self-edit and a sharp beta reader or two can cover the gap.

Sometimes that's true. Often it isn't, because the writer closest to the story is usually the worst-positioned person to see its structural blind spots. You know why your character makes that choice in chapter nine. Your reader doesn't, not if the groundwork wasn't laid three chapters earlier, and you won't catch that gap because you're not reading the book; you're remembering writing it.

What You Actually Get From It?

A good developmental edit comes back as a letter or annotated manuscript that tells you where the story sags, where a character's motivation doesn't track, where the pacing stalls, and where you've buried your best material under something less interesting. It's not always comfortable to read. It's almost always worth it.

For genre fiction, especially dark fantasy, paranormal romance, and psychological thrillers, developmental editing catches the things that break reader trust fastest: contradictory world rules, romantic tension that resolves too early or too late, and twists that don't have enough groundwork to land. Readers in these genres are pattern-trained. They notice.

The Cost of Skipping It

A manuscript that's been proofread but never developmentally edited can still read clean and still fail. Clean prose wrapped around a structurally shaky story doesn't fix the story; it just makes the flaws harder to immediately name. Readers feel it even when they can't articulate why a book didn't land, and that shows up in reviews as "good writing, but I lost interest halfway through," which is often a structural problem wearing the clothes of a prose complaint.

Where to Start If You've Never Done One

If a full developmental edit isn't in the budget yet, a manuscript assessment or an editorial letter from a freelance developmental editor is a lighter, cheaper entry point that still surfaces major structural issues. Beta readers who read widely in your genre can also flag pacing and arc problems, even if they can't always name the fix. The key is getting eyes on your story before it's locked into its final shape, not after.

Your prose can be beautiful. Your world can be original. But if the bones underneath aren't solid, no amount of line-level polish will hold the whole thing up. Developmental editing is where you find out if the bones are solid, while you still have time to fix them.

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, Inkitt (https://www.inkitt.com/KLAdams), Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/KLAdams53), and Ream (https://reamstories.com/kladams) for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

Check out my Gumroad course: https://kladams53.gumroad.com/l/hisznv

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Indie Author News: The Good Stuff Happening Right Now

KL Adams — Tue, 18 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

It's easy to find doom and gloom about self-publishing if you go looking for it. But scroll through what the actual indie publishing blogs are covering this month, and a different picture shows up: authors building real businesses, finding new revenue streams, and proving the old gatekeepers were never the only way in. Here's what's got people excited.

Direct-to-Reader Stores Are Having a Moment

More indie authors are building out their own storefronts instead of relying solely on the big marketplaces, and it's paying off. Signed bookplates, special editions with alternate covers, early access for loyal readers, bundle deals, and even themed merchandise like candles and tote bags built around a book's world. Readers who love a story want to live in it a little longer, and authors are finding they'll happily pay for that experience.

The bigger shift here is mental as much as financial: building a direct storefront pushes an author to think like a publisher and business owner, not just someone who writes books and hopes. Uncomfortable at first, genuinely valuable long-term.

Serialized Fiction Is Thriving

Platforms like Royal Road, Ream, and Radish are giving serialized fiction a real home again, chapter by chapter, the way Dickens once released novels in installments. Readers follow along in real time, comment, speculate, and often become emotionally invested before the story's even finished. What used to be a niche format for romance and fan fiction is now working across mystery, fantasy, sci-fi, and even memoir, and it's opening up an audience that was largely out of reach before.

The Quality Bar Is Rising, and That's Good News

Readers now expect indie books to look and read as polished as anything traditionally published, and the gap is closing fast. That might sound like pressure, but it's really a compliment to how far the indie space has come. Authors who invest in real editing, clean formatting, and strong covers are being rewarded for it, and quality is becoming the great equalizer between indie and Big Five titles.

Niche Genres Are Finding Their People

Rather than chasing the broadest potential audience, more authors are leaning into small, passionate reader communities, and it's working. Focused genres and dedicated niches prove that stronger engagement with the right readers beats a diluted pitch to everyone.

Real Author Stories Worth Reading

Indie Author Magazine has been spotlighting authors like Annabel Chase, Theresa Goodrich, and Deborah Wilde this month, each one carving out a different path through indie publishing on her own terms. Worth a read if you want proof that there's no single template for building a sustainable author career.

The throughline across all of it: readers are hungry for good stories told well, and there are more ways than ever for an indie author to reach them, on their own terms, built around their own vision.

Sources:
- BookQuill, "5 Indie Publishing Trends to Watch in 2026"
- The Books Central, "Self-Publishing Trends 2026: What Indie Authors Need to Know"
- Indie Author Magazine, indieauthormagazine.com

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, [Inkitt](https://www.inkitt.com/KLAdams), [Wattpad](https://www.wattpad.com/KLAdams53), and [Ream](https://reamstories.com/kladams) for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

[Check out my Gumroad course.](https://kladams53.gumroad.com/l/hisznv)

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AI and Your Words: Where Things Actually Stand for Authors Right Now

KL Adams — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you've felt confused about what AI companies can and can't do with your writing, you're not alone, and the confusion isn't your fault. This is one of the fastest-moving legal questions in publishing right now, and even courts are still working it out. Here's the good news up front: the ground is shifting in authors' favor, and understanding why the disagreement exists in the first place makes the whole picture much less overwhelming.

The Actual Disagreement

At the center of this is one legal question: is training an AI model on copyrighted books "fair use," or does it require permission and payment?

AI companies have generally argued yes, it's fair use. Their reasoning goes something like this: when an AI model trains on a book, it isn't storing or reproducing that book, it's learning patterns of language the same way a human writer absorbs style and structure from everything they've ever read. Some judges have been sympathetic to that comparison. One federal judge, ruling in a case involving Meta, compared AI training to the process of teaching schoolchildren to write well, and dismissed concerns that this created unfair competition with the authors those books came from.

Authors and publishers see it very differently, and for good reason. A person learning to write and a company running millions of books through a commercial model to build a product it sells for profit are not the same kind of "reading." The concern isn't philosophical, it's practical: books were taken and used to build billion-dollar products without the authors' knowledge, consent, or compensation. Adding to that, several major cases have revealed that some of these books weren't obtained through legitimate channels at all; they were pulled from pirated "shadow libraries," which shifts the legal conversation from "is learning fair use" to "was this simply theft."

That's the disconnect in a sentence: AI companies are largely arguing about what training does technically. Authors are arguing about what happened to their work practically. Those are two different conversations happening at the same time, which is part of why this has been so hard to resolve.

Why This Is Actually Good News for Authors

Here's where things get encouraging. The legal ground has moved substantially over the past year, and it's moved toward authors.

In 2025, Anthropic agreed to pay authors $1.5 billion to settle claims that it trained its AI on pirated books, the largest copyright settlement in U.S. history. Roughly 500,000 works were covered, and the vast majority of eligible authors filed a claim. That number alone signals something important: when the facts show a company used pirated material, courts and companies are taking authors' claims seriously, and settling for real money rather than fighting to the last dollar.

That settlement has also changed the conversation industry-wide. Legal analysts now expect it to push other AI companies toward settling similar claims rather than risking a trial, because a settlement of that size resets what everyone in the industry expects a losing case to cost. Multiple publishers, including major houses and The New York Times, have ongoing suits against AI companies, and more rulings and potential settlements are expected through the rest of 2026.

At the same time, a real alternative path is emerging: licensing. Rather than fighting in court indefinitely, a growing number of AI companies are striking direct licensing deals with publishers and platforms, paying to use content legitimately instead of defending fair-use claims. It's not a perfect system yet, questions remain about whether independent and smaller authors get a fair seat at that table, but it represents a fundamental shift from "we don't need your permission" to "we'll pay for the right to use this."

What This Means for You Right Now

You don't need a law degree to protect yourself, and you don't need to panic either. A few grounded takeaways:

Your copyright exists the moment you write something down, regardless of what any AI company argues about fair use. That hasn't changed and isn't in dispute in any of these cases.

Courts have also been clear about something authors should find reassuring: AI-generated output itself generally cannot be copyrighted unless a human's creative contribution is present and documented. That protects the value of genuinely human-authored work in a market that's about to be flooded with AI content.

If you're ever unsure whether your specific book was involved in a training dataset connected to a settlement, organizations like the Authors Guild have been tracking these cases closely and are a reliable place to check claim eligibility.

This is a legal and business fight that authors are increasingly winning, one settlement, one lawsuit, one licensing deal at a time. You don't have to fight it alone, and you don't have to fully understand every court filing to know that the industry is moving toward respecting what you make.

Sources:
AI Business, "AI Lawsuits in 2026: Settlements, Licensing Deals, Litigation"
PYMNTS, "US Courts Poised to Shape the Future of AI Copyright Battles in 2026"
Norton Rose Fulbright, "AI in litigation series: An update on AI copyright cases in 2026"
AI Copyright Legal, "AI Copyright Licensing 2026: Publisher Deals Reshaping the Industry"

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, Inkitt (https://www.inkitt.com/KLAdams), Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/KLAdams53), and Ream (https://reamstories.com/kladams) for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

Check out my Gumroad course: https://kladams53.gumroad.com/l/hisznv

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Kirkus Just Gave Indie Authors a Real Spotlight

KL Adams — Wed, 12 Aug 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Indie publishing got a new milestone this year. Kirkus Reviews, the outlet whose starred reviews have quietly shaped which books get noticed for decades, launched its first-ever Indie Awards in 2026, and the finalists are officially in.

Six finalists were named in each of eight categories: History & Biography, Memoir, Literary Fiction, Mystery & Thriller, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Romance, Picture Book, and Children's Literature. That's 48 independently published titles getting the kind of recognition that used to live almost exclusively on the traditional side of the industry.

What Winning Actually Gets You

This isn't a certificate-and-a-handshake award. Winners in each category receive a $500 author-services credit usable toward Kirkus's professional services, a $7,500 advertising credit for promotion across Kirkus's channels, an invitation to the 2026 Kirkus Prize ceremony in New York, and a one-on-one agent consultation. For an indie author, that agent consultation alone can be the door that's historically been hardest to open without traditional-publishing connections.

Kirkus Indie president Chaya Schechner put it plainly: the awards exist to let independently published work "broadcast Indie's best of the best" and bring attention, in her words, that could lead to "a book deal or two." Nearly 4,500 books came through the Kirkus Indie review program last year alone, which gives a sense of just how much talent is out there without a traditional publisher behind it.

Why This Matters Beyond the Trophy

For years, the biggest structural disadvantage indie authors faced wasn't quality, it was visibility. Traditional publishers have marketing budgets, distribution relationships, and award-circuit access that self-published authors have had to build from scratch, book by book. An awards program from an outlet with Kirkus's credibility, specifically built for indie titles, chips away at that gap in a way that actually moves the needle: advertising credit, professional development, and a direct line to an agent.

There's no horror-specific category yet, so genre readers in that space are folded into Science Fiction & Fantasy alongside dark fantasy, but Kirkus has said explicitly they plan to expand categories in future years. That's worth watching if you write in genres that don't have a clean home yet.

Winners will be announced August 27. Worth keeping an eye on that Science Fiction & Fantasy category especially.

Sources:
Kirkus Reviews, "Kirkus Reveals Finalists for the 2026 Indie Awards"
Kirkus Reviews, "Kirkus Launches New Indie Awards"

KL Adams is a literary blogger and fiction writer specializing in dark fantasy, vampire fiction, and paranormal romance. Follow on WordPress, Inkitt (https://www.inkitt.com/KLAdams), Wattpad (https://www.wattpad.com/KLAdams53), and Ream (https://reamstories.com/kladams) for reviews, reading lists, and stories that haunt you long after the last page.

Check out my Gumroad course: https://kladams53.gumroad.com/l/hisznv

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