Author Advice*

One of my personal goals as an author is to be the kind of author I needed when I was growing up, one who wouldn't dismiss a child or discourage someone from writing. In that spirit, I've made this page to post advice* I have for people who want to be authors. I didn't craft it to be genre/age specific, so it's for anyone who wants to be an author.

I'm an indie (independent) author, meaning I published my book myself. Most of my advice* will apply to indie authors, though I'm sure some can be helpful to trad (traditional, through a publishing house) authors.

*This is not intended as professional advice.

Guides I Made

I've worked in technical writing in one form or another for most of my career, so I couldn't resist making some guides to help people out.

  • Alexa Shay's Guide to Self-Publishing (Last modified Feb. 25, 25): This is a high-ish level guide I made explaining what I did to self-publish my book, as well as what I did to get it ready for publishing.
  • Social Media for Authors (Last modified Feb. 24, 25): This is a slide deck I made to give authors a crash course in using social media.

My Team

Getting a strong team together is absolutely crucial to your success. My team helped me grow as an author, publisher, and professional and they helped me out of many problems. I highly recommend everyone on this list. I've linked their sites and listed what services I used. If you hire them, tell them I said hi!

Vendors

These are the services I used to help promote my book or make promotional materials. I'm not promoting their use and I get nothing if you use them. I had good experiences with all of them.

Craft Books I Recommend

I highly encourage anyone that's interested in writing a book to learn about the actual arts of writing and editing first. It's the one thing I wished I'd done before I started all this. These are books that I've read and recommend.

  • Save the Cat! Writes a Novel: The Last Book On Novel Writing You'll Ever Need by Jessica Brody
  • Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing by Tiffany Yates Martin
  • Make a Scene Revised and Expanded Edition: Writing a Powerful Story One Scene at a Time by Jordan Rosenfeld
  • Understanding Show, Don't Tell: And Really Getting It by Janice Hardy
  • Story Genius: How to Use Brain Science to Go Beyond Outlining and Write a Riveting Novel (Before You Waste Three Years Writing 327 Pages That Go Nowhere) by Lisa Cron
  • The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer's Guide to Character Expression by Becca Puglisi and Angela Ackerman

Frequently Asked Questions

Have a question that isn't here? Email me at my Contact Me form or reach out to me on social media.

  • How long did it take you to write/publish your book?
    • It took me about eight years from start to finish, not counting how long I had the idea in my head. I wrote out the whole timeline on my About Me page. It takes you as long as it takes and everyone is very different.
  • How much did you spend on publishing your book?
    • I've heard people say you can self-publish for free and while they're not wrong, they're also not entirely right. If you do everything yourself, you have to learn every. single. skill. That can take a very long time. Plus you'll need to buy and learn software for things like formatting and you still have to buy ISBNs. I preferred to hire professionals who knew what they were doing. For just publishing costs (not all my costs), I spent $4,507.99 USD.
      • Beta readers: $75.00 USD
      • Editing (including mini manuscript evaluation and coaching): $2,578.24 USD
      • Proofreading: $525.00 USD
      • Cover Art: $399.00 USD
      • ISBNs (10 pack): $295.00 USD
      • Formatting (includes retrimming and fixes): $578.00 USD (would have been less but I made some mistakes)
      • NetGalley Co-op: $57.75 USD
  • Why did you choose to self publish?
    • I wanted to have complete creative control over my work. The drawback of self publishing is that you have to pay for everything and do everything yourself, but that's also the fun part!
  • Are you a plotter or a pantser?
    • This wasn't the exact question, but it leads me into the answer. The two main types of writers are plotters (people who meticulously plot out every aspect of their book) and pantsers (people who "write by the seat of their pants"). I'm a pantster mostly, but I've come to learn that most everyone has shades of both types. It's a spectrum. You don't have to meticulously plan every single aspect of your book to be a good writer. The most famous pantser to ever live was Tolkien. At the end of the day, the amount of plotting you do or don't do depends on what works best for you. I tend to have a few, main events in the plot, start writing at the beginning, and figure out how to get from point A to point B along the way. This is called discovery writing, where you learn about your story by writing it. Do what works best for you.