Want straight-up answers about writing, publishing, and marketing books without all the fluff? You’re in the right place.
I’m Dale L. Roberts, an award-winning author and self-publishing advocate. I help indie authors learn how to self-publish a book, publish through Amazon KDP, distribute wide with platforms like Draft2Digital, IngramSpark, and Bookvault, build an author platform, get more book reviews, and market books without wasting time or money.
You’ll find step-by-step self-publishing tutorials, honest platform reviews, book marketing strategies, publishing news, and practical advice for new and experienced authors.
Whether you’re publishing your first book or building a full-time author business, my goal is to help you make smarter decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and keep moving forward.
Subscribe for clear, practical self-publishing advice.
Dale L. Roberts
🤔 What Would You Do?
You discover another author is using a book title almost identical to yours, and their book launches two weeks before yours.
What do you do?
Tell me why you chose your answer in the comments.
10 hours ago | [YT] | 6
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Dale L. Roberts
🏗️ Build-A-Story: Week 3
We’ve reached the final week of our community-built story.
Here’s everything you created:
- Genre: Dystopian
- Protagonist: A 21-year-old man
- Antagonists: A trio of deadly assassins bent on enforcing their law
- Setting: A technology-dead world controlled by black-magic elitists
- Main conflict: The protagonist dreams of people he has never met. He must recreate true images of them, find them in the real world, and bring them together to defeat the black-magic elitists.
- Rebellion element: With technology gone, forbidden letters are being sent to spread the rebellion.
Title: Invenio: The Uncollected
Description:
In a technology-dead dystopian world ruled by black-magic elitists, a 21-year-old rebel dreams of strangers who may be the key to overthrowing the regime. He must recreate their images, find them in the real world, and unite them through forbidden letters of rebellion before three deadly assassins enforcing the regime’s law hunt them down.
Now we need one final piece:
Write the opening line of Invenio: The Uncollected.
Keep it to one opening line per comment so everyone can vote by liking their favorites. If you go longer than one line, no sweat. I still read all the comments. 🤭
Next week, we start an entirely new story.
1 day ago | [YT] | 5
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Dale L. Roberts
Just for fun. I’m not recommending either option. You have to pick one.
Would you rather...
2 days ago | [YT] | 13
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Dale L. Roberts
Write a two-sentence back-cover blurb for a novel inspired by this scene.
3 days ago | [YT] | 11
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Dale L. Roberts
Share Your Book Sunday
This week's spotlight:
How to Become a Crazy Cat Lady to Survive the Zombpocalypse
by M.M. Ward
A cat-allergic librarian, a century-old Egyptologist, and a clowder of zombie-repelling cats race across a plague-ravaged America to expose the cursed fungus behind Pandemic Five before the undead, or the government, wipes out the remaining survivors.
Now share your book in the comments:
- Title
- Author name
- One-sentence blurb
Please, no links. YouTube sometimes sends comments containing links straight to spam, and I check every submission anyway.
One book gets spotlighted each week, so keep sharing even if yours hasn’t been selected yet.
While you’re here, check out some of the other indie authors in the comments. If a book catches your attention, give their comment a like and look them up.
4 days ago | [YT] | 17
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Dale L. Roberts
Name the Character
What’s his name, and what secret got him banned from every airship port in the empire?
5 days ago | [YT] | 10
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Dale L. Roberts
Write the first sentence of a story inspired by this scene.
6 days ago | [YT] | 5
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Dale L. Roberts
Quick update about today’s livestream with the folks at Tertulia for Authors...
We spent the broadcast walking through how simple it can be to build an author website without a bunch of technical know-how, including a live look at the setup process and the tools available to authors.
Unfortunately, I had one technical issue on my end: my microphone developed an echo whenever I spoke. My guests sounded great throughout the broadcast, and there was absolutely nothing wrong with their setup. This was 100% on me.
The good news is I’ve already found the culprit. One tiny OBS audio setting was sending my microphone through twice, and it’s already been fixed, so this shouldn’t be an issue moving forward.
Once YouTube finishes processing the livestream, I’m going to clean up the affected sections and republish a much more enjoyable version so you can watch the whole thing without having to power through the echo.
And considering this was my first livestream in well over a year and a half, I’m giving myself a little credit. Aside from that one stupid setting, everything else went remarkably smoothly.
Huge thanks to my guests for rolling with the technical hiccup, and thanks to everyone who joined us live today. I’ll share the cleaned-up version as soon as it’s ready!
P.S. My new website is live already, so feel free to see the finished product at DaleLRoberts.com/. Shout-out to @JoinTertulia for all the help and for their time today. GREAT guests!
1 week ago | [YT] | 17
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Dale L. Roberts
A book you released a year ago suddenly starts selling after a creator recommends it, but the cover no longer matches your current author brand.
What do you do?
Tell me why you chose your answer in the comments.
1 week ago | [YT] | 10
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Dale L. Roberts
Join me live, tomorrow, Thursday, August 20th at 2:15pm EDT where I'll be unveiling my new website with the help of Tertulia for Authors. If you're even half as impressed as I was, then you'll definitely be floored at how EASY this service makes website building.
1 week ago | [YT] | 1
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