AMA - You Ask, Bethany Answers!

Hey, loves! We’re back for another round of AMA where you ask me all your burning questions, and I do my very best to answer them. As a reminder, my AMA form isn’t the place for Outtake requests, as I do have a form for those and I post it every Friday whenever I write and post an outtake on the blog for you. So, please put that there so it doesn’t get deleted on you.

Do you have a question for me?

Awesome.

Drop it into my form HERE and I will get to it as soon as I can.

Onto the questions!

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1. Hey BK<3 so I remember reading a clip from a upcoming story of yours a while ago. It was in a bar and the female bartender was talked down upon by a guy talking to the male lead and he got angry but didn’t show it. Do you remember this and if so when is this coming out!!! Need. lol thanks.

Hi there – you have your details confused a bit, I think. I have all of one heroine that served drinks behind the bar, and that was Haven, in the bar/strip club she owned. In Duty, I believe it was, Haven was the female lead bartender and the hero’s father and uncle came to the bar to spy on her because she was an “outsider” to their life. She was talked down to by the hero’s uncle, Dante, but the hero wasn’t there. Just his uncle and father. “He” didn’t get angry and not show it because “he” wasn’t there. She got angry and didn’t show it.

So again, I think perhaps you have some details mixed up about what it was. You can find that except on the blog, or in the book, Duty.

Hope that helps.

2. I love all your books but especially the Marcellos. Have you considered possibly writing an additional book for Lucian and Jordyn? Dante and Catrina and Gio and Kim? Sort of like the timeline of Catherine and Cross (which I absolutely LOVED)!

Hi there.

And the simple, short answer for this question is no I haven’t considered writing them anything beyond what I have written for them. If they wanted more books, then I absolutely would have written them already, but all those original generation characters are quite quiet in my mind, and only seem to enjoy coming out to play for their kids’ stuff, or the occasional outtake.

I’m sure that’s not the answer you were hoping for here but that’s just how my muse tends to work. If there’s a book to be written, I’d have written it by now … or I would say yes, in the future. But for this, the answer is no. Sorry. 


1. Hi Bethany, big fan! I was just wondering what advice you would give to future authors? More specifically about publishing. Should they look for an agent or publishing company or do things on there own? Thanks for taking the time out to answer!

Hi there.

Full disclaimer here before I answer this question – I am an indie author with both small press contracts, and one Big Five contract. I like neither the small press nor the Big Five contract because while they taught me a lot of different things in the publishing space, they did nothing for my career.

They didn’t build my reader base, make me real money, or bring in my readers, or write the books, for that matter. I have done literally all that myself. And I did everything they did for me and more by doing it myself when I went fully Indie, which means Independent, and started publishing my own books. And the biggest difference in being Indie is that you do it all yourself – you hire the editors, you hire the cover artists, formatters, whatever. You put the book up for sale. You do the marketing, the promotion … you hire companies to promote your books, or someone to run ads on them, or you do it all yourself. When you’re with a publisher, usually one that isn’t a small press, they do that stuff for you and pay you a very small portion of your overall royalties in return. Whereas with Indie, you make far more on royalties but pay out a lot of money to make the books happen and get them to market.

Now with all that nonsense out of the way, this is what I want to tell you for advice: the way I do things and how I made something out of my publishing career does not and probably will not be the same way you make a go out of yours. Just because I managed to make money doing it my way does not mean it is the secret recipe for success for you. In fact, my way probably wouldn’t work for anybody but me. Because very little about my career was built upon marketing and promo, but on the way I treated my readers and how I handle my business. They are attached to my stories, my characters, my outtakes … the world I created for them to get lost in, for them to find people they relate to within the pages of my books.

Your books are your own – and so you need to make sure what you’re writing is what your readers want to see from you, simple as that.

Indie might not be best.

Traditional publishing might be easier.

There is not a better either/or option here. It is what would work best for you when you look at your overall goals, and what you want. Do you want to see your books on supermarket shelves when you shop?

Trad publishing is the way to go.

Do you want to write books, connect with an audience, and make a career of it regardless of lists and book placement in stores? Indie might be the way to go.

Are you scared of putting in the work? Trad will help with that.

Are you find with learning how every facet of this business works? Indie works for this.

There are a lot of variables.

My way doesn’t have to be yours.




All right, loves, that’s all for this week. Until the next!