As an independent author, I go back and forth on whether to publish my books exclusively with Amazon through their subscription program, Kindle Unlimited, or go wide. I’m still a small prawn in this business, and with the market being oversaturated in terms of the romance genre, I’m happy and grateful when my books do get read.

For the past few weeks, I’ve also gone back and forth about the state and future of my writing. Write more? Write faster? Write under another pseudonym? Stop writing altogether? I did a lot of introspection. I also read up on other writers’ experiences with their uncertainties on whether to continue writing or not. I also read. I read a steamy paranormal romance that was predictable, but enjoyable, with great chemistry between the H/H and not too angsty.

The older I get, the more I realize I would rather have a great love story, an “us” against the world, rather than an angst-filled story of the hero and heroine struggling against one another AND the world.

I also read an MMA (Mixed Martial Arts) series that inspired a different kind of hero and heroine, as well as a story line of a feisty, independent couldn’t-care-less heroine paired with a brooding and overprotective MMA fighter. He fights his attraction for her every step of the way because well, you know, his world is too dangerous for her. What he doesn’t realize is she comes from a far more dangerous world than illegal underground fighting.

I’m thinking of writing this untitled story under a different pen name. National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo is coming up, and I’m feeling up to the challenge of churning out a rough draft of 50,000 words in a month.

But back to the conundrum of exclusive versus wide. I’ve decided to put my books back into wide distribution. I’ll be going direct with Nook, Kobo, and Google Play, and will use Draft2Digital, a book aggregator, for other sales channels such as Apple Books.

Going direct with Nook and Kobo will give me the chance to take part in their author offerings. For example, I can run a BOGO on Nook. With Kobo, I can elect to have my books in their subscription service for ninety days, AND I don’t have to be exclusive with them, a win-win.

My books will also go out to library services, such as Hoopla. My audiobook, Stay, is already available on Hoopla. I checked out my own audiobook to listen to while I cooked. How cool is that?

Being an independent author also allows me to bring my old books up-to-date. I decided to change up the books in my Willowbrooks Series. The series will have a new name. The books will have more modern covers. And I’m changing POV from third to first person for If Only and What If, to be in line with Love, Actually (Red Meets Blue). Both books were written in third person, past tense. It’s a huge undertaking changing tenses as well as adding more to both stories (novella length at 20-25k words), but I hope what I’ve learned since the books were released seven to eight years ago will show in the updated versions.

More to come, including cover reveals and the new name for the series.