Over the past few months, I’ve been creating guides to writing, editing, and bookselling. I’ve tried to take the chance to…well, not sum up everything I know. These articles can run long enough as it is! But to at least share my thoughts and experience.
Here are the articles – I hope they prove helpful, and please feel free to share them with others you know who might use them and to ask questions or leave comments about things I didn’t address!
- Writing with a Zero Draft – My latest post is a guide to steady productivity for writers using a low-pressure and fluid approach that’s less formal than outlines but more ambitious than the “messy first draft”: the Zero Draft, notes to myself that I rewrite into something story-shaped. Maybe it will work for you too!
- Supporting the Small Presses and Authors You Want to Read More From: A Guide That Sometimes Gets Ranty – This is part 1 of a series I always intended to write, a guided tour of my experience publishing and selling books as an independent author and micro-press publisher (with the New Smut Project). It became a bit of a vent post about censorship, because most of the sales platforms I’ve used and enjoyed in the past turned out unworkable with policy changes around erotic content.
(As an update from months down the line: one platform I’ve considered for future NSP anthologies, Kickstarter, recently had its own controversy around mature content guidelines – which it updated under pressure from the payment processor Stripe, then rescinded in response to concern from the creative community it serves. Now mature content on Kickstarter is in a kind of limbo, where you can run a Kickstarter to fund an adult project…so long as Stripe doesn’t stop you. I’ve set up a Ko-fi and am using it to offer editing services as commissions, and I’ve put some of my ebooks up in a store on my page, but Ko-fi has incredibly restrictive mature content guidelines – even fuzzy padded handcuffs are too extreme for them. Another platform I’m looking at, Payhip, has been good for many erotica and romance authors, but it processes payments through Stripe, too.) - My letter to payment processors – A slightly too long and polite template to payment processors asking them to adopt more reasonable policies around sales of “adult” content. Feel free to use it as a base for your own complaints and demands! I also share links to other resources around this campaign.
- Where to Publish and Buy Books in 2026: Options for Indie Authors, Small Publishers, and Their Fans – Part 2 of my guide to publishing and selling books, this summarizes my experience with various ebook and paperback distributors and shares advice for writers who’d like to get started in self-publishing.
- 11 Favors You Can Do for Your Favorite Writer – This is part 3 of my guide to publishing and selling books, looking at the reader’s perspective on ways to boost a book, a writer, or a small press you love.
