About Vania Margene Rheault

Vania enjoys reading and writing. She's lived in Minnesota all her life, and with a cup of coffee in hand, enjoys the seasons with her two children.

Monday Musings; Do What You’re Supposed to do Already

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Words: 1707
Time to read: 9 minutes

Happy Monday! I can honestly say that because Mondays are my Saturdays, and I’m fortunate I can work through the weekends and avoid them. I always say I don’t have much to say, but this week, it’s really true. I’m only three chapters into the fifth book in my series, and this chapter is 20k words long. It will take a bit to edit it, but getting through these is starting to burn me out, so I don’t mind going slow. It’s a big project anyway, and I should start playing with the covers when I don’t feel like editing. Mostly for now that’s just scrolling through stock photos and that’s becoming more and more disheartening. I can try a couple of different sites like dreamstime.com and 123rf.com. I don’t mind paying if I know I’ll use the photos. I’ve downloaded quite a few with my DepositPhotos packages I purchased through AppSumo, and I don’t end up using all of them. Because they were so inexpensive, it doesn’t matter, but if I’m going to go through a different site, I need to make absolutely sure I’ll use them and so far I haven’t bothered to hunt and peck through those sites.

It’s been a week and a few days since my appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. The good news is she seemed to know what was wrong and I left with a couple of creams and a medication that suppresses my ovaries. This was part of the best news because since I had my hysterectomy in March of 2022, my ovulation cycle has made me feel like garbage every month. She explained why and when she offered me that medication, I jumped all over it. I’ve only taken it for eight days, but I can already tell a difference in the way I feel. The other stuff I’m dealing with hasn’t lightened up, but I knew going in that since I’ve been suffering for so long, there wouldn’t be an overnight fix. My treatment at this point is more of a journey than a destination, and I have a follow up appointment at the end of May. Now that we know what to expect and how to get around, this will just be a quick overnight thing and more than likely we’ll head back after my appointment instead of staying for another night. They were very efficient and she seemed to know what was wrong with me just by talking to me and a quick exam. So, there’s that update. Nothing too new there, but life has been smoothing out for me, thank God. I went and got my teeth cleaned and my oil changed last week, so now that my bumper fiasco is over, besides getting my taxes done (which is tedious because I print out all my book spend and report my royalties to the IRS in case I ever strike it rich), most of the drudgery of adulting is finished for the next little bit.

Even social media has been quiet, not much on Twitter (though I am liking to call it X more and more simply because I feel like it’s a warning to stay away), just some reviewer shaming, some people who are complaining about their books being returned, that kind of thing that I don’t see in my author groups on FB at least. It still is surprising to me how writers think that if they’re querying they don’t have to do anything. Don’t have to edit because an agent/acquiring editor will take care of it, don’t have to market because the publisher will take care of it. Even just today I saw a woman lamenting because she queried too soon (I wonder how she figured that out?), and I mean, if you get a book deal, wouldn’t you want to work your ass off to promote your book? Shouldn’t authors feel that way no matter who publishes their book? Yet it feels like so many writers think all they have to do is crank out 350 pages of brilliance and their work is done. A huge controversy last week (cause by this now-deleted tweet)–

–was over whether querying writers should have a website–some said no, some said yes–but if you don’t want to, is this a hill you’re going to die on? It’s free to set one up. Isn’t it better to have a social media presence before you query so potential agents have something to look at? Querying/having an agent and publishing is a partnership, but it seems like writers don’t want to be a partner, they want it all done for them. Let me tell you, from doing this from the ground up and seeing some of my author friends who have given up their rights to small presses and gotten them back, it’s a hell of a lot easier to be in charge of all your stuff yourself. And this isn’t a debate between querying/trad pub vs. self-pub. This is talking about taking control of your book business in any way you can. To know how to do covers in case you ever want to be hybrid and put out some books on your own, to know how to format, to know the back end of your own website. Knowing how your newsletter provider works. Knowing how to do things for yourself will never hurt you in the long run. Because you know what sucks? Depending on people to do stuff for you. You’re at their mercy . . . if they’re busy doing something else, if your relationship with them goes south, if they simply drop out of the game. Publishing is work. It will never not be work, and I should stop being amazed at the writers and authors who think someone else should be doing that work. Honey, just because you wrote 80k words, your work is only just beginning. Suck it up, pay for a Canva Pro account, and learn how to use it.

I had some super awesome Amazon ads going, so much so I spent 100 dollars in five days. Super good! Not really, because I wasn’t getting the sales or borrows (checking your rank to see if it goes up will tell you if you’re getting borrows. There really is no other way as Amazon sees a borrow as a sale and adjusts your rank accordingly.) Fifty pounds, fifty US dollars. I paused my UK ads because I couldn’t afford it, let my US ads keep going, and they are still rocking forty dollars later. I’m having some good impressions and clicks in Canada, too, but not nearly as expensive at only seven dollars, so I left those alone. Maybe my Lost & Found trilogy covers are working after all. I’m always very very leery of turning off a well-performing ad. Mostly because of ad and royalties reporting. Nothing Amazon does is in real time, and I would hate to shut off an ad only for my sales to die. In fact, they even added this disclaimer to their dashboard: All numbers are based on the time zone of the marketplace where the purchase was made. Please note monthly KENP numbers may change and will be finalized near the 15th of the following month.

text on plain white background says: Dashboard
All numbers are based on the time zone of the marketplace where the purchase was made. Please note monthly KENP numbers may change and will be finalized near the 15th of the following month.Learn more about the Dashboard.

Waiting until the following month for real page reads numbers…..yeah…..so you know not to do anything drastic or be ticked off too soon. You should never make decisions when you’re angry or disappointed. Things can change in an instant and you never want to regret anything. Pausing your ads and then restarting them can make them not turn on again at all, ruining the momentum they had before you shut them off. It’s the risk I took pausing my UK ads, but I’m going to have to be okay with it. I don’t have the cash to pay 50,000 dollars for 100,000 dollars worth of royalties. While that’s great ROI, I need to start smaller, and I’m guessing you do too.

I’m also running FB ads, so I’ll always have something going that costs money, but it sure would be nice if I could come out ahead every once in a while. Not that I’m complaining. Breaking even is fine too–I’m finding readers and that’s a good thing.

That’s about all I have going on for this week. I’m going shopping with my sister on Tuesday so I can buy some bookshelves for my living room. I live like a college student (and a poor one at that) and it would be nice to display my books. Now that we don’t have cats, I don’t have to hide them from a furbaby who wants to eat all my covers. She’s ruined plenty of spines using them as a scratching post, so while they will be displayed in a more pleasing manner, they will look well-loved indeed.

Speaking of querying and newsletters and all that, I must have gotten purged from Jane Friedman’s newsletter. I admit I don’t open my newsletters enough, and I missed hers, so I signed up again. She’s a good source of publishing news and also she hosts inexpensive classes with industry experts. If you want help with your query or first pages, take a look at this class hosted by her with guest Allison K Williams. https://janefriedman.com/get-past-gatekeepers/ (This is not an affiliate link.)

I’ve taken some of her classes before, and if you can’t watch it live, she makes the replay and all the handouts available after the fact, so don’t worry if you can’t fit it into your schedule. Her class with Allison is March 20th, 2024, from 1-3pm. It’s $35.00 and it will be worth every penny if landing an agent is one of your goals for 2024.

I hope you have a wonderful week ahead and good luck with all your endeavors! It’s not too late to hop on my social media calendar. I may end up making one for March. I’ve been able to stick to posting. My engagement isn’t the best, but it keeps my pages from looking so bleak. Nothing works without consistency, so we’ll see what happens in the coming months.

Until next time!

Monday Musings: Ghosted

Posted on February 12, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Ghosting someone isn’t this cute. (Judy Kao’s Images via Canva Pro)

Since my trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, I’ve been thinking a lot about ghosting. Being ghosted and doing the ghosting. I think we can all agree that being ghosted feels like crap. You have no idea why someone decided not to talk to you anymore, why they would drop off the face of the earth without an explanation or a goodbye. Maybe it’s easier to understand if you’ve done the ghosting in the past–we all have reasons why all of a sudden we would stop talking to someone. I have done the ghosting and have been ghosted and neither feel particularly great.

My appointment went well–all seventy minutes of it–a timeframe that I most definitely would not have been granted here in Fargo, ND. She asked me to start at the beginning of my troubles, and I did. She gave me an exam, consulted with a dermatology specialist, and we came up with a plan. It all seemed to easy, too good to be true, but it’s too early to know if it is or not. I didn’t expect a magic bullet–I’ve been suffering for three years. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if it took that long to find some normalcy, though she did assure me that I would start feeling better in the next couple of weeks. I go back for a ninety day followup at the end of May, and I thank God I have the resources to do that. I know how fortunate I am that I had the means and support to travel, but it’s pretty sad that I had to resort to that in the first place.

Anyway, so I’m not proud to say I’ve ghosted people, and not just because for the past three years I’ve been dealing with a health issue. Back when I first started writing (and unfortunately, publishing) I was really involved with Writer Twitter, and I met a lot of really nice people and made a lot of friends, some I still have today (though they’re more acquaintances now). But like anything, networking and friendships need to be kept at a moderate level, and I reached a point where all I was doing with my time was talking to people. Culling relationships to make room for the real reason why I was on social media to begin with hadn’t been on my mind, but some of those relationships made it easy. I ghosted one friend because everything was about her. Her books, her writing, her life. Friendship needs to go both ways, and frankly, after a couple of years, I got tired of supporting her with nothing in return. Looking back, I should have been grownup and told her I wasn’t getting out of our friendship what I needed. Being a grownup is difficult though, and I took the coward’s way out. She let me go easily enough and maybe she didn’t care I faded away. At the beginning of our friendship she said she had trouble keeping friends, and I had no idea why, but after a couple of years it became apparent. If someone tells you they have a hard time keeping friends, believe them. Why will come out soon enough.

I ghosted someone else because he was involved with so much drama on Twitter, I honestly thought he was going to drag me down with him. A stalker latched on to him and he ended up having to leave Twitter for good. We corresponded by email for a bit, but I didn’t want my relationships to be about drama, I wanted to talk writing and publishing. I stopped responding to his emails which was probably for the best. I think he dropped offline all together and his last book was published in 2017. He’s unpublished all of his books, which is really too bad. I own all his paperbacks. He was a good writer.

I don’t have a great track record with people in my real life, and I probably sound like a horrible person. I haven’t had the energy to keep up with anyone, like my friend I used to run races with back when I was running instead of writing. We’ve been friends for twenty years, but dealing with my stuff, I just couldn’t. I texted her recently and she gave me a short text back, but if I want to try to salvage that relationship I’m going to have to apologize and explain. I probably won’t have any energy for that until I know this treatment is going to work. There are other people who haven’t heard from me in a long time, people who have emailed me or messaged me on Facebook’s Messenger. I just get tired, and though I know I owe them responses, that’s as far as it’s gotten.

I could argue that I got carried away with my writing and let it take over, and that’s pretty truthful too. Once I started writing, almost ten years ago, I didn’t care about anything else, and still, to this day, no matter what the reason is behind it, I put in 30-40 hours into my books a week. Hiding from COVID and my health issue, yeah, but it’s also just a mental thing. I’m obsessed and not in a good way. I never found balance, and since I started my pen name, it’s gotten worse. All I care about is writing, and my relationships (and health as I’ve gained some weight) have suffered.

But, I’ve been on the receiving end, too, coworkers who have turned friends who have gone, or are going through, their own stuff, just decide to drop off. One coworker is doing that to me now–I haven’t heard from her for weeks, and she knew my Mayo appointment was important to me. Not a “good luck,” or a “tell me how it goes.” It hurts, and I know my behavior has hurt other people. If she ever decides she wants to start talking to me again, I’ll have to decide if it’s worth it. Like the people I’ve ghosted, you break trust, and she’s hurt my feelings. At this point, I doubt I’ll want to talk to her ever again, because what’s that saying…with friends like that, who needs enemies? I’ve gotten along fine without her, and it’s obvious she doesn’t need me, either.

I think the moral of this whole story is we know who we want in our lives and who is expendable. No one likes to think we aren’t important, but no matter what we’re going through, we make time for the people we want to keep close to us. Surprisingly, I haven’t alienated everyone in my life, and I would have to think if that was deliberate or if the people I have kept worked a little harder at keeping me in their lives. Not that I’m proud of that, either. Like I said, friendship goes both ways and I would never force someone to pull more weight than me in our relationship. I try to reach out as much as someone is reaching out to me. So, take from that what you will and apply it to your own life. Mediocre relationships aren’t worth the energy–sometimes it’s easier to be alone. You make that choice about people, and people make that choice about you.

Do I have amends to make? Yes. Will I make the time when I feel better? I hope so. Feeling normal seems like a pipe dream, though, and if I truly do make progress, maybe that will be the boost I need to reach out and at least explain. Then if people don’t accept my apology, it will be what I deserve and nothing less. I’m okay with that.

As far as author news, I realized I didn’t have any Amazon ads going (all the end dates came and went), so I decided to create a few new ads. The auto placement ads do really well for me (which tells me my 7 keywords that I set up when I published and my categories are on target) and I started getting impressions the next day. I also did some for Canada and the UK, but I’m going to have to watch those UK ads–they spend like crazy. I did ads for the first in my Lost & Found trilogy and the first in my rockstar trilogy. Read through really is the only way you can make any money if you’re spending money on ads.

I did the new Sponsored Brand ad for my Lost & Found trilogy, where now you have to choose a graphic to go along with your books. This is how the display looks in the ads dashboard. I don’t know how it looks in the wild, as they say, and I doubt I’ll bump into my own ad.

I was surprised they suggested comparing your books to others’ because with the Sponsored Products, you can’t mention other authors in your ad copy text (that I’m aware of, correct me if I’m wrong here). I’d already bought the graphic from DepositPhotos for a TikTok video I didn’t end up creating, but I think it fit perfectly with the background I chose for my books (I think they are both LA at night). We’ll see if they make any headway. I think the covers are working better, but I don’t read through my reviews to see if the edits are making an impact. I may not know that anyway as I never had a negative review saying my writing sucks. Here are my stats for this ad:

The left column is impressions (20,321), the 2 indicates clicks, the $1.44 is spend and the 209 is supposedly the page reads in KU that that have been attributed to the ad (though I’ve heard that’s not accurate). I’m not sure why I’m spending so much for a click–either I forgot to change the default bid, or I forgot to change the bid to dynamic down only. Either way, I’m going to have to keep an eye on it so it doesn’t get out of control. I don’t mind spending money as long as I come out even or ahead, but I’m also running FB ads and those use up a lot of money too. I like seeing the impressions though, knowing I’m getting my name out there. At the end of the day, it’s all you can really do.

As far as my February social media posts go, I need to backtrack for Saturday. I missed because I used all my time to edit after my trip. I finished book 4, but book 5 is going to need a lot of work. I wrote quickly, used a lot of garbage words, and FFS, I have a 90k book and only 11 chapters. These chapters are long, and if I remember right, one is over 20k words. I’m not going to change that during editing, that was definitely a deliberate choice on my part and it’s too late now. But I think I’ll be using up the rest of the month to get this book done. Even longer, maybe. Tedious no matter how I’m feeling.

That’s about all I have for this week, though I suppose it’s enough.

Have a great week!

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Happy Monday! Well, I hope it’s happy for you, but if you’re not a full-time author, by the time you read this, you’ve probably guzzled a gallon of coffee and you’re sitting behind your desk at work wondering why you haven’t won the lottery. I know, I’m such a downer, but that’s life. I was scrolling Facebook yesterday and bumped into this motivational piece of perfection….

I don’t know why stupid stuff like that makes me laugh, but it does.

Anyway, not much on my plate this week besides going to Rochester, MN on Tuesday for my Mayo Clinic visit that’s scheduled on Wednesday afternoon. I’m fortunate we’re having a mild winter and I don’t have to worry about blizzards. Over the past three years I’ve talked a lot about how icky I feel, and I’m trying not to get my hopes up. This is an old subject, so I won’t waste any more time on it. I’ll be sure to update you next week, though, and hopefully I’ll have some good news to share.

I’m proud of myself and I’ve been doing the prompts that I made up for the February social media content calendar I shared with you last week. I don’t mind talking about myself, but I was at a loss of how to do it. The prompts help, and I’ll schedule posts for when I’m gone. The Canva scheduler makes that easy and I post to my FB author page and to my IG page. The algos don’t know who I am so I don’t get many likes or comments, but if I can teach them to know who I am (again), maybe that will change and I can start building my following (again).

Here it is if you missed it last week. It’s never too late to start posting.

I’m more than halfway done editing book 4 in my series. It’s slow going, taking out all the whens, whiles, and withs and some becauses. I definitely took the easy way out when I wrote these, and I’m still layering in feelings, emotions, and descriptions into the scenes. This book isn’t too bad. I’ve only added 1,000 words so far and I have 4 chapters left. I won’t get it done before my trip, as rewriting takes a long time, but I’m hoping to get all of them done by the end of March. I still have to do covers, and I wish I could afford to source my stock from a site that wasn’t DepositPhotos. I don’t know if I’ll ever get there and right now, I’m at their mercy. I think I’ve got the template ready to go–the backgrounds and possibly the title font (though I’m always on the lookout for beautiful font duets). I’m keeping the series logo I made for the other covers. There’s nothing wrong with it. Will these be the books where I start chopping heads off? Stay tuned.

I’m thisclose to joining Threads. I vowed I wouldn’t add another platform to my social media, but I see teaser posts on IG and FB enticing me to join. I’ve exceeded my limits of clicking and reading without having a profile. It’s not because I want to promote my books–IG and my FB author pages are enough for that. No, the posts Zuck’s been teasing me with are what I’ve been missing since Twitter went to the way of X. I need a place for book news. Facebook and the author groups I’ve joined fill in a lot of that, but I had to leave 20booksto50k for ethical reasons, and I left the Self Publishing Formula group that’s hosted by Mark Dawson after all that plagiarizing stuff came out. Losing those two groups hasn’t been a big deal, but I’m seeing that BookThreads could be what I need to fill in the gap. Twitter hasn’t been the same, and I got treated to more BS the other day when someone was commenting on this article:

https://www.theverge.com/c/23194235/ai-fiction-writing-amazon-kindle-sudowrite-jasper

They talk about about authors using AI to get ahead, write faster, crank out more content. I’ve often referred to self-publishing as a hamster wheel, that little furry guy running faster and faster but not getting anywhere. The industry is full of books and when you release a book that sinks the second you hit Publish, it can feel like you do a lot of work for nothing.

I keep my mouth shut a lot of the time now. I’m not popular on Twitter, my views are not well-received, much like Joanna Penn who said in the article she had to step away because she’s an AI cheerleader and she got a lot of pushback for that. I am not an AI cheerleader, but I feel out of place all the same.

I really do just want to make one thing clear–I do not blame Amazon (KDP) for the grind self-publishing had turned it. I’m not denying at all that it’s common, COMMON, for authors to publish 4-6 books a year. And not novellas, either. Full-length books. It’s common. But it’s the KNOWLEDGE that it’s common that can eat at you. You know authors are doing something you can’t. I can’t publish four books a year. Not without writing them and saving them up. Writing, editing, cover design, proofing the proof, it all takes too long. Especially if you’re dealing with a series. Especially if you want to publish something that’s got some quality to it. It’s not easy writing a book full of twists. Half the reason I sat on my series for so long is that I have 540,000 words of an intricate plot that I needed desperately to make sure held together. Only time away could give me that clarity, and it has proven to be valuable so far.

The woman featured in the article turned to AI for help. She’s living off her book money and that in itself, I’m sure, is stressful. I’m at the point where I don’t think I’ll ever be able to quit my day job, and that’s okay, but trying to find time to write after working 40 hours a week is stressful in its own way. I’m not not blaming this woman for letting AI write part of her books, that’s her choice, but the WHY she did it I don’t agree with. She said her readers would drop her if they had to wait too long between books, and I think that is complete BS. Okay, maybe not complete because I do think you need to have consistency when publishing. Even if you train your readers to only expect one book a year. Publishing is the fastest moving sloth there is, and yeah, you’re going to have your work cut out for you if you’re writing a series and need five years between books. That’s why I write my series before I publish them. People binge now, and I just go with it. But rather than turn to Al for help, there are things you can do.

Keep your readers informed. Start a newsletter or post consistently on social media. If you let your readers know what you’re doing, what you’re working on, and when the next book will come out, they will wait for you. Build a connection with your readers. Care about them, and they will care about you.

Recommend other books. Listen, when I was reading that article, I felt her desperation, but in the end you are not going to be the only author a reader reads. It’s impossible. Romance whale readers can read a book a day. There’s no humanly possible way to keep up with that pace. Instead of being scared of being replaced, embrace the idea that books are a community and you are only a piece of it. Recommend other books–you should be reading them anyway–but that’s why it’s important to create a niche. On my V’s Vixens FB page, I post books that are free and in KU and pull quotes from books that are similar to mine. I’m building a readership of the kinds of books I write. If you’re all over the map, your readers won’t know what to read. They read YOU and want to read books that are similar to yours. Make it easy for them. Recommend books that you like so when your next book is ready to go they know exactly what they’ll be getting.

Relax, but not too much. I like rules, and if you’ve read my blog for a while, you know I do. Stick to one genre, know reader expectations. Cover your book to market. Learn an ad platform. But the one rule I have never ever agreed with is to write every day. For some people it’s not possible, and beating yourself up over it won’t make things better. If you can’t write, you can’t. Thinking is writing. Plotting is writing. Sorting through stock photos is, maybe not writing, but you get the idea. Don’t lose your joy, or like woman in the article, writing will be come work and not the good kind. She said after she started using AI for a prolonged time, she didn’t feel connected to her characters anymore, would lose the theme of her books. She didn’t wake up thinking about her characters, she didn’t go to bed and they were the lost thought in her mind before she drifted off. You know what? When characters claw at you from the inside out, that is the best part of writing. When your characters need their story told so badly they don’t let you go. I felt sorry for her when I read that. If you lose your joy, there’s not much to write for anymore.

I didn’t get into with that guy, though he spouted off a few more things about how evil KDP is and how there isn’t an alternative to publishing. Maybe KDP has the biggest slice of the pie, but they gave us the pie. I truly think Amazon gave us opportunities when we wouldn’t have had them otherwise.

That is all I have for this post. I hope you all have a wonderful week ahead, and if you have time, sign up for ProWritingAid’s Romance Week. I always sign up but never watch anything. I still have all the 20booksto50k videos from their November conference. Plus two of Alex Newton’s K-lytics reports. But if you’re interested here’s a non-affiliate link to sign up. https://prowritingaid.com/romance-week/sign-up

Until next time!

Author Resources–Five Things That You Can Use Right Now

Posted on January 29, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

There are a lot of resources out there, some free, a lot paid, and you can lose track of where they are and forget them if you ever need them. I thought I would put together a short list of the little out-of-the-way resources that you might want to bookmark in case you ever want to use them. (As as always, there are no affiliate links in this post.)

The first one is one that I use a lot, and it’s a site by Creativindie’s Derek Murphy (https://www.creativindie.com/). The 3D Cover Creator doesn’t need special software to use–all you have to do is upload your book’s cover, and spine, depending on the mockup you choose, download to a PNG for the transparent background, and you have a mockup for all your social media graphics. https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/
What I really like about this site is during the design process, it’s a cool way to test if your book cover is going to look good. This is a graphic I made for Instagram when my Christmas novel came out.

The next resource I like to tell authors about is by Dave Chesson and his team at Kindlepreneur. I love the QR code generator. It’s absolutely free and you can add it to bookmarks and any other marketing paraphernalia you create. I love VistaPrint’s quality and their prices are decent. Add a QR code pointing potential customers to your website or Amazon author page. You can even add a logo to the middle. For lack of anything better, I added my imprint logo to this one and it points to my pen name’s author website.

Another free resource Dave and his team provides is a barcode generator. I don’t use this because I just let KDP and IngramSpark add the barcode to my books for me, but if you wanted your price embedded into the code the way Barnes and Noble requires you to do if you want your books in their stores, this is a free and not very confusing way for you to do that. Create it and add it to your book’s cover before uploading and publishing your book. Here’s a barcode I created for one of my books, but I’ll just delete it as I won’t need it. You can find the barcode generator here: https://kindlepreneur.com/isbn-bar-code-generator/

Kindlepreneur has a lot of great resources on their website. Check out all they have to offer and sign up for their newsletter. https://kindlepreneur.com/

The next resource I use quite a bit when I’m looking for comparison authors for my books is https://www.literature-map.com/. The only con about using it is it doesn’t bring up indie authors unless they are bestsellers or have been picked up be a publisher like Amazon’s Montlake. Type in the name of an author that you want comps to and watch them populate. I put in Jodi Ellen Malpas, as she’s one of my comp authors.

This is a great tool for keywords for ads, finding your target audience, or just looking for something to read in your genre.

One of the last things I use almost on a daily basis is the Unicode Text Converter. https://qaz.wtf/u/convert.cgi?text=t If you’ve ever wondered how to bold and or italicize Facebook post text or Twitter tweets or Instagram text, this is how. Enter the text you want and click SHOW. Simply copy the style you want and paste where you want it to post.

These are little things that I use a lot that I thought you would like to know about, too. I don’t have much else for this week. My personal drama has seemed to have died down, and I’m happy about that. I finally finished editing the third book in my series and started on number four. I’m still stumbling upon a few scenes where I rushed, but I’ve always liked this couple just a little bit better and reading these last three won’t feel like such a chore. I still don’t have my car back from the auto body shop, but once I do, I feel better about that, too. On Wednesday my daughter, sister, and I are going to dinner and then to watch Titanic at the theatre. My daughter is 18 and has never seen it before, so I’m excited to see what she thinks. I said at least she can see where all the memes come from.

One last thing–I made a February calendar of social media prompts. I thought I would share it and you can save it if you need something to help you post next month. I bumped up the DPI so you can print it too, if that something you do, but I think the sizing is kind of odd. I’m going to try to stick to it since I was the one who made it. My Facebook author page is nothing but tumbleweeds, and I’d like to bump up my following there and get comfortable posting. I hope you all have a good week!

Until next time.

made in Canva using one of their templates

Monday Author Update

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Before I get into my post for this week, I would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has given me their time reading this blog. I just posted my 500th post, and I have over 700 subscribers. I appreciate anyone who has stopped by, even if it’s just to grab the directions on how to make a full wrap paperback cover in Canva. I’m delighted, truly, that those instructions have helped so many people, and in doing so, brought their dreams of publishing their books one step closer. I know how hard it is to publish without resources, and I am grateful to be a part of anyone’s journey.

In January alone, my updated instructions have been viewed 235 times, and almost 3,000 times since I published it in the summer of 2022. Thank you so much.

I don’t have an author update, but for lack of anything better to title my blog, there it is. I have the hardest time coming up with “clickable” subject lines. I really struggle with my newsletter, too, trying to sound cute and funny, sexy and intriguing, and everything in between so people will open my newsletter and not empty it out with the social and unwanted promotions. You would think that people would unsubscribe if they didn’t want your mail in their inbox, but at the same time, I think I have to delete something for a whole year before I get tired of it enough to open it up and find the unsubscribe link. Maybe they feel guilty they took my free book and think that unsubscribing will hurt my feelings. What I know of the backend of newsletters now, I actively encourage anyone who has subscribed to my newsletter to click that unsubscribe the second they don’t to be on my list anymore. Because you know what? An unsubscribe doesn’t hurt my feelings, but a low open rate does, haha. Okay, so that’s my intro for this post.

Editing my series is slow going, and I blame two things: I’m already so familiar with the story that it’s a drag to read it over again, and these books need work. I’m at one part now where one character is in a room talking to another character and then boom he’s somewhere else a paragraph later. I need him in both places so having to rewrite that scene is kind of a pain, though, to be fair, I’m glad I caught the inconsistency to fix it in the first place. But still. This is what I’m dealing with and being kind of, I shouldn’t say, but I will, bored, isn’t helpful. I don’t believe in belittling your content in public. I think it’s a bad omen to put derogatory comments about your books online. You never know who will be reading, and if the author him/herself isn’t confident about his or her work, then why would anyone want to read it? I love these books, and I do try remind myself that I should enjoy the editing because once I read the proofs as a final check, I won’t be reading them ever again. Though I complain now, it will be bittersweet to say goodbye to characters I will have spent three and a half years with.

So while I should be trying to get these edited as quickly as possible, it was a nice surprise when someone asked me to help her with her series covers and I jumped into the project with both feet and a big sigh of relief. It’s been a welcome break to scroll through stock and experiment with the fonts and the design. I’ll let her do the cover reveals, and maybe after they’re done we can do a collaborative post about working together and bringing an author’s ideas to fruition. I have worked with enough people by now that I know I would never want to do covers for other people as a side hustle. I’m not a perfectionist by any means, but when you’re doing something for someone else, you want to give them the best product possible. It can be stressful, especially if your skills aren’t there like mine. She knows I don’t do this professionally and was okay with that. It doesn’t mean I’m not going to do my absolute best or that I won’t try to stretch my skills. It’s why I like helping others in the first place. Whatever I do for someone else can only help me and my covers later on.

I finally heard about my car and will be driving a rental this week while my bumper is getting fixed. It will be a relief to get that out of the way. Finding the damage and having to make arrangements to have it repaired has been stressful and just when I cross something off the list and I think my life will calm down a bit, something else pops up. Lately after work I’ve been decompressing with a glass of wine and rewatching Bridgerton, but I should be using those hours to edit my series. I know I can’t give them the attention they deserve if I’m stressed out and tired, but the lack of progress is still in the back of my mind and I truly will relax and celebrate when they’re all done. This is my biggest project to date, and I don’t think I have it in me to work on something so huge again.

That’s really about all I have for this week–I know you’ll be shocked that this isn’t another 2,000 word post. Oh, wait. I had a BargainBooksy last week, and you probably want to know how that went. I probably shouldn’t even bother with posting the results because they weren’t great. I always blame the operator, not the machine, so I’m not sure what quite happened. My cover, even after redoing it, maybe didn’t hit the mark, or the blurb wasn’t that enticing. Whatever it was, I only sold 10 on the day the promo ran and 53 over all for the month of January so far because I’m also running a Facebook ad to it. At .99 that doesn’t bring in a lot of royalties, and I’m counting on read-through to the other books to make up that 35% rate on KDP. This is what my feature looked like in the BargainBooksy email. You can say the model I chose still isn’t conventionally handsome, and maybe.

I’ve seen less attractive men on covers, so, like I said, I’m not sure what happened. Written Word Media doesn’t share the click through rate, so it could be I had many clicks and readers didn’t like my whole blurb. I would hate think that these have already peaked, but if they have, I don’t know how to bump them up without spending a lot of money I probably won’t get back. The book has 90 reviews and a 4.4 rating, so it’s not that. I don’t know. I’ve heard overall that newsletter promos like this have lost their luster, but if that’s really the case, then I’m not sure what indies can do besides picking up the TikTok mantel and forging on. Newsletter promos used to be a sure way to nudge your book up the charts and into readers’ hands. I’ll dig deeper, but I can only afford to experiment so often. Facebook ads are expensive, (I’m not losing money, but you still have to budget in that expense) and I’ve been pouring all my budget into those right now. The one for Twisted Alibis has taken off and it has a lot of social proof:

That ad keeps my trilogy selling at a steady, not huge, but steady pace. I haven’t put the first book on a promo yet. I’m reluctant to do so since they’re selling okay without. Maybe at the end of next summer I can do the first one for free for their anniversary.

Anyway, I’ll report the 90 dollars I spent as a business expense to my tax guy and keep on keeping on. There’s not much else I can do. (Well, there is a lot can do but I need to get a few financial things off my plate first before I can try shoving money at a different promo.)

One of the things I was saying I missed most is going for walks and listening to podcasts. BookBub sent me an email with a list of podcasts for writers and authors, and they segmented them by marketing, craft, industry insights, and author life.

Here is the link for the post: https://insights.bookbub.com/podcasts-authors-writing-publishing-book-marketing/

Starting a new podcast is difficult. If you’re like me, you like to start something new at the beginning, but in the publishing industry, old news isn’t always the best news. Plus, if the podcasts have had a long run, there could be hundreds of episodes to listen to. I think I’d like to start a podcast about industry insights, and if I sample a couple, I’ll let you know which ones I like best. As long as it’s above 0 degrees Fahrenheit, I don’t mind being outside, and walking and listening to publishing news is probably better for my mental health than drinking and watching Netflix. I know you need a break every now and then, but as I’ve said, immersing myself in books is what saved me the past few years. If I can get some answers at Mayo next month, I can enjoy all things publishing again instead of using them as a coping mechanism.

I hope you all have a good week, and let me know if you try a new podcast!

Until next time!

Monday Author Update: Newsletter/Email Guidelines

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Last week was not the greatest week I’ve ever had, but as they say, things could always be worse, and since things have smoothed out a little I’ll agree . . . for now. Let me get the “real” issues out of the way first and then I can tell you about a few personal things that haven’t exactly gone my way either.

Newsletter/Email Authentication and adding SPF and DKIM records
I’m subscribed to Holly Darling’s newsletter and she’s an expert in email marketing. I bought her MailerLite tutorial a couple of years go during a Black Friday sale. I haven’t gotten around to watching it *wincing* and with the migration I completed a few weeks ago maybe it won’t help me much now anyway, but it signed me up to her newsletter. In it, she outlined what you need to do to so Gmail and Yahoo will keep delivering your newsletter to your subscribers who use them as their email service provider. Luckily, she also has a blog, and you can read the article here:

https://pages.hollydarlinghq.com/posts/what-the-heck-is-a-dmarc-and-why-you-should-care-1

I knew changes were coming, but I didn’t realize they would be coming quite so soon. Most of these changes need to be completed by February 2024 (which is poor timing if you wanted to migrate to the new MailerLite because you also have to do that by the first of February), and I do not like waiting to do things until the last minute. That just begs for things to go wrong with no time to fix it–and I had plenty go wrong.

Way back when I started blogging, I let WordPress handle my hosting even though I was warned my site wouldn’t have all the bells and whistles that it could have if I found a different host. I didn’t want to mess with GoDaddy, Bluehost, GatorHost, SiteGround or anything else and didn’t need anything fancy. I didn’t start blogging to sell books–thank goodness too, because this blog does not sell books, and that’s fine. People who read this blog want to sell their own books, and I’m happy to help if I can. So, I was a little concerned when all this news started circulating that I was going to have to authenticate my newsletter account. I wasn’t sure if I even could with WordPress, but fortunately, the answer is yes.

I decided to start a newsletter last summer, no, was the summer of 2022 since 2023 is gone now. The first thing I did was pay for an email address linked to my website. Even back then people said not to use a regular email account, and I paid for a G-Suite account. You can email me at vania@vaniamargene.com if you want. I’ll get it eventually (my apologies to Debbie who wrote me some really nice things about A Heartache for Christmas that sat in my spam folder for two weeks). WordPress made that easy to do as well, and I pay $72 dollars a year for it. I looked up all my renewal notices and I pay $187.00 a year to WordPress for this site ($96 for the Explorer plan, $72 for the G-Suite account, and $19 for my domain name), and $66 dollars for my vmrheault.com author site ($48 for the personal plan and $18 for my domain name). It’s no wonder I’ve barely been breaking even doing this author thing. I pay WordPress a decent chunk of change, but websites are necessary and the email I set up to go with my newsletter is a must (and it will be for everyone after February 1). I thought I would have some trouble because I decided to write under a pen name, but I’m not hiding who I am and even give my first name in my welcome letter, so it’s not a big deal my newsletter shows they come from vaniamargene.com. I only set up a separate author website because my 1st person books are very different than my 3rd person books and I don’t promote the books I was writing under my full name . . . though I probably still should.

Anyway, long story not-so-short, I thought I was in for some trouble, but if you also host with WordPress because you were as confused as I was, don’t worry. I can show you were to go.

Click on your profile name:

You’ll get a new menu. Click on manage domains or it might say just one domain. I have two, as I just stated above.

Click on the one you want:

Scroll down to DNS records. Click it to make it expand then click Manage.

This is where you go to enter the information that your newsletter aggregator will give you. Click add a record and that opens up a new menu where you can chose the type and that will allow you to enter the name and value. I honestly don’t want to go any further than that to capture screenshots because when I was adding the information MailerLite was telling me to enter, I messed something up and took my whole site down for over 24 hours and didn’t even realize it. I was really lucky that WordPress’s chat was available and a Happiness Engineer knew exactly what I did wrong and helped me fix it in only 10 minutes, but I missed out on over 200 hits while it was down. I apologize to anyone who was trying to find the instructions on how to make a full book cover wrap in Canva (I know it’s all you guys love me for haha).

The good news is that DNS menu is going to look similar no matter where you host your website. The information your newsletter aggregator might be a bit different, but just copy it from them and paste it where it should go in your website’s DNS records.

Here is the MailerLite DNS tutorial.

Next you’ll want to add the DMARC, and what’s really cool is that DMARC is the same for everyone. I copied what Holly put into her domain and you can copy what I put in mine: TXT is the type, _dmarc is the name, and v-DMARC1: p=none; is the value. MailerLite also has a tutorial for this, but if you did the SPF and the DKIM, then this will be more of the same.

I didn’t do it the way they did, but what I did worked and I’m not going to go back and change it.

If you want to check your DMARC and see if you pass, you can use this free site: https://dmarcian.com/dmarc-inspector/

Holly goes through this in her video that she shares in her blog article, and she tells you how you can know if what you did worked by sending yourself a test newsletter email.

This is what my content looked like before I did the authentication and the DMARC:

What all this does is tell someone’s email platform where your email is coming from and you want it to say your website, not your newsletter aggregator.

My test email came to me all right and my website is back up and doing okay now. I won’t know 100% for sure if everything is fine until this blog post posts correctly, my next campaign is sent and opened, and February comes and goes and doesn’t cause any trouble.

It’s really difficult to stay in compliance with all of these things and I’ve seen authors who have just given up having a newsletter. I can understand that, especially after tallying up all the money I put into WordPress alone. I probably don’t need more than a personal package for this site but I upgraded when I thought I needed more. Saving $50.00 a year I guess isn’t that big of a deal, but I’ll consider it if I ever get to the point where I have to pay for MailerLite. So far I’m under 1,000 subscribers and likely will stay that way since my Bookfunnel integration went down the drain with the MailerLite migration to the new platform. Though, I’m saving money not running ads to my reader magnet anymore, and that money can go toward ads to the books I’m actually selling.

This wasn’t meant to be a detailed tutorial because there are so many different website hosts out there and so many newsletter aggregators too. I feel like everyone is scrambling to get this done and hosts and newsletter support are familiar with everyone’s troubles. Reach out to your support if you need to. I don’t send many emails but I want to stay in compliance so that the emails I do send are delivered properly.

If you run a newsletter and want to test the spammy-ness of it, this is a fun website. Send a test email to it and see what your score is. https://www.mail-tester.com/

Promos
Because I downgraded my Bookfunnel account, I promptly spent the money on a BargainBooksy through Written Word Media. I’m advertising Give & Take, the first real promo I’ve done for that book and the trilogy since I redid the covers and edited the insides. I dropped the price of book one to .99 and I’ve been selling a few here and there. I’m running a Facebook ad to it, and I’ve sold 29 ebooks since the first of the year. I’ve also had 5907 page reads which equals out to about 15 books. Hopefully the BargainBooksy will kick that into gear and I can finally move my trilogy. It really is a shame I dropped the ball with the covers when I released them but I didn’t know the insides were so messy, so giving them an overhaul was the right choice. If you don’t remember what my covers were like before, here’s the comparison:

I’ll never get that first year back, but the insides weren’t my fault. I grew as a writer and spotted the flaws after the fact. That’s all you can really do, and as an indie, I have the freedom to fix the mistakes that were made. Now that I know what my tics are, I can write better books moving forward.

King’s Crossing Series Update
Not much new to report there. I’ve been distracted with newsletter changes and glitches, not feeling the best, and my son started a new job and I’ve taken on the role of unpaid taxi driver (he gets anxiety behind the wheel and doesn’t have his driver’s license). I’m working on Book 3, rewriting sentences, smoothing out scenes, adding words, deleting sentences. I think what I’ve learned in going back and redoing the trilogy and now this series is that taking time away from your WIP is very helpful. You can see more clearly what’s missing. I’m only on chapter eight of twenty-four, and I’ve already added 3k words. I’ll probably double that by the time I’m done. But it sounds richer, the scenes don’t sound as choppy. I’ve spent three years with these characters and I’m adding more emotional depth. This is slow going, but I’m pleased with how they’re sounding so far. I’m also playing with covers, but I’ll do a separate post about that later.

Personal Adventures
Last Monday I woke up to my back bumper ripped halfway off my car. I don’t know if someone hit it or tried to pull it off, but either way, they caused over 2k worth of damage. I just paid it off, literally, a month prior, so this was not the way I was hoping to celebrate. Luckily, I pay for full coverage and the car is drivable until I can get into the body shop and have it repaired. On top of the migration issues I was having then still not feeling all that great, I didn’t need this on my plate. Fortunately, I was able to get into the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN sooner than I thought, and I only have to wait three weeks to hopefully get some answers. My deductible would have paid for that trip, but it is what it is. Things happen. It could have been worse, and I’m thankful I can still at least drive it. My sister also experienced some car issues, and I had to pick her up and take her home after the tow truck towed her car to the dealership for engine trouble. 2024 hasn’t been kind, but I’m trying to keep my spirits up.

That’s all I have for this week, but at 2,100 words, I suppose that’s enough. I just hope that all I did for my newsletter compliance will suffice and that I don’t have to do anything else with my newsletter for a long time. My promo for Give & Take runs on Thursday, the 18th, and if you want to see what it looks like, you can subscribe to the BargainBooksy newsletter. They’ll drop you emails telling you what the bargain books are for the day.

I’m tired, and even a cup of coffee won’t fix it.

Until next time!

How to plan your 2024 (or not).

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

green desk and office supplies. text says planning your 2024

We’re already eight days into the New Year, and if you’re still reeling from 2023, I don’t blame you. 2022 was more of a shitshow for me than 2023 was–mostly last year consisted of mental health damage control, not that I did so great in that department. Still, I’m alive, barely, and planning ahead keeps my head above water.

I’m not going to into what I plan to do this year. You already know I’m getting my series ready to go and when that’s done, jumping into writing what I want to publish beginning in the middle part of 2025. I won’t have my series ready for a while yet, and I’ll space the launches out to buy myself some time to write. I’m not in any rush–my rockstars are doing okay and now that my Lost & Found Trilogy is how I want them, I’ll start pushing them. I have plenty of books to market while I get my series finished, and I’m not going to publish them before they’re ready. The insides need to be how I want them and I need my covers to be perfect.

But this is the time of year when people start thinking of all they want to do, and if you’re like me, the call of the PLANNER is like a siren to sailor . . . much too enticing to ignore. You know what I mean, all those cute 2024 spiral-bound, sticker-filled planners on every endcap of every store daring you to be a better person than you were last year.

green flat desk. text says, you don't need a new plan for next year. you need a commitment. Seth Godin

This is also the time of year where everyone has gone over what they did the year before. There are a lot of successful people out there, and their stories (and screenshots) of all they achieved can make you feel like crap. You don’t have to feel sorry for yourself if you run into stories like that, and you can do what those planners dare you to do–be better. Perhaps not a better person entirely (there’s probably no need for that unless you’re a despicable human being and if that’s the case a planner won’t help you anyway), but if you had plans last year that you didn’t get around to for whatever reason, maybe this year is going to be your year. Of course, if you’re like me, every year is going to be “your year” and last year was the first year publishing where I actually felt like I made a little headway in that department.

I don’t buy planners anymore, no matter how pretty they are (and there are some gorgeous ones out there). I don’t want to waste the money or the paper. The last planner I bought was a really cute one covered in cartoon cats . . . at the end of 2021. But the problem I have with planners is that I don’t need one. I know what I want to get done and then I just do it. You might be asking, “What witchcraft is this?” but the simple fact is I like writing and publishing and I don’t need the extra push to get words down or books published. I have a little trouble with posting on social media. I still haven’t found anywhere I like to hang out to talk books–you all know how I feel about Twitter and I’m not going to add any new platforms like Threads or BlueSky if I can’t make what I already have work (my experiment with TikTok was a flop, but I haven’t completely given up). But when it comes to planners, I doubt even the prettiest one would help me anyway. What am I going to write, “Post to Social Media” at the top of every day? Very easy to ignore, especially if you don’t know what to post, which is what most people face. If I want to challenge myself, I can commit to posting on Instagram and my Facebook author page every day and see how that goes. After publishing eleven books, finding content shouldn’t be a problem, it’s just taking a half an hour off the top of every day and “getting it out of the way” but that’s a terrible way to think about it and not at all conducive to enjoying reaching out to readers.

I do have to keep track of some things, though, and what I’ve started doing is buying a large grid calendar from Walmart. It has big enough spaces that allow me to write in the squares giving me a month-at-a-glance view. It’s not elegant, but it gets the job done.

https://www.amazon.com/Large-Grid-Blue-2024-Calendar/dp/B0C3WTDKYB

Sometimes the months are sparse–if I don’t have a release or a promo planned then they’re going to be. Sometimes they’re busy if I scheduled a promo and want to remind myself of when it is so I can set up ads, schedule social media, and send out a newsletter. Authors in my writing groups are putting up their calls for round robins and newsletter swaps. A calendar would be a great way to keep track of all that. I don’t have enough books to join in round robins in addition to the promos I buy through Written Word Media, so I’m not up for doing any of that right now. (Most of the round robins I see your books are supposed to be free and I don’t have enough to put up a free book every month and not enough free days to only do a select few.)

The calendar is great to keep track of launches and things like when I put my book up on Booksprout and when they’ll drop out and into KU, and when my paperbacks go live (thanks to the new KDP scheduler), that kind of thing. It can at least give me quick visual which is what I want.

Planners are good for writing down your daily activities, and if you have a lot going on, then maybe that’s what you need. But if you don’t feel like writing, putting “2,000 words on my WIP” in your daily reminder isn’t what’s going to get your ass in your chair. That is something you’re going to have to figure out on your own, pretty planner or no. I know there are some authors who can’t get anything done unless they have their books on preorder, and if that’s what you need to light a fire under you, then go for it. I think that would cause me more anxiety than anything. When my books are on preorder, I only put them up for a couple of days, long enough to get some ads going and grab the buy-link, and then they go live. I have all my files ready to go. I don’t announce launches until my books are done because you just never know what could happen and I don’t like making promises I can’t keep.

There are a few planners that authors swear by like Sarra Cannon and her HB90 system. You can get the information here on her website: https://heartbreathings.com/tag/hb90-method/, or look at the product on Etsy: https://www.etsy.com/listing/1603823270/hb90-method-planner-q1-2024-printable

I purchased this planner by Audrey Hughey a couple years ago thinking that I would dive in and change my ways. It looked great and there was no reason why it wouldn’t have worked for me. It’s spiral bound like a lot of daily planners are, and that’s really convenient. The price has gone up a bit, but anything made with paper has, so that’s not a surprise. You can get information about her system on her website here: https://www.audreyhughey.com/ and you can look at her planner on Lulu (she prints there for the spiral binding option): https://www.lulu.com/shop/audrey-hughey/the-2024-authors-planner/paperback/product-p6djwd6.html?page=1&pageSize=4

Honestly there are so many planners out there–and geared toward writers–but only you can decide what is going to best fit your needs and what those needs are going to be to get your butt moving to get your goals accomplished.

If you had a bad year in 2023, you can turn it around. In my experience, success breeds success and the more you accomplish, the more you will accomplish. I think one of the most important things you can do for yourself is to have a couple of accountability partners, but not just anyone. Someone willing to take the risk of making you mad telling you when you’re lagging behind and falling onto excuses. Everyone should have a friend who won’t lie, but sometimes you just don’t want to hear it. If that’s truly the case, maybe find a successful indie whose career you want to emulate. With social media, it’s easy to see what they do. Check Amazon and see how often they publish. Sign up for their newsletter, follow their Facebook author page. Romance authors release frequently. We have to–we have to compete with the output of other authors and we’re fighting against every algorithm known to man. I know releasing so many books last year was one of the keys to my best year. I may never be able to release that many at one time again, but hopefully the momentum never slows.

green flat desk. text says, action is the foundational key to all success--pablo picasso

Whatever you have to do, find your process and do it.

Even if that includes a pretty planner.

Happy New Year 2024!

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I am taking today off from posting, but I hope you all have a wonderful year ahead!

If you missed my year-end 2023 recap, you can find it here: http s://vaniamargene.com/2023/12/25/my-year-end-recap-and-whats-ahead-in-2024/

I’ll be back next week with a regular post. Until then, thank you to my audience and my readers who support me every week. You keep me coming back. I appreciate you!

My Year-End Recap and What’s Ahead in 2024

Posted on December 25, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

I re-read the blog post I wrote at the end of 2022, and it’s interesting to see how things changed with what I thought I was going to do. My main change was my publishing schedule–back then I thought my rockstar romance was only going to be one book and then out of nowhere it turned into a trilogy. That was a stroke of luck on my part (and for Eddie and Brock who had their stories told and ended up with HEAs I hadn’t planned on) and actually made up the bulk of my sales this year. I have that blog post pulled up–let’s compare.

Books/Novels/WIPs

Number of books written: 3.5
I wrote three and a half books last year, too. I finished Twisted Alibis (I had 58k of it done and the total number of words in that book are 107k) and wrote Twisted Lullabies and Twisted Lies and also, at the last second, wrote A Heartache for Christmas I was able to edit and cover in time for the holidays. Last year, in 2022, I wrote 286,000 words. This year I wrote 340,000. My rockstars are long (the shortest coming in at 92k) and my Christmas romance added to those at 97k. All in all, I had a good writing year.

Number of books published: 4. Wait, no. 8.
I forgot I published my Lost & Found Trilogy in January. That’s three. Then I published Faking Forever in May. I published that as filler while I was writing my rockstars and published those in August, and also my Christmas romance in November for a total of eight books. Sounds impressive, but my Lost & Found Trilogy was written in 2022 and I only pushed Publish. Faking Forever was also previously written and all I did was order a fresh proof and proofread that. My rockstars were the biggest project I completed since pivoting to first person present and I’m really proud of them.

Year-End Royalties: $4,404.19 (This figure will be off by 7 days as I am writing this a week before the end of the year.)

taken from the Chrome extension BookReport

As always, forget about the total number of books there. BookReport crams all the formats together. That is definitely up from the $670.55 that I made last year, and I owe half that to my rockstars and the other half to Facebook ads. Like last year and my disappointment with my Cedar Hill Duet, I’m sad my Lost & Found Trilogy didn’t do better, but that was my own fault–with covers, and more recently, my dismay at having found a writing tic I edited out not long ago. Now that the covers are how I want and the insides are going to be the best they can ever be, I’m going to start running ads to them after the New Year. I’ll report back if I can get them to sell.

As for Amazon ads, I didn’t throw the money at them I have in the past. Last year I spent $112.55 and this year I spent . . . $835.67. Just kidding. As my character, Agatha, in Twisted Lies says, Jesus Christ on a bicycle. I didn’t know I spent that much. I spent $200.00 in June alone, so I guess I better add watching my freaking ads more closely to my 2024 goals. FML.

I knew Facebook ads going in would be expensive (but so can Amazon ads if you’re not keeping an eye on them, sigh) and I spent $1,238.60 (I had to go through my emails and tally the invoices they sent me that I set aside for my accountant, so no screenshots available, I’m afraid.) I actually thought I spent more than that, but I didn’t start running ads until May of this year, and I didn’t crank them up until August when my rockstars came out. I didn’t buy a Freebooksy this year, so Amazon ads and Facebook ads are the only ad spend I had, for a total of $2,074.27.

I had other yearly expenditures like my WordPress fees, my Alliance of Independent Authors membership, BookSprout, my Office 365 renewal, and Canva. I did more than break even this year, and surprisingly I’m ahead by about $1600.00. I’m not going to add up Canva and the rest. That’s just extra fluff I pay for that I would regardless if I was making money or not. I get so much out of Canva (not just covers) that paying is a necessary evil, and I need my Office 365. My Alli membership is just insurance for my author career as far as I’m concerned because I need someone to help me if Amazon decides to think I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing and suspends my KDP account. I throw money at other things like fonts and my KU subscription, but I behaved myself when the AppSumo deal for DepositPhotos came out last month–somehow I convinced myself the 300 images I still have in my DepositPhotos account is enough. I bought a marketing book and a couple of Alex Newton’s K-Lytics reports, but I’m not going to nickel and dime myself. Like any other *cough* hobby *cough* you spend money. That’s just what happens if you enjoy doing something.

So, my numbers aren’t bad, and I’m finding readers. I think Facebook ads can be profitable if your hook, ad copy, graphic, and your actual book can mesh together into something that your target audience wants. I need to do more research on FB ads and see if I can level up. I have the books to sell.

Website/Blog Stats

My views went up a smidge but my visitors went down, also by a smidge, compared to last year, and I don’t know what the difference is.

I also posted one post fewer and eight thousand words fewer, too. I was so busy writing my rockstars, I think, that I didn’t bother commenting on any of the book drama. I can’t remember what any of it was now, but I’m sure there must have been some. I really just don’t care anymore about authors behaving badly and maybe that’s just a byproduct of dealing with my health issue. I don’t waste time with people who can’t follow through, I stop reaching out to people who can’t be bothered to message me first once in a while. Twitter is still just a pit of people whining because they can’t sell books or get a book deal, but if I don’t keep my ear to the ground, I just do not have much to say. My blog has turned into more of an online journal than an informational blog, but it is what it is. I don’t care if someone is trying to copyright the sun or if a big-time indie is being accused of plagiarism. I just am really tired of people who expect things without giving, but retreating into my books doesn’t give me a whole lot to share, and I would imagine this trend will keep going into later years.

People are still sharing my blog which is great to see. These are all-time stats . . . WordPress changed their platform layout so I had a harder time finding the information and it won’t completely match up with how I gave you my stats last year.

Number of Shares
Twitter
5.2K
LinkedIn
5.2K
Facebook
5.1K
Pinterest
4.8K
Email
8
Press This
7 — all-time stats from december 2016 to december 2023

Posts & pages
Views
Doing a Full Paperback Wrap in Canva for KDP Print (plus screen grabs)
2,781
Home page / Archives
2,502
Updated! Creating a full wrap paperback book cover using Canva (plus more screenshots!)
2,021
Getting reviews and my second try with BookSprout
703
Adding subtitles to your ebook on Kindle Direct Publishing
304
Another case of plagiarism. My question is why?
267
First Person POV Blurbs: A debate?
179
Thursday Thoughts: Claim your book on ACX and where I am right now.
154
Moving my books to IngramSpark. So. Much. Fun.
153
Keywords for your books. What are they and how to find them.
149 — january to december 2023

It’s not a surprise that my Canva how-to posts have the top billing . . . again.

All-time stats
Doing a Full Paperback Wrap in Canva for KDP Pri...
Published Jun 24, 2021
Views
6.9K
Likes
13
Comments
22

I’m glad that post is so useful, and I appreciate everyone who has commented, liked, and shared my blog posts. It means a lot that while I’m struggling I’ve been able to help people too.

Health Update

I still feel like garbage, but I’ve done all I can do on my own and I have to call after the New Year to make an appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN. I figure I have access to it, I might as well go to the best of the best and see what’s what. They may not be able to cure me but at least they’ll know how to treat my symptoms so I feel better more regularly. I’m going in March while my daughter is on Spring Break and I have a few days I can be gone without motherly responsibilities. I’ll need to save a little for hotel and gas money as the clinic is six hours away from me, but I’m tired of dealing with the doctors in Fargo who don’t care if they can’t throw some antibiotics at you and call it a day. I’ve been dealing with this for a very long time, and I hope this coming year I’ll see the last of it.

What’s next for 2024?

I’ll be editing my King’s Crossing series until I get them done and ready to publish. That’s my goal–getting them edited, creating covers I won’t have to change, and setting them up on BookSprout for reviews and putting them all on preorder. I plan to schedule them two months apart to give me twelve months to write more books. I was deleting some screenshots off my desktop and I remembered a standalone I wanted to write. I should maybe do that before I forget the plot. So, after I get my King’s Crossing books squared away, I’ll be taking two months to write that out. It will be nice to work on a simple project after six books anyway. I’ll need to go slow, it’s twisty, maybe one of the twistier books I’ll do, and I need to make sure I lay the breadcrumbs correctly. After I write that, then I plan to move into Mafia–I even have a plot rooting in my brain–but after my Mayo appointment, if I can get to feeling better, well, even if I can’t I just hope I don’t have to do this feeling the way I do, I need to look for a different job. I’ve been pretty transparent with my financial situation and only my ex-husband’s alimony and child support are keeping me afloat. That will run out at the end of 2024 and I am grown up enough to know I cannot make it on what my work pays me. My royalties are not steady enough nor enough enough (especially after ad spend) to fill in that financial gap. Once I get a different job, I really don’t know how I’ll feel about writing or how fast I’ll be able to still write books. I’m not a seven-, six-, or five-figure author. I’m a four-figure author who shoved 75% of her earnings back into her business. Instead of being scared of it, I’m trying to look forward to it. I’ve been with my job for twenty-three years and I need the change.

But, if we don’t add a career change to the mix, I’d like to publish my series, write my standalone, and write my Mafia books which may be a duet or a trilogy, we’ll see how the plotting ends up. Those won’t be released until 2025. I have one more standalone on my computer that I wrote in 2020, so if I clean that up and package it, that’s four/five books I have on the docket in 2025. After that, I really don’t know what will happen. I would love for my series to take off and I could drop down to a part-time job somewhere (or even keep my current job), but in terms of more books and ideas, after I write my Mafia duet/trilogy, I have two books written of a six-book series that I would like to finish. They aren’t as complicated as the series I’m working on now, and I don’t think they would take me long, I just need to plan out the four remaining books. I’m not excited about the project, though I would really hate to have those two books go to waste. I haven’t heard of the concept before and I think they could sell well. I just need the motivation to finish them. I like thinking ahead, but 2026 is just a little bit too far, even for me. In the meantime I’m going to deep dive into Facebook ads. TikTok did nothing for me short of just making me mad, but I may give it another try. I don’t spend enough time on there networking and commenting, nor am I reading the books that have blown up, and I need to do that if I want to have anything meaningful to contribute.

I always share this quote from Arnold Schwarzenegger: I will always stay hungry, never satisfied with current accomplishments. It’s a lot easier to stay hungry when you’ve had a taste of what’s possible.

Write books people want to read. Figure out an advertising platform that you like, that you’re willing to invest some time and money into learning. Save for a bit if you have to, be honest and make sure your book is advertising-ready. If it’s not, you’ll waste money and all you’ll do is blame the ad platform instead of yourself where the blame would really belong. You are always in control and you do yourself and your books a disservice when you act like you aren’t. Choices can be made and unmade. Mistakes can be fixed. Learn your craft, meet readers’ expectations of the genre you’re writing in, learn how to make covers if you can’t afford to hire out. People are so concerned about being different, but there is value in sameness. People are comfortable with what they know. Saying your book is “unique” or “different” isn’t the marketing spark you think it is. People shy away from change and they won’t try you if they think your book will be too far off from what they already like. Where would your book go in a bookstore? Write for that audience, find a way to push your book in front of that audience once your book is written. Their readers are yours–there’s no point reinventing the wheel. Someone already did that, so why make more work for yourself?

It’s possible to turn this into a career. What steps can you take in 2024 to do that? Stay hungry. Never give up. One day you’ll reap the rewards. You just have to hang on there long enough.

Happy 2024!

books i’ve written and published (so far) since 2020

Thursday Author Update

Posted on December 21, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

I thought I would write quick update being that this will be the last one of 2023. Next Monday on Christmas Day I’ll post my year-end recap and on New Year’s Day, I’ve decided to take the day off. After that, I’ll post what I want to accomplish in 2024 and fall back into my usual posting schedule.

Mainly all I’ve been doing is editing my King’s Crossing series. I got through number one and added almost two thousand words. Some of the scenes were sparse and I filled them in. That is what is happening with book two–I’m only halfway through and have already added 1500 words. It’s really interesting reading these since they were the first books I wrote when I switched to first person, but not only that, I can tell I pantsed a lot of the plot (she just said what?!). I’m going slower than I’d like, but I have to make sure these are the way I want them to be before I publish. Like my rockstars, I’m not going back to edit them ever again, and though I know perfection isn’t obtainable, I want to make sure they are done to the best of my ability. So even though I said I would like to start publishing them in March, I might not be able to do that. I was hoping to get through each book in two weeks’ time, but there are some chapters that are so long that it takes me days to get through them.

Which leads me to this question: How long should a chapter be?

My most recent chapter I edited was 14,000 words long. There is one chapter in one of the later books that is 21,000 words long, and no, I didn’t accidentally add a zero.

When I started with the idea of dual POV, I didn’t think much beyond that I simply knew what it was, that’s how contemporary romances were being written and that they were selling. I had read books in dual POV like Sylvia Day’s Crossfire Series, and I never thought much about length of chapters. As long as there is stuff going on that moves the plot along, and the chapters are fast-paced and don’t drag, why should it matter how long a chapter is? I’ve read a couple books where the book is “dual” but we don’t hear from the male POV for chapters into the book. There was one book I read that took so long to get to his, I wasn’t even sure if his POV was included and I almost did not finish (DNF). I like the man’s POV more than the woman’s and I always have. I think that reflects in my writing too, where I wouldn’t be surprised if there is more male POV in my books than female. Writing that made me curious, and here’s the breakdown of A Heartache for Christmas:

Sawyer’s POV: 54,114
Chapter one, 1,611
Chapter three, 3,681
Chapter five, 8,152
Chapter seven, 7,266
Chapter nine, 4,894
Chapter eleven, 10,691
Chapter thirteen, 4,354
Chapter fifteen, 10,305
Chapter seventeen, 3,160

Evie’s POV: 43,050
Chapter two, 878
Chapter four, 5,907
Chapter six, 4,355
Chapter eight, 6,302
Chapter ten, 6,772
Chapter twelve, 8,930
Chapter fourteen, 2,750
Chapter sixteen, 7,156

As you can see, I started writing long chapters and never stopped. I gave Sawyer 11,064 more words, but in this case, it makes sense because he was solving a mystery and needed the page time. This also goes along with how I used to write my 3rd person books. I never wrote in chapters, only scene breaks, and then I would chop up my book in editing. I couldn’t think in chapters and maybe I still don’t. I end a POV when it needs to be ended and not any sooner to stay in line with some arbitrary chapter-length rule. Because if you have a POV that needs five chapters to be told, why are you cutting up that POV? It doesn’t make any sense, but then, I guess you don’t have a 95k word book with only sixteen chapters in it. Is there a wrong way? I think the only wrong way cutting up something into such small parts is if the reader doesn’t have time to get invested. Your readers have to care about your characters–that’s nonnegotiable. They can’t do that if they’re not given the time to do so.

Anyway, so when I’m dealing with a 14,000 word chapter where parts need to be beefed up a bit here and there and then I have to go back and read, not only to make sure I didn’t add any typos but to make sure that what I added blends into what was previously there and what came before it, then yeah, the editing process slows way down. Unfortunately. But, on the bright side, I am still loving these books, and I’m enjoying the process. These will probably be the biggest project I’ll ever tackle. I’m not really interested in writing this big of a project again, and I have no idea how these are going to be received. I hope these sell well, even boost-my-career-to-the-next-level well, but these will take a time and money commitment from a potential reader and you just never know. No one wants to write books that no one will read, and there are no guarantees.

As for what else I’m doing, that series will consume all my attention, my every free second, until they’re done. I’m still aware I need to redo their covers too, as the more I read these books the more convinced I am that the covers they have now don’t and won’t do them justice. I’ve been playing with hiring GetCovers to do them. They are inexpensive and after I get my tax refund in February could afford to cover six books, but I’ve heard you get the best results if you find the elements (stock photos) you want them to use. Finding the male models is what takes the longest and if I’m going to do that on my own, I might as well do the whole thing myself. But I have plenty of time to play with that–I just need to remind myself that experimenting with cover concepts is just as important as the editing. Thank God the blurbs are done, though I’ll go over them one more to be sure they sound okay.

Be sure to check next week for my year-end recap. My rockstars boosted me up a bit, so hopefully I’ll have more to report. I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas if you celebrate! I’m having my sister and ex-husband over and I’m cooking turkey, cheesy hashbrowns (we had mashed potatoes and gravy for Thanksgiving), green bean casserole, and the yummy cheddar biscuits from Red Lobster you can buy as a mix. It will be a small meal, but difficult to orchestrate as everything needs oven time and I only have one. Oh well. It will work out. I managed on Thanksgiving.

One last thing before I sign off for this week…there has been lots said about Bryan Cohen and his free Amazon ads course that he hosts. Some call him a scammer and only wants to recruit people into his Amazon Ads School, some say he doesn’t know what he’s talking about when it comes to Amazon ads, (calling his method throwing spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks) some say if he’s not selling books not to listen to him (something I don’t believe because a lot more goes into selling books than knowing how to use an ad platform) but I’ve joined in with the challenge many times, and if you want a free way to learn Amazon ads, Bryan is the one to teach you to do it. There are many strategies to experiment with when it comes to Amazon ads, or any ad platform for that matter, and Bryan teaches you one way. For free. He goes into a lot more than just how to set up an ad. He goes through and makes sure you understand if your book is ready to throw money at it (and a lot of times people find out the answer is no) and teaches you how to write hooks and more. I’m not saying his way is the end-all, be-all way. There are plenty of people out there who do ads like Robert Ryan, Janet Margo, and Ricardo Fayet (from Reedsy), but if you join in with the challenge, you have a ton of help and people to bounce ideas off of in the Facebook group. You can use Bryan’s free course as a springboard for getting your feet wet, and then move on to other strategies by other people. Anyway, so I just wanted to throw that out there, and if you were planning to learn Amazon Ads in 2024, then you can sign up for Bryan’s course that’s starting on January 17th and decide for yourself if his spaghetti deserves a plate at your table. You can sign up here. https://learn.bestpageforward.net/jan24/ (These are not affiliate links.)

Enjoy the rest of the week and have a restful weekend!

	Vania Margene Rheaul… on What do you NEED to be a write…
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	Vania Margene Rheaul… on Not So Hardcore Anymore
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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Author Archives: Vania Margene Rheault

About Vania Margene Rheault

Monday Musings; Do What You’re Supposed to do Already

Monday Musings: Ghosted

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

Author Resources–Five Things That You Can Use Right Now

Monday Author Update

Monday Author Update: Newsletter/Email Guidelines

How to plan your 2024 (or not).

Happy New Year 2024!

My Year-End Recap and What’s Ahead in 2024

Thursday Author Update

About Vania Margene Rheault

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