Words: 1217
Time to read: 6 minutes

I really don’t have too much to say this week. I’m at 77k on my Christmas novel, close to being done, but not quite wrapping it up. If I had to guess, I think I still have about 15k-20k, but I’m not sure. Since I already have so many words, it can be as long as it needs to be to finish. At this point, I don’t care–it will just be nice to be done so I can breathe. I was playing around with the cover again, and I’m happy with what I have. That takes some pressure off since covers are my nemesis and I never feel good about a project until I can pin one down.

I don’t have any plans to write anything more this year, instead I’ll be using September and October to edit and package this book and do some things around the apartment that I should have done years ago, and in November and December, celebrate birthdays and the holidays and spend time with family. After that break, I’ll be diving headlong into my 6 book series–the first first-person books I wrote during lockdown in 2020 when I decided to pivot and write under a pen name. I haven’t read through them in a long time, and I haven’t looked over feedback from my proofer, so there might be a little work involved getting them out. There’s no publishing schedule for those yet, but I’ll have published 8 books this year, so I think I deserve a little time off.

Reviews for my rockstar trilogy are coming in from Booksprout and the few I have are favorable. It’s always a gamble writing something a little off genre, a little off trope (say, oh, I don’t know, a baby-for-the-billionaire trope with no baby) and that’s what my rockstars are. I have a difficult time incorporating what my characters’ occupations are with the main story, the romance the main focus of any of my books. Once when I was getting feedback for a blurb and cover in an FB group, one person said, just because you call them billionaires doesn’t mean they’re billionaire books, and well, guilty as charged. My rockstars are rockstars, but I have no idea how much their stories would have changed had I made them something else. I didn’t read any in the genre before I wrote them, so how they measure up to other rockstar novels is anyone’s guess. The book I’m writing now, the main male character who’s a billionaire, could be anybody. In fact, when I plotted this book years ago, he was a private investigator, and honestly, the story hasn’t changed that much. I don’t know if veering off hurts or helps–I certainly don’t look at my reviews to find out.

I’m on TikTok–not posting enough to get anywhere, but having fun and learning new things in Canva. Making videos is different, that’s for sure, time consuming figuring things out. I’m slowly learning, though, my videos are far from perfect. Between Canva and the tools TikTok has, I’ve posted a few to get the feel of it. I don’t mind showing my face, and the author copies I ordered for page flipping videos came a couple weeks ago. My main project when I finish this book is to set up bookshelves to have a more professional background behind me and to buy a cell phone stand for things like unboxing videos. I’ll be able to film one when my rockstars are completely live and I order author copies of the trilogy in a couple of weeks.

Here is a video I made, and I can see why people like TikTok–it has 246 views. I know that’s nothing on that platform, but with all the time I’ve spent on FB, Twitter, and IG, it’s pretty amazing to me.

@vaniarheault

Rescue Me, a standalone, one night stand, billionaire romance. #billionaireromance #romancenovels #onenightstandtrope #onenightstandromance

♬ Angel – Sarah McLachlan

One thing I’m not going to film is an empty KDP sales dashboard. I was scrolling TikTok, they have a For You tab and a Following tab like Twitter, and someone posted a video of their empty dashboard. I thought not being on Twitter anymore would stop me from having to see stuff like that, but I guess authors like bragging they have no sales. I really wish I could tell authors that it does the exact opposite of what you want it to do. When I see an empty dashboard, the last thing I want to do is check out that author. To me, if you’re not selling books, I think it’s because your books are bad or you’re not doing enough to market them, and that’s not a reader’s responsibility. In the amount of time it took that author to create that video, they could have made something positive. There are so many examples of videos that you never have to run out of ideas. It’s no one’s business if you’re not selling books, and if you’re not, do something about it. Yuck.

That’s really about all I have. I started my Facebook ad for newsletter sign ups again and in two days I’ve given away 35 copies of my reader magnet and have had 18 newsletter signups (you don’t have to sign up to download my reader magnet because I hate the hard sell), and I started my Facebook ad for Rescue Me again after my own sales slump (see I did something about it!) and my books are selling again. I think after this book is done and I take a break, I’ll dive deeper into Facebook ads. They might spend my money just a little faster, but the cost per click is lower, and I seem to grab more sales there than Amazon ads. To be fair, all my Amazon ads are old, and I know ads can grow stale. Killing some and creating more would probably help. But what I should really do is write some good ad copy for my trilogies, put the first ones on sale for .99 and see what kind of royalties that read-through will bring in. Selling Rescue Me for .99 has given me some traction, but I only earn 35% royalties on it, and after paying for a click, I don’t bring in much. I know it’s not all about the sales all the time, and I hope I’m finding readers and they’re subscribing to my newsletter when they’re done reading the book.

The marketing game is long, but I’m still doing better this year than I ever have before, and that gives me hope I’m on the right track.

This week my daughter starts her senior year in high school, and I’ll be getting used to a new routine, again. Summer went by in a flash, and I don’t feel like there was much summer at all. I rarely sat on my balcony and baked my brains out, and besides a road trip to Bismarck, ND, and a trip to the zoo last week, we didn’t do anything. My daughter is turning 18 on November 18th, so we’re going down to the Twin Cities for a couple days to celebrate. I’ll have had plenty of ups this year, so I’m going to use the time to celebrate my own wins in 2023. I may not be making enough to quit my job, (or even drop my hours) but you need to celebrate the little things or it’s easy to get burnt out. I’m sure I’ll post again next Monday, but until then, have a great rest of your month!