The question all romance writers are asking right now: to KU or not to KU?

You may have seen a lot of people lately talking about how they’re going to stop buying from Amazon, and as a consequence will be getting rid of their Kindle Unlimited subscription. If you’re a romance author on KU, you may have seen a downturn in your page reads since January. If you are on social media, you may have seen lots of book influencers and authors and others (me included!) imploring people to keep their KU because it helps authors, who are essentially small businesses who happen to need Amazon in order to run said business.

So as an author, what do you do right now when a huge income source is being boycotted and affecting your take-home pay? Do you stay on KU, or is it time to jump ship?

As a reader, I love KU. I get my money’s worth every month with the way I read—like many romance readers, I go through a ton of books in a month between KU, the library, and actual purchases (though I have shifted from buying ebooks on Amazon to buying on Kobo). KU is not only an economical way for me to read a lot, but I’ve found some of my favourite writers on KU, and KU gives me a ton of flexibility in my reading tastes (just this weekend, I was like, “I need to read something UNHINGED”—there’s no better place for KU than that).

But as someone who supports authors, I’ve long been wary of KU and its practices (peep this blog post from 2018! Who remembers Cockygate?), which tend to be not at all transparent and can seem almost indiscriminate in the way it applies its rules and exercises its authority. And now in 2025, the KU romance market, which was alwaysoversaturated, is even more so, which means there’s less money in the pot and more competition for eyeballs and page views.

Still, KU remains one of the best places for discoverability if you’re able to cut through the noise and carve out your own niche there. And for readers like me who are willing to try a new-to-them author based on a gorgeous cover or a great blurb or an enthusiastic recommendation, it’s a way to discover a new favourite author.

KU’s exclusivity requirements have always been a headache for authors. You cannot put your books for sale anywhere but Amazon while your books are in KU, which obviously narrows your potential sales, and Amazon can get very punitive if you’ve forgotten to take down one book on one other platform. Basically, they very much encourage putting all your eggs in their Amazon basket—but now that Amazon is facing backlash, is it still worth it to stay?

I still think it's worth being on KU because it's still where the readers are. There hasn't been enough of a mass exodus yet to warrant jumping the ship. BUT...there are more options now for authors going wide, so maybe it's time to reconsider your strategy?

Going wide (i.e. not being on KU) is an uphill battle—you need to convince people to pay money to take a chance on an unknown quantity. But you have a lot more freedom and a lot of places to experiment and find your niche. (This can be a good or a bad thing, depending on how much work you want to put into your strategy and how much time you have for experimentation.)

But if you're hoping to divest yourself from Amazon entirely, being wide won't necessarily do that. You probably still want to sell your books there (it controls the majority of the market). And having your books wide is more work for you to keep track of them on all platforms, which will not have nearly as many sales as Amazon. Amazon has so ingrained itself in the book market that trying to extricate yourself from it—as a reader or as an author—has become very, very difficult. So, unfortunately, a strong ethical position against Amazon is not really for your author business—but of course that's your decision to make.

If you do want to go wide, I’d suggest experimenting a bit when you have a few books under your belt—can you put some in KU and some wide, and see how they do and determine where the best place for you to be is?

If you’re wide, you also might consider putting your book in Kobo Plus, which is Kobo’s version of KU. Unlike KU, it does NOT require exclusivity, so you can sell your books on other platforms too. It’s not nearly as saturated with romance as KU is, but there are also way fewer readers there than there are in KU. The royalties aren’t a ton more than KU (here’s a nice comparison of KU vs Kobo for authors), but if readers are jumping ship from Amazon, they’ll probably head over to Kobo for book sales and to Kobo Plus, which gives readers unlimited borrows per month and includes audiobooks in one of the plans. 

If you remember the heyday of KU in the mid-teens when people were making big money on there, Kobo Plus hasn't gotten to that heyday yet, as it's still in its relatively early days. So I think there’s a lot of opportunity for authors to find their niche and their audience on Kobo Plus, especially as it grows—you’d basically be getting in at the ground floor now. And if readers are leaving KU, Kobo Plus, with its similar format, is probably where they'll go. But to be on Kobo Plus right now means you can't be on KU because of their exclusivity clause, and there are more readers (and money) on KU than on Kobo Plus.

I don’t want to say “yes, everyone should be on KU!” or “no, get off of KU ASAP!”—it really depends on a variety of factors: how many books you have out, what kind of romance you write, where your ideal audience is and how they read, how quickly the market changes, the concerns of your particular business, your ethical stance, etc. etc. I want you to make the choices that are best for your creativity and your author business so you can continue to grow. Don’t be afraid to experiment and see where you’re actually doing really well—maybe it’ll surprise you?

Where are you at right now? To KU or not KU? If you’ve always been wide, have you considered KU or Kobo Plus?

This was originally published in my newsletter. If you want more on what’s new and important in romance writing, marketing, and the romance industry at large, join my newsletter and get my Romance Resource Roundup, a collection of the BEST romance books/websites/podcasts you should be consuming as a romance writer.

What POV is best for your romance novel?

Let’s talk narrative voice and how to use characters’ perspectives to get them a happily ever after in a romance.

First-person POV, second-person POV, and the various third-person POVs are different kinds of narrative voice. (I’m going to use voice and POV pretty much interchangeably here.) So let’s go through each one and discuss how they work and when to use them in romance.

First-person POV

With first-person POV, you’re in a character’s head and they’re using “I” to narrate the story. It’s basically like the character is talking to the reader directly and telling them every thought that crosses their mind.

E.g. “I caught his eye from across the room.”

When should you use first-person? When you want the reader to be incredibly close to your protagonist(s) and have the reader feeling/thinking/seeing/etc. everything that the character is. This works great for high-angst stories when you want the reader to have visceral reactions to the story, or if you have lots of world-building and want to create a visceral, immersive experience for your reader. First-person has been the most common POV lately in certain contemporary sub-genres (dark romance, some adult contemporary, mafia), New Adult, fantasy, and YA.

People have big feelings about first-person (and about third-person, for that matter): they either love one and hate the other. Do not get super caught up in this—you’re never going to please everyone. (More on this near the end about which POV you should choose.)

Second-person POV

Second-person is tricky, because the narrator doesn’t have their own individual voice, but is talking directly to another character by using “you.”

E.g. “You caught his eye and beckoned him over to you.”

It’s very hard to do second-person, and you need to have a good reason to do it to justify it over the course of a whole book. I see it mostly in fanfic when there is a self-insert Reader or original character, but I would not recommend it for published romance. (You can get away with it in literary fiction, maybe, but not in romance.) Where I think it can work in romance is when you need to hide the identity of the narrator, e.g. a baddie in a mystery/thriller, especially if they’re sinister and threatening to the protagonist(s). I’ve seen it done in romantic suspense with an occasional POV of the stalker or the killer. Again, a very tough sell, and you’d have to really convince me it needs to be there.

Third-person limited

In third person limited (or close) POV, you use he/she/they/etc. to refer to the POV character(s). The character is telling you their thoughts and feelings, but unlike in first-person, there’s mediation between the character and their actual emotions through the narration. 

E.g. She caught his eye and beckoned him over. His expression went from confused to surprised to...pleased? Whatever he was thinking, he schooled his features before approaching her.

Third-person limited is common in historicals, contemporary (rom-coms, some adult contemp), and paranormal. This POV is great if you have an unreliable narrator who’s clearly misreading the signs they’re given, or if you want a bit of a wider narrative lens than you’d get in first-person.

Deep POV

Deep POV is a subset of third-person limited. You are deep (duh) in a character’s head and immersed in their thoughts and feelings—basically like first-person POV except using third-person pronouns and only a tiny bit of mediation through the narrator. There’s no “she felt” or “she thought”—those filler words aren’t necessary in deep POV. 

E.g. She caught his eye and beckoned him over. He looked surprised for a moment, and her heart jolted. Was he nervous around her?

If you’re using third-person in romance, you probably want to be using deep POV—romance is all about character and emotions, and you get more immediate access to them with deep POV.

Third-person omniscient

Third-person omniscient POV is a narrator who is not a character in the story but has access to the perspectives of ALL the characters, and the characters are still referred to as he/she/they/etc. The narrator can give each of their perspectives as needed. It gives a bird’s-eye view of the story and characters, but it’ll never get deep into any character’s thoughts and feelings.

E.g. She caught his eye and beckoned him over. He was bewildered that she wanted him, of all people.

Third-person omniscient was popularized by Jane Austen—and you know I love my girl Jane, but unless you are actually Jane, you probably want to avoid omniscient and stick with limited or deep POV. Omniscient is just not in fashion at the moment, and most people will mistakenly believe that you’re head-hopping (which is also not on trend).

What’s the difference between head-hopping and omniscient? Head-hopping happens when you switch from one character’s deep POV to another within the same section. In omniscient, you’re not in deep POV so your narrator can easily move from one character’s perspective to another. The difference is very subtle! But you can only do limited OR omniscient—not both in the same story (usually).

Head-hop:

She caught his eye and beckoned him over. His expression went from confused to surprised to...pleased? He plastered on a smile, knowing that this could be his chance.

Omniscient:

She caught his eye and beckoned him over. He was bewildered that she wanted him, of all people.

What voice should you be writing in?

Any POV is doable if you write it well. I have my own preferences for POV, but when it’s done well, I don’t even notice what POV the book is being written. You need to know the voices of your characters and how to express their POV in the way that works for you, for your reader, and for your genre. And you’ll need to look at comps, books like yours (in the same genre with a similar vibe to you and targeting for similar readers) to see which POV is used most often.

The question I get most often from clients is “should I write in first- or third-person? I don’t like one of them, but that’s the one that seems to be selling most.” Unfortunately, I can’t answer that for you if you’re self-publishing because it’s ultimately your choice whether you want to write a POV that feels easy and brings out your best writing or a POV that might sell well (because wow, some readers will not even pick up a book if it’s in a POV they don’t like, or will rate it low because of the POV they don’t prefer).

I spoke about this more in-depth here—but if you don’t want to watch a video, basically the point is that there is value in doing the POV that works best for your creativity because you’ll attract people who are into that AND trends get started by people doing something different and outside the market-prescribed box. But there is also no shame in writing to market either! It really depends on what your goal is.

Should you use single or dual/multiple POV?

This is a separate question from voice, but just as important. When should you use just one narrator, and when should you use more than one?

Single POV—where you only get one character’s POV for the entire book—is best to use when the story is very much about the arc of that one character, and the arc of the other protagonist(s) is secondary. More often, how I like to see it used is when the other protagonist(s) has something to hide or that can’t be revealed to the reader or to the POV character if we were in the other person’s head. So we can’t know that he’s harboured a secret crush on our first-person character since he was their childhood bully, but there should be signs that the first-person character misses entirely but are legible to the reader.

If you’re doing multiple POVs, how many should you use? Ideally I’d say just the main protagonists of the book, so for most romances, this is two. But for why-choose romance or a book that has two (or more) main relationships, you could have three or four or more. But then you as the writer have to keep track of all these voices, and that’s a lot of unique perspectives to juggle. Not every character needs a POV, so choose wisely.

With multiple POVs, I usually recommend keeping the voice the same for each POV, i.e. not using first-person for one character and then third-person for another. It’s absolutely possible to use first and third in the same book, but I personally find it jarring when it switches back and forth. It is, however, a great way to distinguish between different characters—we’ve all experienced the confusion of not knowing which character’s head we’re in in first-person because their inner narratives sound too same-y.

Each character should be distinctive in their voice so that you don’t have to flip back in the section to figure out who it is or look at the top of the chapter to see which voice is narrating. To me, this is lazy shorthand to tell the reader who the character is at each chapter/section break—it should be obvious from the way that character thinks and speaks, so make sure each character has their own unique quirks that set them apart.

Questions about POV or voice? Let me know!

Is it time to discontinue your romance series?

I did a presentation to the Ottawa Romance Writers’ group earlier this month about The Dos and Don’ts of Being a Romance Novelist, and one of the participants asked a great question at the end (and one that I’ve been meaning to write something about for a long time!).

The question was: How do you know when you should stop writing a series that doesn’t seem to be getting any traction?

I’m sure as readers or consumers of media, we’ve all experienced the frustration of not getting the end of a series. We can all name a TV show that we loved that ended on a perpetual cliffhanger, never to be resolved, or perhaps less often, a book series that a trad publisher decided not to continue to put money into. But what about if you’re on the other side of that as an indie author?

So here are some considerations to help you decide what to do:

1) Why is it that the series hasn’t gotten enough traction?

Be very, very honest with yourself here and analyze what’s going on. Are the covers not giving the reader a good first impression? (Are they on trend with other covers in your subgenre?) Are your blurbs and marketing materials not intriguing or unique or clear enough to get the reader to buy? Are the books priced too high? Have you put in the work to market them and get them in front of your target audience? Is the quality of the writing and editing not as good as it could be?

Do your research, ask your readers and impartial observers, and be very real with yourself. Are you willing or able to put in the work to fix these problems? That might get expensive—i.e. recovering all the books so far in the series, re-editing, doing additional marketing, etc. Which begs the question…

2) Is it worth it to continue to put the time and money towards this series?

Not only to revamp the previously published books in the series, but also for the ones to come. More books in this series means more money put towards editing, cover design, and promotion, and it takes you away from books that you could write that might be more successful. And if the books you’ve already written in the series aren’t helping to fund much of the next books still to come, do you have the budget to continue? The books in this current series may be the books of your heart right now, but if they’re not selling, it might be time to consider how you can rework the larger ideas of this series and eventually repurpose them for a different series that might do better for you down the line.

3) Do you have a full series already?

A complete series is a great thing to have in your backlist. If a new reader falls in love with your writing and goes back to read all your old stuff, they might buy the full series immediately to consume, rather than one standalone book at a time. And if all your books are linked in the same extended universe (which I do usually recommend doing!), a full series is even more of an easy sell. So, is it worth it to finish off the series in this case?

4) How do you feel about this series?

When you’re an indie author, it’s all on you to decide if it’s worth it to continue the series. Are you happy with the quality of the writing? Have you had good feedback from readers, or has it been crickets? Are you still excited to continue the series or get to that final book? Especially if you haven’t had a ton of great feedback from readers about the series, you may have lost enthusiasm for it—that’s normal. It’s time for some soul-searching about whether you should keep going with it.

Even if you do decide to discontinue a series, I do not want you to feel like it was a waste of time or that you didn’t get anything out of it. I especially do not want you to see this as a failure AT ALL. Every single writer, even the most popular or successful, has books that just don’t hit. And every book is a learning experience. Writing those books has improved your writing skills, has made you more aware of the things in your author career that you might have to spend more time/energy/money on, and is going to make your next book and/or series stronger. As much as I’ve asked here “is it worth it?” to help you decide whether to continue the series or not, I think there is always something worthwhile in the experience of getting these books out into the world.

Have you ever discontinued a series? What made you decide to? (I genuinely want to hear! Let me know in the comments!)

Does your romance writing process need a change?

One of the things I find myself talking about a lot with my Series Architecture clients is—perhaps unsurprisingly—their writing process.

Whether you identify as a planner, a pantser, a planster, or chaos demon, your writing process is your own. Whether you’ve been writing since you were a kid or you just decided to pick up writing a year ago, you probably have a good sense of what’s going to work for you and what’s not when you sit down to write.

My goal when I’m talking to clients is never to force them into a process that doesn’t work for them. If you’re a pantser, planning everything is going to drive you insane; likewise, if you’re a planner, me telling you to just make it up as you go will probably send you spiralling. And no matter how many craft books you read, following one system the way that author prescribes is likely not going to fully work for you because it’s going to feel too narrow and not aligned with your own process.

This is not to say that your writing process should never change! Sometimes you need to evolve, and you always want to be improving, right? So what are the things you tell yourself you have to do when you’re putting a story together and when you write, and what would happen if you just…didn’t do them? Or what would happen if you tried something different that you believed you could never do?

For example, you might think, “working under pressure is great for me—it focuses me and gets me out of my head so I can just channel all my thoughts into prose.”

Or is it that you're actually just worried that it has to be perfect so you’ve been procrastinating on it for a long time, and then when you finally have to start writing because of the deadline, you’re frustrated that it’s not coming out the perfect way you intended, and so you have to settle for whatever you end up writing because time’s up? (Not speaking from experience here at all.) That pressure is maybe anxiety you don’t actually need. So what if you started early and broke down your writing into manageable daily word counts (500 words? 1000?) rather than cramming writing the last 30K in a week?

Another example: I used to just think “okay, I’m gonna write, and my brain will just take me where I need to go.” This, it turns out, was putting way too much stock in what my brain could do while writing. What actually would happen would be that I would stall out, start panicking, and then spiral into thinking I sucked, procrastinate because it felt so hard, and then get behind on everything. But surprise! I’m actually a planner/planster, not a pantser. Once I realized I actually need to outline quite heavily before I even start writing, everything changed. (Something I would have really liked to know before quitting my PhD dissertation.) I need to do the big thinking first and work it all out in my head to know where I’m going, and after that, writing is a breeze.

That’s the process that I’ve discovered works for me, and it may not work for you. But take some time to evaluate what you’re doing now and maybe try changing some things up—if they don’t work, okay, just go back to what you were doing before. Read some craft books and implement some advice in there that could naturally slot into your current process. Talk with other writer friends to see how they write. Adapt and evolve to keep growing as a romance author.

So that’s your challenge for this month: take a long, hard look at how you write, and evaluate what’s serving you and what’s not.

How can I help you write better, faster, stronger, harder? Head over here and see how we can work together!