I like this one. She's got a good head on her shoulders, and this video is very useful and detailed.
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Writing Plan for 2026
- Thread starter A. E. Lowan
- Start date
I have ten published books and hope to release two more this year (medical and other stuff depending).
1 - 600-800 words per session is the norm for new works.
2 - I set the first draft aside for a few months while working on another project.
3 - The next step is the rewrite, or perhaps the 'rewrite lite.' That goes quick these days, but not as quick as her.
4 - After painfully learning the limitations of MS Word Editor and Free Grammarly, I use Paid Grammarly for editing. I can't afford paid editors.
5 - For her, reviews just seem to appear. That is the opposite of my experience - getting reviews is a struggle.
6 - Her presentation assumes publishing via Kindle. For folks like me on D2D, much of what she recommends is difficult or not possible.
1 - 600-800 words per session is the norm for new works.
2 - I set the first draft aside for a few months while working on another project.
3 - The next step is the rewrite, or perhaps the 'rewrite lite.' That goes quick these days, but not as quick as her.
4 - After painfully learning the limitations of MS Word Editor and Free Grammarly, I use Paid Grammarly for editing. I can't afford paid editors.
5 - For her, reviews just seem to appear. That is the opposite of my experience - getting reviews is a struggle.
6 - Her presentation assumes publishing via Kindle. For folks like me on D2D, much of what she recommends is difficult or not possible.
- Thread starter
- #3
Reviews can definitely be a struggle, and now we have ratings, which are basically review lite. All the feels, none of the verbiage, and they both count toward our total. And yeah, she's a bit more indie-inclined, but I also think she writes Romantasy and Urban Fantasy, two subgenres that see a whole lot of reader traffic in our author spaces, and when they recognize a name and read a title based on that, we see reviews. I can tell you guys how we get our reviews, but we don't have a ton, yet, but I'm learning how this game is played, and so far the only issues we're struggling with are production and the final covers and blurbs, most of which can be overcome with money. Money doesn't fall from the sky, barring alien literary investors or someone hits the wrong button on the alien investor spaceships.
What so far has worked the best for us is publishing the next book. We find readers really like that and, seriously now, the advice is dead on: Publishing at market speed is not only doable, it's becoming the standard, and unfortunately this has become a Publish or Perish environment. And it's also critical that readers know who you are, and we can get a nice chunk of new eyes on us and more books in hands by getting into popular reader lists like FreeBooksy. Bookbub is I think the biggest of these. The week we released Beneath a Stone Sky was also the week of Planet Comicon Kansas City, our home con, and between both con hits and the Freebooksy spot we'd purchased, and me at home shaking every tree in sight we seriously hit #1 in Kindle Free... twice, same weekend.
Much caffeine was had that weekend.
But the one factor that I think helped with just making that possible is that we make a lot of friends, and those friends are the ones who signal boost us and each other and make indie publishing work.
All of this holds true for both indie and trad. Indie has some major advantages, though. My fav, creative control, tops the list. And while we indies take all of the risk and pay for everything, we get to keep all of our sales. We make the marketing choices. We get to choose and we get to chart our own course. Trad does none of this, while also expecting you to tackle everything promotion and marketing and driving your own work higher in the ratings, while the most they will show the love for are the top sellers, only now you don't have control over your covers, have an editor who wants changes made to bring us closer to center and can hold your contract where you agreed to such things. Also, distribution in brick-and-mortar stores... which are dying. You can get yourself on Amazon just fine.
Mad Swede
Auror
A writing plan for 2026? Well, more like an authors plan.
The fourth novel is almost through the editing process, so I'll be having the first meeting with my cover designer in the third week in January. The galleys will be ready at the end of March, so I get to proof read the final copy in April and May. Then it will be time for printing, binding etc, and that will take most of the summer. The book is planned to hit the shops in October, in time for Christmas, so the review copies go out in late August and I'll need to be available for interviews from mid-September. There will be a few book signings during October, November and December.
In the meantime the fifth novel is starting to take shape. The beginning and the end are done and about half the key scenes. The rest will get written between now and next Easter, before I send the manuscript to my editor in May. She then gets her teeth into it and the whole process starts again. It will be a summer book (as in it gets published summer 2027), although there may also be a (second) short story collection in time for Christmas 2027.
At the same time I'm writing more short stories, starting to think about what a sixth novel might be about. All whilst holding down a job, writing the odd (in all senses of the word) academic paper and acting as reviewer for other papers. And also answering e-mails from readers.
The fourth novel is almost through the editing process, so I'll be having the first meeting with my cover designer in the third week in January. The galleys will be ready at the end of March, so I get to proof read the final copy in April and May. Then it will be time for printing, binding etc, and that will take most of the summer. The book is planned to hit the shops in October, in time for Christmas, so the review copies go out in late August and I'll need to be available for interviews from mid-September. There will be a few book signings during October, November and December.
In the meantime the fifth novel is starting to take shape. The beginning and the end are done and about half the key scenes. The rest will get written between now and next Easter, before I send the manuscript to my editor in May. She then gets her teeth into it and the whole process starts again. It will be a summer book (as in it gets published summer 2027), although there may also be a (second) short story collection in time for Christmas 2027.
At the same time I'm writing more short stories, starting to think about what a sixth novel might be about. All whilst holding down a job, writing the odd (in all senses of the word) academic paper and acting as reviewer for other papers. And also answering e-mails from readers.
My Bargain Booksy promo this year flopped.
MyBookCave did good the first two times, but has been so-so this time around. I attribute this to a general slump.
Book Barbarian yielded mediocre results.
Mostly, I stick with the $10 and under email newsletter sites like Reign of Reads, EReaderIQ, and Bookspry (via CraveBooks). Sometimes, they do very good, other times, they flop. The 'Cheap Lunch' strategy. $50-60 a month total. From painful experience, I don't use the same site more than once a month, nor do I promote the same book with the same site more than once every two months.
I am starting to experiment with free email newsletter promo sites, but I am not expecting much.
The marketing goal for this year was a sale a day, on average, not counting freebies. So far, so good.
Most of my reviews in 2024 came from Goodreads Reading Rounds, but the more you participate, the more conflicts arise, making further participation difficult. This year, I joined Authentic and Bookroar, point-based review pools. I got about 45 reviews from Authentic and nine from Bookroar.
Writing-wise, 2025 has been dedicated to rewriting and publishing old projects that had completed first or second drafts. These projects include the novellas that make up 'Empire: Southern Heat' (released February), the standalone novellas 'Disharmonious Spheres' and 'Reset,' both released in the past six weeks or so, and 'Exiles: Pilgrimage,' which I will try to release by the end of this month, medical matters depending. If time and health allow, I will try to publish 'Labyrinth Journal' by the end of the year.
The 2026 project list will take some thought. The remaining unpublished longer books all need extensive additions and revisions, and I don't have enough linked short stories/novellas to make worthwhile anthologies. Still, the ones under consideration include...
'The 'Game of the Gods,' a complex tale featuring time travel and reincarnation that has been on the back burner for decades, and currently exists as a novella, four or five short stories, and some notes.
'Empire: The Demon War,' a collection of shorter works, about half of which are written.
'Exiles: Generations,' the second book in the'Exiles' series. Right now, it consists of the leftover chapters from the original draft. Writing the rest will require a lot of thought.
There are others, but whatever.
MyBookCave did good the first two times, but has been so-so this time around. I attribute this to a general slump.
Book Barbarian yielded mediocre results.
Mostly, I stick with the $10 and under email newsletter sites like Reign of Reads, EReaderIQ, and Bookspry (via CraveBooks). Sometimes, they do very good, other times, they flop. The 'Cheap Lunch' strategy. $50-60 a month total. From painful experience, I don't use the same site more than once a month, nor do I promote the same book with the same site more than once every two months.
I am starting to experiment with free email newsletter promo sites, but I am not expecting much.
The marketing goal for this year was a sale a day, on average, not counting freebies. So far, so good.
Most of my reviews in 2024 came from Goodreads Reading Rounds, but the more you participate, the more conflicts arise, making further participation difficult. This year, I joined Authentic and Bookroar, point-based review pools. I got about 45 reviews from Authentic and nine from Bookroar.
Writing-wise, 2025 has been dedicated to rewriting and publishing old projects that had completed first or second drafts. These projects include the novellas that make up 'Empire: Southern Heat' (released February), the standalone novellas 'Disharmonious Spheres' and 'Reset,' both released in the past six weeks or so, and 'Exiles: Pilgrimage,' which I will try to release by the end of this month, medical matters depending. If time and health allow, I will try to publish 'Labyrinth Journal' by the end of the year.
The 2026 project list will take some thought. The remaining unpublished longer books all need extensive additions and revisions, and I don't have enough linked short stories/novellas to make worthwhile anthologies. Still, the ones under consideration include...
'The 'Game of the Gods,' a complex tale featuring time travel and reincarnation that has been on the back burner for decades, and currently exists as a novella, four or five short stories, and some notes.
'Empire: The Demon War,' a collection of shorter works, about half of which are written.
'Exiles: Generations,' the second book in the'Exiles' series. Right now, it consists of the leftover chapters from the original draft. Writing the rest will require a lot of thought.
There are others, but whatever.
- Thread starter
- #6
Our next trilogy has been 35 years in the making.
I talk about this a lot, but I'm going to bring this here. The books we've put in hands, the reviews, the readers and writers and our superfans, our little bit of success and the stars I pin our hopes to, has been made possible by one practice.
Positive, authentic Lowan. We don't network. We don't see ourselves above such things. We make friends. Lots of friends. lol We listen to everyone and we help where we can. Life in today's world can be hard. Here, this is Seahaven. See? It could be oh, so much worse. And then we tell readers that we're going novelling and saving the world. Seats still available.
Demesnedenoir
Myth Weaver
Plans? As the great Bill the Cat said more than once...
ACKPHFT!
ACKPHFT!
- Thread starter
- #8
I had a point up there and promptly forgot it. All the bouncing around talking to people - and that's what made our release so successful, non-stop talking in groups, helping out with writing questions and trolling... er. No. No trolls under this bridge. >.>
The payout for all of that good humaning? That elusive tease, Word of Mouth.
The payout for all of that good humaning? That elusive tease, Word of Mouth.
pmmg
Myth Weaver
I think this video more focused on production of material than writing stuff with passion. I think it lends itself more to romance (which is her medium) than fantasy. Romance is very formulaic.
I think if I told the universe this was my plan, God would start laughing.
I think if I told the universe this was my plan, God would start laughing.
Prince of Spires
Istar
There's a lot to unpack in that video, and I'm not sure I agree with all of it. My main issue I think is the pitch that getting four books out in a year at (relatively) low cost following her method will lead to break-even / profit. A lot more goes into that than just writing in my opinion.
Also, 2 weeks of revision time really depends on the kinds of revisions you need to do. If anything structural is off, then that timeline goes out the window. Though perhaps it is easier for Romance, where the story beats can be more formulaic.
That said, I do agree that more time writing overal tends to lead to better results. And if you want to make writing your job, then it helps if you treat it like your job.
As for planning 2026, I'll just go with I hope I get the next book finished. We'll see. I'm at 1500-ish words so far. So about 1.5% of the first draft down...
Also, 2 weeks of revision time really depends on the kinds of revisions you need to do. If anything structural is off, then that timeline goes out the window. Though perhaps it is easier for Romance, where the story beats can be more formulaic.
That said, I do agree that more time writing overal tends to lead to better results. And if you want to make writing your job, then it helps if you treat it like your job.
As for planning 2026, I'll just go with I hope I get the next book finished. We'll see. I'm at 1500-ish words so far. So about 1.5% of the first draft down...
