Andrea Bartz: Get It Write

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order Darby Bozeman’s twisty and twisted campus mystery, out now. Me: Good morning! Darby: Hi Andi!! Good morning! How are you? Not too bad! How are you? I’m doing well, thank you! Huge congrats on SUMMER’S NEVER OVER! How are you feeling post-launch? Ah thank you!! I am feeling good! And also... weird??

Welcome back to Ask a Bookseller, a monthly column in which folks from amazing indie bookstores across the nation answer authors’ burning questions. Y’know, stuff that’s obvious to booksellers but shrouded in mystery to us writers, a la… How do you gauge if an in-store event was a “success”? How can authors let bookstores know about their upcoming release? Can stores return autographed copies to the publisher?

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and order Chassity Evans’s sun-splashed romance, out now. Me: Good morning! Chassity: Andi, good morning! I’m so excited to be chatting today. Ditto! How are you? How’s life post-launch?? Life feels really great post-launch. It’s been the most excited time, really.

Check out the collection of past Words With (Author) Friends, wherein I g-chat with an author and you get to read over my shoulder, and orderCleo’s razor-sharp domestic suspense, out now. Me: Good morning! Cleo: Good morning!! How are you? I can’t believe what an early bird you are on the west coast! I’m doing well. Always up early! Usually I start my writing day by 5:30am.

Lately, I've gotten an influx lately of messages from writers wanting me to validate that their LLM usage is just fine. One said that they’re the real victim of anti-gen-AI positions like mine, because now people judge them for using ChatGPT to write. Another is using a chatbot as an editor for their manuscript because it’s quick, “neutral,”1 and avoids the personality clashes of human workshopping. Apparently, it’s doing an admirable job. Look, there are things generative AI is good—even great—at.

Hi friends, Yesterday, Publishers Marketplace let the world in on the book I’ve been working on! It was even the Deal of the Day! [tosses confetti] I’m SO excited to tell you about Delete Your Account, coming your way on May 11, 2027.

A few quick announcements before today’s post! For a limited time, the ebook of We Were Never Here, my bestselling Reese’s Book Club pick about two globe-trotting besties who kill a backpacker in self-defense…again, is on sale for $2.99 across accounts.

Raise your hand if this sounds like you: You’ve got a writing project on which you’d really like to make progress, but…well, life keeps getting in the way. Also the news. Also the world? Plus, you could really use a ride-or-die support network of fellow creatives…everyone else seems to have magically conjured a writing community, but you? You’re typing alone in a room.

WTF is going on in publishing? Last month, I talked over g-chat with Keith Riegert, president of The Stable Book Group and CEO of Ulysses Press, VeloPress, and Perfect Bound Technologies. ‘Twas a few short weeks before Daggermouth came out amidst AI accusations and publishers killed a $2.4 million book contract over alleged AI use. The publicist’s pitch had mentioned eroding reader trust, a topic near and dear to my heart. I thought I knew where the conversation with Keith would go.

That’s right, it’s a guest post! Because I don’t actually know everything, I’m excited to share from-the-trenches pieces by authors and publishing professionals. This galvanizing one is from Substack favorite Jo Piazza, whose sweeping literary thriller, The Parisian Heist, is out now. (Be sure to check out the giveaway at the end.) Enjoy! I launched a new novel last month! Whooo hoo! Yay me. So why am I so depressed about it just four weeks later? And what can I do to recover from it?