Being an author isn’t just about writing anymore. Authors — both independently and traditionally published — have to wear a lot of hats: writer, marketer, administrator, content creator, personnel manager, and operations manager, among others. With so many roles to juggle, how do they balance the time it takes to actually write books with the business of reaching readers? What do writers do on a daily and weekly basis?

BookBub surveyed more than 500 authors in the BookBub audience to ask about how they actually spend their time — see what they had to say.

The post What Does a Writer Actually Do? BookBub Surveyed 500+ Authors appeared first on ePubGuru.com.

Squirrels don’t talk much but have a lot to teach us about protecting our data. Their compulsive scatter hoarding behaviors don’t seem to accomplish much because they don’t, really. Their value is in what they prevent. Just as no squirrel ever went hungry for lack of midwinter snacks, so no one who keeps media discipline need ever sit alone with a blank stare for having lost all their data.

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Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) have developed rapidly in the last few years, and now represent one of the most controversial topics in the publishing world. We regularly survey our partners to understand how they’re using different platforms and technology and to share those insights with our audience, and we recently did the same for AI. We heard from over 1,200 authors who told us how they’re currently thinking about AI in relation to their work.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Most critics of AI, including creator platforms who are taking steps to suppress the use of AI, are responding to the emotional backlash without having taken it upon themselves to consider the various uses of AI.

• Many unscrupulous creators use AI to deceive their audience.
• This can take the form of deepfake political news.
• Others use AI to generate fictional stories as though they were true, such as short-form interspecies animal stories, whose conventional counterparts have attracted more than their share of views and likes. Many of these conventional stories are either true or they are untrue. We are given only the word of the storyteller to suggest they are true. The use of AI at the present state of the art to tell these stories only makes it obvious to most that they are untrue.

• Generative AI is also used, on the other hand, by storytellers of fiction or nonfiction who would rather not spend a small fortune on paid artistry services to illustrate their stories.
• This includes me, for example, at GoYrOwnWay.com in my use of generative AI to illustrate historical accounts such as Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, better known as Plato’s Atlantis, which unfortunately did not come down to the modern era with original illustrations.
• Many, many other nonfiction creators use generative AI occasionally to dress up their narratives with engaging illustrations or animations. In general, there is no suggestion nor reason to believe that these uses of AI are deceptive. This includes illustrations in eBooks, such as those in the second edition of Back Up Your Data!, soon to be available on this site.

Critics and creator platforms, however, riding the momentum of the emotional backlash against AI and unknowingly captured by the transparent groupthink bubble that surrounds it, continue to disparage and restrict its use without considering its perfectly legitimate uses.

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The post How Authors are Thinking About AI (Survey of 1,200+ Authors) — BookBub appeared first on ePubGuru.com.

Think about the last time you read a book you didn’t want to end. That longing for more is a significant part of the appeal of reading. A series allows readers to spend more time in a world they’ve grown to love, with characters they’ve become attached to. It’s like catching up with old friends. There’s comfort in returning to a familiar setting, and excitement in seeing how characters evolve over time.

Do it on YouTube too!

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The post How to Plan a Marketable Fiction Book Series — BookBub appeared first on ePubGuru.com.

I don’t usually wander from the business of writing because that’s often the biggest challenge for artistic types who would prefer to spend their time writing to navigating the technical challenges of publishing. Most of this site is about the latter, and not about writing per se. This post, therefore, is the first of its kind on this blog, as it pertains to the craft of writing. It also pertains to audience and platform targeting, however, and in that sense is about integrating your craft into the present-day realities of business and marketing.

BookBub has several Featured Deals categories that fall under the speculative fiction umbrella. You may find yourself wondering not only which category is the best fit for your book, but also how to maximize your chances of getting selected for a Featured Deal based on what our editors and readers are currently looking for. As BookBub editors, we’re here to help by taking a deep dive into four of our speculative fiction categories: Horror, Supernatural Suspense, Fantasy, and Science Fiction.

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The post BookBub Trends: Tropes Readers Love in Speculative Fiction appeared first on ePubGuru.com.