Write On The River

Write On The River A nonprofit organization supporting writers at all stages in North Central Washington and beyond.

08/26/2026

Well, no matter how you slice it, it's Wednesday! And that means it's time...

Hello!
Welcome to a regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.

On Wednesdays we’ll be posting some sort of writing tip. A suggestion, a technique, maybe just a bit of inspiration. These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today’s post comes from VR Tapscott, author of fifteen books including the Jane Bond humorous science fiction series, and the Lacey & Alex urban fantasy series.

Kindle Unlimited from the author viewpoint.

So, I see this a lot: “Why should I be in Kindle Unlimited, you don’t make anything by giving your books away for free.”

Now, if that was true, that would be true.. ;-)

I’ve had my books in Kindle Unlimited since 2018, and I’ve been a KU member since 2014. At this point I have something over 8 million page reads in Kindle Unlimited. That translates to something like 25,000 to 30,000 books ‘sold’ through KU. And that’s double or triple the numbers of ‘books’ I’ve sold outright in paperback or eBook format.

Something those numbers of books translate to is lots of ratings on Amazon. Obviously the more books you sell, the more ratings you get. I haven’t really looked at totals, but book 1 of series 1 has almost 1300 ratings, and book 2 and 3 have nearly 1000 ratings each. From that I’m guessing around 4000 ratings for both series.

People who read their books (and by that, I mean YOUR books) in KU are at least as likely to leave a rating and often a review.

So, if people read your books and buy them outright, you’ll only sell 30% of the books that you would if you had them in KU. It’s tempting to consider, since the reality of the deal is that you make MORE on each book sold outright than you do on each book ‘sold’ in KU. However, if you only sell 30% as many books, you’re not making any more money, and if you sell two or three times as many books (on KU), that means more reviews and ratings, which are gold to Amazon.

However, as I mentioned last week, I very seldom buy books outright. If I go visit the book page of a new author and find they’re not in KU, unless there’s a personal reason to buy that book, I won’t do it. I made the decision to buy my reading material through KU, and I still hold to that.

Oh, and one thing? Maybe this is just a pet peeve of mine, but I might see their first book in KU and grab it. I’ll love it. I’ll go back to get book 2, and it turns out that ONLY the first book is in KU. The rest of them are $6 each. It pains me to not get the next in series, but that $30 for their next five books is just not available.

A lot of the above is personal experience. Obviously your mileage may vary.

The single most important thing you can do? Release consistently and as often as you can. Amazon will push books from authors it can count on to release product at least a couple three times a year. I’ve had some medical issues the past year and a half, and my production has gone from three books a year to zero since April of ‘25.

And as always, the disclaimer - this is just my opinion. Make up your own mind from your own data! :-)

Next week I’ll talk about EITHER “Some legal questions on being an author” OR “Should I self-publish or get an agent and go traditional.” If I wind up with the second one, I’m in hopes I can get an agent to write up a short explanation as to why I’m all wet for being so happy with self-publishing. Doesn’t mean either of us is wrong, just two different viewpoints.

Until then!

(update!) Elena Hartwell of Allegory Editing is willing to play along, so I'll be posting our point/counterpoint in two weeks!

Hello!Welcome to a regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.Most Wednesdays we’ll be posting some sort of w...
08/19/2026

Hello!
Welcome to a regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.

Most Wednesdays we’ll be posting some sort of writing tip. A suggestion, a technique, maybe just a bit of inspiration. These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today’s post comes from VR Tapscott, author of sixteen books including the Jane Bond humorous science fiction series, and the Lacey & Alex urban fantasy series.

TLDR: Kindle Unlimited is a great deal in my opinion, and you should take a look at it if you have a Kindle.

Ever hear of Kindle Unlimited?

Most authors probably have, but I thought I’d explain and, as per usual, give you my opinions.

Kindle Unlimited (KU) is a part of Amazon. If you join KU as a reader, you pay a set amount per month ($11.99 as of this writing) and in return you get to browse through literally millions of books. You can ‘borrow’ up to 20 at a time, and keep them for as long as you wish. If you’re a voracious reader as I am, KU is almost an imperative.

On average, I read at least 13 books a month. Obviously, it would be cost-prohibitive for me to buy 13 books a month. Even at $5 per book, I’d be looking at $65 per month for my book habit. Paying $12 is a great deal, in my opinion. However, even if you only read TWO books a month, it’s still pretty much a break-even proposition. And if you get a wild hare and want all 9 of the Jane series, well, there you go. And it won’t cost you a penny more than that $12 per month. In fact, you get a 30 day trial period to try it out. If you cancel, you don’t even pay the $12 for the first month. Of course, you have to have a Kindle to take advantage of this deal.

Now, I’ve read comments in the forums saying “Oh, but I want to support my favorite author, I can’t get their books for free!”

The neat thing about it is, you ARE supporting your favorite author. Amazon pays the author for every page you read of their book. Pretty snazzy. I’ll go into the author side of Amazon next week.

Back to reading, though. Consider, if I read 13 books a month in KU, I’m supporting 13 authors a month. If I bought two books a month outright (or let’s be generous, call it three books), I’d be supporting THREE authors.

Now, obviously Amazon is making some money on this, or they wouldn't be doing it. Last month Amazon took in SEVENTY ONE MILLION dollars from their KU program. However, the bulk of that goes back out to authors. I have no real idea (though I’m sure you could find out) how much, but you readers supported your favorite authors to the tune of $71,000,000 bucks. Thank you!

Now, one of the neat things for a reader is that you can ‘sample’ an author’s work without being on the hook for the dollar amount of a book that turns out to be crappy. Or pardon me, perhaps ‘a dissatisfying experience’ is a gentler way to say it. You haven’t paid 4, or 5 or 12 dollars for that book. You got it as part of your KU subscription.

So, that means you can try out new authors with impunity. If you read a few pages, hate it, and return it, you’re not out any more dollars for that. This makes it SO much easier to take a chance on a new author. Or a new genre, or just something different that you’d not really want to pay for, but are willing to give it a try for free.

And yes, all sixteen of my books are in KU. :-)

Next week we’ll talk about what KU looks like from the author’s side.

08/13/2026

Hello!
Welcome to a somewhat regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.

Every now and then, we’ll be posting some sort of writing tip. A suggestion, a technique, maybe just a bit of inspiration. These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today's 'tip' comes from VR Tapscott.

You may or may not have noticed we haven’t posted a tip here lately. I have to admit it’s because I’ve run out of ideas to talk about!

BUT, here’s a new one anyhow. I cribbed the idea off another website, of course. However, beyond the title, it’s all mine for better or worse. This is evidently a Neil Gaiman quote - “Follow the White Rabbit”.

Now, in the Alice story, Alice is more or less minding her own business when the white rabbit comes barreling along, whinging about being late. Alice follows him into the rabbit hole, and the rest of the story is history. Literally, or at least literarily.

So, how do we use that bit of wisdom?

Obviously, this is just my interpretation, but I take it to mean ‘follow your ideas wherever they may go’.

For instance, I had an idea about possession. Suppose that you could go into a store and go through a list of available talents. You’d choose a talent, like maybe tax preparation. You’d go into a room and be ‘treated’ and the ghost of a tax prep lawyer would take over your body. You’d sit in the background while this person did your taxes, then they’d de-possess you and go on to the next person.

Of course, the real story, as in where every story goes - what happens when someone doesn’t want to give up their host. Or a customer writes a bad check and is possessed by a ghost that works as free labor.

So, find your rabbit hole. It might be something silly, like ‘what do seagulls talk about’, or it could be very serious, like ‘what actually goes through someone’s mind just after they are k1lled’.

Getting ideas is really easy. Right? :-)

And I mean that truly. Almost everything in your day could be a story idea. What if chemtrails were real? What if all the stuff on your desk attained some kind of critical mass that created a black hole and sucked you in? What if, in the future, everyone was named Steve?

Basically,. I think every idea has a story built in. And it’s just a matter of figuring it out. The neat thing? That single idea could be used a the basis for paranormal, romance, science fiction and everything else.

Here's to good ideas!

08/02/2026

I found this very interesting and inspiring. Dean Koontz on writing and how he does it, overcoming a lack of self confidence.

Yes, Dean Koontz, lack of self confidence.

Location in comments...

07/16/2026

Hello!
Welcome to a regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.

Every Wednesday we’ll be posting some sort of writing tip. A suggestion, a technique, maybe just a bit of inspiration. These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today’s tip comes from V.R. Tapscott:

Long Shorts

I think they call them board shorts, or something like that. I’m old, I don’t know these things.

BUT!

We talked about short story ideas last week. The neat thing about short stories is that very often, they’re the germ of a regular length story. If the short story resonates with you, then you naturally (or at least I do) start thinking about what happened before and after the short story.

I wrote a short story titled “The Pirate’s Apprentice”. It involved a writer who was trying to write a pirate story, and was being blocked by the ‘worldwide AI” that corrected every story and item written in the entire world. This AI had apparently expanded its purview to editing every fiction book being written, correcting the writer as they were writing. Even dialog.

Here’s a tiny snip:

“Lay on ye miserable curs, fight f’ ye lives, ye bunch o’ lily livered swine. If ye be loosin this fight, I be followin ye down tae Davey Jone’s locker meself tae make sure ye don’t get away with bein a pack o’ malingerers.”
Chuck shook his head in disgust as he read back over what was now on his Writer screen. “Fight men, fight! If you don’t, I’ll follow you and make sure you’re never allowed to be lazy.”

All that aside, it begs the question, how did the AI get in control of all the world’s writers? Why does it edit like it does? Who told it to do this? Is there something that can be done about it? If the AI is taken down, what would happen to the world, since this AI is running basically everything?

So, the little bit of an idea from a short story gives you VOLUMES of things to consider, to think about, to sit up til midnight and obsess over.

This right here is really the beginning of all 9 (soon starting 10) Jane Bond books:

The drop had to be at least 400 feet, and I couldn’t quite see if the green stretch below was trees, moss covered rocks, or slimy water. Shouts and gunshots behind me, and one shriek of a bullet past my head, made up my mind - I jumped.
As I dropped, my past life flittered through my head - had I remembered to pick up cake frosting at the store? And cat food, dammit, Jandice went through it like it was going out of style but never seemed to get fat.

So, who is this person? Why is she running from bullets? Why would she commit su***de by jumping off a 400ft cliff? Why in the world is she thinking about cake frosting and cat food while she’s dropping to certain death? And most of all, why is she thinking about her cat getting fat and being petulant about it?

There’s a whole STORY out there, waiting. All you need to do is tease it out of the wilderness and bring it into the clearing.

It’s not that hard, really. You’re walking down the street, and you see in front of you a woman stepping along. She’s wearing black high-heeled boots and a short black skirt. She has nylons on. See, already we’re wondering. Is she going to a meeting? Is she going home after a meeting? Why is she wearing nylons? Doesn't she know they went out of style years ago? She’s walking with a jaunty step, so she’s probably not heading home after a long day's work. Taking it a step further, she has a black, closely buttoned vest with a jacket over it. She has long black hair. We’re building a character here. We already know enough to write a short story about her, just from that description. Could she be on the way to the courthouse just down the street? Is she a lawyer? Maybe an alien in disguise. They have their real four legs and 3 arms glamored so no one knows what they really look like, but their next-door neighbor’s dog vanished without a trace, beyond someone seeing the ‘lawyer’ with the dog just before it went missing.

Happy Writing!

07/08/2026

Hey, it's Wednesday... guess what that means??

Hello!
Welcome to a regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.

Every Wednesday we’ll be posting some sort of writing tip. A suggestion, a technique, maybe just a bit of inspiration. These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today’s tip comes from V.R. Tapscott:

Writing Shorts

No, this isn’t about putting your shorts on to write, but being summer it might be appropriate. Get you in the mood to get moving?

But what I’m thinking more of is short stories. I often write short stories, some of them very short. I’m kind of fond of microfiction.

I’m not sure why, but I seem to have an obsession with Halloween. There’s something about it that gives me inspiration. I seem to write a short story or two every Halloween. I suppose at some point I’ll gather all of them up and publish my own anthology.

Now, it’s not limited just to Halloween. I have several Christmas stories, and others that are inspired by various holidays through the year.

Writing short stories is a great way to practice story writing in general. It’s quick, it’s concise, and you get practice in making sure all the elements of the story are there. The beginning, middle, and end are all tied together, and you can see the entire story in the palm of your hand, so to speak.

For that matter, you don’t even have to wait for a major holiday to be inspired by. Every month has a lot of ‘minor’ holidays, and surely one or more of them will be an idea in the making.

For instance, yesterday was World Chocolate Day! Does that inspire you to consider writing a short story about some oddity that happens as a result of World Chocolate Day? You can come up with something completely silly and write about it. Like a future world government causing rioting and unrest by declaring the official World Chocolate as being Hershey’s, or Swiss, or whatever.

The main point is, you can be inspired and get a bit of experience from just about anything as you look around you. The color of a leaf, the coarseness of newly applied ‘chipseal’ on the road, a tiny ding in your windshield that appeared completely mysteriously…

Give it a whirl. You might be surprised at how FUN it can be!

07/02/2026

Hello!
Welcome to Write On The River’s Facebook writing tip.

These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today’s tip comes from V.R. Tapscott:

Write what you know?

I got this off the Author Forum on Facebook:

'Write what you know. That should leave you with a lot of free time.'
Howard Nemerov.

I thought it was pretty funny, but it also got me thinking. “Write what you know” to me means that I should write about things I have experience in. Things I’m familiar with. But, to some extent I wonder if that’s as true as it once was.

Now, the reason I mention that, is because pretty much everything is available on the internet now. If I want to know why something is what it is, I simply check a search engine, and it shows me the relevant data. If I want to know some detail about an item, I’ve found the best place to check is Yelp. Yelp will give reviews of whatever it is that I’m asking about and that will give me a ‘real person’ view of that particular question.

So, in the end, I can find out about pretty much anything. This means I no longer have to ‘write what I know’.

However. Is this really true? Is looking up facts and figures on something the same as ‘knowing’ it?

I guess in some ways it is. However, just like AI, looking up facts about something, and actually ‘living in it’ is totally different.

I can look up the exact color of a 1957 Corvette, but to actually run my hands over the paint, to feel the texture of the fiberglass, to see with my own eyes the ‘flavor’ imparted by the actual item - it’s totally different.

And, strangely enough, I just found an interesting thing. I wrote ‘to feel the texture of the metal’ and then in looking back at it after, (also called ‘editing’, imagine that), I realized that a Corvette isn’t made of metal, it’s made of fiberglass.

And that’s exactly the kind of thing that would trip up an author writing about something they know nothing about. Those tiny details that some of your readers will see and be angry about.

So follow my advice. Either write what you know, or be very vague about details.
Either way, you’ll use up all that spare time.

Let me know in the comments if you write what you know or if you wing it. And how does that work out for you?

06/24/2026

Hello!
Welcome to a regular feature of Write On The River’s Facebook site.

Every Wednesday we’ll be posting some sort of writing tip. A suggestion, a technique, maybe just a bit of inspiration. These tips are provided by authors in our community, and are not necessarily endorsed by Write On The River. If you’d like to submit a tip, please send it to [email protected].

Today’s tip comes from V.R. Tapscott:

Well, here we are back to Wednesday again. Funny how that happens, eh?

I just had a memory pop up (my friendly Facebook) from seven years ago. Apparently, I posted my very first manuscript to Amazon seven years ago yesterday.

It was rather pitiful, in fact, it was a single short story with only a few pages. I’m honestly not sure why Amazon even allowed it, but seven years ago, Amazon didn’t have as many books incoming every day as they do now, and they were a lot less picky.

Over the next couple months, I expanded the single story and wound up with a book of short stories. It’s still there to this day, still at only 36 pages. Oddly, it’s racked up 46 Amazon ratings and still has a 4.0 score, even with just 7 stories.

Is there a point? Yes, there is. I posted that paltry bit of text on a whim, just wanting to know what it took to get a book published on Amazon. But even though it wasn’t an epic novel with fencing and fighting, great escapes, amazing deeds of derring-do, and heart-wrenching love stories, it was a book by a new author, and published with a reputable publisher.

This all is designed to try to point out that no matter how small or short or apparently poorly designed it is, with cover art by an amateur, it still qualifies as a book. It’s still salable on Amazon. And it gives YOU permission to do the same. The book you have written, or you’re contemplating writing is maybe not going to be an amazing dark-horse candidate for a Pulitzer, or a Hugo, or a Nebula award.

But it’s a start. And hitting publish on that first novel is psychologically stimulating in such a way that it makes it far more possible to do it again. And maybe next time it will win an award, be a bestseller, entertain millions.

But how will you ever know if you don’t put it out there and see what happens?

See you on the ‘zon!

Congratulations are in order!!!Write On The River is proud to announce the 2026 Teen Short Fiction Competition Honorable...
06/23/2026

Congratulations are in order!!!

Write On The River is proud to announce the 2026 Teen Short Fiction Competition Honorable Mention Winner Yesenia Madrigal-Williams. Yesenia wrote the amazing short story "The Eleven Pound Astronaut."

To find out more about our other Teen Short Fiction winners and to read their outstanding stories, visit our website:
https://www.writeontheriver.org/2026teenwritingcontest #2026-contest-winners

Congratulations are in order!!!Write On The River is proud to announce the 2026 Teen Short Fiction Competition Honorable...
06/23/2026

Congratulations are in order!!!

Write On The River is proud to announce the 2026 Teen Short Fiction Competition Honorable Mention Winner May Hinderer. May wrote the amazing short "The Painter".

To find out more about our other Teen Short Fiction winners and to read their outstanding stories, visit our website:
https://www.writeontheriver.org/2026teenwritingcontest #2026-contest-winners

Address

P. O. Box 3596
Wenatchee, WA
98807

Website

, ,

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Write On The River posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to Write On The River:

Shortcuts

Share

Category