If you love vampires or Romance of enemies and loversYou're probably familiar with Carissa Broadbent.
The bestselling author is best known for her romance series Crowns of Nyaxia, which explores the dark world of vampires, warring houses and romantic angst.
Broadbent originally self-published the first part of the series.”Serpent and Wings of Night,“in August 2022. After she signed with Bramble in June 2023, the publisher re-released it in December 2023 and it immediately hit The New York Times bestseller list. Since then, Broadbent's career has grown rapidly.
Now Broadbent is revisiting one of his earlier novels with Bramble. Broadbent self-published Daughter Without Worlds, the first installment in her War of Lost Hearts series, in 2020, but it will get a splashy new cover and be released on October 14th.
Speaking to Business Insider ahead of the release, Broadbent reflected on her publishing journey. While she enjoys working with a traditional publisher, Broadbent says there are big benefits to the self-publishing model.
More money
Broadbent works with Bramble on a hybrid model, retaining some self-publishing rights to her e-books even as the publisher releases her novels.
“Sometimes people take my hybrid stance as some sort of message that traditional publishing is 'better' than self-publishing, and I don't think that's the case,” Broadbent told Business Insider. “Don't get me wrong, I'm very happy with my partnership with my publisher because it was the right move for me. But as a network, I don't think any one is better. There are pros and cons to both routes.”
Broadbent said she initially self-published Daughter of No Worlds because it made her goal of writing full-time “more achievable.”
“I got into self-publishing with the goal of one day becoming a full-time author,” she told Business Insider. “From the research I did at the time, I felt that this was a much more achievable goal through self-publishing than through traditional publishing because there is so much more control.”
Likewise, Broadbent was drawn to self-publishing because it can quickly turn a profit, which is a bonus if you don't have a book deal or an advance offering financial support while you write. Some authors even make more money from self-publishing than from traditionally published book.
“Daughter Without Worlds” by Carissa Broadbent. Carissa Broadbent
“You get a much bigger piece of the pie,” Broadbent said. “There are many self-published authors whose names are by no means household names, but who make a very comfortable middle-class living from it. So I chose this path because I really thought I would never be a New York Times bestselling author.”
In the early days of her career, Broadbent's novels were mostly e-books, and she said she started making money from them fairly quickly because she didn't share those profits with the publisher.
“E-books are very, very, very profitable if you self-publish them,” she said. “Essentially, you keep everything.”
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“Your overhead is very low,” she said, adding that it has helped that her books are available through the Kindle Unlimited program. “These royalty structures for most traditional deals are not super beneficial for creators.”
I work two jobs
Self-publishing also suited Broadbent early in her career because she was still working in marketing. She had to figure out how to fit writing into her life, and since she didn't have a deadline set by a publisher, she could do it in a way that made sense to her.
For Broadbent, this meant writing early in the morning.
“I realized I would never write after work,” she said. “I had a very stressful day job and worked with a lot of people on the West Coast, so my days tended to end late.”
Broadbent rose around 4:30 a.m. to write before work.
Broadbent writes full time now so she doesn't have to start as early, but that flexibility in her early years writing career was of great importance to her.
Quick results
Since she didn't have book deal When she published books entirely on her own, Broadbent had an incentive to get her books out quickly so she could start making money. She said that when she was independent, publishing was much easier, although she still hired editors to review her work.
“Indie authors sometimes get a bad reputation for not editing,” she said. “My books went through a lot of editing when I was an indie developer, just like they do now, to be honest. But the difference is that I am a puppeteer.”
Broadbent said she might give editors with whom she had a working relationship parts of her books at a time so she could continue writing drafts as she edited them.
Carissa Broadbent. Carissa Broadbent
“You can do things in parallel,” she said. “You have a lot of flexibility to do these things.”
“In traditional publishing, we mobilize a giant machine of thousands of people, so that doesn’t happen,” she said. “There are much more difficult starts and stops.”
The next book in the Crowns of Nyaxia series, The Lion and the Undying Darkness, is scheduled for publication in August 2026, and Broadbent said she needs to submit a complete first draft of the book. novel to his editor about a year earlier. She couldn't edit it until her editor had reviewed the book, so the process was slower.
Likewise, Broadbent said there is a need to consider the physical process of printing books that occurs in traditional publishing.
“The physical production of the book alone takes about seven months,” she said. “You print hundreds of thousands of copies.”
Her self-published e-books made the process almost instantaneous for Broadbent.
“Basically, you press a button and within 48 hours you get the book,” she said. “It's over.”
I write what she wants
Broadbent's work falls into the “romantic” category, combining high fantasy with deeply moving (and intense) romance. Her description of herself her instagram Bio sums it up well: “#1 New York Times bestselling author of books about magic and kissing.”
However, when Broadbent first wrote The Worldless Daughter in 2018 and 2019, romance was not as big a deal in the publishing industry. Series type “Courtyard of Thorns and Roses“Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros”Fourth wing” had not yet gone viral, and often young adult books dominated the bestseller list.
Broadbent said the dearth of romantic fantasy for adults was part of what pushed her to self-publish Daughter of No Worlds.
“For ‘Daughter Without Worlds,’ I was actually thinking about requesting traditional publication,” she said. “Particularly in traditional publishing, what we now call romance novels, many of these books were shelved by young people.”
The characters in Daughter Without Worlds are in their 20s, not teenagers. Broadbent, who said she was “also afraid to ask questions”, did not want her book to be picked up if it meant she would have to age her characters.
“I really believed that if I tried to ask that question, a traditional publishing house would want me to make all the characters three years younger and put them in the young adult category,” she said. “I felt very strongly that I didn’t want to do this.”
Because she self-published the novel, Broadbent ensured that Daughter Without Worlds remained true to her vision. By the time Bramble took on the Crown of Nyaxia series, both Broadbent and the romance were established enough for her to continue writing romantic fantasy with adult characters.
