For Katie Cross, writing is the coolest thing she has ever done in her life—it gives her the highest high. When an idea takes her, she can spend hours writing without realizing how much time has passed. It has been that way for as long as she can remember.

So when constant moves across the country because of her husband’s career with the US Army disrupted her career as a pediatric charge nurse, Cross turned to her lifelong love. Writing allowed her to build a career that could travel anywhere the military took them. 

Twelve years later, Cross has three pen names, more than one hundred titles published, and five successful Kickstarters at the time of publishing. She attends conferences all over the US and even hosts some of her own—she invites her readers to meet up with her at “Katie Cons” whenever she visits major cities. Her work today looks entirely different from when she was working in healthcare—but she doesn’t see herself stepping away from her new field anytime soon.“Self-publishing led to this journey that is continuing twelve years later and has led to my forever career,” she says. “It’s pretty amazing.” 

In Her Own Time

After Cross wrote her first book, Miss Mabel’s School for Girls, she decided she wanted to make publishing happen on her timeline. With a husband and kids to care for and other responsibilities to juggle, she realized she didn’t want to wait for others to make decisions for her. It made sense for her to be in control.

“I didn’t really want to wait for feedback from other people,” Cross says. “I’m a very efficient person, and the idea of wasting years waiting for someone else to pick up my idea that I already knew was a really good idea seemed silly to me.”

Around that time, Cross discovered independent publishing. She liked the idea of having creative control over her own company. “I was an entrepreneur at heart; I just didn’t know it at the time,” Cross says. “The creative control of owning my own company and putting my books into the world exactly the way I wanted them was way too delicious to pass up, so I just jumped right in.”

Since publishing her first book, a YA Fantasy, Cross’s career has grown outward almost as much as it has upward. Today, while still publishing YA Fantasies as Katie Cross, the author also publishes Clean Romance titles under the pen name Katie J. Cross and Romantasy titles under K. Cross. 

Cross says she didn’t pick her genres; they picked her. “I loved the characters that were in my head, and the ideas flowed [from there],” she says. Although all three are distinct, she considers the foundations similar. In any of her story ideas—she never seems to have a shortage of them—magic has always been a byline, and even the non-Romance stories share something with her Romance titles.

“Not all of my stories are Romances, but most of my stories have some form of romance,” she says. “Not all of them, but close.” 

“The idea of wasting years waiting for someone else to pick up my idea that I already knew was a really good idea seemed silly to me.”
—Katie Cross

With so many ideas at one time, Cross chooses which stories to focus on based on reader feedback. “My business is like a breathing organism that is based on what my readers want more of,” she says. Right now, Romantasy is her biggest up-and-coming genre, so those titles are where she spends most of her time. Despite being focused on what the readers want, however, she also makes sure to keep her other pen names moving. 

Cross says she is fortunate enough that many of her readers will read across genres, though she admits not all of them do.

“It’s interesting how Contemporary readers feel reluctant to venture into Fantasy, but Fantasy readers, from my experience … seem to cross more easily into Contemporary than the opposite way,” she says. “But I also have a lot of readers who would buy my grocery list if I sold it.”

Growing Forward

In the same way that Cross listens to her readers to decide which stories to write next, she also listens to the publishing industry for insights into her business. Through the years, Cross has paid attention to how the publishing industry has changed, and she has pivoted to incorporate new ideas that work with her business strategy—namely, crowdfunding and direct sales. 

Since late 2019, when she started setting up her website, Cross says her entire business has run on the direct sales machine. Her ads are focused on driving traffic to her website, and it has become a platform she relies on for sales.

Even so, she says diversification is just as important.

“I have some titles in Kindle Unlimited and not available direct. I have other titles that are direct,” she says. “I advertise with ads, TikTok, and Instagram. I have special editions. I learn what’s working, and right now, my direct sales bring revenue into my company and keep the lights on. I love it.”

When asked whether she would have pivoted to direct sales sooner, she laughed before answering. “I feel like this question is sort of the same as, ‘Would you change anything if you went back in time?’” she says. “I love where I am right now. It would have been nice to remove the angst and frustration—and there was so much frustration behind not selling—that drove me to direct sales. But that angst and frustration led me here, and now, six or seven years later, I absolutely love the business model that I have. So in a nutshell, it would have been nice to know it sooner, but I’m grateful that I got on the path at all.”

Kickstarter has also played a role in Cross’s business model, and she attributes those campaigns to building her reader base. Over 50 percent of Cross’s customers came from Kickstarter itself, and the rest came from her existing reader base. “When you can repurpose existing product into a high-level offer on a website that will bring 50 percent of your consumers to you, that is really cool,” she says.

The platform also introduced her to a new type of reader than those she’d encountered through other book-selling sites. After joining the crowdfunding platform, Cross discovered that readers who are on Kickstarter are willing to pay a premium price for premium books and invest in the experience of a special edition. “They just want it to look a certain way on their shelf because they highly value the decor of it,” she says. “I acquired new readers who were dropping $125 on a never-read-before author because the book was beautiful. They wanted to buy it for their niece or friend or someone.” 

Crowdfunding offers endless opportunities to repurpose and repackage books, bring them to an audience in a new way, and discover new readers, Cross says. “That was an entire market that I hadn’t put myself in front of before, and I loved it because it opened my thinking around the margins in publishing and how we put ourselves into a hole as a low-margin market, but really we’re not.”

Cross says she enjoys running a Kickstarter campaign, even though it can be time-consuming. Her advice for other authors interested in adding Kickstarter to their diversification plan: Take a book you’ve already written and make it something new. 

She also suggests keeping your options open for diversification. You aren’t limited to what you can do, she reminds authors. “You have all these assets to use in different ways. You could open a TikTok shop if you wanted to, or sell at conventions, or whatever you decide to do. You aren’t limited to one thing, like Kickstarter. You can do whatever you want.”

From the Page to In Person

Cross’s relationship with her readers goes beyond the pages of her special editions. She has made attending conventions, meeting with readers, and hosting meetups throughout the US a priority for her business. “I had a desire to meet readers one-on-one and really get an idea for: What pitch can I give that brings readers who don’t know me into these worlds?” she says. Attending in-person events allowed her to do both. 

She started out with small, local shows. There is an art to selling books in person, and over time, she learned how to tweak her pitch and close sales. Eventually, she was invited as a featured guest to a couple of larger shows, then eventually expanded into conventions such as FanX and Dragon Con.

“I’ve had readers approach my table that I never met before,” she says. “I’ve had people that have never traveled by themselves come to meet me—they’ve never been to a con, and they go to Dragon Con, and then they wait in line for four hours and search for my table for another three hours and eventually get to give me a big hug. It’s so cool.”

In addition to shows of all sizes, Cross also hosts more familiar gatherings that she’s dubbed “Katie Cons,” impromptu events that she hosts in cities that she travels to for work or fun. The events give her one-on-one time with fans and a chance to connect with her readers more. 

“Sometimes they get swag if I had time to plan it. Sometimes Katie Cons just pop up,” she says. “I’ll do them in my hometown, and we’ll get ten or twelve people that show up that just want to talk about the books and get them signed, and we have dinner. I try to do these anytime I go somewhere for a few days.”

“I also have a lot of readers who would buy my grocery list if I sold it.”
—Katie Cross

Recently, she flew out to Raleigh to attend her assistant’s wedding. While there, she hosted a signup to meet up with readers in Durham at a local restaurant. “It’s fun to have these events where I can meet readers one-on-one and get to know them better. These are more intimate than the big events because I get to talk with them about my books.”

Advice for Authors

As much as Cross focuses on reaching her authors through new channels in her own business—be it Kickstarter, direct sales, or in-person events—Cross reminds authors that their catalog is everything. Choosing to focus on  direct sales, Kickstarter, or various retail platforms, or even to test the success of ads or coupons, isn’t possible without having books to sell first. 

“For example, I have a Young Adult Fantasy direct sales advertising funnel right now that was not doing well at the beginning of the year, so I turned it off to come up with new creative. Meanwhile, my Contemporary direct sales just started to skyrocket and picked up the revenue that the Young Adult Fantasy wasn’t doing,” Cross says. “Having a big catalog means, especially with direct sales, you have liquidity. You can push one forward with a higher budget, or you can scale it back and have two offers. You can play around with it, so you always have revenue and reader acquisition coming in.”

For those wanting to experiment with Kickstarter, Cross recommends authors new to the platform temper their expectations according to their current audience. 

“Set softer goals for yourself. I would maybe start with a launch that’s not going to require a lot of money, so you can slowly and gradually build that Kickstarter audience,” she says. “The possibility is there, and hold on to hope, but temper expectations and make decisions off of data.”

As with advertising and Kickstarter, she encourages authors to make informed decisions about everything in their author business—even live events. “You … have to figure out if a show is worth your time commitment as well as your financial commitment. Are there too many books there? No books at all? How much does a booth cost? Factoring in all your costs, how much would you have to sell to break even? Make a profit?” she says. “There are many things to consider before committing, and I feel scouting a show will help you make a good decision.” She suggests talking to the authors with booths who have attended an event before committing to get a feel for the show’s culture and make sure it’s a fit for your books and your brand. 

Looking to the Future

Besides her life as an author, Cross has two children, ages eight and eleven, who keep her busy. She keeps their names off social media and does the same for her husband, referring simply to him as “husband.” The family lives in Montana and is constantly on the go.

“We have football, baseball, dance,” she says. “There’s so much going on that I have to be five places at once. It’s so crazy.” To manage it all, Cross sometimes finds herself fitting author responsibilities between events. “I had to do a podcast interview in my van the other day, because we had people renovating my house, and I often work from my van while my son is at football practice. I just work wherever I can find time for it.”

Even with her busy schedule, Cross’s author business isn’t showing signs of slowing down. She is excited about her upcoming Romantasy project, The City of Citadels—a ten-book serial series that ties into her existing series in the genre. 

“It’s more of a TV show cadence than a three-act-structure novel cadence,” Cross explains. “We’re really leaning into the serialization, so I can try a different plot structure, so it feels really fun and fast. We’re going to be launching every single month, so people aren’t going to have to wait long for the next installment, and it gives [me a chance to try] that short-form audio … that my readers are asking for.”

Cross worked on writing the books through August and September and, since then, has been building a schedule for editing and publishing them. “I’m just in the heart of it right now, and dedicating the next six weeks to writing it,” she said when we spoke in August. “I am so excited for it. It’s going to be amazing.”

The first book in the series is set to release in December. Naturally, Cross planned the release schedule while hiking. Her author business keeps moving—as does she. 

And she wouldn’t have it any other way.