Category A Day in the Life of…

Sep 23 2026

Help Us Finally Go Home

I never imagined I’d be asking strangers for help, but today I don’t know where else to turn. After spending nearly twenty years trying to rebuild our lives after Hurricane Katrina, we were finally three days away from moving into a new home on the family land where five generations of my family lived. Then everything fell apart. The loan never funded, the home was never delivered, the savings we’d spent years building were gone, and today we’re living in a house we can no longer afford to keep up with.

I’m not asking for help to build my dream home. I’m asking for help because we’re running out of options. For years we’ve patched, repaired, and held this house together with everything we had. Today, the damage to the bathroom, hallway, and one bedroom remains, additional repairs are still needed in the kitchen, and we simply don’t have the savings left to make them after losing everything we invested in the home that was supposed to get us out of this situation.

For me, asking for help has been one of the hardest parts of this entire journey. Like so many people, I kept believing that if I just worked harder, saved a little longer, or found one more solution, we could get through this without anyone ever knowing how difficult things had become. But after exhausting every option we could think of, we’ve reached the point where staying silent won’t solve the problem. Sharing our story isn’t easy, but it’s the only path we have left.

How We Got Here

To understand why we’re asking for help today, I have to go back to August of 2005.

When most people hear “Hurricane Katrina,” they think about the devastation along the Mississippi Gulf Coast or in New Orleans. We lived nearly 100 miles inland, so we never imagined the storm would change our lives the way it did. But the winds were stronger than anyone expected, and our family home suffered severe roof damage that allowed water to pour inside.

That house wasn’t just where we lived. My grandparents built it, my father grew up there, and it’s where I was raising my own children. Five generations of my family have called that land home, and at the time, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Like so many other families, we turned to our insurance company believing they would help us rebuild. Instead, our claim was denied. We suddenly found ourselves in a position we had never expected to be in. We had a home that had been badly damaged, no insurance money to repair it, and nowhere else to go.

So we stayed.

We patched what we could, lived with what we couldn’t, and kept hoping we’d eventually find a way to save our home. What Hurricane Katrina damaged in a single day, time slowly took from us over the years that followed. Every new leak, every section of water-damaged wood, and every repair we had to put off because we simply couldn’t afford it brought us one step closer to losing the place where my family’s story began.

Leaving was never part of the plan, but eventually we reached a point where we could no longer keep up with the repairs. After holding on for years and doing everything we could to make it work, we had no choice but to walk away from the only home we’d ever known.

Starting Over After Katrina

By 2011, we knew we couldn’t stay in our family home any longer. The damage had become more than we could realistically repair, so we purchased a foreclosed house that had been sitting vacant for seven years. It wasn’t the fresh start we’d dreamed of, but it was one we believed we could rebuild.

We weren’t looking for our dream house. We were looking for something we could afford.

The only thing within our budget was a foreclosed house that had been sitting empty for nearly seven years. It needed a tremendous amount of work, but compared to what we were leaving behind, it gave us hope. We emptied our savings, rolled up our sleeves, and spent the next year and a half repairing walls, replacing flooring, painting, and fixing everything we could ourselves. Every paycheck seemed to go right back into that house.

Little by little, it started to feel like we were finally getting our feet back under us. We knew it would never replace the home we had lost, but it was ours, and for the first time in years it felt like maybe life was beginning to settle down.

Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last.

About three years ago, we discovered a water leak that had been quietly causing damage we couldn’t see. By the time we found it, the floor in one bedroom, our only bathroom, and the hallway had already sustained damage. Despite doing everything we could to stop the damage and make temporary repairs, the damage remains because we haven’t had the resources to complete the repairs.

A year later, we noticed the floor beneath our refrigerator beginning to sink. The work that section of the kitchen needs is beyond what we can currently afford, and we know we’ll eventually have to address it. We haven’t had running water in our bathroom sink for years because the plumbing had to be disconnected, and every time another part of the house needs repair, we’re reminded that we’re running out of time.

We’ve spent years working on this house together because that’s what we’ve always done. We fix what we can, save for the next repair, and keep moving forward. But we’ve reached a point where patching it together isn’t enough anymore. The problems are bigger than what we can solve ourselves, and each new repair seems to uncover another one behind it.

Why This Land Means So Much

People have asked why we’ve fought so hard to get back to our old family home and the homestead we were forced to leave behind. The answer is simple. It’s home.

Long before I was born, my grandfather cut timber from that land to build the house where generations of my family would live. Like so many families in rural Mississippi, they made a life with what they had. My grandparents raised cattle, pigs, and chickens, grew vegetables to feed the family, sold the extra produce when he could, and took on odd jobs to help make ends meet. My grandmother sold eggs every year to pay the property taxes. They didn’t have much, but they always found a way to make it work.

By the time I came along, the house had changed some, but it was still home. There was a front porch with wooden columns where our family gathered, birthday parties were celebrated, and stories were shared. There was a Black Jack tree in the front yard with a swing hanging from one of its branches, and three giant oak trees lined the road leading to the house. Those aren’t just details I remember—they’re part of the picture I still carry in my mind whenever someone asks me where I grew up.

One memory has stayed with me more than any other. Somewhere, there’s a photograph of me when I was about four years old. I’m standing in the front yard wearing little brown pants my mom had hand embroidered with flowers, an orange tank top, and holding a plastic rake while pretending to help rake leaves. My hair is blowing in the wind, and behind me is the old green house with its original front porch. I’ve searched every family photo album I can find hoping that picture will turn up. I’d give just about anything to find it again because, to me, it captures what “home” looked like before everything changed.

There are other pictures taken years later, after my dad remodeled the porch, added siding, and painted the house. Then there are the pictures after Katrina. Today, there isn’t a house there at all.

When we prepared the property for the manufactured home, we had to remove what remained of the original house because it had already collapsed. The new home was going to sit in exactly the same place where the old one had stood for generations. I’ll never get back the house I grew up in. I know that, and I’ve finally made peace with it. The people who made it home are gone, and no matter what we build there, it will never look exactly the way it did when I was a little girl standing in the yard with that plastic rake.

For a long time, I thought what I missed was the house. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that isn’t entirely true. I miss the people who filled it with life. I miss family dinners in my grandmother’s kitchen, birthday parties on the front porch, afternoons spent outside until the sun went down, and a time when home simply felt safe. That house represented my past, my childhood, and a huge portion of my life.

I know I can’t get any of that back. The house is gone, and so are many of the people who made it home. But the land is still there. Every time I stand on it, I’m reminded that while I can’t recreate the past, I can build something new for the future.

That’s what this has always been about. Not trying to rebuild the house I lost, but creating a place where my children and, one day, my grandchildren can make memories of their own on the same land that gave me so many of mine.

A Plan That Finally Gave Us Hope

For years, going back to our family land was something we talked about as “someday.” We wanted to believe we would make it home eventually, but it always felt like something far off in the future. Meanwhile, the repairs on the house we were living in had become more than we could realistically keep up with, and eventually we had to stop talking about someday and make a real decision about what came next.

A few months before we began looking at manufactured homes, I drove past the old place for the first time in nearly eight years. I had stayed away because going back was simply too painful. Every visit left me grieving what had been lost, and after a while, I couldn’t keep putting myself through it.

When I pulled up that day, the property was almost unrecognizable. The circle driveway that once went around the house had disappeared beneath years of overgrowth and young pine trees. Tires and trash had been dumped on the land by people who had come onto the property without our knowledge. The growth was so thick that I couldn’t even see what remained of the house, even though it had stood only about a hundred feet from the road.

I sat on the side of the road and cried for nearly half an hour, thinking the same thing over and over: My home is gone.

I think that was the moment I finally understood that we couldn’t keep putting everything off. We’d reached the point where we could no longer keep up with the repairs on our current home, and patching things together was no longer a long-term solution. We had reached a crossroads. We could invest tens of thousands of dollars into a house that continued to need major repairs and commit ourselves to staying there for the rest of our lives, or we could put that same money toward starting over on the land we had always hoped to return to.

Neither option was easy, and we didn’t take the decision lightly. More than anything, we needed a place we could build a future. But if we were going to take on another mortgage and invest that much money into our future, we had to ask ourselves where we wanted that future to be.

A manufactured home seemed like the quickest and most practical way to make that happen. It would allow us to stop investing in a house we could no longer keep up with and finally return to the family land we’d hoped to call home again for nearly twenty years.

Before we signed anything, I asked every question I could think of because we couldn’t afford to get this wrong. My biggest concern was whether we would have to sell our current home before moving into the new one. That wasn’t possible because, despite its condition, it was still the only roof over our heads.

I explained that concern more than once, and each time I was assured it wouldn’t be a problem. We were told we could move forward without selling our current home first, and hearing that changed everything. For the first time in years, we stopped talking about “someday.”

We paid the down payment, worked through the design process, and chose the floor plan that was supposed to become our home. While it was being built, we cleared years of overgrowth from the property, prepared the home site, and completed everything we were asked to do so we would be ready when delivery day arrived.

A few days after the clearing and dirt work were finished, we went back to clean up brush and start making plans. We talked about where we might put a shed, where the carport could go, and what the property would look like once we were finally living there. I took a video that day, and when I watch it now, what stands out most is how happy I was. Because for the first time since we were forced to leave our home after Hurricane Katrina, I had hope that I was going to finally get to go home.

It was the first time since we moved away that going back didn’t end with me crying. For once, I wasn’t standing there grieving the home that was gone. I was looking around and imagining the life we were about to build. For the first time in nearly twenty years, “someday” had become real.

Three Days Before We Were Supposed to Go Home

Three days before our scheduled delivery, my phone rang. I still remember exactly where I was when I answered it because, even now, it’s one of those moments I can replay in my mind as though it happened yesterday.

The person on the other end told me the loan wasn’t going to fund after all. If we wanted to move forward, we would have to sell our current home first.

I was stunned. From the very beginning, I had explained that selling our current home before moving into the new one wasn’t possible. Despite its condition, it was still the only roof over our heads, and that’s why I had asked that question over and over before we ever signed a contract. Every time, I had been assured it wouldn’t be a problem. We were told we could move forward without selling our home first, and we trusted that information when we made one of the biggest financial decisions of our lives.

Now, everything had changed. The home had already been built. Our family land had been cleared. The homesite was ready, and we had spent months preparing for the day we thought we would finally move home. After all of that, we were being told something completely different than what we had been told from the beginning.

The manufactured home was never delivered. We lost the money we had invested, and the property we had worked so hard to prepare sat empty. We weren’t simply back where we had started; we were in a worse position than before because the savings we had planned to use to build our future were gone, and the home we thought would finally take us there never arrived.

Looking back now, I think what hurt the most wasn’t just losing the house itself. It was losing the certainty that, after nearly twenty years of waiting, we were finally going home. For a brief moment, “someday” had become real. Then, with a single phone call, it became “maybe” all over again.

I wish I could say we immediately found another solution, but we didn’t. Instead, we spent the next several months trying to figure out what options we had left and whether there was any way to salvage the future we had worked so hard to build.

Trying to Find Another Way

After the manufactured home fell through, we weren’t ready to give up. Our first instinct wasn’t to ask for help—it was to find another solution. We started making phone calls, asking questions, and looking at every option we could think of to see if there was some way to move forward.

One of the first places we turned was our bank. We hoped there might be a way to borrow against our current home so we could make the repairs it desperately needed or recover enough financially to start over. Instead, we learned that wasn’t going to be possible. It wasn’t the answer we were hoping for, but it forced us to face the reality that our current home could no longer provide a path forward.

We also reached out to family to see if there was any way to bridge the gap. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option either. Like so many families today, everyone has their own financial responsibilities, and no one was in a position to help us with something this significant.

When those options didn’t work out, we didn’t stop trying. I continued working my full-time job while also taking on a second job, putting every dollar I could toward rebuilding what we’d lost. We’ve cut expenses where we can, postponed anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, and continued looking for any realistic path that would allow us to solve this on our own.

The problem has never been a lack of willingness to work for what we need. The problem is that the repairs have become more than we can realistically keep up with.

Today, the damage to the bedroom, bathroom, and hallway remains. The repairs to our kitchen floor are still beyond what we can afford, and we still don’t have a working bathroom sink. Every month that passes brings another repair we simply can’t afford to make. If this were simply a matter of working longer and saving for another year or two, that’s exactly what we would do. But after everything we’ve experienced over the past several years, we honestly don’t believe we’ll be able to keep up with the repairs for another year or two.

That realization was one of the hardest parts of this entire journey. Asking for help was never part of the plan, and it’s not something that comes naturally to either of us. We’ve always believed in working hard, solving our own problems, and doing everything we could with what we had. That’s exactly what we’ve tried to do every step of the way.

This fundraiser isn’t about avoiding the hard work. It’s about running out of time. That’s ultimately what brought us here.

Where We Are Today

Today, we’re still living in the same house we’ve called home since 2011. We take things one day at a time, but the reality is that we’re living in a home that continues to require repairs we simply can’t keep up with. It’s not the future we imagined for ourselves, but it’s the one we’re doing our best to navigate until we can find a way forward.

The good news is that we’re no longer starting from the beginning. We’ve been able to save enough for a down payment, and we finally have a realistic path toward returning to our family land. Our goal has never been a large or elaborate home. We simply want a safe, modest place where we can finally return to the family land and begin rebuilding our lives after everything that’s happened.

What we’re asking for isn’t help paying for the home itself. We’re asking for help covering the essential expenses that remain before we can finally move home. Those include installing a septic system, connecting utilities, purchasing essential appliances, and adding the storage space we’ll need after downsizing from a 2,000-square-foot home that has held more than thirty years of our lives.

Because the new home is much smaller, there simply won’t be room for everything we currently own or for a dedicated workspace. I work a full-time job, a second job that I do from home, and I’m currently working toward my PMP certification through online classes. Having a small outbuilding that can serve as both storage and a home office will allow me to continue earning that second income while also giving us a practical place to keep the things that won’t fit inside the house. It’s not about adding extra space—it’s about making a smaller home work for the life we’re already living.

Every donation, no matter the size, will go directly toward those remaining costs and help us move one step closer to finally going home after nearly twenty years. We’re not asking anyone to buy us a house. We’re simply asking for a little help getting us across the finish line after losing the savings we’d spent years setting aside for these final expenses.

If you’re not in a position to donate, we completely understand. We know times are difficult for many families, and simply taking the time to read our story means more than you probably realize. If you feel comfortable sharing our fundraiser with others, that kindness alone could help us reach someone who is able to make a difference.

For more than twenty years, we’ve done everything we knew to do. We survived Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt a neglected foreclosure with our own hands, saved for years to return to our family land, and when that plan fell apart, we kept looking for another way. This fundraiser isn’t the beginning of our effort—it’s the final piece of a journey that’s been decades in the making.

If you choose to be part of that journey, whether through a donation, sharing our story, or simply keeping us in your thoughts and prayers, please know how deeply grateful we are. Your kindness gives us something we’ve held onto through every setback we’ve faced: hope.

Our dream has never been to build a perfect house. It’s simply been to go home.

To everyone who has taken the time to read our story, shared our story, or donated, thank you. God bless!

If you’d like to learn more about our journey, we’ve been documenting parts of it on TikTok here: Nikki’s Homestead.

View Our Fundraiser on GoFundMe

Apr 24 2021

How Scammers are Ripping Off Authors Now More Than Ever – And Why You May Fall Victim

“The only constant in business and marketing is everything is constantly changing.”

These were the words my professors told our class in both my intro to business and intro to marketing classes in college. I have found no truer words in all the classes I took while studying for my business management degree. If someone out there insists that they know how something in business works every. Single. TIME, without fail, I have one word for you – run.

Anyone who has spent more than two minutes in any type of business, but especially in the publishing industry, knows the one thing which never changes is nothing ever stays the same. There is no one-size-fits-all marketing plan that will work 100% of the time for 100% of the authors for 100% of all fiction books, without fail. Anyone trying to tell you different doesn’t know as much about business as the average college student still sitting in Intro to Business/Marketing 101. Veteran authors know you have to go back to the drawing board every single time, every single book, every single launch. Just like we have to have our fingers on the pulse of the next hot new trope, we also must be able to roll with the latest marketing strategies that get results.

Not sure if someone is trying to sell you snake oil or if they really know what they are talking about? Take a look at how they are actually making their money. Does the bulk of their income come from selling courses and other services that target authors, or are they making their money off doing the thing they are teaching? If you are not sure, then ask yourself these two simple questions.

Question 1: If this course worked so well, and they were able to truly turn anyone into a bestselling author making thousands of dollars every month, then why would they want to share that secret? Why wouldn’t they just do this wonderful business strategy they are peddling to produce their own bestselling books and make thousands of dollars like they claim they can do for other authors?

Question 2: Why would they also then create more competition for themselves in the publishing industry by helping other authors hit bestseller status?

The long and short of it is – it simply doesn’t make economic sense to sell an earth-shattering money-making secret and simultaneously create even more competition for yourself in the market, unless the way they are making their money isn’t by using their own advice, but selling said advice to other authors while promising them the moon (and a six figure income to boot).

This brings me to an important case study I came across when I began researching the best ways to market an indie book. Everyone knows what a “success story” 50 Shades was (and still is, considering we recently got the same book from a different POV which also sold millions of copies). However, what most people don’t know (and what EL James has tried to scrub from the internet but hey, screenshots are forever) is James used a combination of gorilla marketing and a huge pot of her own money to basically buy her way into bestseller status. Let’s take a look at the backstory.

Some people may not be aware, but before James became a world renowned author, she was relatively famous in her own circle of readers on a Twilight fanfic site. That’s right, 50 Shades started out as fanfic. But you probably already knew this. The book was initially called Master of His Universe and after prompting from readers, James self-published the book. She coerced her former fanfic fan base into nominating and then voting for the book in one of Good Reads’ many lists and contests that used to frequent the site where it ranked very well. The book would later be picked up and published by an Australian press (a basement built “publisher” put together by fellow fanfic writers and cohorts) before Vintage Books (now owned by Random House) offered her a contract. (there is a lot of interesting details to this story and I highly recommend doing some in-depths search if you can still find anything from the old archives. You’ll want to look for articles written between 2010 and 2013, anything written past that time frame mentions little to nothing about the origins of how all this really came about) According to one case study I came across, James spent somewhere in the neighborhood of $100K of her own money on marketing and promoting the book. If rumor serves, I believe the deals for the first movie was also signed, or at least in the works, when she was signed on with VB.

Now, James will vehemently deny spending this much money. In her own words, “I didn’t even have $100K!” But as I said, the internet is forever, and try as she did to scrub this sordid backstory from the catacombs of the past, those of us who were lucky enough to see the articles and the original posts, etc. know the real story. Fanfic and bitchy attitudes aside, there is still a correlation between this story and what it has to do with selling and buying marketing courses in the publishing industry. As far as that goes, there is a direct correlation between this story and what it takes to actually make money as an indie author. That in itself is no big secret – you have to have money, and lots of it. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

In a nutshell, if you toss enough money at it, you can literally make any book into a bestseller. And while I used 50 Shades as an example, there are plenty of other books out there where authors have tossed even more of their own money into marketing their books in order to crack bestseller status. I came across one romance author who admitted to sinking $1K a day into Amazon ads just to keep her books ranked in the top 10K overall on Amazon. It’s the age-old adage where if you throw enough shit at the wall, something will eventually stick. To be blunt, publishing has turned into a pay-to-play industry where only authors who have a hefty marketing budget are able to gain any real traction. And this is a tiny little tidbit which many marketing gurus and those peddling author courses that promise to turn you into a $100K/year earning author conveniently leave out of their own marketing pitches.

I’m sure there are marketing coaches out there reading this shaking their heads muttering, “But I show authors exactly what to do and exactly how to word their ad campaigns and exactly where to marketing/promote, and the exact set of keywords they need to use on the Amazon ads to make them effective. If they follow my directions and do what I tell them then they are guaranteed to make big money!”

And what happens when the book doesn’t make the author lots of money? What is the excuse then? Will the coaches then claim it’s because the book didn’t get a proper edit or have a good enough cover or wasn’t a very well written novel? I’m sure they can sell you all those services. And do they even bother to tell authors their books aren’t up to par? What if they don’t? Then who is at fault when authors shell out thousands of dollars on these courses only to find out they didn’t have a marketable product to begin with? Where does the money pit end?

Let’s look at the flipside of that argument. What if their book has everything going for it? What if it has a killer cover, edited within an inch of its life, perfectly formatted, and written to market yet it still fails to become a bestseller? The author does everything to the letter but the book still fails to perform. Who is at fault then? Is it because the author didn’t have the money to spend on marketing (something which isn’t their fault and definitely should have been disclosed prior to signing up for any of these courses), or is it because the one-size-fits-all marketing plan just flat doesn’t work? Either way, it disproves every sales pitch used in order to get authors to sign up for their courses. You can’t very well claim that it’s just the course/advise/service that is earning an author $100K/year if they also have to sink $100K/year into various marketing avenues. When it comes down to it, any book with that kind of marketing dollars behind it will have a fairly decent ROI, as 50 Shades has proven time and again.

Do you see where this is going? There simply isn’t any way anyone can claim to make any author into a bestseller making thousands of dollars a month, no matter how “fool proof” the courses are. When the books fail to thrive, and there are many which will, it begs of the question of where the fault lies.

Thus there are two very important lessons to learn which lies at the heart of marketing courses – the first being how much time and money will ultimately be required for an author to find something that truly works for them (throw enough shit at the wall to see what sticks) through trial and error, even when following step-by-step instructions on what to do. (I wrote another article on this very thing – the three “missing ingredients” or “secret sauce” these courses do not tell you about) And second – when the book fails to thrive, where does the blame fall? Even when the book is up to par, and an author follows everything to the letter, where does the fault lie? Is there a money-back guarantee? .

This brings me to a few important questions to ask prior to signing up for any course.

1.      Is there a money-back guarantee? If the book fails to perform, regardless of the reasons, is there a money-back guarantee offered? If not, or if they offer other of their services instead of a monetary refund, then you may want to seriously rethink their offer.

2.      How much money will you need to spend on marketing and promotions after you have completed their courses and/or services? If they have a very specific marketing plan in place, then they should know how much money their plan will require to at least get it started. If they can’t give you an answer on how much money you will ultimately have to shell out to make their plan/course/services work (it just depends on your book and the genre and the keywords you use, but if you follow my instructions you’ll start seeing a ROI in no time!), then you may want to give pause.

Trial-and-Error should not be a part of their sales pitch – they should be giving you hard data that clearly shows how much money their average author is spending on marketing when using their courses/services, how many sales that marketing strategy is generating, and how much net profit the author is seeing. Claims like creating thousands of authors making six-figures or that they have thousands of happy authors or pointing you to a bunch of reviews of their services should not ever be offered up instead of hard data. If the claims can’t be backed up by hard numbers, then you may want to pass it on by. And never, ever, let the company harass you, guilt you, or threaten you. Above all else, do your due diligence and research the person/company across the internet, including keywords such as “scam” and “scandal” with their names.

It should go without saying any company wanting to bully, harass, or threaten you or your career, who otherwise act in an unprofessional manner online, even in private groups, should not warrant your money or time. If you even suspect the company of doing this, even in the past, it should be an automatic hard pass no matter how many raving reviews from authors. It’s not worth your hard-built career chasing after rainbows which may end up getting your butt scorched by the lightning that comes out of the thunderstorm. The quickest way to taint your name is to have it associated with a person or company who has been known to scam authors, be in legal negotiations/have been sued, who use threats/bullying, or have otherwise been involved with, suggested, or used black hat/immoral business practices to further their careers or the authors they are selling services to.

3.      Does it require signing a contract or NDA? Again, there is literally nothing anyone can teach you that isn’t already out there on the internet somewhere, in some form, if you know where to look and how to research it. Anyone who thinks otherwise and tries to force you into signing some type of contract or NDA or calling any of their ideas “trade secrets” is an immediate red flag, especially if the contract gives the company/person the right to cancel their services without a refund because the author was “suspected of leaking secrets” or otherwise discussing or disclosing any of the information. This is a loophole which gives the company a legal way to pull their services without a refund and without prior warning.

Imagine shelling out thousands for a marketing course only to have the company ban you from receiving any more of the information because they suspected you had “leaked” something from their course. Short of getting a lawyer, there is little recourse for authors so again, it bears repeating for you to do your due diligence and be wary of any company who makes you sign any type of NDA or contract to gain access to courses and marketing information. And if one does require it, have a lawyer look over it before signing it. The last thing you want to do is sink your life savings into these courses only to be banned from receiving the rest of the course/service you paid for because of something in that agreement.

Right now I know there are multiples of you shaking your head mumbling, “But what about the ones who truly want to help authors out of the kindness of their heats?” To this I’m going to say, “Bull. SHIT.” And here’s why. If they were really interested in helping authors they wouldn’t be charging for their services. I’m not saying charging for things isn’t good, but let’s not sugar coat this. We’re all adults, and whether you want to admit it or not, making money off of authors has become big business in recent years. No one is doing this because they legitimately want to help others make money; they are selling these types of courses and services for one very simple reason: to make money for themselves. And that’s fine, but thanks to an influx of authors over the years because of the ease of self-publishing, it now means scammers and snake oil peddlers have a never-ending supply of authors who do not know any better, who do not do their due diligence, and are easily taken in by anyone claiming they can make all your writing dreams come true. While it is a sad fact, it is still a fact nonetheless. So again, ask yourself – if their advice works so well they claim they can easily make you rich as an author selling books, why aren’t they using this advice themselves and getting rich off of selling their own books? You know the old saying – those who can’t do, teach.

And them not being am author themselves? Do I even need to go over why that’s a bad idea? Would you want your car worked on by someone who wasn’t actually a mechanic? Would you want someone teaching you how to fix your car who isn’t actually actively a mechanic? Then why fork over thousands of dollars to someone for a course in how to become a six figure author when said person isn’t making their money by following their own advice?

For all you authors out there, be you a newbie or a veteran, take heed and use caution. If something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

** Chances are, I’ve hit a very big nerve with this article. Authors who were taken in by these companies and individuals who don’t want to admit they made a mistake, scammers who are pissed that I’m shedding light on this sordid topic and will begin to do damage control, and readers who may feel they were taken advantage of by buying into a hyped up book that turned out to be just another average story written by an average author. I don’t write these articles for anyone but my fellow authors as a warning. So long as we are quiet about the dark side of this industry, it allows the scammers to thrive and spread like a cancer. By not talking about it, by not making others aware, we are indirectly supporting such companies and scammers. If nothing else, do your due diligence and stay away from any suspect company or person. Even if you are not shouting names from the rooftops, at least warn your closest author friends who may not do as much research as is required to fully steer clear of the sharks swimming in the waters.

I also know there are going to be those out there who wonder what my qualifications are that makes me such an expert on all this. 30 years. That’s my expertise. I’ve spent 30+ years in this business. I have spent decades researching authors, marketing courses, promotional strategies, and everything remotely related to the publishing industry. I have been both traditionally and independently published. While I may no longer be a “bestselling” author, I have been an Amazon international “bestseller” several times over the years. What I haven’t done, however, is lost thousands of dollars on sketchy author courses and marketing classes. I did research, I compared the information available in the classes to what I could find for free online, and I asked questions of my fellow authors, many of which who were more than happy to share their own research, experiences, and techniques. I researched the hell out of companies and classes, I scoured old archives, articles, and message boards (those message boards are a treasure trove of “author beware” information on companies and individuals), and no matter how great a company looked, there was always some dark secret that surfaced when digging deep enough. Take my years of wisdom or don’t. Just don’t be surprised if you choose to ignore my wisdom and end up with the short end of the stick. **

Mar 9 2021

Are Book Marketing Courses Worth the Money?

What can I do to sell more books? This is THE question every author drives themselves crazy asking. So they dive into marketing and promotions, reading up on what to do, how to do, where to do, watch countless videos, and they still aren’t ranking or making bank. Eventually, and inevitably, they turn to marketing “gurus” to help them attempt to turn a profit. There are two very high-profile “gurus” who come to mind. But, you are probably wondering, as I often have, if these courses are worth the money.

Before dishing out cold-hard cash, I invite you to read this article.

This is a very interesting read, and echoes what I have discovered for myself through years of research, trial, and error. Please read the article and then come back to this post as I would like to further break down what the author points out.

First, I’d like to bottom line this for you. There is literally nothing Mark Dawson, or any of the other gurus promising to turn you into a 6 figure making author, can teach that you can’t already find for free on the internet. Honestly, marketing isn’t that big of a secret. The hardest problem is hammering out a marketing plan and executing it. Sure, there are author coaches who will “coach” you on how to create a marketing plan, they may even hand you a one-size-fits-all marketing plan. They may offer you dozens of services to help you sell more books. But no matter how good your plan is, no matter what courses they offer or what services they offer, if you don’t have the three “missing ingredients” (or as I like to call them, what the gurus don’t want you to know) that the author of the above article talks about, you won’t sell books. And even if you do have all the missing ingredients, you still won’t make money.

Wait, what? How can I have an exceptional marketing plan, all the missing ingredients a.k.a the “secret sauce”, and still not make any money? It’s because of the way these gurus teach you to sell books. It’s the “dog chasing its tail” mentality. Meaning the only way to keep making sales is to keep funneling more and more money into the machine, keeping it greased so your book stays in front of people. Unfortunately, the entire industry has become filled with authors who are taught to “publish fast” and sink as much money into marketing as they can get their hands on. It’s just not a viable marketing tactic. But why, you may ask? Let’s break it down.

The above article talks about whether or not Mark Dawson’s Advertising for Authors is worth the money. The article could have been written about any marketing guru – the root analysis is basically the same regardless of who is claiming they can turn you into a 6-figure earning author. What the article uncovers holds true no matter the coach, the guru, or the marketing plan.

The article talks about three “missing ingredients” that Mark Dawson’s course does not directly mention. The author mentions she specifically asked Mark Dawson what was the “secret sauce” and his replied was simply “there isn’t any.” The author goes on to list three “ingredients” that Mark’s plan doesn’t include or even mention. Whether Mark, or any other publishing marketing coach wants to admit to it, these ingredients are the “secret sauce.” Or as I like to call them, the information they don’t want you to know. And these ingredients are universal regardless of the marketing course, who is teaching it, who the PR or marketing company is, or what service is being offered. Let’s get into those missing ingredients.

The last ingredient the article talks about is “a good book.” While I agree to a certain extent, if 50 Shades  and the plethora of unedited books have taught us anything, it’s that if you toss enough money into something, you can sell it. Unfortunately, all these marketing courses promising to make you a bestselling and high-earning author have created a market drowning in subpar books. Sure, many of them will tell you if you don’t have a really good book, then it won’t sell. What they actually mean is – if you are not writing to market with the same formulated plot and book cover that looks just like all the others in your genre, you probably won’t be able to sell the book.

Honestly, it’s not that difficult to see why they push this approach in their courses and services. Your book has to be eye-catching, and it has to be marketable. The easiest way to market is to compare it to something already hitting it big in the industry. After all, no matter how great the book is, no matter how well-written, if it’s not a genre or trope currently selling in the industry, you are going to be hard-put to sell it.

Now, here’s the catch on writing to market, which I hinted at earlier in this post.  When you are writing to market, it means you are pushing out the same tired plot line with the same look and narrative voice you can find in hundreds of thousands of other books already on the proverbial bookshelves. It’s considered “disposable entertainment”, and you won’t keep readers around long writing like that. Let’s take a further look at this.

After your book is ready to launch, you activate your launch/marketing plan. It goes well, you make sales which means you make money. But your readers want a new book now. Actually, they wanted it five seconds after they finished reading the one you just launched. They really wanted a new book already sitting on their Kindle ready to go as soon as they finished this last one. So you are forced to crank out another book. Then you have to launch it, which means you shove all the money you just made off the first one into the next one. And thus the cycle of the “dog chasing its tail” continues. You can’t create unique plot lines when you have to crank out a new book every month or two. So you “write to market” because the books sell, but in order to keep those books in front of readers, you have to keep funneling all your money into each new book. To put it bluntly, these gurus turn you into a publishing farm, where you crank out the same plot line repeatedly, producing book after book that looks like, reads like, and has the same tired plot line as thousands of other books. And the only way to keep them selling is to funnel thousands of dollars into marketing.

This is the problem with writing “disposable entertainment” books, or those that are written to market. You don’t keep the same readers for more than a book or two before they have moved on to another author. Can you make money at this? Yes, absolutely. But are you getting to keep any of it? No, and that’s the part these gurus don’t tell you. One of many moving parts they don’t want you to know about. They don’t tell you that in order to make $100K a year, you will shovel $99,900 of it back into writing and launching more books. It’s not money you get to spend on bills or vacations or whatever it is you are expecting to pay for out of those earnings. You have to keep “feeding the machine” to keep that money flowing.

The only way to stop this endless cycle is to strive to become a legacy author, or a “household name.” Think about it. When was the last time you saw Anne Rice, Stephen King, JK Rowling, or any of today’s greats launching a new book every few weeks, or every month? Most of them only release once or twice a year. And in Rice’s case, she can easily go years without producing a new book. But all of their books are unique, their plot lines unique, their world building unique. When you read one of their books, you immediately know you are reading their work because their narrator voice is also unique. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

The second missing ingredient, another part of the “secret sauce”, or another moving part of the machine the gurus don’t want you to know that the article talks about is money. This is the #1 item which usually trips up most authors. And we’re not just talking about the money you spend on the course or the coaching. What no one wants to tell you is after you spend thousands of dollars on their courses and teachings, you then have to come up with even more money to implement any type of marketing campaign. There are literally hundreds of sites to market to, Amazon ads, Facebook ads, BookBub ads and deals … the list goes on. And it can take a lot of money before you see any results. Because the results aren’t usually immediate.

Authors shovel a lot of money into the campaigns and the ads and the marketing, and then it could be months before they see any results. It’s a gamble, no matter who is doing the teaching or how “tried and true” their plans and services are, it’s still a gamble with your hard earned money that you have to spend on these launch campaigns and services. If you don’t have the money to piss away on it, you could easily lose thousands and still not see any results.

Even if the plan/course/whatever they are teaching/giving you has worked for thousands of authors before you, there is absolutely no guarantee that it will work for you. It’s literally a case of throw enough shit at the wall to see what sticks, as the author of this article points out. Simply put, there are no guarantees. You could have the best written book on the planet, it could be written to market, you could have the best cover art ever seen, shove a half-mil into marketing, follow your guru’s courses and plan to the letter, and the book still bomb. This entire industry is a gamble, and if you don’t have the money to play the game, then you can forget about ever getting ahead in it.

The last missing ingredient is time. And this is another big one. The article talks about time to read through the courses, learn it, and then time to execute everything you have learned. But it’s not just that. It’s also the time it takes to write the book, to edit the book, to get the book ready. And then it’s the time you have to wait to see if all your efforts will actually pay off.

For those of us who are still working full time jobs, we often don’t have the time required to adequately launch and market a book, especially not on our own. And if you do hire a 6 figure author coach or some other guru, you aren’t just letting them take over. You still have a lot of time and energy you will have to put into launching the book. Unless you are hiring a complete PR/marketing firm who will do it all for you, you will still spend a lot of time learning about and executing a marketing plan. Even when hiring a “one-stop shop” company who handles the entire marketing and launching of the book from beginning to end, you still need to be very involved in the process to find out what works and what doesn’t. Otherwise, you could spend thousands of dollars on useless services that just aren’t helping.

This brings us back to the age-old question – how do I sell more books … when I don’t have a shit-ton of money to shovel into marketing?

Oddly enough, the short answer is very simple. The execution, not so much. I have a business plan already in place, and yes it would take several hundred dollars to execute. Unfortunately, I simply don’t have the money to spend right now. But the short answer? That is super easy, and it’s something authors already do, they just don’t do enough of it to make it work.

So what is this magic bullet? Networking. But not like you are networking right now. As I said, I have a game plan in place, I have a marketing plan in place, but what I don’t have is the team of fellow like-minded authors who are willing to join me on the journey of breaking out of the cycle of publishing books with meager or no sales. It requires networking with authors who are good writers, who produce a quality product, who understand how important editing and good graphic art is to the equation. It’s about networking with authors who understand it takes a lot of work, who are willing to put forth the effort and time, but who may not know how to leverage the knowledge they have gained, or who simply do not have hundreds of hours a week and thousands of dollars to spend. If you can find those types of authors, you can help turn the tides of the industry, those who are team players and willing to work with others, those who can follow directions and are willing to learn and help each other. You find your tribe, and yes, you can do all the things the gurus teach, minus the large guru price tag.

Aug 16 2019

Nikki’s Gone Crazy $0.99C Sale!

Been waiting to finish out the Before the Sun Rises series? Putting off finishing up the Sweet Seductions series? Well the wait is over. For a very limited time ( I might change these prices back tomorrow, you just never know) every single book in my catalog is just $0.99 So if you’ve been wanting to catch up on anything Nikki related, today is the day to do it! Grab my entire collection for less than the cost of a really nice meal at TGIFriday’s.

Jul 30 2019

New 2019 Signing Events Added

Nicola has added two new signing events to her schedule for 2019, including CWC’s AuthorCon2019 in August and RidCon2019 in September. Be sure to check out the 2019 Events Page for details on each upcoming appearance.