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 romance writers need to be doing in 2025

With every new year comes new resolutions, new goals, new outlooks. Even if you’re not a resolutions person (and I’m not, personally), there’s still something about a new year that’s hopeful about the ways you can change in the next 12 months.

To make 2025 a great year for you, I want to offer this piece of what is maybe tough love to keep in mind:

What you’ve been doing has to change.

Listen, I’ve said this many times before: I HATE change. I like my comfort zones. And there’s something to be said for consistency in doing the same thing over and over again, right?

Consistency is great, but there comes a point when consistency becomes stagnancy. And stagnancy means you aren’t growing. Sooooo…something’s gotta change, even if you really don't want it to.

Doing the same thing you’ve been doing in your writing career—whether that’s in your writing itself or in your marketing—is probably no longer serving you, especially if you haven’t adjusted it in a while.

And things are changing rapidly right now for romance writers. If you’ve been using TikTok, after the bait-and-switch where they almost disappear and then magically returned, I would be very wary of its continued existence and of the potential reach being limited if you say anything political. (And romance? VERY political. I won't even get into the precarious space romance is in as a target of conservative censorship with the new American administration.) 

(If the TikTok social media frenzy has shown us anything, it’s that you can’t rely on platforms owned by billionaires who only care about their bottom line. Your newsletter is your direct line to your readers—cultivate that! Here are some ideas for newsletters if you need them. Also, make sure you download your list regularly in case anything goes wrong with your newsletter distributor—my friend just had a heartstopping moment where all of her accounting data disappeared because the app stopped service, so this is a good reminder to always back up info you store online!)

If you didn’t use TikTok and have been congratulating yourself for choosing Instagram instead, how will you react to an influx of TikTokkers coming onto IG and taking up more space in an already saturated platform? If you want to get seen there, you're going to have to innovate and stay on trend.

We’re going to have to learn to pivot to adjust to changes out of our control. (Which I know is a big ask when so many other things not related to romance are even more frightening and out of control.) So what can we do to be more adaptable?

It’s honestly a good time to take some risks and stretch a little outside of your comfort zone. Experiment, try something new—and stick with it for a while so you can see some actual results and whether they’re positive or negative. Don’t just try something once and say “welp, didn’t work” and go back to what you were doing before. What worked before isn’t going to work forever.

So maybe you write the story that you’ve been working yourself up to write for years. Maybe you forget all the fear and go unhinged with it. Maybe you try a new subgenre, or even a whole new pen name. Maybe you put your face out there more on the socials. Maybe you forget about the socials entirely and pour all of your focus into building your newsletter and turning your readers into lifelong fans.

What happens if it doesn’t work? Hey, at least you tried. And like I said, staying stagnant and not changing isn’t doing you any favours. You’re going to have to constantly adapt in this industry, and you have to get used to flexing that muscle so you can adapt faster.

So try something different this year. I dare you.

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!)

What you need to make a great author website

If one of your plans this year was to make an author website (or get your current author website in shape), today’s newsletter is for you!

Why do you need an author website? You need a place that holds all the information that your readers would want to know. Social media sites are often used as replacements for author websites, but you don’t own your Facebook page or your TikTok handle, and if any of those platforms go under or get hacked, you can lose access to those sites and to your readers. And those platforms are designed for specific purposes (i.e. to be social) rather than to transmit information. One central place that you can direct readers to and that you own will make your life so much easier.

If your goal is just to get your site up and running, I’m going to cover the tech basics and the pages you’ll need for your site here, and keep it super simple so you can quickly get it online. Then I’ll get into ways that you can make the content really pop so that readers can get the most out of your site.

Tech basics

If this is the part that’s making you not want to even put a website together, fair. I get it. The term “tech basics” scares me too. So let’s break it down step by step.

First, you should get your own domain name, e.g. authorname.com. Make it super easy for people to find you on the internet, rather than having to type an unnecessarily long website address with dots and backslashes. And this will also get you your own email address with your domain name (e.g. author@authorname.com), rather than just a gmail address (not required, but looks a bit more professional). You do have to pay for a domain, but I think it’s a necessary cost of doing business as an author.

You do NOT need to hire someone to design you a whole custom website right now, especially if you’re just starting out. That’s expensive and fancy, and you can make a website on your own without spending much money. We’re going to keep everything super simple at the moment, and then you can build up to higher levels of fanciness later if you want to. So get a website builder like Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress (I use Squarespace), and they will walk you through the process of putting a site together.

If you want to get a logo and brand colours and fonts, go for it, but if this is not your thing (it is so not mine), just keep things black and white with a pop of colour, and choose a easy-to-read font for the bulk of the writing on the site. For your logo, you can choose another font just for your author name. We want to keep this readable and easy to use. If you want to use photos, use your own or choose royalty-free ones from sites like Unsplash or Canva.

What do you actually need to include on your author website?

A bio: Just a short paragraph about who you are, what you write, and maybe some fun little tidbits about your life. I also suggest including a picture, but totally understand if you’d rather be faceless (an illustration/cartoon also works). A bio helps readers relate to you, get to know you, and get on your side so that you can make a connection with them and not just be the writer behind the curtain.

Books: Tell readers about your work by including blurbs for all the books you have out (it can be the back cover blurb copy/pasted there, that’s fine). Most importantly, make sure you have buy links directly to the bookseller of their choice. Use universal links for Amazon so that you can easily send them to their own country’s Amazon. As a Canadian, I find it so frustrating  when only American Amazon links are included, and if I’m feeling lukewarm about the book, it may stop me from seeking it out on Canadian Amazon (yes, I am that lazy sometimes). Don’t give readers a chance to talk themselves out of buying the book! The blurb should sell them on it, and then you need to give them the clearest path to go buy it.

Contact info: Sure, this might open you up to awkward fan interactions or unwanted criticism or pressure (“when’s the next book coming out?!”), but it also gives grateful readers the opportunity to tell you how much they loved your book and what it means to them, which: worth it. Also include your social media links so that readers can follow you and stay up-to-date with what’s going on with your work.

Newsletter link: Make sure you include multiple places on your site where readers can sign up for your newsletter. I’ve talked at length before about why newsletters are SO important, and if starting or reviving your newsletter is one of your goals for this year, I would say that the newsletter is perhaps even more important than the website. It took me a year or two before I started a newsletter, and I still regret that I didn’t do it sooner.

You can add more pages to your website, but these ones above are the absolute musts. If you want to have a page about events you’re going to or press you’ve done, or if you have a blog, you can include them as well. (If you don’t want to blog, you don’t need to, promise.)

How to make your website work for you

Here are a few tricks to help your readers find what they need on your site and understand you better.

We want readers to connect with you on an emotional level, so inject some personality into your site. Have a tagline that explains what you and your books are about (check out other writers’ sites to see the little one-liners they use to give readers a sense of who they are). What kind of romance do you write? What themes do you explore in your work? What kind of experience do you provide for the reader? What kind of tone/voice do you use—are you funny, angsty, wry? This will help set readers’ expectations so they know what they’re getting from you.

If you’ve written a lot of books already, give your readers good entry points into your oeuvre. What’s the best place for them to start? If they love X trope, guide them to specific titles. What’s the ideal reading order for your books and/or series? If they’re on your site, they’re already interested in you, so get them invested in your work and reading it!

Going back to that newsletter: tell readers why they want to get on your list. Usually you include a free lead magnet with your newsletter—most often it’s a story of some sort, whether it’s full-length or a novella or a deleted scene, a prequel or sequel to one of your previous books, or a standalone, or it could also be something book-related but not a story, like colouring pages, a game, etc. Whatever it is, make sure you tell the reader why they want that lead magnet and/or why they want to get on your newsletter list. Does the magnet provide deeper insight into the story that they’ve already read and loved? If you can’t convince the reader why they NEED this lead magnet, then maybe it’s time for a new one. (Change them out frequently—at least once a year.)

Or maybe it’s your newsletter itself that's the draw, in which case you’ll want to highlight what’s special about it. Do you do giveaways and sneak peeks? Do you spill the tea about what’s going on in your world? Do you write fanfic about your own characters and what they’re doing? Again, convince them that it's the best thing for them if they get on your list.

Finally: keep your site updated! Make sure all your information is current, especially if you have a book that’s just released—it shouldn’t say “coming soon” on your site anymore.

I hope this has convinced you to get working on or updating your author website. It’s such a valuable resource that’s often neglected, and it can really help you drive sales if you’re using it well.