Going Indie: Month One

2026 is my year of living dangerously

2026 is my year of living dangerously, by which I mean I’m becoming my own publisher. I did some foundational work for that in 2025, which I wrote about here, but the real push started with the beginning of the new year.

Now that we’ve flipped the first month of the calendar, I thought it was time for an update. I want to document this for myself and as a help to others.

My 2026 wall calendar: pollinator themed!

For starters, I should set the stage. Context is everything, after all.

I’ve been a traditionally published author for about 12 years now, through small presses. At the end of 2025, I had completed my Menopausal Superhero series, had my stories included in about 20 anthologies, and had just put out my first indie book, a short story collection that I thought of primarily as my learning project (though I do love those stories): Stories from Shadow Hill.

I’ve been pretty happy with my trajectory in my writing life (despite ups and downs along the way), but I wanted to move from “hobby that pays for itself and occasionally a little better than that” to “viable side hustle” and then to “pay my bills with this.” And even though working with a small press is faster than the glacial pace of a Big 5 Publisher, it’s still slower than I want to go.

I’ve long had an interest in “going indie” but I hadn’t done it yet. I was concerned about managing all the work of it, and unsure if I could support the initial financial burden to do it the way I wanted to. But, three years ago, I left teaching for a corporate job that is less stressful and pays better. My youngest child turned 18 years old, and I started to feel like maybe I could take this on now. I had more time, more knowledge, and more money to invest.

I don’t like how Amazon exploits creatives, but I recognize the stranglehold they have on our industry, so I wanted my books available through the big river despots, but not beholden to them--no exclusivity. So, I’m “going wide” as they call it--trying to have my books available on as many platforms as possible: ebook, print, and audio. Everything, everywhere, all at once.

I’m not very business and number oriented as a rule, but I’m trying to corral my brain weasels and improve that. My sister is an accountant and is helping me, and I sought out training, education, and learning opportunities, both casual and more formal about running a business and about some aspects of indie publishing as well as marketing.

So, now it’s 2026, and my first “real” indie book, Not Too Late, a GenX romance will launch April 28, 2026 (for my birthday).

So far, I’ve spent:

• Vellum software for formatting: $249.99 (August 2019--bought when I thought about doing this the first time). I’ve used it for 4 books so far, so that makes Not Too Late‘s share: $62.50

• ISBNs: $295 for 10 from Bowker June 2025 which amounts to $59 for the two I used for ebook and paperback of this book. (These are cheaper per ISBN the more you buy at a time, but I figured 10 would keep me busy enough for a year or two—at this point, I’ve used eight of them).

• Editing: $196.80, July 2025 (I got a friends and family rate from a FANTASTIC editor)

• Bookcover: $400 Pd. July 2025 (I hired a person I met through convention life to do all three covers)

• Proof copy from Ingram: $7.80 (September 2025)

• Audiobook cover: $50 January 2026

• NetGalley Co-op 1 month rental: $63 January 2026

That’s a total of $839.10 by my reckoning, but notice the dates in that list. I didn’t spend all of that at once, but spread it out across several months. And the software purchase is an unlimited license, so the more I use it, the less it costs per book.

I anticipate spending about $400 more on my audiobook narrator. Rather than a royalty share, I’m opting for paying $75 per finished hour and then not having to manage periodic payments thereafter. I did look into being my own narrator, but decided that’s more than I want to take on at the moment. Maybe someday.

Not Too Late has been up for preorder since September in a lowkey way. You can find it, but I haven’t promoted it yet. I put together a books2read link I could use for social media so that people can preorder wherever they might like to https://books2read.com/NotTooLate It was free, even including the vanity naming, and has been really useful for connecting with other folks.

My big focus in January was getting some early reviews lined up. So, I made a google form that I sent to my newsletter subscribers and posted around social media. That netted me 9 ARC readers. I set up a Bookfunnel download page to use with that, figuring I’d need a Bookfunnel account ongoing anyway.

My research suggests that roughly one quarter of the people who take an ARC will actually read and review it, so I wanted more than 9 people. I checked into NetGalley. It’s is a great way to connect with booksellers, librarians, influencers, and just plain old readers, but it’s EXPENSIVE ($575 for one book). Luckily, because I have worked on building my network these past twelve years, I had people to ask and learned about NetGalley Co-ops. I rented a month on NetGalley for $63.

As of this writing, that netted me 127 requests with 114 who downloaded the book. So far, I have 11 reviews and one set of feedback without a review on NetGalley and 7 reviews on Goodreads (which is the only venue where people can review a book that hasn’t been released yet).

For comparison, I didn’t do any of this with my learning book Stories from Shadow Hill which came out in October and as of this writing, it doesn’t have any reviews at all.

But here’s the thing with going indie: while all that was going on, I was also juggling several other things in the month of January:

• Managing that NetGalley offer, vetting and approving requests

• Arranging for audiobook narration of Not Too Late, which meant uploading the ebook separately to Amazon so I could claim it on ACX

• Realizing I’d need an audiobook version of the cover, and negotiating that with my cover designer

• Realizing I’d want audiobook versions of all three of GenX romances, so negotiating that with my cover designer

• Finalizing the cover design for the third GenX romance

• Writing the blurb for the third GenX romance (the hardest part, IMO)

• Working with another audiobook narrator for mini-audiobook productions of one of the short stories from Stories for Shadow Hill

• Getting Beware Cheap Houses (the aforementioned story) up on ACX (which is when I learned that there has to be an Amazon ebook to go with a book you want to make an audiobook of for ACX)

• Creating graphics for social media and other promotional stuff, then keeping up with posting and interacting on social media (I do Instagram, Facebook, Bluesky, and Threads mostly)

• Arranging for another NetGalley rental in February for Acid Reign, the second GenX romance

• Networking with other romance writers to set up future author events and collaborations

• Giving a reading at a local bookstore

• Arranging for several author events across the spring

• Designing and ordering swag (bookmarks, stickers, etc.) for those events

• Ordering copies of books for said events

• Sending out press releases in my hometown area for Not Too Late, since it’s set in Bellevue, Kentucky

• Beta-reading/critiquing two books, a short story, and a piece of a novel for author friends

• Finishing a promised short story for an upcoming anthology: Disruptive Intent (The story is a Menopausal Superheroes short called Ricochet Happens and I’m excited about it! It’s my first time as an invited author rather than a slushpile pick)

• Picking back up an unfinished novel to work on, a Gothic romance called The Architect and the Heir.

See how low writing fell on that list? I feel like that’ll be my new challenge: balancing all the “business” with the actual creation of new works.

So, that’s where I stand at the end of my first month of living dangerously. It’s busy, but it’s also exciting and I really think I’m going to love it!