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.

Results of My Goodreads Giveaway

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,610 words
9 minutes read time

I don’t mind trying new things, mostly because (for now) I can afford to experiment. I give all my receipts to my tax guy and he works his magic. I don’t know how much I get back, but it helps to know that I’m not taking a complete loss on all the extras I need to buy to keep my business going. (I’m looking at you, WordPress, Canva, Booksprout, and Bookfunnel.)

Anyway, because I saw someone on Threads saying Goodreads giveaways should be free, I bought one out of spite (the entitlement on that site is outrageous). It was good timing, since from what I’ve gathered, they’re used to build buzz for new releases. Cruel Fate had only been out for a week when I bought the giveaway, and I did make sure it was okay to run a giveaway on a book that’s enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. It is, and a Goodreads giveaway is probably the only thing you can do while your book is enrolled.

I hit a snag right away because I didn’t realize I couldn’t host the giveaway under my pen name. The giveaway is connected to the name that you have your Amazon/KDP bank account information under (which makes sense because that’s how they bill you). Then I had to verify my email which was a hassle and I wrote about it in a different blog post. You can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2024/09/23/housekeeping-update-and-verifying-your-email-address-on-goodreads/

Besides those two things, set up was pretty easy. I researched a little about it, and Al said to put it on for a month, so that’s what I did (don’t always listen to him, sometimes he lies). Looking through other giveaways, thirty days seemed to be about standard, though there were some that were shorter, probably in an attempt to create urgency which can work depending on who your publisher is and how big of an author you are. I’m still just a baby author as far as I’m concerned and didn’t have many expectations. Thirty days worked for me and I gave away the maximum number of ebooks, which is one hundred. I thought back in the olden days you could mix and match and I was going to give away five signed copies of the paperback as well, but if that was true then, it’s not the case now. I was going to give them away on my Facebook author page or something, but honestly, having one book out of six, that ends on a cliffhanger at that, seems pretty useless, and I’ll buy the other five and bundle them up next spring for a giveaway when the last book is released.

So, all in all, the giveaway went okay. In total, there were 2,240 people who entered.

I can’t say that’s more or fewer than what I was expecting since I’d never done one before. Of course, comparison is the thief of joy, but I did notice some books received fewer entries that had the same timeframe as mine and some books by bigger authors that had five-figure entries. I posted the giveaway where I could, and as often as I thought I could get away with, without irritating people. I posted it on IG a few times (and changed the blog subscribe link in my bio to the giveaway link), I told my newsletter/blog, and put it on my Facebook author page. The only place I didn’t put it was on Threads because I don’t have readers there and I’m not trying to find any. I don’t know if posting on social media helped–I think Goodreads pushes your giveaway somehow because my posts have never solicited that kind of response before, and if they do promote on your behalf, I’m grateful. I just don’t have the social media platform to promote something like this which is why I didn’t have high expectations going in.

You can’t measure this kind of return on investment. Sure, when they entered the giveaway, my book was added to their Want To Read list, but I’m not sure how far that really goes.

Everyone knows that in reality, a reader’s TBR list could wrap around the earth twice, so that’s another reason why I considered the giveaway an experiment. Since the last book doesn’t even release until April, I may not see any ROI for months. I could get a few reviews out of it if people read the copy they won right away, but there’s no telling if the reviews or read-through to the next book that’s available can be attributed to this giveaway.

One thing that took my by surprise was that the one hundred copies that were given away showed up on my KDP dashboard. They showed up as processed orders, and I was very confused. First because had I sold them, I would have gotten the royalties. They didn’t show up as free copies on the new reports dashboard, but they did on the old reporting dashboard (that’s going away November 11th, incidentally).

Don’t mind the blank space–my KENP graph looks a lot better.

I even went so far as to contact KDP chat who said the sales looked fine on her end, but she didn’t tell me the books were connected to the giveaway. It was only one night while I was trying to fall asleep and planning this post and what to say that it hit me. So that was a strange lesson learned, but I’m glad I figured it out because a phantom one hundred copies of my book floating around, or KDP glitching, would have driven me crazy.

So why did I do it? I don’t know. Something to try, I guess. I’m not stupid and I know that had I been more active on Goodreads the giveaway probably could have gone even better. But since becoming an author, I just don’t think being active in a space like that is a good idea. There’s an expectation if someone finds out you’re reading their book and honestly, it’s no one’s business what I’m reading (or not reading) or what I think of it. Part of being an author is the literary citizenship, recommending books you’ve read, discussing a book if you know someone who has read the same one. I get it. But in the land of poor reviews and authors who will retaliate if you don’t like their book, I keep what I do pretty private.

Both of my Goodreads profiles are dumpster fires. It’s on my list to clean them up and have a Goodreads librarian update the covers to almost every single book I ever published because they’ve all changed. Maybe answer some questions so they’ll have recent answers. Update my bios because I think a lot of them still say I have my cats, and Blaze passed away almost a year ago already. (She was our last cat and due to financial reasons we will remain pet-free). Look like I’m at least still alive even if I’m not active. That’s the problem with all these book sites popping up. It’s like you’re tasked to keep a profile up to date when you don’t even want to participate. Fable, StoryGraph, LibraryThing. BookBub. I don’t want to be involved like that. Goodreads I almost have to because I need to move all my books over to my “real” profile whenever I publish because of an issue with the initials on my pen name. I get that, and it is what it is. But beyond that, I don’t want to do their reading challenge, I don’t want to update my status. I don’t think everything I read needs to be shouted from the rooftops because it’s no one’s business what I’m doing.

I got a little off track there just because when we talk about places like Goodreads, it’s natural to start talking about reviews, and I don’t like talking about reviews. I don’t write them anymore because I don’t think I should be criticizing my peers’ work, and I’ll leave it at that.

Will I run another giveaway? I don’t know. If I’m going to pay $99.00, I feel like I could put that money toward a promotion where I can measure the ROI better. On the other hand, I reached readers I haven’t before, and depending on who won a copy, maybe a bookstagrammer or someone on TikTok or an influencer of some kind, someone will read it and fall in love with the series. A lot of this publishing game is luck, and you just never know what can happen which is why I don’t mind trying new things in the first place.

Would I recommend it? Not if you don’t have the money to burn. If you need reliable ROI, I would pay for a promo through Freekbooksy or BargainBooksy or Bookspry or Fussy Librarian, Robin Reads, or Ereader News Today. Those work well, especially if you don’t use them often and their newsletter subscribers are new-to-you readers. But as I said, I think this could have gone better had I been active there, and if you treat Goodreads as its own social media platform and have friends and followers there that you interact with, you could see some positive ROl. We’re all different and we write different books, and what can work for someone won’t do anything for you and vice versa. If you do try it, keep an open mind and remember you may not see any positive movement for months. Hope for the best and at worst, chalk it up as an experience. That’s all you can do.

Until next time!

Are Stuff Your E-reader Days Beneficial?

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

black bomb on black background. text says are book blasts worth it

With the number of book blasts on the rise, once again we’re talking about if giving away books is worth it. Not even giving away books because if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you know I’m a big fan of giving books away. But there are so many book blasts coming into existence now, when before there were just one or two prominent ones and that was all. These book blasts can have anywhere from 100 to 2,000 free books and they always bring up questions such as, “Are readers actually going to read my book or will it sit on their Kindle?” “Do these book blasts hurt authors who don’t give books away?” “Do readers take a chance on new authors?” “If I give away a first in series will a reader read the rest of the series?”

No one can know the answers to these questions, but I don’t think authors really care about the answers anyway. What they’re concerned about is getting lost in the shuffle, and you can get lost during a free book blast just as easily as publishing a book and watching it sink to the bottom of your category because you don’t know how to market.

I’ve given a couple of my books away, during book blasts and using promos like Written Word Media’s Freebooksy. I don’t think there’s a lot of difference between them besides cost. Most, if not all, of the book blasts are free (the only cost is spreading the word around online and with your newsletter) and a Freebooksy is about 120 dollars depending on the genre you write in. The only time I’ve never not gotten my money back is when I’m giving away a first in series that no one likes. (I’m looking at you, poorly edited His Frozen Heart, book one in my Rocky Point series I happen to be re-editing now.) I’ve also discovered that my standalones do better than first in series, and I’m not sure why. Maybe some readers don’t want to get locked into a series by an unknown author and they just want an uncomplicated taste of your writing style. Maybe the tropes hit a little better. I mean, there could be a thousand reasons why one reader picks up one book but not another.

At any rate, the number of downloads your book gets doesn’t mean that readers are going to read it, or if they do, turn into a fan. Free book blasts are a way to get your name out there, but you have a responsibility to the readers who do try your book. If a book blast has 2,000 books available, and you get downloads, that’s half your battle. Here’s how to tackle the other half.

Write the best book you can.
I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but for a lot of readers, grabbing your book out of a book blast will be their first taste of your work. You want the cover to look great and you want your book to have as few typos as possible. I realized that no one is going to waste their time on a poorly written book, and if it’s a first in series, you can forget about read-through to other books. I know firsthand. I think these numbers reflect a couple different free promos I’ve done over the years, but I’ve given away 10,604 copies of His Frozen Heart. The series was rapid-released back in 2018 and I tried to promote the hell out of it. You all know I do my own editing, and you’d think I’d learn my lesson, especially after crunching these numbers.

His Frozen Heart:
Free: 10,604
Paid: 83
KU pages converted into books sold: 362

His Frozen Dreams:
Free: 0
Paid: 34
KU pages converted into books sold: 105

Her Frozen Memories:
Free: 0
Paid: 32
KU pages converted into books sold: 96

Her Frozen Promises:
Free: 0
Paid 31
KU pages converted into books sold: 77

You could tell me that out of 10,000 books given away that people did go on to read, and yeah, it looks like a few did, but the numbers aren’t great because the first book was a dumpster fire, and to be fair, so are (were) the rest. After these have new covers and they’re re-edited, it will be a very interesting experiment to see if any of these numbers increase. Of course, the first one will be exposed to the same readers, who may or may not remember they downloaded the first before, but Amazon will remind them when they click on the product page. So, putting my book in another blast may not do what I want it to do anyway.

The moral of this story of course, is to put out the best book you can. You’ll increase your chances of growing your readership if you’re publishing good books.

Be consistent.
I talk about this a lot, but this is especially true if you’re hoping to expand your readership through a book blast. You’re giving out a free sample of your work, and hopefully that sample reflects other books that your reader can choose from. I doubt any of the readers who managed to choke down my series went on to read other books, even if they did forgive all the flaws. My Rocky Point series is a small town holiday and other books under that name are enemies to lovers, close proximity, and age gap. And let’s not forget the first trilogy I ever published that probably sounds even worse than my Rock Point series that I should just unpublish and sweep under the rug (which happens to be a sports/running romance). That was probably one of the biggest publishing lessons of my life: if you hope to build a readership, don’t genre-hop. I thought I was writing “contemporary romance” and that anything under that umbrella was okay. It is okay. For Nora Roberts. The thing is, traditional publishing and indie publishing are different, and you can maybe attribute my sales going up to just being a better writer, but I did start selling more books when I created my pen name and niched down to Billionaire. I also changed my POV from 3rd past to 1st present, so that could have had an impact too, but when we try to drill down like that, we’ll never know for sure.

Make use of your back matter.
You should be doing this anyway, but capture those readers who chose to read your book out of 2,000 books. Put your newsletter link in the back and give them a way to stay connected to you. Then, actually send out your newsletter. Authors get so weird about saying they have nothing to say or that they don’t want to bother anyone. People don’t sign up for things they don’t want. It’s actually a confusing take, but the point is to stay connected so readers know you have more to offer or that you’re going to be publishing soon.

Be real.
In an era of AI, readers are going to seek real people to connect with. They want to know about you, what your struggles are, what you like to do when you’re not writing. I know this sounds like a load of crap, but look at the engagement of any huge author and the activity on their Facebook Author pages. Authors like Brenda Novak and Lori Foster have thousands of members and they talk about everything from what kind of wine they like to drink to sharing pictures of family vacations. They treat their members like family, and when they have a new book out, all it takes is a post to make them a best seller. Start by personalizing your bio on Amazon. A reader may look at it when going through book blast entries. Whether you want to use a real author photo or an avatar or a logo, that’s up to you, but I’ve never regretted putting my real photo on my author pages and in the backs of my books.

Do I think that book blasts are harmful or there aren’t good reasons to participate? I don’t think they’re harmful at all, no matter what other authors say. Yes, there are lot of free books on that day, but honestly, there are a lot of free books out there every day. I don’t have any reasons why you wouldn’t want to participate unless you have few books out. If you only have one or two, there’s not much for a reader to move on to if they like you, so you would have to fit the blast into your marketing strategy so you know what you’re getting and that you’re okay with the outcome. I don’t participate in every romance book blast that’s available. There are books I haven’t given away, like my first rockstar book in that trilogy or my Christmas novel. The last book I gave away was the first in my Lost & Found trilogy, but I don’t think it did too much. I got a few downloads (3,000) but not a lot of read through after the fact because it wasn’t the first time I’d given it away. It’s really difficult to let a book blast pass me by because I have terrible FOMO and I worry I’m giving up a golden opportunity to be seen. Because of the money I save doing the blasts with other authors, I feel okay paying for a promo every now and then, or something different like the Goodreads giveaway I paid for last month. I pay for ads, too, so the blasts are just a part of my overall marketing strategy.

You can use them as a learning opportunity, like my Rocky Point series. If you’re getting downloads but no read through, or if your book is also in KU and you get very few pages read, you know something is wrong with your book. It’s not well-written or the first ten percent is too slow and doesn’t keep their attention. It’s a costly lesson, as those readers may not try anything else you’ve written, even if you leveled up your craft and you’re doing better now.

I don’t know if I’ll do any more blasts this year. I did two, and that seems like enough. My King’s Crossing series is slowly releasing, the next book will be out on the 28th, and I’ve been trying to do better posting on social media to keep sales up. The second book has 7 preorders, which is amazing to me since I’ve never had that many preorders for a book before, and Cruel Fate, the first book in the series, has sold 7 ebook copies and has had the equivalent of 7 books read in KU. Not the greatest launch by any means, but the book ends on a cliffhanger, and I’ve been very clear about it, so I hope that just means readers are waiting to dig in.

If I can give you any advice as to joining a book blast, it’s to figure out what you want out of it. Do you want downloads? KU reads? Are you doing it to simply get your name out there? If you’re giving away a first in series but your series isn’t done yet, what are you hoping to accomplish? That’s not a derogatory question, it’s something you should ask yourself as your read-through won’t reach its full potential and you’ll have to work at dragging those people back to your series when the next book releases, which, if they didn’t connect with you in some way, is easier said than done.

I’m not going to whine about book blasts or support others who do. I don’t think they take away from my audience on days I don’t participate, in fact, I still tell my newsletter and social media followers about them because it’s content they appreciate. It would just be sour grapes to keep that information from my list.

If you choose not to do them, that’s a business choice, as well as doing them over and over again. It really does help to know what you want out them, though, and to keep your expectations realistic depending on the books you’re giving away. They can be a great marketing tool if used correctly, and free exposure never hurts.

Here’s a list of book blasts I’ve put together. Someone is always asking how to join but either don’t know where to start to search or are too lazy to do the legwork. Either way, the list is mostly romance, though it wouldn’t surprise me if more genres start forming. It’s a lot of work to put together, so if you do join, please be kind to the facilitator. They are doing a lot of work on your behalf, so the least you can do is follow their rules to make things easier for them. I don’t run any of these, and I’m not interested in doing so, so please use the contact information for the blast you want to participate in if you have questions.

Fantasy: https://stuffwithfantasy.com/authorhelp

Romance all genres: https://www.romancebooklovers.com/authors

Romance all genres: https://www.romancebookworms.com/for-authors

Witchy books: https://www.facebook.com/groups/witchybookwormsauthors

Alpha Cinnamon Roll Book Boyfriends: https://alphacinnamonroll.com/for-authors/

Dark Fantasy, Romance, Horror: https://www.darkmodesyk.com/sign-ups

Closed Door Non-Explicit Romance:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/cleanromancecollab/

That’s all I have for this week. I hope you’re doing well and if you celebrate Halloween, be safe!

Amazon Ads: A Case Study

Posted on October 21, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

logo taken from https://advertising.amazon.com/

I stumbled upon something interesting on Threads the other day. Someone was asking for tips and tricks on how to make Amazon ads work for her. Of course, I looked at the book she was trying to sell, noted a few things, and told her what I thought. That never works well in the land of the public, and there were a couple of people who commented on my comment. It’s interesting to me how people can tell you their opinions without looking at what you’re trying to sell or just spew stuff based on their own poor experiences. I’m not going to call this author out, but you can apply what I’m going to say to almost any debut author.

One of the things you should do when wanting to run ads is look at your product. We think we’re pretty wonderful we’ve managed to write a book and publish it, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to want to read it. In fact, there are so many books out there it’s actually a miracle if you can find anyone who wants to pay for what you’ve written. Thinking that you’re going to set the world on fire will only set you up for disappointment. You have to be realistic when it comes to your book and by that I mean you have to look at your book and your author career as a whole.

What did I see when I saw her book?

It was only the first in a duology and the second book wasn’t on preorder. This is a Catch-22, and we know it is. People won’t buy the first book in a series without the others available because they don’t want to wait or won’t take a chance the author will finish. Authors who don’t sell enough of their first book think there’s no interest, lose motivation, and may not want to finish. I get it, but we also need to look at it from a reader’s point of view. Not being able to start and finish a series on their timetable is unsatisfying. Bingeing is a way of life now and when we are kept from it, we hear about it. No one wants to wait for the next season of Bridgerton or The House of the Dragon. No one knows where they’re going to be in 2026. This author doesn’t have the second book even on preorder, so God only knows when it will be out. She may not have even started writing it yet. It’s a sad fact that if she’s selling a duology, the first would sell better if readers had access to the second, even if only in preorder form.

She’s wide.
Amazon ads can be used if you’re wide, but to me, it makes more sense to use Facebook ads so that you can capture readers on all devices (by targeting them in your audience list). I told her that, and someone said she uses Amazon ads to great effect even though she’s wide. I just scoffed. Okay, Karen. The person who said that has been publishing for years, has over 30 books in her backlist, and, I would imagine, a very large newsletter list. She started way back in the Kindle gold rush where it was possible to make a lot of money simply publishing books and buying ads to fuel the flames. Publishing isn’t like that today, and only running ads won’t get you very far, especially as a debut author. I wasn’t impressed with her answer since it was clear she didn’t look at this author’s book or lack of backlist to provide any real, personalized direction. There’s no reason why you can’t run Amazon ads if you’re wide, but Amazon ads are known to be spendy, can’t get any traction for less than 30 cents a click, and you’re only reaching one audience. Facebook ads can reach more than only Kindle readers, can be cheaper (there are ads where I’ve gotten my clicks down to 9 cents a piece), and just seems all around a better investment. For her.

She’s not in KU, and her book is priced at $5.99.
This goes along with the “wide” part of the case study. I’m not saying Amazon readers are cheap, I’m sure there are people on Amazon who buy books at full price. But, we’re also talking about a debut author who has one book and the other book doesn’t look to be forthcoming. I’m not sure how many readers will really take a chance on a book that’s $5.99. I’m not arguing for or against being in Kindle Unlimited, that’s a business choice and being wide can be beneficial, but you are choosing your audience and that audience has disposable cash to buy entertainment. I don’t think it’s easier or harder to reach those people, you just have to know how. She may have her book in the Kobo Plus program (Kobo’s KU) but running Amazon ads won’t help her find those readers. So, she’s using Amazon ads to find readers who are willing to pay $5.99 for a debut author who is more than likely still writing the next book. If she’s getting a lot of clicks and no sales, her price could be part of the reason.

She has few reviews.
We like to think that reviews don’t matter, but they do. My duet won’t move no matter what I do and I attribute that to not putting them on Booksprout for reviews. The first book is only at twelve, and the second book is only at ten. I didn’t look to see if those are text reviews or only star ratings, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know the statistics on the number of readers who read reviews or just glance at the stars, but it does stand to reason the more star ratings you have, the better your book looks. Even if you have a good cover and solid blurb, a reader could nope right out of there if you don’t have enough social proof.

The book is old.
She published a while back, about eight months ago, well past the ninety-day grace period Amazon gives you. Running ads to a book that is old and already not selling well is like pushing a boulder up a mountain. Amazon is all about relevancy, and if your book isn’t relevant, meaning, people aren’t buying it, Amazon doesn’t care about it. They may still show your ad, and you get evidence of that when you see your impressions, but who knows if Amazon is pushing down your ad when it could be doing better. She’d do better to put her second book on preorder and then create an ad that targets both of them. That may be her plan once her book is closer to completion, I don’t know, but trying to drum up buzz for an old book takes a lot of time and money. Being that I have no idea how many ads or what kind she’s running, it’s hard to say if creating more and different kinds of ads (category vs. auto placement vs. keywords for example) with a higher budget would work.

So that’s what I saw when I looked at her Amazon page. Marketing is more than just figuring out an ad platform or posting social media graphics. It’s the genre you’re writing in, what your publishing schedule is like, if you offer a newsletter. She’s just getting started, so it’s no surprise her marketing tactics will be slow to take off.

I mentioned a little bit about the ad platforms, but let’s just take a shallow dive into them (I don’t have the expertise to go deep). Amazon’s ad platform isn’t complicated, though you do have to invest in clicks if you want any traction. I can’t get anywhere if I’m not bidding 40 cents or more, and that’s for contemporary romance/billionaires/rockstars. The ad itself only consists of your book cover, a tagline if you live in a country where that’s offered, and the number of reviews your book has. You need a strong cover, and if you get clicks, your cover is doing its job. It’s after you get the click and it doesn’t convert into a sale that you need to look at your product page. If your price doesn’t attract readers or if they’re looking for KU books and your book is wide, or your blurb is confusing, or they decide you don’t have enough reviews. Those can affect other ad platforms too, but if we’re just talking clicks, having your book in solid categories so they show up in the right spots on Amazon and having a fabulous cover will go a long way.

There’s a lot that goes into Facebook ads, and the potential to get one part wrong is huge. It’s probably the reason why the guy who said my Facebook ads recommendation was garbage. He had a bad experience, didn’t know how to put the ad together and maybe lost some money, but not everyone is going to have that experience. You need a good description, a good hook (headline), a good stock photo (creative) that will draw readers in enough to click. They can take a lot of trial and error and it can be costly, but I know it can be worth it once you figure out the secret sauce. Again, though, clicks can be a waste of money if readers don’t like what they see after they click on your ad. Facebook ads allow you to target more than just one kind of reader (versus Amazon ads whose readers only read on Kindles). You can target Google Play readers, Apple readers, Nook readers, Kobo, hoping to draw in those Kobo Plus subscription holders. Facebook will spend your money faster than Amazon does, but I found overall the clicks can be cheaper which allows for a little wiggle room. The dashboard is hella complicated, and I hate clicking around in it, but like any platform, once you get used it it, it’s not so bad. She could start small and boost a post off her author page and see how it goes. She would still need to create an audience, but you’d want to do that anyway. Every author needs comps.

I saw someone who was having bad luck with BookBub ads (not the featured deal you have to approved for) saying she was getting impressions but no clicks. It’s really important to understand what kind of platform you’re using. Amazon ads can cater to regular-priced books as does Facebook, but BookBub’s audience are freebie seekers and if she was trying to sell a book at full price, she wasn’t going to get any clicks. I asked her if she was trying to sell a full-priced book and if she had the price on her creative like they encourage you to do, but she didn’t answer me. Whether she didn’t see my response or she resented me telling her a full-priced book wouldn’t sell there, I have no idea, but I’ve heard of other authors trying to sell full-priced books on BookBub and it just won’t work. They have built their entire readership on readers who want free and cheap books. Trying to go against years of that will be futile. You can use them if you put your book on sale, though I have noticed that not a lot of authors want to do that. The author who is trying to sell the first in a duology might do that when her second book comes out, but without knowing her, I would guess the chances are slim.

When you decide to run ads, you have to take a look at your product and your company, which is you. Backlist, number of reviews, how long you’ve been publishing (there’s a reason why companies love to say they were established in XXXX–it creates trust in the person who’s looking at the advertisement), and how often you publish can all influence a reader’s potential to buy. Being a debut author isn’t a bad thing–we all have to start somewhere–but you have to keep your expectations in check. When she does release the second book in her duology, how long will it take her to write another book? Will she be marketing two books for the next two years? Will she release another first in series and expect readers to wait while she writes the next? Building a backlist can take years and she may not get ads to work for her for just as long.

There’s a reason why they say writing the next book is your best marketing tool. I understand the want to push your book out into the world, and I applaud her for trying, but she seemed to think the ads were what was going wrong, and well, I think in this case, it’s the operator and not the machine.

I’m certainly not an expert and I’ve killed ads that were costing me money, not making it. Like I said, I stopped trying to run ads to my duet, and now when I get someone reading them, I just figure they found out about them some other way. I’m running Amazon ads to my King’s Crossing series, and I had to kill a very productive ad. No one was preordering and the clicks were adding up. I may turn it back on once more books are available to purchase or read in KU. I knew from the start I would be paying for exposure, and I left three of the slower-moving ads on. I created two for my rockstars but they are very slow moving right now but maybe rockstars aren’t in and the books are a year old already (relevancy).

Once I write a blurb for the whole series I’ll set up a Facebook ad for it. I need a blurb that explains what the series is about, but I’ve been busy doing other things (which isn’t great since marketing this series should be on the top of my list) and well, I hate writing blurbs.

Anyway, ads are a great marketing too, just be sure you’re in a place in your career where you can benefit from them and always make more than you spend.

I found this in my email from James Blatch–Is your book advertising ready? Could be a fun webinar to listen in on. It’s free, and you can click here to sign up:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RqcLtAxuSd-ioWbFGZiIKQ?inf_contact_key=d2952934bcb214bf7377961b3d3304084dfbc39d7283b2cb89d5189540b69330#/registration

Quick Links:

Bryan Cohen’s free five day Amazon Ads course: https://www.bestpageforward.net/getting-ready-for-the-5-day-amazon-ad-challenge/
The link at the bottom directs you to his Facebook page. Join his group to stay up to date on all the webinars he offers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012

Dave Chesson’s Free Amazon Ad course: https://kindlepreneur.com/free-amazon-ads-course/

Matthew J. Holmes offers a newsletter and classes on Amazon and Facebook ads: https://www.matthewjholmes.com/

David Gaughran has free tools on his YouTube channel that includes using Canva to make Facebook ads graphics: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidGaughran

There are a lot more resources out there when it comes to learning ads. Robert Ryan’s books are great, and if you want to learn BookBub ads, David Gaughran has one that will read outdated because the platform has surely changed, but the tactics described to find your audience are probably still on target. Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy also wrote one that is really informative.

Author Update and Mixed Bag

Posted on October 14, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

tea, candle, cotton branch laying on comforter

text reads author update and mixed bag

I didn’t make any progress on my small town series last week, at least, not on my days off. I was silly and reread a standalone I published a few years ago because someone bought it and I was like, “Wait! What is she reading? What did she pay for?” And I really have to stop doing that every time someone reads something in my backlist (the reason, you’ll recall, I’m editing my small-town series in the first place), especially my 3rd person stuff, because there will always be mistakes to fix. I think that’s just the law of being an indie author. But it was worth it in other ways, as I thanked people in my Acknowledgements who no longer deserve it, and it was a relief to just delete the page entirely. One wrote under a pen name that doesn’t even exist anymore (so I doubt she’d want anyone to look her up anyway) and the other was my ex-fiancé who doesn’t need to be attached to anything I’ve done or do. I don’t need to keep reminders of people who have hurt me, even if back then they were important to me. A long time ago I wrote a blog post about this, and I think my opinions have changed. Then I advocated to leave the pages, since those people were a meaningful part of your life in some way, but now I say, change it if you want. Do whatever you need to do to protect your mental health and move on. You can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2018/05/31/acknowledgements-and-dedications/

I was also able to update my Also By page in the back and add all my first person stuff. I’m the same person so I thought, why not. The long list looks nice, anyway, haha. I didn’t do anything else with my back matter, though I could have put in a call to action (CTA) because it didn’t have one. I should have, but I was in a hurry, that side project not intentional, and I was mad at myself for wasting time. Oh well, it doesn’t matter since on the way home from dropping my daughter off at work the other morning I decided to stop with the hard sell.

A few years ago, during COVID, I guess, I listened to an author marketing podcast and one of the pieces of advice was to give them the CTA the second the book was done. I followed that advice and the back matter for Faking Forever‘s ePub looks like this:

The end of the story bleeds right into the call to action, and I don’t like it (anymore). I want a reader to be able to sit back and savor the ending of the story, not have my newsletter subscribe link shoved down their throats. It probably still is good advice, to hit them when they’re feeling good about your story, feeling good about you as an author because you delivered on your promise and didn’t waste their time and money. But I don’t think it hurts to give them room to breathe, either. If they liked your book that much, they’ll find a way to follow you, even if that means simply “flipping” the page to see what’s in your back matter.

Anyway, so editing All of Nothing was a side project I hadn’t counted on, but I’ll try to keep my eyes on my series now and get that done as soon as possible. I have a potential beta reading and formatting project I might be helping with that I really want to do, so that’s an incentive to stay on track.

Sometimes I think when I get sidetracked it has to do with how I’m feeling. I was a little lost last week. Just normal social media experiences that can rub you the wrong way or leave you feeling out of sorts. My friends and I talk about this a little, about the need to find connection, but when you’re online trying to reach out, you get your hand bitten off or snubbed. It’s common, and my experiences weren’t great. So, of course, when you get to feeling down like that, it’s easy to start wondering why you work so hard on your books for no reason, blah, blah, cue the violins, right? My mental health has gotten a lot better since my diagnosis, but there are a few things that can still bring me down. I’m not perfect, but things out of my control shouldn’t have that kind of effect on me and it’s something I’m working on. I can log out of Threads or even Facebook, and my books will always be there. Except Canva. I can never log out of Canva, haha.

Otherwise I don’t have much else. I posted on social media today, for the first time in a while. I think I need to keep this tab open, because the graphics BookBub highlights in their blog post can be a good source of inspiration. I was reading this today: https://insights.bookbub.com/bookstagrams-ebooks/. If you need a free place to make a book mock up, even if you just want your book’s cover on a Kindle, you can look here: https://diybookcovers.com/3Dmockups/#

I posted this pic on Instagram. It’s pretty simple, but I forget it doens’t take long to make something like this and who knows who could see it.

flat lay of wood wht autumn leaves and a blue scarf. cup of cappuccino that has a foam heart
also Cruel Fate's book cover on a kindle device

I was sent a scam email today that said I need to appeal a Facebook ad because I broke copyright. Anything like that makes you want to take action right away, but there are a lot of scammers on Facebook; I get messages on my Facebook author page and my reader page all the time. Here’s what the email looked like:

It wasn’t sent to my Spam Folder, it went to my Inbox, which gave me pause. But I didn’t click on the link, thank goodness. I checked all my ads first because I know enough if Facebook thinks you’re violating copyright, they’ll take your ads down and maybe even suspend your ad account. I checked my ads, and they were all running fine, so I reported the ad as phishing and sent it to Spam. The things you have to be aware of as an indie is getting out of control, but I was proud of myself that I didn’t overreact and click the link, which gives them access to your ads dashboard (and my ads dashboard is connected to a bank account I assigned for my marketing budget. Needless to say, that’s money I don’t want to lose). So if anything seems suspicious or fraudulent, take a deep breath before freaking out and check things out first.

I don’t think I’ve mentioned it in a while, but if you’re looking for a good book marketing resource, Nicholas Erik has a wonderful book on it. I bought his second edition and was sad when he unpublished it because I recommended it to everyone. But, he revised it and released the new version. I bought it on his website but it’s also available on Amazon. This isn’t an affiliate link, I just like to recommend his book because it really helped me see book marketing clearly. If you’re interested, look here: https://nicholaserik.com/books/marketing/ Also sign up for his newsletter. He gives a lot of good advice in there, too.

photo of book cover. the title is the ultimate guide to book marketing by nicholas erik — Image borrowed from his website.

I had to pause a couple of my Amazon ads because even though I knew I was paying for exposure, it was getting to be too much. I’d already spent $29.00 by the 13th of this month, and my sales and preorders definitely weren’t reflecting that. I knew the clicks would start adding up, but I didn’t pause all of them because I know exposure is only the first step in selling books. I boosted a post on Instagram that I made about my Goodreads giveaway, and that was a little over 1200 entries the last time I checked. It will be interesting to see if anyone who wins the first one will buy/borrow the others, but like any promo, it could be months or even years until I find out, if I ever do.

That’s about all I have this week. I won’t be getting distracted by anymore side projects, though I have plenty of books I could read through on a whim. I need to get this series done because I have plans for it around the holiday season.

If there’s one thing I can say about the last four years or so, it’s that I’m glad life didn’t get me down to the point I stopped writing. When I bought those dryer sheets and my life turned upside down, I could have easily given up. I’ve accomplished a lot in the four years I’ve been writing (launched a whole new pen name and will have seventeen titles released by the time all the books in my King’s Crossing series launch), and if you’ve written despite the odds and against life’s challenges, I’m proud of you. I can look back on a long list of books, whether they need a bit of a polish or not, and be proud of myself.

Take care this week. I’m taking Friday off and we’re going to the state park to look at the leaves, then we’re trying a new bar and grill that opened in the town next door. It will be a fun day, and hopefully I’ll be celebrating being that much closer to done on my series.

Until next time!

Another (Manic) Monday

Posted on October 7, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

It seems odd that Mondays come around so fast. My weekends are Monday through Wednesday, then boom, I’m working the rest of the week wondering why I only got through half a chapter. Last week was different as my daughter started her first job and we were getting used to her schedule. Because I wasn’t feeling well for the past four years, she’s eighteen and doesn’t have her driver’s license yet. I take responsibility for that, never feeling good enough to drive with her, and I had to give her rides. So, being in the car on the days I have off will take some time away–I just need to use the time I do have better.

On Wednesday, I went to Best Buy and bought a new Mac. My T was driving me insane and I wanted to replace my computer before it gave out completely. Now that I don’t have to push on the keys so hard to type, I’m hoping some of my carpal tunnel pain will go away, too. My arms would ache after a long typing session, so replacing my old laptop (it was seven years old!) was a must. It’s a little smaller than the one I had before, so I regret getting another MacBook Air and not the Pro, but the images are sharper so maybe that will make up for it. I saved the receipt they emailed me under my 2024 Book Spend as I fully intend to give it to my tax guy as a writing expense.

That leaves me with only one more thing to do when it comes to adulting, and that’s to make an appointment for new glasses. I’ve been putting it off because I’m so sick of doctors, but like finally spending the money on a new computer, I think I’ll like having new glasses since they’re two years old and more scratched up than my furniture (I used to have three cats). I think once I get that taken care of I won’t have to adult for the rest of the year. I’m still trying to find some normalcy when it comes to how I feel. I rarely drink anymore, and that’s helped a lot. I still get nauseated sometimes and overall just feel “off” but that’s probably due to hormones more than anything else, and I’m already on birth control to keep my ovaries steady. Since there’s not much more I can do about that, I have to take each day as it comes and if I’m feeling good, enjoy, and if I’m feeling not so good, stay home and rest. At almost fifty, I could be worse off, so I’m trying to be grateful for what I have.

As far as writing is concerned, I’m trying to get through edits of my old third person series. I’m in the middle of book three (of four), and while I can honestly say I’m enjoying the stories, either my writing style has changed or I just got that much better, but it seems almost every sentence needs some kind of tweaking. I’m taking out a lot that slows down the pace, on a paragraph/sentence level, and then adding more words to plump up scenes here and there and finish conversations where the characters just seem to sputter out. I mean, when someone says, “Have a nice day,” someone else doesn’t just get up and walk away without saying anything back or at least acknowledging it in some way. It was a weird thing I held on to all the way until last year. But while I can say I’m enjoying the stories because I haven’t read them in so long, it’s a freaking pain in the butt and a project I honestly didn’t think would need so much time and work. So, I’m dragging my feet, but knowing it has to be done, and the only thing keeping me going is the fact that these books are going to sound SO GOOD when I’m finished. Could be for nothing–does anyone read third person anymore? I have no idea, but it will be interesting to see what they do with new covers and a little ad money thrown at them. That may be my experiment for 2025.

Book two of my King’s Crossing series will be out this month, on the 28th, I think, and I’m getting some good feedback on Booksprout already. I have a couple preorders for it, literally, two the last time I looked, but I didn’t put them up for preorders for people to actually do it, anyway, so that’s fine. Just passing along the information that my preorders are there, Amazon hasn’t messed with them (yet), and they look good on my Amazon author page.

What am I going to do for the rest of the year? Well, get my old series done ASAP. I’d like to promote it in December if at all possible, and then I’m going dive into a standalone that I wrote a couple years ago. I read through it once since I wrote it and made some notes on what needs to be fixed. Add more chemistry between the characters, fix a few inconsistencies, that kind of thing. I have him wearing jeans when he would never wear jeans–he’s just not the type. Now that I know most (hopefully all) of my writing ticks, like overusing words like “with” and “where” “for” and “from” and dialogue fading off into the sunset, I’ll be able to whip that book into shape pretty easily (as easily as 109k words can get whipped into shape). Don’t know if I’ll find a beta reader for it or not. I love my coworker and value her time but in the end she doesn’t give me the real feedback I need to make the story better. After working with someone who backed out of reading my trilogy last year (when I had given her so much of my time, too), I kind of soured on working with anyone, as detrimental to my career as that may be. I don’t think too many people really admit that they write, package, and publish their books all their own because being a one-stop-shop has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It takes a village to raise a child, and it also takes a village to publish a book. Too bad sometimes my village resembles more of a ghost town these days. Not a whole lot you can do about it either, especially since paying for services doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you pay for, or anything at all.

I sound like I’m whining, but I think it’s a reality for a lot of authors now. We can try to make connections and friends, but the sad truth is, people are too busy. Too busy with life, too busy working on their own stuff, too busy with the friends they already have. I should probably be grateful I can do so much on my own because I know there are authors who can’t and I feel sorry for anyone who has to wade through the scammers and the people who aren’t qualified to offer the services they offer to find real help. Anyway, so that’s what I’ll be doing for the last three months of the year, besides living it up on my birthday on Thanksgiving Day. My ex-husband said he’d come over and cook dinner so I wouldn’t have to, so I may just end up sitting around drinking Prosecco and eating chips and dip. I’ll definitely have stuff to celebrate, like my King’s Crossing series finally out into the world, my old series hopefully done by then, saying goodbye to all my undiagnosed health issues. 2024 was rollercoaster and I threw up a few times, but maybe I can get off this crazy ride in 2025. I would welcome solid ground under my feet.

My Goodreads giveaway is losing steam, but as the days go on and more giveaways are added to the list, that’s to be expected. An author is supposed to do their own promotion after all, but I already tapped out my FB author page, my Instagram, and my newsletter. All I can do now is boost a post here and there, so I might do that before the giveaway ends on the 25th.

I think my newsletter signups are getting sick of me as I lost ten in the past week, and I only had a 29% open rate for my most recent newsletter. That’s not great, but since I’m treating it more like a blog than a newsletter and posting more for the public consumption of it, I guess I’ll have to expect people who signed up to react to the shift in vibe and opt out. That’s fine, maybe a little counterproductive since I want people to sign up rather than unsubscribe, but my sales have also dropped which means fewer people signing up from my books’ back matter. I’m not sure what to do about it at this point because it sounds like a lot of us are struggling. The best thing for me at the moment is just to keep my eyes on the end of the year. I would be really disappointed in myself if I didn’t finish editing my series. I was the one who started it in the first place and doing the relaunch over the holidays would be perfect.

That’s about all I have for this week, but I’ll leave you with a warning. You know I keep my opinions on AI to myself. I’m careful how I use it and use it very little. I like to brainstorm with Al about blog subject lines or hooky tag lines for ads because I’m bad at that, but I’ve never used it to generate photos or write for me. I’ve never written a blog post with it, never used it to edit my books. Mostly because I’m not interested–the things Al does I can do myself, and an AI photo generator doesn’t offer anything you can’t find on DepositPhotos. But if you do use it to generate pictures for a blog post, aesthetics, ads, social media graphics, or for your book covers, or if you use ChatGPT to edit for you or write portions of your books, you need to be careful because not everyone is going to be so blasé about it. There are witch hunts online, a lot of it on Threads, some in FB groups, and there’s a list going around of authors who use it. I don’t condone this list (like my lovely governor says, Mind Your Own Damn Business) and don’t know any of the authors on it, so far, but all it takes is one person to add your name and that will never go away. (Screenshots are forever, my friend.) That’s not the kind of word of mouth you want.

I know the writing community is small, I know that in comparison the reading community is a thousand times larger and maybe you don’t care what other authors think of you so long as readers like your books. That’s okay. I don’t bow down to the author community, but I have been ganged up on on Twitter, and it’s brutal on your mental health. There’s also a list of authors going around who are against AI, but I didn’t put my name on it. I started adding a disclaimer to the copyright pages of my books saying I don’t use AI for my book creation, and I’ll continue to add that, but I do it for myself and my readers. I’ve never done something just because someone else has told me to, and I don’t expect you to stay away from AI if you like using it just because I said so. But if you keep your ear to the ground, you’ll know this subject is hot and it would be bad to land on the wrong side.

I use this blog to pass around information I hear and hopefully help you make informed choices about your own book business. I’ve been on social media for a long time and this AI hate is on a level I’ve never seen before. It’s best to stay away from it or don’t announce it if you’re using it (though that can be for naught as people are pretty good at spotting it). I personally don’t care either way, this blog is a safe place for everyone, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it because like I said, this is a level of hate I’ve never seen before and the mob mentality oftentimes leaves me speechless.

I hope you have a good week, and I’ll see what kind of progress I can make on my series. Hoping to get book three done would be asking way too much, but if I could get close, I would be very happy.

Until next time!

Author Update and SMH

Posted on September 30, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

So, there have been a couple things going on that just make me shake my head because I have too much going on to care, and while I do take interest in most things, if my energy allows it, I’ll be patient and see what happens.

I guess there’s been some issues with the founder of WordPress and WP Engine who uses the… I want to call it software, but I guess it’s technology? I’m not really sure, but I did a little snooping and my website isn’t run by WP Engine, it’s through WordPress directly. I don’t know how any of that is going to affect anyone’s websites now, and it seems a lot of people are panicking and pulling their websites that use WordPress technology down and going with something else. From what I understand, a lot of websites are built using WordPress, but are hosted by someone else like GoDaddy. I never went with a different host, even knowing I wouldn’t have all the flexibility, but I never minded. My website and blog does what I want it to do. Not to mention, I’m not very tech savvy, and fighting to create a website didn’t interest me. (Not back then. I was too busy trying to figure out how to format my freaking books!) Anyway, since the issue is really with the founder of WordPress and the people who run WP Engine, I think I’m safe. Listening to my gut has paid off before, so I’ll wait it out and see what happens. Moving my websites somewhere else, or breaking off from WordPress hosting and going with a different host sounds like a headache and nothing I want to tackle. I did export my blog posts from January of 2018 (the first two years I blogged are a disaster and that information is probably useless anyway) up until now. That would be a lot of words to suddenly lose, and maybe it’s a good idea to do that once in a while anyway. TechCrunch summarized what’s been going on and you can read it here: https://techcrunch.com/2024/09/27/wordpress-vs-wp-engine-drama-explained/

In other news, my Goodreads giveaway is doing fine, and just under a week I already have over 900 entries. If you want to enter, click here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/enter_kindle_giveaway/397874-cruel-fate

I’m not actually sure what I expected, but I’m grateful there seems to be interest.

screenshot of goodreads 877 people want to read

I knew this giveaway would plump up my “want to read” numbers, and that’s cool, too. I don’t do much with Goodreads, haven’t even bothered to change the old covers on some of my books. I don’t know really, if Goodreads is safe for an author who reads, and at this point, with all my health issues and other things going on, I don’t think I want to add another platform anyway. Alessandra Torre is a huge Goodreads cheerleader, and you can read (and watch) how she uses it here: https://www.alessandratorreink.com/home/2017/5/12/grpromo

She has quite a bit of information out there on how to use Goodreads, just search “Alessandra Torre how to use Goodreads,” and a lot of information comes up. I don’t read as much as I should, so maybe Goodreads isn’t that great of a place to hang out if you don’t, but I don’t think once a reader becomes an author that it’s an author’s place to review another author’s work. I see authors all the time who defend their right to say what they want, but then when they get an “honest” review of their work, they can’t handle it. Don’t be in the kitchen if you can’t stand the heat is all I have to say to that. You all know my stance. Stay out of reader spaces (even if you are one!). Leave people alone. Go write your next book. There are actually some things you don’t have to tell anyone about. Imagine.

Now that I got my sarcasm out of the way for today, no, I don’t think I plan to be on Goodreads all that much, even during/after my giveaway. This was mostly an experiment in paying for exposure, and I have no idea really if it’s even worth it. I have Amazon ads going to my series, and I’m getting quite a few clicks and lots of impressions, but all my books will be released into KU and that’s what my readers will wait for. I’m not running ads hoping for preorders, even though I dropped the preorder price on books two and three. Book one is still .99 and probably will be until the last book comes out in April. I’m trying to be pragmatic about this release, realistic, and even though they call it “rapid release” I know I won’t see any real movement until they’re all out.

I have a lot of thoughts on paying for exposure, and maybe I’ll do a blog post about it sometime. For now, let’s move on.

Actually, there’s not a lot to move on to. I’m still editing my series, and I did get done with book two on Friday after our trip to the zoo and the junk market and started book three while I was at work on Saturday. Book two needed some work, some plumping up, and I know why. That was the first book I wrote and I remember thinking it was too “quiet” to carry a series and I decided to make book two book one. Now that I’m reading them with fresh eyes, I think book two would have been an okay book one, but I hadn’t gotten into the flow of the characters and I added 1500 words to book two. That took a little time, and I added a lot to the ending because it didn’t quite make sense. I think I learned a lot writing my King’s Crossing series, handling all that plot and all those details. I have a better memory than I did when I wrote my Rocky Point series, or maybe I was just in a rush to publish and didn’t work on them as hard as I should/could have. Hard to say since I published them in 2018, and that feels like a lifetime ago now. Still, never too late to fix a mistake, and these will sound good when I’m done. I’d like to celebrate their rerelease since some authors do that, maybe do a couple of lives if I can get up the courage and I’ll order some author copies to give away. I know I need to start being more active online, engage with people more. I’m not sure why I have problems with it. Hiding behind a screen is the easiest way to communicate with people.

That’s really all I have left. My ex-husband has a key to my apartment (it was ours before we divorced and he kept his in case of an emergency) and he does weird things like come over while I’m working and drops off bags of garden veg he gets from somewhere. He did that a couple weeks ago and I put the squash on my balcony, jokingly referring to it as my fall aesthetic because I’m terrible at decorating. So, you all know I feed the squirrels and one of them decided to turn my fall aesthetic into a snack. She completely ripped the guts out of one and scattered them all over the balcony. But, she’s enjoying it, and I’ll let her have at it until there’s nothing left.

Squirrel eating squash — I took the picture through my screen so I wouldn’t disturb her.

That’s all I have for this week. I’m praying for everyone who was affected by Hurricane Helene. I’ve seen some pictures and read on Threads what’s been going on and I feel for everyone who has suffered. My thoughts are with you.

Until next time.

Housekeeping Update and Verifying Your Email Address on Goodreads

Posted on September 23, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

pumpkins, sliced blood oranges, and stick of cinnamon on flat wood. text says Housekeeping Update and Verifying Your Email Address on Goodreads

I thought I would switch it up a little because all I did last week was housekeeping. I put the rest of my King’s Crossing books on preorder. I have the paperbacks to books two and three scheduled, but Amazon doesn’t let you schedule out that far in advance, so I’ll have to go back at the end of December and schedule the other three paperbacks. It’s fine, I was just hoping to get it all done at once. But, they’re all up on preorder besides book one that’s live, and they’re pretty to look at. I still have to write a series blurb. It’s on my to-do list, but I’m slowly checking things off so I should be able to get to it soon. You can see them here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CX7SFGB5

Something else annoying is I had to contact Goodreads, again, and ask that all my books be moved over to my “real” profile as opposed to my fake one. My fake one doesn’t have dots between my initials like my pen name, but my “real” profile does, as that’s some kind of Goodreads requirement. I have to contact a librarian to have my books moved over every time I publish, and it’s mildly annoying. They’re pretty good about getting to it in a decent amount of time, though, and they were moved over the day I posted in the Librarians Group. It’s not really a big deal besides the fact I have to do it at all. This time I had an extra run around and had to verify my email address before they would let me post. That took me a few extra minutes because I didn’t know how to do that. If you’re ever asked to verify your email, this is what you do:

Click on your profile picture in the upper right.

Go to Account Settings at the bottom of the menu.

Then click on Edit Profile.

Once you’re there, click on Settings.

After Settings you’ll see where your email is. If it’s not verified, click the link and it will send a verification email to your email address.

Mine is already verified, so it doesn’t show it anymore, but if yours isn’t you might wanna go ahead and do it while you’re thinking of it. It might save you some issues in the long run, or trying to find this post for the instructions later.

How to do it was buried, as you can see, and Googling the instructions wasn’t that helpful, but it did at least send me in the right direction.

Anyway, so I verified my email and posted in the Librarians Group to move my books over, which they did.

Because of a crappy post on saw on Threads, calling Amazon criminal for charging for Goodreads giveaways, I set one up, almost out of spite. I’ve seen some really asinine things over there lately, and I realized it’s because a lot of those authors are new and don’t remember how things used to be (if you’re new as well and want to read some of the scammy things authors used to do, read here: https://vaniamargene.com/2020/05/04/scammers-gonna-scam/), don’t know how things should be done, or think they should be getting something for nothing. The Goodreads argument is valid, I can admit, considering they used to be free, but newsletter promo sites like Written Word Media, E-reader News Today, Fussy Librarian, et. al. have always charged, so when Amazon said Goodreads would start charging, it wasn’t that much of a surprise. I’ve heard conflicting stories of how effective they are, but at $119 USD, it wasn’t that costly of an experiment and I didn’t have to use any of my free days. So, I’m giving away 100 ebook copies of Cruel Fate, hoping to build some buzz for the series.

I didn’t realize you had to choose between ebooks and paperbacks, and I mistakenly ordered five author copies of Cruel Fate thinking I would need them for a mixed giveaway. So, now I have five paperback books coming, but maybe I’ll just run a giveaway on my Facebook author page in conjunction with the Goodreads giveaway and see what happens. I could have canceled the order, but I didn’t see the harm in having some on hand. The giveaway goes from September 25th to October 25th, which is good timing since the second book releases October 28th.

I’m still editing my A Rocky Point Wedding series, getting close to being done with book two. I took a couple days and read book four for pleasure (Autumn and Cole are my favorite characters in the series), noting some of the changes that would need to be made, mostly tightening up prose. I have three and a half chapters left of book two, but it’s a lot considering each chapter has about 7,000 words in it. I don’t know what I was thinking, chopping it up that way, but I do remember back when I wrote in 3rd person I didn’t break up my books until the editing phase. If I ever write 3rd person again, I’ll write the chapters in as I go. Switching to dual 1st person didn’t leave me a choice, so maybe writing in chapters would be more natural for me. I don’t mind working and reading in 3rd after so many years writing in first, and once I’m doing editing these, I’ll continue on with my “break” and read a few more books I’ve been putting off. Because once I go back to writing 1st person, I’ll stay in that lane for a while.

As far as personal things go, I’m taking Friday off work and going to large zoo 45 minutes from here with my sister and my daughter, and after that the fairgrounds in Fargo, ND is hosting a junk market. I love poking through antiques and stuff. There’s a fee to get in, unfortunately, so we’ll be paying to browse, but it will be nice to spend the day outside in cooler temperatures. It will be a long day for me as I’m still not used to doing so much all at once, but hopefully I feel okay and I’m very much hoping book two will be done by then so I can start on book three on Saturday.

So, things are moving along. I also started some Amazon ads on my series hoping to get some exposure. That’s all it is right now since preorders are usually a waste for me. Readers just wait until they’re available in KU, and I know that, and that’s fine. I very much know that every click on those ads is for exposure (I’ve only had one person read Cruel Fate in KU since release so far), but sometimes there’s no other way. Once I get a series blurb down I’ll create a FB ad for it too. Those clicks are usually cheaper anyway, but I need a good series blurb and tagline or the ads won’t do anything. I learned with my FB ads for my rockstars that you need a hooky hooky hook or no one will care. But that tracks–it takes a lot to care about anything these days. (Is it still COVID languishing or election fatigue?)

I think that is all for now. In the coming months, since there are weeks I struggle to find anything to write about, I may feature an old blog post that has done well, and muse about if I still agree with what I wrote or if my opinions have changed. I don’t mind admitting if I’ve changed my mind since we all grow and learn. It would be an interesting series, anyway, so we’ll see. Threads throws up different ideas here and there, but a lot of it right now is just Amazon hate, ISBN confusion because people need free ways to publish and ISBNs are expensive in the US, and people wondering why their books won’t sell when they have bad covers. It’s pretty par for the course, really, but nothing I can blog about.

Enjoy your week, and next Monday I’ll let you know if I find anything at the junk market!

Until next time!

Monday’s Author Update

Posted on September 16, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I’ve actually had other things to write about lately, which is a surprise as well as a gift, so this week I can catch you up on what I’ve been doing without feeling bad.

Putting up my King’s Crossing series is slow. I’ve done two so far, hopefully three by the time you read this. I’ve been spacing them out because I didn’t know if putting all six up for preorder would anger some Amazon god. They already asked me for proof of licensing for the stock photos I used for book two. They accepted the DepositPhoto screenshots of my account and the licensing agreements and approved my book on the same day, but I decided to wait a couple days between that approval and book three. That happened on Wednesday, so I put up the third book on Saturday. At this rate it will take me a whole week to get everything up on preorder, which is silly since the first book is scheduled to go live on Monday, uh, today. I can’t even do anything until they’re all available in some way, can’t run ads and I haven’t really posted anywhere the first book is close to being released.

With a series, it’s a double-edged sword. You want people to know your books are coming out, or have been released, but few readers will dive into the first book before they know a series is complete and well, I don’t want them to because I know read through is where the royalties and happy readers are. In fact, someone on Booksprout thanked me for putting all of them up to read. I told her, of course, I don’t know how a reader would read them any other way. I’ve talked a lot about series before, so I’ll leave it there, but for me I can’t do anything until I have all the links. Until they’re all showing up on my Amazon author page. Then, and only then, will I start paying for traffic.

I did a crazy thing, too, and started re-editing my A Rocky Point Wedding series, a 3rd person series I released back in 2018. I had a friend say she read them, then someone else was reading them in KU not long ago, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I knew they needed work–I’ve learned a lot and have gotten better at self-editing in the six years since I’ve published them–so just to keep myself from going insane, I decided now would be a good time. I have the time while my King’s Crossing series is releasing and if I can get them done by December, I can push them hard because they take place around Christmas. I’ve already finished book one, and I estimate each book is going to take about two, maybe three, weeks. One week, possibly a week and a half, to do the initial edit, then another week to read it again to make sure what I fixed makes sense. These books are shorter, about 75k words on average, and that helps too, since most of my first person books hit 100k. I really like this series and I’m having fun.

I’ll take the opportunity to freshen up the insides, formatting-wise, and I can update my author bio and my ALSO BY list. I figured it can’t hurt to put my pen name books in the backs and I’ll direct people to my VM Rheault website just for kicks since I didn’t have a call to action (CTA) in the back matter anyway.

All in all, it shouldn’t take too long, maybe be done by the middle of November, then I can hype them up a little bit longer and take the rest of the month off, and December too, for a break and not think about book things during the holidays.

When the first of the New Year hits, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a standalone that needs editing, so I can put that up after my King’s Crossing series has been released. Do you want to see the cover? I have a concept done already. Wait. What? Am I redoing the covers for my Rocky Point series? I’m glad you asked, because, yes, I am! I mean, yes I did. I am very sorry to say, as much as I loved, absolutely adored, looking for couples to help my friend Melody with her covers, I just couldn’t do it anymore, and breaking with the brand I was building under my Vania Rheault name, decided to go with single characters. Which actually turned out because of what the titles are. You’ll see for yourself.

Unless Amazon thinks Autumn is showing too much cleavage, I’ll finally be able to run ads to these. My ads were always blocked before because the characters were showing too much skin in bed.

Quite a change, but I think they look sleeker, simpler, and more angsty than the original covers. I may explore different fonts since I know the title isn’t legible at thumbnail size, but honestly, with the product page blaring the title and the blurb, I’m not sure how much difference that makes.

Hopefully the new covers and edit will draw readers in. Surprisingly, I don’t think read-through is too bad, though in book one I did catch quite a few typos and an inconsistency that I couldn’t believe I let slip by me. Editing book two will keep me on my toes because it follows the same timeline as book one. I remember when I was writing them that I needed more time, in the stories, I mean. There are four books that take place over two weeks, and the only way I could find the time for all four was to write book one and two during the same timeframe. Then three picks up the timeline and book four finishes out the two weeks. But I’ll have to double check all the characters and what they’re doing in book two line up with book one.

So, that’s what I’ll be doing in the next couple of months. While I’m working on these, I’ll try to remember to give my King’s Crossing books some love because I get way too focused on the current project at hand. I’ve always been this way, never stopping to enjoy the work I put into a book, but for some reason, I’m going to be absurdly proud of my A Rocky Point Wedding series when they’re all fixed up, and I may order some authors copies to give away at Christmas.

That’s about all I have going on here. It might sound like a lot, but I’m still taking the time to relax a bit and I’m watching A Discovery of Witches on Netflix. I already watched it once, but I liked it enough to watch it again. As far as health stuff, I wrote one last blog post on my mental health blog. Since I stopped drinking in June, I haven’t had nearly the anxiety and it’s difficult to write about anxiety if you’re not experiencing it. I still get nervous sometimes, that this is how I’ll feel for the rest of my life, but when the best of the best says, “It is what it is,” there’s not a lot that can be done. I won’t get into it anymore here. If you’re interested in that update, you can look here: https://chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com/2024/09/nothing-good-in-good-situation.html

I might still write on it from time to time, to explore how I feel and what I’m doing. I’m trying to move forward the best I can, working on my books, trying to remember that it’s okay to take a break. I don’t think I’m going to be as hardcore in 2025 as I used to be. Things have changed, and I’m tired. I have my books figured out until August, and I need to find the fun in writing again. I have an idea for another standalone, about a woman who’s sister was involved in a kidnapping gone wrong, and my main character happens to fall in love with the boy’s father. I even have the cover for that one almost done, and I know I want it to be dark. Like depression, death, heartbreakingly dark. It might just be the thing to keep my spirits up because, like a lot of people these days, life has been kind of dragging me down.

Anyway, enough of that. There’s no point in wallowing. Life is good.

Have a good week, everyone!

How to turn your book’s cover full wrap PDF into an ebook cover

Posted on September 9, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I’ve gotten a few questions about this, and I guess maybe I was remiss in not typing out the instructions before now.

In all honesty, I’ve been doing it the hard way, importing the PDF into GIMP, cropping out the back cover and spine, adjusting the DPI and size, then downloading the JPG file. When someone asked me in the comments of my updated full wrap post for instructions, I didn’t want to direct them to a software they might not have. My full wraps are made in Canva, so should the ebook covers.

So, I messed around a bit, figured it out, and to my surprise, found it was easier than using GIMP anyway.

For the screenshots, I used Melody Loomis’s cover for her book, Thrill of the Chase. I designed the cover, so I already had access to the PDF and she gave me her permission to use it.

Here you go:

Click on Create a Design.
KDP’s guidelines for an ebook cover are 1600 x 2560 pixels. Click on Create a Design and click on Custom Size. Enter in the pixels, like this.

Click Create New Design.

Next, you can either upload your book’s PDF or check your Projects folder. It will already be there unless you’re doing an ebook cover for someone else. The first time I uploaded a PDF I was really confused and kept thinking I was doing something wrong. So either way, your Projects folder is where you’ll find the PDF. I’m using Melody’s Draft2Digital cover, and it’s at the top because I uploaded it for this post.

Click on it so it’s laying on your empty canvas.

Click the cover to select it, if it isn’t already, and crop off the back cover and the spine.

Now grab a corner and enlarge it. At this point, just play with it until it fits the canvas how you want it. It won’t fit 100% and you’ll lose just a tiny bit on the sides, but it’s so little you won’t notice.

Click Share and Download.

Choose JPG because KDP won’t accept a PNG. If you have Pro, scoot the quality up 100.

Save it in a place and under name you’ll remember.

It will save in the correct size and DPI and you won’t have to do anything else to it.

That’s it. I should have written this out a long time ago, but I never thought to. Anyway, it’s simple enough to do and I should have been doing it this way from the beginning. After that reader posted his or her question, it did get me to thinking about it, and now I’ll never use GIMP to make ebook covers again.

If you have any questions, drop them in the comments below, and I’ll answer them to the best of my ability.

Thank you to Melody Loomis who let me use her cover, and if you’re interested in her Storm Series, you can follow her author page and check out her books here: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Melody-Loomis/author/B093KGD3ZC

Until next time!

Author Websites: Do You Need One?

Posted on September 2, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Today’s topic on websites is thanks to Melody Loomis, and you can check out her website here: https://www.melodyloomis.com/

I’ve been a writer in some way, shape, or form, all my life, like most writers are, but when I found writing after a failed attempt at going into Human Resources as a career, I didn’t think to create a website. In fact, the idea of it sounded foreign, confusing, and costly. I dusted off my Twitter account–I had made one while I was in school to connect with HR people–and joined the writing community instead (thinking I’d make the connections I would eventually need to sell my books. Ha!). One of the first things they said was to start a website, so, despite my inhibitions, like everything else I’ve done in publishing, in December of 2015, according to my WordPress site, I jumped right in.

I didn’t create my website to tell people about my books though. I started an indie blog, the one you’re reading right now. Almost nine years later, I have never taken my website down or skipped a week publishing, for that matter. I was pretty hardcore back then, writing six times a month about stuff I knew nothing about. Arrogant, I suppose, like a lot of newbie authors are. I don’t recommend having a website where you blog for indie authors and try to sell your books to readers at the same time. Mixing the writing community and the reading community can leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth, be it the writing community who doesn’t like the kinds of books you’re writing or the reading community who doesn’t like what you have to say on your blog that’s intended for other writers and authors. In fact, after typing that sentence, I’m tempted to take my Books page down. I don’t promote them anyway, and really, they don’t belong on a website that I use to write about my publishing experiences. I could always add them to my true author website (vmrheault.com), nesting a page under that Books page and making it clear they’re written under another name, but that’s a thought for another day.

The title of this blogpost is “Author Websites: Do you need one?” and the answer to that question is yes. Yes, you do, and along with the reasons why, I’ll explain how I use my websites and how they differ from each other.

Don’t build your house on other people’s land.
This is really important and I can’t stress this enough. Just a couple of days ago, someone on Threads was saying how her Facebook Author page got taken down and she lost over four thousand followers. Imagine if she had created a newsletter/blog instead. I know this post is about websites, but websites and newsletters/blogs are almost one and the same. A website is yours, and so is your newsletter. Social media platforms come and go (not because they fall apart like Google + but because you’re at the mercy of a bot who decides if you’re breaking their guidelines), but your website and a newsletter will always be around (unless, for some reason, you take them down).

It’s where you should send newsletter subscribers.
It’s a very bad idea to use your newsletter aggregator’s landing page link to send readers to sign up for your newsletter. If you change your landing page or you have an issue with your newsletter, that link might not always work. When you put that link around online and for some reason it gets broken, readers will think you don’t have a newsletter anymore and you could lose a fan. Also, broken links just look plain unprofessional. If you send subscribers to your website instead, you can make changes to your newsletter sign-up link as needed. No one learned this lesson better or faster than I did when my MailerLite newsletter went up in a puff of smoke. I had an invitation to sign up to my newsletter in the back matter of over ten books. That’s a lot of links to change when you think of ebooks, paperbacks on KDP, and paperbacks on IngramSpark. Luckily, I was sending them to my website, and now instead of a landing page link, I edited what the page says and it invites them to subscribe to my blog. My reader magnet is on that page now, instead of in my welcome email, but it is what it is. I’ll never try another newsletter aggregator. I like being in control of my website and blog. The longer I’m in this industry, the more I learn it’s difficult to trust anyone with any part of your business. If you want to see what that page looks like, you can look here: https://vmrheault.com/subscribe/

It doesn’t cost that much.
I can only speak for WordPress. I use WordPress and let them host. I bought my domain name and the email I needed, vania@vaniamargene.com, when I set up my newsletter, through WordPress too. I’ve shared that email enough that I probably won’t get rid of it even if I don’t need it for MailerLite anymore. Way back people said you shouldn’t do that because you can’t enjoy plugins and other things on a WordPress-hosted site. I didn’t care about having popups or selling books on my site, and still really don’t. Selling my books here sounds like a big time-suck and I already have enough of those. So, I went with a Premium plan for both and pay $96.00 dollars a year, each, $19.00 for my domain names, each, and my G Suite email for $72.00. You don’t need all that. Personal plans are $4.00 a month or $48 a year plus the domain for $19. You can have a professional WordPress website for $67.00 a year. Some website providers are even free, and there’s no reason you can’t go that way, but you’ll still end up paying for a domain name. One of the things authors forget is that when you get your taxes done, you can write off your expenses. I keep track of all my yearly spend and give that and my yearly royalties to my accountant. With how much I spend in ads, I break even or I’m in the red, but I can still get some money back for all the money I put into my business. No matter which way you go, free or paid, or if you find a site that’s in between, set something up.

Your website will turn into your hub.
Your website will be around for years and years and years and as you publish books, you’ll add those to build a nice backlist. You don’t need to worry about SEO or how people will find you. You can add your website link to the backs of your books and on all your social media profiles. People who are searching for you or your books already know your name and what to Google. The only time you need to worry about building SEO is if you’re blogging on a topic and you want to be found when someone searches for information about that topic. That really doesn’t apply to authors, unless you write nonfiction, and then you’re probably blogging about your subject.

This website gets anywhere from 30-100 hits a day. Mostly because people are looking for instructions on how to make a paperback cover in Canva. The updated instructions have gotten over 6,000 views since I published it in June of 2022. I get my regular readers who will read every Monday, and they count too, but if you search for “making paperback covers in Canva” my blog post is on the first page of results. That doesn’t matter much since it doesn’t sell books, I’m just happy I can help people publish. I don’t sell books off this website, so that would be another reason to take my Books page down. If you’re worried about SEO for your website, the only thing you can do is blog consistently on it. Being that a normal newsletter is only sent out once a month, if you blog that infrequently, you’ll never get the SEO you want. Building SEO takes hard work and consistency. Anyone who blogs whenever they feel like it and hops around from topic to topic can tell you how difficult it is to grow your following. Still, if you choose a WordPress-hosted site, you can be part of the WordPress Reader. When I moved my newsletter to my blog, not only did my number of opens stay around the same, but my posts were seen in the WordPress Reader, a perk I hadn’t considered but appreciate now. If you truly want your website to come up if someone searches your genre, sell a lot of books. That’s all you can do.

People say they don’t want a website because they don’t have anything to put on it. To me, that sounds like a good reason to have one. There’s no maintenance. I guess then you can argue you’re paying for nothing, but you’re paying for an internet presence you own and you have no idea how helpful it is to have one until you don’t and you need it. I loving having both my websites, and I have to admit, I love blogging on both too. I never understood people who say they don’t have anything to write, and oh, my God, do I hear it a lot. You’re a writer. How hard is it to come up with 500-1000 words once a month? Talk about yourself. Talk about your books. People can’t get to know you or think they’ll try out your books if you don’t put yourself out there. Though, that’s neither here nor there since we’re just talking about websites and not blogging, but if you’re worried your website will become stale, at least copy over your newsletter content to a blog once or twice a month, and maybe you’ll get some new readers who haven’t subscribed to your newsletter.

Content is the name of the game, and you’d need something to post if you make up a Facebook Author Page. You definitely need to create content on FB if you want people to see it, otherwise the algorithms will sink your page faster than Amazon will sink your book. If you write lengthy posts on Facebook, repurpose those posts on your website.

When I started posting about my books on my author site, I really enjoyed myself, and I was surprised at the number of views and visitors I was getting. I put my ARC links up and though they haven’t gone as fast as I would have liked, more signed up than if I wouldn’t have made them available on my website at all.

Your website will be what you make it. It will reflect who you are as author and the kinds of books you write. We’re all grappling for discoverability, for our books to be seen. A website is a good way to do that.

Now, I need to set up a blog for my author site. I’m blogging more over there to create buzz for my series, and it’s working well. In the past week I’ve had 145 views and 95 visitors, plus the opens I get from the list I exported from MailerLite when I deactivated my account. I couldn’t be happier.

I hope you had a good weekend and that you’re enjoying the Labor Day holiday. Check www.vmrheault.com if you want to see what I’m writing to my readers.

Until next time!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Author Archives: Vania Margene Rheault

About Vania Margene Rheault

Results of My Goodreads Giveaway

Are Stuff Your E-reader Days Beneficial?

Amazon Ads: A Case Study

Author Update and Mixed Bag

Another (Manic) Monday

Author Update and SMH

Housekeeping Update and Verifying Your Email Address on Goodreads

Monday’s Author Update

How to turn your book’s cover full wrap PDF into an ebook cover

Author Websites: Do You Need One?

About Vania Margene Rheault

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