My File System Was a Disaster. Here's the One I'm Building to Replace It. I want to be upfront about something before I get into this: what follows is not a finished system I've been running for years and am now generously revealing to you. It's the system I'm actively building right now, because the old one finally broke under its own weight. Here's what broke it. I went looking for a cover concept file from an earlier book. It wasn't in the book folder. It was in a "Graphics" folder from eight months ago that also had three other books' covers in it, none labeled clearly enough to tell them apart at a glance. The marketing copy for that same book was in a completely different folder tree, because I'd started using a new tool partway through and never went back to reconcile the old stuff. Fifteen minutes of searching for one file I knew existed. That's the tax you pay for not deciding on a structure up front, and I'd been paying it quietly for a long time. So I sat down and asked the obvious question: what's actually going in these folders, and what's the smallest set of rules that keeps it findable six months from now when I've forgotten the details? The core idea: Projects is the top, then everything nests by type Books aren't the only thing I'm keeping track of. There are coding projects, there's a growing pile of AI prompts and skill files, there are short stories that don't need the full novel treatment, and there's a permanent junk drawer of half-formed ideas that aren't committed to anything yet. Trying to organize all of that around "books" was the first mistake, because a lot of my actual work isn't a book. So the true top level is just **Projects**, full stop. Not around the tool that made something, not around the date, not around whether it's "writing stuff" or "marketing stuff." Whatever kind of thing it is, fiction or code or a stray idea, it lives inside its own project folder, not scattered across whatever pile happened to be open when I made it.

Do we need to have a class on book covers in WCP? There are a couple ways to do it and I'm sure I'm not doing it the best way yet, but I'm glad to share what i know in a Q&A format. I just need to know a good day/time for the most folks to participate and we'll record it for the rest. I'm getting pretty good results from the ones I show you all with very little effort. I'm working on a way to give more/easier control over type by using layers, and image under the type. These are really low effort below. They all could use some touchups.

Yes it can be done. Instead of deleting a single video in a youtube playlist I deleted the entire playlist. All 3600+ videos I had squirreled for a rainy day. Research, ideas, a couple of years worth of unsorted. Gone. Poof! The only way to somewhat "recover" is to scroll back through my history, but most of those I just saved for later and do not have an inkling what they were. So i'm in emotional and mental upheaval right now trying to take the high road and think, well if i don't know what they were I can't miss them right? Nope Nope Nope. My data pits: Youtube, Recall, Notes, Notion, Raindrop, etc.. are my first searches for things I know I know but cannot remember. Lesson in loss here I suppose. Or.....a notebooklm style rag database of all of my data pits to find.... nope nope nope. not going there either. time for a cry and then get back to life again

Because time alone and quiet is hard to come by. I am about to start going to my car to do this. But I can ideate, write, read.... and code no matter what. So I did a thing.... Trainings, Onboarding, better documentation are all priorities and being added to daily. But in the background my buddy Claude is churning along on a few things... Next Priorities are marketing, LayoutCrafter (the Vellum/Atticus tool) which I had some layout issues with to get all the extras that Romantasy and modern books now have, images in the backgrounds, fancy chapter headings, sprayed edges, forced edges (neat trick that one), etc. In doing more research on this I came across a few things that tied into some future roadmap items. I've mentioned this before that I started writing again a few years ago with a fascination of Visual novels created in Ren'Py and then came Ai. About six months ago I started noodling on how to do this easier and write better and WordCrafter.Pro was born and continues to evolve. I am trying NOT to change much in its base functionality to keep the learning curve light on the basic writing side but instead use the plugins to do the "optional" additions AudioCrafter for audiobooks, BookCrafter as an automated writing tool, the unfinished tools, Layout Crafter for book finishing, ImageCrafter for higher end covers, graphics, and POD or DIY merchandise, MarketCrafter for the full marketing plan and social media mastery, PathCrafter for Interactive/Branching Fiction and the three just research projects so far GameCrafter, VideoCrafter, BookWorlds, and a couple others that are notes on a napkin. The goal is a one stop shop. We may not do everything here but having to learn one tool that does most helps us all be more productive So a teaser of my last few days is below. And yes I have been editing furiously two books as well PathCrafter for interactive and branching fiction. At it's simplest it is a Choose Your Own Adventure book engine. But I'ma glutton for punishment and can't leave it at just that. So you can also create game books with encounters, combat, dice rolls, NPC's with timelines and agendas they follow. Both of these formats can be read/played online or exported as an epub, pdf or html file with the choices on each page and "If you have the lantern go to page 12, Otherwise got ot page 23". The gaming version has extra pages to cover those needs, including a way to generate a random number if you do not have dice. Cool eh?

What's Selling Right Now (And What to Have Ready Before the Holidays) Marketing Monday | DragonWorks Publishing We're in August. That makes this the most important marketing strategy window of the year. Not because August is a big sales month. It isn't. But what you do right now, the content you create, the book you finish, the ads you build, the back matter you fix, determines how much money you make between October and January. The authors who treat August as a slow month and coast through it will spend December watching other authors' launches while their own books sit quiet. Here's what the data says about what's selling, what's slowing, what's coming, and what you need to have ready. What's Selling Right Now Romance is still the undisputed market leader. This is not a trend. This is structural. Romance generates over $1.5 billion in annual sales and accounts for roughly one in five adult fiction books sold in the US. Indie authors dominate the Kindle Unlimited top spots in romance, and the genre's reader base, characterized by readers consuming five or more books per month, creates consistent demand that doesn't require viral moments to sustain. The specific corner of romance generating the most energy in 2026 is dark romance and romantasy. Adult fiction driven by the romantasy subgenre saw a 12.6% sales surge this year. Special edition hardcovers with sprayed edges are moving significant volume at $15 to $25 price points, which matters for authors thinking about premium print runs or Kickstarter campaigns. Romantasy is the fastest-climbing category. Thanks to social media virality and high-profile adaptations, fantasy titles with romance at the core are surging into bestseller territory faster than almost any other category. If you're writing in this space, your timing is good. If you're not, it's worth understanding what romantasy readers are responding to because those emotional expectations (high stakes, slow-burn romantic tension, strong world-building) are bleeding into adjacent categories.