Writer’s Corner: Author of the Future – Selling Books

I’ve run a few Kickstarter campaigns in the past, and I’m running one this month for my Time Travel Adventure Series and the release of the second book, The Rock Star & The Outlaw 2: Double Visions. It began yesterday, March 1, and will run through March 28th, 2026. (Little secret: March 3rd is my birthday, but your gift of support lasts forever.) If you’d like to check it out, and maybe even support this author with a pledge, you can check it out here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kayelynnebooth-wcp/the-rock-star-and-the-outlaw-2-double-visions

I started down this road back in 2023, when I successfully funded two campaigns, including one for the first book in this series, The Rock Star & The Outlaw. I chose to sell my books through Kickstarter because the buzz is, that Direct Sales and Kickstarters are the successful author’s future. Since the WordCrafter website isn’t set up for direct sales as yet, Kickstarter looked to be the best option.

We’ve Come a Long Way Baby

When I first started writing books, the publishing world was entering a transition phase. Traditional publishers had run the show for a very long time, and if you were an author, you peddled your book to literary agents. Once you found one of those, they would peddle your book to publishers and hopefully, found it a home with one of the Big Five. Or, you could peddle your book to smaller, independent publishers and try to find a home for your book yourself. Either way, very few authors found a way in, and even fewer made the best seller lists. If you were fortunate enough to be picked up by a traditional publisher, you might get a substantial advance when you signed your contract, which the book would have to earn out in sales before you could receive any further royalties. If the book didn’t earn out, you never saw another dime. But this was the way the publishing industry worked. You didn’t get in without making it past the gatekeepers; the agents and publishers who held all the power.

At that time, independent publishing carried a nasty taste with it. The world of independent publishing was filled with vanity presses that would publish your book for a cost, and they thoroughly took advantage of authors who tried to buck the system and bypass the gatekeepers. As publish on demand (POD publishing) gained popularity, it offered authors the opportunity to publish their work for much cheaper, but it also opened the door for anyone who wanted to, to claim authorship. Not everyone cared about quality, and authors who chose this cheaper route were likely to have skipped costly steps like editing, too. This flooded the market and gave independent authors a bad name, but traditional publishers still viewed them not as a threat, but a nuisance.

Traditional publishers stuck to their guns, and continued to do things the same way they always had, because that was the way it had always been. But as they began to falter, their advance payments grew smaller and smaller, and today, even if you get a traditional deal with one of the Big Three, you may not receive an advance at all. Indie authors began to hit the best seller lists, offering some real competition and traditional publishers began to take indie publishing more seriously. Suddenly, there was a new route past the gatekeepers. If your book hit the best seller lists, a traditional publisher might come knocking with an offer, even if you weren’t looking for one.

And why should independent authors go trad? With only small advances being offered, if at all, and less and less of the marketing efforts being put forth by trad publishers, there really was little reason to go with traditional publishing unless you were just after the literary prestige. An indie author, who did the work to publish and market their own work got to keep more of their royalties than the 40% traditional publishers were offering.

With the rise of aggregators, such as Lulu, Smashwords, and Draft2Digital, independent publishing became even cheaper for authors, and traditional publishing continued to look less and less appealing, at least to me. So today, authors can do it all. Write the story, publish the book, and market it, all by themselves. That’s a lot. So, of course, they can also choose to outsource any of the work, depending on how much they want to spend. Because it’s all up to them. The author is the boss and the choices are all theirs.

Now we are faced with more choices about where to sell our books. We can publish exclusively, placing them on Amazon in Kindle Unlimited, but to me, that’s putting all your eggs in one basket. We can publish wide and place our books on retail sites around the globe. Or we can sell direct from our website, start a store on Shopify, or sell through crowd funding on Kickstarter.

Many authors use a combination, selling direct or crowd funding and placing their books on retail sites, as well. This is what I perceive to be the future of book marketing. Direct sales are how authors can make the most money from their books, but retail stores have the visibility to get their books discovered.

Why do I say these are the future of book marketing?

Come along as we explore the pros and cons, below.

Direct Sales

Direct sales are the best way to go if you are able to set up a store on your site. Having an onsite store would be a bigger expense from the hosting site, in order to give your site monetary capabilities, so it is more expensive initially. I’m still struggling to get enough sponsors and donations to cover the annual costs of the Writing to be Read site on the current level, so the upgrade must wait, although this would be my preference for selling my books.

Why?

One big reason is authors who sell through direct sales cut out the retailer middle men and get to keep more money from each sale. So, when you can buy a book directly from the author’s site, you are supporting that author more than the person who buys the same book through a retail site. Because they don’t have to pay 30-70% of their royalties out to retailers, the savings can be considerable.

Authors may have to do all the marketing for their books, but these days, that may be the case even with traditional publishing, so why not do the work and reap the reward?

The Kickstarter Platform

Kickstarter is a crowd funding platform that can be a great way to finance all your creative projects, if done right. They keep a small percentage of each project that is successfully funded. So, while you are giving them a small cut of the royalties, they handle the collection and distribution of monies, and provide promotional materials in return. Plus, it gives.you access to the crowd funding community, which is big on creative projects and accustomed to supporting them. And if it doesn’t fund, it doesn’t cost you anything.

I like running Kickstarter campaigns upon launch because I can offer books at less than the prices set on retail sites, and exclusive offers, such as signed print copies or special edition books, which aren’t available anywhere else, so my readers benefit, too. I can also offer package deals, combining two or more books.

For those same reasons, it pays to support your favorite authors on the Kickstarter platform because you can get some really awesome deals on some really great books. I not only sell on Kickstarter, but I’m also a supporter of the projects of others. You can show your support, usually for as little as $5. It’s a great way to get books and other exclusive merchandise, and of course, I wrote reviews for all the books I bought to further show support for the author.

International bestselling author, Kevin J. Anderson, runs at least two Kickstarter campaigns per year, with some astounding results. Likewise, Dean Wesley Smith and Kristine Katherine Rusch run several each year. As does author Russell Nohelty. But you don’t have to be a big name to run a successful Kickstarter campaign. I’m the proof of that. To date, I have run three successful campaigns and only one that failed to fund.

The Rock Star & The Outlaw 2: Double Visions Campaign

If you’d like to support this author and help to fund my current campaign for The Rock Star & The Outlaw 2: Double Visions, drop in via the link below. We have great deals on Books 1 & 2 of the Time Travel Adventure Series, including signed print copies, plus posters and goodies bags available only through the Kickstarter campaign. All support is greatly appreciated.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kayelynnebooth-wcp/the-rock-star-and-the-outlaw-2-double-visions

About The Rock Star & The Outlaw 2: Double Visions

In 1887, LeRoy is stuck, bringing trouble down on those around him. Sissy is kidnapped and he’s the only one who can save her.

She wakes up in 2030, in a future very different to the one she knows, one in which she may not have  been born. Amaryllis will stop at nothing to find LeRoy fix what she messed up in the past.

She and a version of Monique which is different from the one she grew up with travel back to 1887 to try and make things right.

Add two time travel regulators from the future who are after the time module, and things begin to get wild.

When the time loops are crossed, things change, but not the way Amaryllis intended and pretty soon, everybody is seeing doubles.

If you’d like to know more about the second book in the Time Travel Adventure Series, we’ll be running a book blog tour March 23-27, 2026, right here on Writing to be Read. Join us for readings and guest posts about the inspiration and creation of this series, and a great giveaway of digital and signed print copies.

About Kaye Lynne Booth

For Kaye Lynne Booth, writing is a passion. Kaye Lynne is an author with published short fiction and poetry, both online and in print, including her short story collection, Last Call and Other Short Fiction; and her paranormal mystery novella, Hidden Secrets; Books 1 & 2 of her Women in the West adventure series, Delilah and Sarah, and Book 1 in her Time-Travel Adventure series, The Rock Star & The Outlaw, as well as her poetry collection, Small Wonders.

Kaye holds a dual M.F.A. degree in Creative Writing with emphasis in genre fiction and screenwriting, and an M.A. in publishing. Kaye Lynne is the founder of WordCrafter Quality Writing & Author Services and WordCrafter Press, where she edits and publishes two short fiction anthologies and one poetry anthology every year amidst her many writing projects. She also maintains an authors’ blog and website, Writing to be Read, where she publishes content of interest in the literary world.

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This segment of “Writer’s Corner” is sponsored by the Robbie’s Inspiration blog site, where you can find ideas on writing and baking with hostess, Robbie Cheadle.