For many indie authors, one retailer becomes the entire business. And that creates a fragile foundation. Publishing wide simply means making your books available across multiple retailers and platforms—rather than relying on a single storefront such as Amazon. It’s not about avoiding any particular platform. It’s about building a publishing model that protects your work and…
Why Wuthering Heights Still Feels Dangerous 175 Years Later
More than 175 years after its publication, Wuthering Heights still feels dangerous. Not romantic. Not nostalgic. Dangerous. In a literary landscape that often softens passion into something palatable, Emily Brontë’s novel remains raw, unresolved, and emotionally uncompromising. It unsettles rather than comforts. It exposes rather than redeems. Few novels capture the extremes of love and…
Building Your Story: Characters, Setting and Theme
Part 2 of the Blue Crab Books New Author Series – practical guidance to help you turn your idea into a published book. Many new writers start with a great idea — but struggle to turn that idea into a story that actually works on the page. In this post, we’ll look at three foundations…
Indie Authors: your ebooks can now be sold through independent bookstores via Draft2Digital and Bookshop.org
There’s a meaningful new distribution option for indie authors—and it’s especially interesting if you care about reaching readers who actively support independent bookstores. Draft2Digital has announced that authors can now distribute their ebooks to Bookshop.org’s ebook platform, making those titles discoverable through more than 3,400 independent bookstores across the US and the UK. Before we…
How to Get Started Writing a Book When All You Have Is an Idea
This is Part 1 of the Blue Crab Books New Author Series – practical guidance to help you turn your idea into a published book. Have you been carrying a story idea around in your head for months — or even years — but don’t know how to turn it into an actual book? You’re…
Fall in Love with Reading Again: The Valentine’s Collections
Every February, I find myself returning to the same quiet truth: reading should feel like falling in love. Not only with a story—but with the atmosphere around it. The colors, the textures, the mood, and the gentle sense of stepping into a world that feels made just for you. That belief shapes everything I…
The Classic Books We Always Meant to Read (Especially the Ones with Shadows at the Edges)
Some books linger in our imaginations long before we ever open them. The ones whispered about in school hallways. The ones with foggy moors, locked rooms, or mysteries that feel older than the characters themselves. The ones we always meant to read one day. Gothic and noir stories have a way of waiting for us….
Behind the Scenes at Blue Crab Books: Designing Our 2026 Desktop Calendar Collection for Every Kind of Dreamer
Every year as the holidays approach, the team at Blue Crab Books sits down to think about what makes a truly meaningful gift. Not the biggest gift, not the flashiest — but the ones people reach for every day. This year, we asked a simple guiding question: “What kind of art would bring someone joy…
Authors: Stop Wasting Hours Formatting Your Book
A personal story about frustration, burnout, and the moment I finally said “enough.” I didn’t expect formatting to break me. I had survived the long nights, the rewrites, the moments of doubt, the imposter syndrome, the messy middle, the fear of finishing — all the things that make writing a book feel like walking a…
From Chaos to Clarity: The Audio Tool That Fixed My Workflow
I wasn’t looking for a new tool. Honestly, I thought I had my workflow pretty dialed in—between proposal writing, content creation, and running Blue Crab Books, I’ve tested my fair share of productivity apps. But then I stumbled across something that made me pause: Notta. At first, I thought it was just another AI transcription…