2025 What I Learned This Year

In December, I took some time to reflect on what I've learned this year. I posted a summary video to my YouTube channel, but in case you want more details or prefer reading, here is a detailed outline of all the things I've learned this year. If you'd rather watch my video, click here.

• Self-publishing agencies vs doing it all yourself: It is a ton of work to do all of the work yourself (editing, formatting, publishing) but you get a ton of control over how things look and can go at whatever pace you want. It is important to set deadlines for yourself and to stick with them though. Otherwise, you could be editing and formatting forever.

• The costs for everything are ridiculous. I can do a breakdown in another post/video if anyone is interested.

• Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP): I learned how to go through the KDP process. It's pretty simple and easy to do, but there are sometimes glitches that you have to work through. I think that happens with any kind of technology though. I'll do a separate video and blog post on this process.

• The general process of self-publishing: I learned the entire process of self-publishing (doing it all myself) this year. It was definitely easier when I first published with a self-publishing company as they did all the work of getting it out there. But I grew a lot in several areas from doing it all myself.

• Areas of growth

o Knowledge: I increased my knowledge in every area. If you watch my YouTube video on this, I focus on this point a bit more. My improved knowledge of editing, formatting, and publishing actually increased my writing knowledge. After publishing 3 books, I wrote the first draft of a romance novel in 6 weeks and I feel that it was better because I was using what I had learned from the entire process. I really recommend doing it all when you are first starting out because you learn so much from it. However, I know that can be overwhelming and difficult. It's okay to use a self-publishing company, it's just very beneficial to your writing to do everything else.

o Literally everything but especially the process and formatting: These were two areas I was the weakest on. I learned so much about them this year, but I still have a lot more to learn.

o I feel like I better understand my style, voice, and general method/ process of how I write. I will probably do a whole video and/or blog on this coming up this year (2026).

o I have known that the first draft is just a draft, but I feel I've gotten better at accepting this and just writing. If you're trying to write but can't seem to finish, either you don't know enough about your story to write it or you're too busy trying to make the final draft instead of the first draft. The goal of the first draft is to get the general story down on paper. Even if that means typing out a summary, just get it all down. Don't worry so much about the perfect dialogue or descriptions. More on this on another video/blog coming up!

• Areas to focus on improving

o Marketing/ social media consistency

o Keeping up with logging expenses

o Formatting

o Figure out how to keep printing costs lower without cutting my books in half

o Figure out formatting with pictures and text together like for a children's story or comic

• Goals for 2026

o Will do a video with more specifics

o General: do more marketing by putting myself and my book out there more; get a good publishing cycle well established (I'm starting to have one, but I want to refine it)

o New laptop 💻 ✨️

o Publish Red Planet and 1 other book, finish posting Stories Have Power

o Be more comfortable with putting myself out there or at least more comfortable with being uncomfortable

If you have something you've been putting off because you're waiting for the "perfect" moment, I challenge you to start it by the end of January 2026. Subscribe for encouragement as you go about it and so you don't miss updates on my upcoming books.