Helpful Tips for Authors: The Real Millionaires

Hi! Dominique Gibson is back with another post, this time of a different nature. So, for the last two weeks or so, I have been thinking a lot about my finances and my future when it comes to being a toddler teacher at a daycare center. As of right now, I have no savings, no investments, no stocks, bonds…nothing. For the longest time, I have been depending on my job as a way of financial security but as I learned by going through both the recession in 2008 and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, it caused me to open my eyes and to really think about my finances on a broader scale. So, I decided to set a goal for myself: I want to become a millionaire in five years and a billionaire in ten years.

I knew that in order for me to achieve this goal, I had to start small. So, the first step I decided to do was a search on what the millionaires are reading in order to become millionaires. The first book I decided to do that peaked my interest was The Millionaire Next Door by David Bach. I have been reading this book for at least two weeks now and it has been very eye-opening. I really don’t want to give too much away considering I want more people to read this book (Especially writers who want to achieve the same goals I want to right now) but I want writers to think outside the box when it comes to gaining financial wealth.

I have read about many writers who live solely off of writing full-time. While I am more than aware that this is the ultimate dream for most writers, I would highly suggest that a writer should explore other options when it comes gaining financial freedom. Depending on one source of income is always a mistake. Writers need to diversify their skills in other areas or even in other genres to stay afloat in the publishing industry. The same holds true for your finances as well. If you really want to achieve the financial success you want, I highly recommend you start with this book. It’s free on Amazon through Kindle Unlimited. I will provide the link down below if you are interested in learning more about this book.

Another reason why I decided to get serious about my finances is because I didn’t want to depend on my book sales to earn a living. Publishing is fickle. Amazon may be the most popular platform for know but things might change in the future (Take a look at MySpace and Facebook as an example). I want to be able to write freely without having to worry about my finances in the process. I still want to continue to self-publish my paranormal romance in the future. I have also tinkered with traditional publishing as well in the future.

As I previously said, the link for The Millionaire Next Door is down below.

See you soon.

The Millionaire Next Door

Dominique Gibson

Dominique Gibson knew she wanted to be a writer ever since she sat down at her plastic table and wrote her first book out of sheer boredom at eight years old. Years later, she decided to go get her Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia College Chicago. She is obtaining her master’s degree in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. When not writing, she is busy teaching two year olds at a daycare center in Skokie, IL. For more information, check out her website at http://www.dominiquegibsonauthor.com.

My Funding Options as an Author: Part Two

Hello! Dominique Gibson is back with another post. This post is a continuation of the other post I did a couple of weeks back about my funding options as an author. If you want to check out my first post I did when it came to this subject, you can click on the link down below to take you straight there.

My Funding Options as an Author

This is part two of this post. In this post, I will show you what my professor’s response was to my different options and her views about my response:

Professor’s Response

Dominique,

You sound so much like me! I’m not an “all my eggs in one basket” kind of person. I thrive knowing I have multiple income streams at any given time. This is probably a result of having own my own business for more than 10 years and realizing how one major incident (like the pandemic – or in my case the great recession) can totally devastate a small business that’s been going well for many years. 

You look like you’ve really considered as many varied options as you can. When possible see what you can double dip. For example, if you are teaching, gather than knowledge into your How-To book or it class packets/videos that people can purchase from your website. 

Some advice about consulting – interview your clients before taking them on. This will help you avoid the PITA clients (Pain in the Ass) who typically are the ones who complain the most, ask for the most revisions or help or free work on your part, then refuse to pay the bill, trying to negotiate for a lower price. They are not worth the time, angst and effort and will almost never provide a good recommendation for you to other clients. Make sure clients know you have the option NOT to work with them if you so choose, and create a clause for it in your contract. This has saved me on more than one occasion. Additionally, always have a signed agreement. Each party should know what they can and cannot expect from your services in writing.

My hope is by sharing this, I will be able to help other writers consider their options when it comes to sitting on that one dream of being a full-time writer.

See you soon.

Dominique Gibson

Dominique Gibson knew she wanted to be a writer ever since she sat down at her plastic table and wrote her first book out of sheer boredom at eight years old. Years later, she decided to go get her Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia College Chicago. She is obtaining her master’s degree in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. When not writing, she is busy teaching two year olds at a daycare center in Skokie, IL. For more information, check out her website at http://www.dominiquegibsonauthor.com.

Helpful Tips for Authors: Maverick Services

Hi! Dominique Gibson is back with another post. Since I have been checking out this service for awhile, I decided to post this on my website for other authors who might be interested in obtaining this service to promote their work.

Maverick Services offer a range of services for authors who need help in the design and the promotion of their books. They offer services such as editing, book design, book covers, trailers, and even the opportunity to turn you book into an audiobook.

For more information about their services, check out the website down below for more details. See you soon.

Maverick book services

Dominique Gibson

My latest addiction: Before Summer Ends and The Sea Glass Cottage

Before Summer Ends Book Cover

Hello! Dominique Gibson is back with another post. So, it’s been a crazy weekend. While I was able to get some stuff done when it came to working on my thesis (I finally managed to make it to my 10,000 word word count for the second round of my thesis submission). There seemed to be this desperate urge to read this certain book since I ordered it from Amazon a couple of weeks ago. If you checked out my newsletter from last month, I gave out a glowing review for the last book I read, which was Blame it on the Billionaire by Naima Simone. Now, I am reading both The Sea Glass Cottage by RaeAnne Thayne (See below) AND Before Summer Ends by Susan Mallery (See Above). These two books have become my latest addictions so far and I have to admit I love them both. The more I read these stories (Even though one is a category romance and one is a single-title romance), the more I realize that my contemporary voice fits within these two books.

The Sea Glass Cottage book Cover

These two books have really resonated with me when it came to the different characters and plot lines these two ladies developed within their stories. I won’t go much into detail considering I’m still reading the book but as I am reading these stories, I can’t help but wonder if my contemporary stories fit more for the Harlequin Special Edition line vs. Harlequin Desire. For the longest time, I thought my voice fit very well with Harlequin Desire considering how much I loved reading Brenda Jackson’s novels and how much I loved reading about a rich sexy billionaire sweeping me off my feet (and in a lot of ways, I still do, hence the sexy men from The Truson S.E.T. Series) but just because I love reading Harlequin Desire novels doesn’t mean I am able to write one.

Yes, I have realized that I love reading them but my writing voice wouldn’t love writing them. Why? Because those 50,000 word short novels I have been reading for years only focuses on the hero and heroine of the entire story and not much on the secondary characters unless it’s about the hero and heroine’s relationship. I tried writing a story like this and I just wasn’t comfortable writing it without adding the secondary characters to the mix. That is why there are a lot of secondary characters in my paranormal romance series as well. I try my best to add in secondary characters who contribute to the main romance plot as much as possible as the hero and heroine try to sort out their feelings while battling criminals along the way.

I have thought long and hard about this when it comes to which genre(s) I want to write besides paranormal romance and the only thing that would make me just as happy as writing paranormal romance is writing contemporary romance. Since I have decided that Harlequin Desire doesn’t fit within my writing voice, I have found out that Harlequin Special Edition might be. The word count for Harlequin Special Edition is 60,000 words instead of 50,000 words and it has more leeway for secondary characters in the mix, which is the kind of style I enjoy.

So, maybe it’s time for me to sit down and look over my submission that I submitted back in 2019 to the Harlequin Mentorship program, write it over (Both the outline and the chapters within itself), hire a beta reader for my work and finally send it off to Harlequin in the near future.

Before that happens, there are a few projects I have to finish first…

Well, that’s it for today. If you’re interested in buying the books I mentioned earlier, click on the link above where the highlighted titles are and it will take you to the Harlequin website. Otherwise, I will see you soon.

Dominique

Dominique Gibson knew she wanted to be a writer ever since she sat down at her plastic table and wrote her first book out of sheer boredom at eight years old. Years later, she decided to go get her Bachelor’s Degree from Columbia College Chicago. She is obtaining her master’s degree in Creative Writing from Southern New Hampshire University. When not writing, she is busy teaching two year olds at a daycare center in Skokie, IL. For more information, check out her website at http://www.dominiquegibsonauthor.com.

Update: Courtney’s Redemption

Hi! Dominique Gibson is back with another post, this time involving the update on the progress of Courtney’s Redemption. I have officially reviewed the first draft of this book and I will admit that I have a lot of work to do when it comes to rewriting this story. But at least I have used a lot of sticky notes to see where I needed to improve on. Boy, this is going to be one long process but I am loving every minute of it.

See you soon.

Dominique Gibson