Category Archives: author update

Authors in Reader Spaces, Monday Musings, and Author Update

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I actually had a different blog post planned for today. I had it all written out, but I was rereading it and after thinking about it, I decided not to publish it after all. We’ve had so much talk lately about authors who can’t handle their reviews, and we see evidence of it all the time. I’m not on TikTok, but I’ve watched reaction videos of authors who publicly go after reviewers for their honest reviews, (though some would say negative, even vindictive) and I really started to think about the kinds of information authors share.

Not just me, but any author who shares their numbers, their empty sales dashboards, their private messages, publicly. I’ve shared numbers in the past–how many books sold, how much it cost me, how many page reads after a promo and how long it took. That kind of thing. Authors who drift into the non-fiction space almost have to post some kind of proof of success or failure if they’re giving marketing advice. If I’m going to share my ups and downs publishing my books, then it’s almost a given to say, well, I paid $200 for ads between FB and Amazon in the month of May and I made $235, so really, I made $35 bucks. That’s the transparency we need as authors looking for marketing advice, and that’s the honesty we should be putting out there if we’ve chosen to share our journeys.

But then I think, authors are public figures and what we do and say on social media is put out there to be scrutinized, but not just scrutinized, scrutinized by readers who could find what we’re saying. This blog and the information I share is definitely different than what I put in my newsletters, and honestly, I don’t know how I would feel if any of my readers stumbled upon this website. We like to think readers and authors are separate, but with social media, they aren’t. (And we keep saying that authors are readers too, so…) They really aren’t. My numbers (or lack thereof) concerns them. It concerns the money and time they spend on my books, and mixing my readership with the contents of this blog doesn’t sit well with me.

I was going to share my numbers after my Fussy Librarian promo last Friday, and to be honest, I was disappointed in the results. But as I started to reread it to proof it for mistakes before I posted it today, I was ashamed. I had no right to be disappointed because in that disappointment, I discounted every reader who downloaded the book during the promo and every reader who will go on to buy books two and three. No, it didn’t pull the bigger numbers a Freebooksy does when I buy a promo from Written Word Media, but that only tells me their newsletter subscriber list is bigger. And we pay for that with a higher fee when we book with them.

I want readers to be proud they’re reading me. Proud to say, “Yeah, that VM, she’s classy. She doesn’t crap on other authors, she doesn’t splash a bad review everywhere and complain about it. She doesn’t post private messages everywhere making fun of people who reach out to her. She has a cute cat, drinks watermelon wine like me, and likes to read sexy romances in the tub. She’s my people.” That’s what I want readers to feel when they buy one of my books. That’s what I want readers to feel when they stumble upon my IG or sign up for my newsletter, or even God forbid read this blog.

I obviously don’t write for the money. If I pulled all my numbers for my lifetime of publishing, I would be in the red. Bottom line, I have put more time and money into my books than I have ever gotten back in royalties, but maybe that’s no one’s business but mine. Do I have dreams of speaking at 20books or NINC? I used to. (No, not really, I don’t EVER want to get into public speaking.) I wanted to be able to say, this is how I did it. I wanted to be able to encourage other authors and say, “If I can do it, so you can you.” But maybe I don’t want that anymore. Social media has become this dumpster fire of entitled authors who have such a thin skin they get pissed off when they get three star reviews. It’s terrible. I don’t want to inadvertently get meshed in with them, either. “Oh, that Vania, she’s complaining about how her promo did again. Ugh.” And the more you put yourself out there, the more of a chance there is of that happening.

So, that was what I was thinking when I reread my blog post that was supposed to be up for today. Was my Fussy Librarian successful? Sure. I had 1,257 downloads of Give & Take when it was free. I wouldn’t have had any if the cover was crap or my one sentence ad copy line was terrible. Have I sold anything? I sold 9 Give & Takes, 4 Lost & Founds, and 3 Safe & Sounds. If you count every sale, every reader, a success, then yes. My Fussy Librarian promo succeeded. Did I earn my fee back? No. Will I? I have faith in my books. I will eventually. I know I will, just not at the speed that I hoped. I can give myself permission to be disappointed, but my disappointment isn’t for public consumption. Readers and Authors mix on social media on a daily basis. My disappointment may not be for public consumption ever again.

So, where is this blog headed? I’m not sure. I’ve posted Monday and some Thursdays every week without fail for 7 years. I’m not a quitter and even if I don’t post hard numbers, I still feel I have a lot to share. I’m dipping my toes back into the non-fiction side, listening to podcasts, reading more non-fiction books. I want to share resources, but that’s hard to do when I’m not consuming them to pass along. I’ve been in a bubble with my own writing, and maybe blame my reclusiveness after COVID or my drive to get my pen name going (I published my first book in May of last year), but I haven’t let my attention go anywhere else and I know I need to, if anything, to grow as an author.

So, I will leave you with this: a chat between Kevin Tumlinson of Draft2Digital and Jane Friedman, on D2D’s Facebook page. I’ve tried to find it on YouTube as they post their videos there, but I couldn’t find it, so I apologize in advance if you’re not on Facebook to watch it. I’ll keep an eye out for it and if I find it, I’ll post it ASAP. Here is the link, and the screenshot is from D2D’s FB page: https://fb.watch/l4wVa0M6rS/

I hope you have a good week, everyone!

Why I have an author website and the advantages of having one.

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When I decided to publish my first person POV under a pen name, I was torn between starting a whole new website, or simply adding a page and listing my books on this one. I already knew my way around WordPress (this theme, anyway) and starting another and letting WordPress host my domain would be easy, if I chose to go that route. I don’t pay for an outside host, WordPress takes care of that for me, and I bought both of my domain names through them too. I’ve blogged for seven and a half years, I think, and I have never had a problem logging in, hackers taking over, or spam comments dirtying up my posts. I’ve always been very happy with WordPress and I like being part of the WordPress Reader. I think over the past seven and a half years I’ve found a lot of readers showing up in WordPress community, and that traffic is invaluable.

The main issue for me was keeping my nonfiction and writing community separate from my readers and my books. For a long time I put a graphic of my books and author page at the end of posts, and I realized that my audience isn’t here. You guys come to me for publishing news, indie information, and how-to posts like my how to do a full wrap in Canva instructions. You come here to read about my experiences, and I love sharing them. If I ever sold any books from having them at the end of my blogposts, it was few, and I decided instead of trying to cram two readerships together, I took my graphic down and stopped. It didn’t do anything to my sales, such as they were, and well, I think I made the right choice.

But, readers like somewhere to go, a place to look at your stuff, even if you don’t think they do. So, I decided to put up a website just for my first person books.

One of the first things I realized is that I needed a brand. My books are about Billionaires (kind of. I have a rockstar trilogy coming out at the end of the summer, and they’re rich, but in a different way LOL). Sexy men with gobs of money, wanting, needing, things money can’t buy. I needed graphics, fonts, that would carry across the website, my newsletter, and any other social media posts. Starting my website was a way to put everything I learned from five years of doing it wrong into practice, and I still made a lot of mistakes along the way.

The first thing I did was think about the font for my author name on my books. I got some flack in some feedback groups on FB for using Cinzel Decorative for my name.

This is the cover for the first in my rockstar trilogy I’m playing with. My name will look like this on all my first person POV books. Always. I wanted it to look similar to my name on the third person books, but with a little twist. I may go back to writing in third person. I don’t know. I still sell a few here and there, and I don’t want to completely write that name off.

That was the first thing I had to decide. Next I had to figure out what would denote sophistication, elegance, and money, but also sex as I have open-door sex scenes and I thought I should hint at that. The brand of a billionaire. I chose this photo as a header for my FB reader group page, my FB author page I rebranded instead of starting a new one, and it’s the header for my newsletter sign up landing page. It’s important to be consistent all over the web.

My home page header and tagline.
My landing page for my newsletter signup through MailerLite

I went through a lot of graphics and I changed a lot of things before settling on him.

The reason why I’m telling you all this is because when you decide to create and pay for a website, it’s more than just putting up a list of your books. It’s part of your marketing strategy. You’re giving your readers a look at what they’re going to be be getting buying and reading your books and signing up for your newsletter.

So, after I got all that up and running, I decided I didn’t want to blog. I wanted to do things differently than what I was doing for my non-fiction part of writing. Instead of blogging, I started a newsletter to reach readers, and it’s a lot easier writing a newsletter once or twice a month than it is thinking about relevant topics for this blog once a week. This is like a journal about my publishing journey, and readers don’t care about that. It’s fun to think of little things to tell my readers about my books, and now that I’ve gotten used to the MailerLite platform, it doesn’t take any time at all to knock out a newsletter and send it off.

My author website doesn’t have much to it. An about me page, how to contact me, my books, and a subscribe link to my newsletter. The only thing I keep up to date is the list of my books, and that doesn’t take much time at all. There are other things I could add, like a list of trigger warnings, or when I have more books published, I could list them by trope. There is always something to add, but for now my website is very simple.

I got the idea to write this blog post is because I wanted to give you some numbers. I don’t promote my website anywhere. I have the link on my Twitter bio (along with this one, too) and my subscribe link is at the back of all my books (www.vmrheault.com/subscribe). You would think I wouldn’t get any views, but I do. You may not believe readers will find you, that a website isn’t relevant, but it readers will find you. They really will.

I started my author website in September of 2021 and I published my first 1st person POV book in June of 2022. I already had a reader magnet written, and I started up my newsletter a few months after I published my website.

In 2021 I only had 33 views:

In 2022 I had 213 views.

So far, this year, I’ve had 266 views.

I don’t use attribution links, so I can’t tell you how many people have bought books using my Books page, but all those views could be readers, and I never would have had them if I hadn’t had a website.

I’ve had 44 newsletter signups that came from my landing page I have connected to my website. That may not seem like much, but that’s 44 people who may not have signed up. Every little bit helps when it comes to building your mailing list.

I call it my No Freebie List because I have a different way to collect email addresses through Bookfunnel when I have a little money to play with to run FB ads to my Bookfunnel link. They are still able to download a copy of my reader magnet–that was just how I differentiated them in my mind.

For as little time as keeping up website updated costs me, I think it is worth it to have one. When you’re building a readership, each reader counts and they want a consistent way to be able to find you. I don’t do much with any of my Facebook pages. Sometimes I’ll take a couple hours and schedule posts for a few weeks in advance, but I’m terrible at keeping those up to date. I like my newsletter for that, because I don’t send it out often, and I don’t have that much to share. I write a lot. That’s where my time goes.

If you’re on the fence about an author website, ask yourself why you wouldn’t want one. Would the lack of views get you down? You do have to write and put the links in the back and not be afraid to share it on social media. I admit, having a reader magnet goes a long way. I’ve given my reader magnet away 1,004 times, and that probably has brought traffic to my website, too. It all works together, and that’s part of your marketing strategy. All the wheels need to turn, and a vehicle stops moving if you have a flat tire. I’m happy with the stats of my website, and I’m glad I put one up.

pieces of marketing: website, consistency, newsletter, backmatter, and promos/ads.

Do you have any other reasons why you would have an author website? Let me know!

Have a great week!

So…Much…Indie Publishing…News!

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Words: 1431
Time to read: 8 minutes

There has been a lot going on in the past couple of weeks, and now that I’m done with my trilogy (!) I can poke my head out of my writing cave and weigh in! Most of it’s been happening over at Amazon, but when aren’t they making huge waves over little changes that leave all of us authors rolling around on the floor in a temper tantrum?

The first big thing was they raised the price of Kindle Unlimited. It used to be $9.99 a month and they raised it to $11.99 USD. I’m not sure why that gave every author I know a heart attack. Two dollars is nothing, especially since in the email they sent all their subscribers, they said their catalogue has grown to over four million titles.

Since the launch of Kindle Unlimited in 2014, we have grown our eBook catalog from 600,000 titles to over 4 million titles today, introduced digital magazine subscriptions, and improved selection quality across genres. Kindle Unlimited members have unparalleled access to read as much as they want from a rich catalog of eBooks, audiobooks, magazines and comics. We continue to invest in making Kindle Unlimited even more valuable for members.

Taken from my Amazon Email

Guys, readers aren’t going to care. As a reader who uses KU, I don’t care. Have you priced ebooks lately? Anyone? These days your KU subscription fee will pay for two, mmmaaaayyybbbbeeee three ebooks, if they’re priced low enough. Everyone’s prices are rising, and KU for a reader is still a great deal. If you’ve been considering pulling your books out of Kindle Select because of this small price change, I would tell you to take a step back and breathe. You all are going to make a major business decision over two dollars a month? (And I’m especially staring at the people who are paying Musk $11.00/month to tweet.) I hope not. But if you are going to go wide, publish with Kobo directly and enroll your books in Kobo Plus. They don’t require the exclusivity Kindle Select does, and if you’re considering signing up as a reader to save money, understand that their catalogue isn’t nearly as large.

Graphic explaining Kobo Plus benefits for readers. Text taken from their website: After the free trial period, we'll charge you $7.99 a month for a Kobo Plus Read or Kobo Plus Listen subscription, or $9.99 a month for Kobo Plus Read & Listen, ... Free delivery · ‎30-day returns
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/plus

Evaluate for yourself if keeping your books enrolled in Kindle Select is the right thing for you and your business. Don’t blindly follow what people are doing on Twitter and in your author groups. A lot of the reaction is due to the fact that AMAZON made this change. Authors love to hate Amazon, always accusing them of undercutting and cheating us. They added value and upped their prices–like any company does. Like Canva is going to do with all their new toys. I’m waiting for the email to come from them too. It’s what happens.

Another nasty surprise we woke up to is Kindle Direct Publishing raising their printing costs. This caused a lot of anger and resentment too, but someone I trust analyzed how much that means for indie authors, and the fact is, KDP upped printing costs by .15 a paperback. You need to take a look at your business and decide if freaking out over .15 is a wise business decision. I don’t sell many paperbacks. It’s not where my focus is. I market to KU subscribers. Any time I run an FB ad or mention my book on Twitter or anywhere else, I say it’s available in Kindle Unlimited. That is where my readers are. That might not be true for everyone. Authors who write poetry, kids books, and middle grade focus on paperbacks, and if you’re buying author copies in bulk, you can always print through IngramSpark. I think again, people are angry because this is Amazon, but you have to take a look at the industry as a whole. For some reason, I follow a lot of agents, and when they are telling querying writers to adhere to a certain word count because printing is expensive and it’s easier for them to sell shorter books, then it’s an industry problem, not an Amazon problem. Amazon is part of the publishing business, and the publishing industry is global. We are caught in the middle of the pandemic aftermath, and it seems a lot of people forget that. Are you upset about fifteen cents? I’ll give you the quarter I found between my couch cushions.

IngramSpark is dropping their publishing and revision fees this month. That was actually a very nice surprise, and I will be taking advantage of it as I haven’t put my trilogy on IS yet. (I abhor busywork and adjusting the KDP cover template to the IS template is a boring pain the butt.)

We believe that all authors should be able to successfully print, globally distribute and Share Their Story With the World! In our tenth anniversary year, we’re announcing exciting changes that will make publishing your book with IngramSpark even easier. No more book setup fees (Coming May 1st) We will no longer charge book setup fees. It’s that simple. Upload your books for free*. FREE revisions on new books (Coming May 1st) Make a mistake? No problem. Revise your book within 60 days of the book's first production date and you will not be charged a revision fee.

I wondered how they were going to recoup that loss, and they too, are going to be charging more. I can’t remember where I got this screenshot, but I shared with my friend Sami-Jo when we were talking about IS dropping their fees:

To balance the general 60-day waiving of fees, IngramSpark is introducing a higher percentage fee on the publishing side, a "market access" fee. We are currently seeking more clarification on both changes and will further update you as soon as we know the full details.

So while the free title set up and the free revisions are a good thing, they are going to make up that loss, and it will fall to us. I’ve never paid a fee; I’ve belonged to a group like IBPA or ALLi who includes codes as member benefits, or just waited until they had a promotion and used their promo days (a good time was always in December for their NaNoWriMo promo.) Amazon isn’t doing anything everyone else isn’t doing, so please breathe and conduct your book business accordingly.

So much talk about AI I’m going to scream. I’m never going to use AI to write my books. I’ve played with Chat-GPT and while it’s fun to chat with Al and bounce ideas off him from time to time, the last thing I’m going to do is give him a prompt and copy and paste it into a book that has my name on it that i’m going to sell. If other authors want to do that, that’s their choice, name, and reputation. My books come from my heart, and I pour a lot of blood, sweat, tears, and wine into my fiction. (Not so much the wine anymore. I’ve stopped drinking hoping to drop a few pounds this summer.) I enjoy writing. I love creating characters and putting them through a lot of crap before giving them their HEAs. Why would I outsource that? I get not everyone feels the same, and that’s fine, but I have started to include a disclosure on the copyright page of my books, and I did it with my newest release Faking Forever, which was out last week.

screenshot of kindle view on the formatting software Vellum No part of this product was generated by AI. The entirety of this book was created solely by the author’s hard work, skill, talent, and imagination.

My copyright page is absurdly long because I give credit to everyone living and dead who in any way shape or form helped me with my books. Just kidding, but I add all the contributors for my stock images and chapter headers with DepositPhotos plus I give credit to my son and ex-fiancé for helping me with the imprint logo. And maybe one day I’ll update that too so I don’t have his name in my books anymore. Anyway, maybe no one reads copyright pages, but I like knowing that I’ve added it. I’m not going to write my books using it, but I can look at both sides and understand that there can be a place for it. Authors are going to have to do what they’ve always had to do: write good books and find a readership. I don’t think AI is going to disrupt this any more than COVID did when everyone was staying home and writing and publishing books because they didn’t have anything better to do. Publish good books, publish consistently, buy promos and invest in an ad platform. Start a newsletter and reach out to your readers. Let them get to know you as a person, and they’ll respond and connect with that.

Probably more went on, but this is going to be it for me this week, as far as commentary goes, anyway. While I “take a break” I’m going to re-edit The Years Between Us and reformat it using one of the newer styles that came with a Vellum upgrade. Depending on how I feel after that I would like to tackle my small town series and give them a facelift (especially covers because not being able to run Amazon ads is especially annoying), but I also want to stay on track with my rockstar trilogy to have that ready to rapid release by the end of August. There is always something to do!

I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Writing a taboo subject: is it worth it?

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Dictionary Definitions from Oxford Languages ta·boo noun noun: taboo; plural noun: taboos; noun: tabu; plural noun: tabus a social or religious custom prohibiting or forbidding discussion of a particular practice or forbidding association with a particular person, place, or thing. "many taboos have developed around physical exposure" Similar: prohibition proscription veto interdiction interdict ban restriction boycott nonacceptance anathema Opposite: acceptance encouragement a social practice that is prohibited or restricted. "speaking about sex is a taboo in his country"

When you choose to write about a subject that people consider taboo, you’re setting yourself up from the get-go for readers not to like your work–at least, not that particular project. Incest is a big taboo subject (even today people still bring up VC Andrews’ Flowers in the Attic–a popular book wherein a brother and sister begin a sexual relationship), along with cannibalism, religion/rituals, bestiality, torture, necrophilia, among other things.

What people consider taboo will vary from person to person, and when you write about a sensitive topic, you’re taking a risk that the majority of your readers won’t mind or can get past the topic at least long enough to buy and finish the book.

Book covers take from Goodreads

I don’t find many topics off-putting. I read Flowers in the Attic when I was younger, and reading about a brother and sister having sex was wicked and thrilling (at the age I was, reading about any sex was thrilling, haha! [If you don’t know by that comment, yes, I am an GenXer]). Sometimes a book will catch me off-guard, like Nora Roberts’ Sundown where a character is kidnapped and raped repeatedly throughout her life. I love Nora Roberts and have never had a problem with any of her books. I enjoyed Sundown as well, but I don’t remember Nora being so violent on the page. Still, I wasn’t upset and finished the book, an angsty and quick read for the length it is. If you want an example of ritual animal sacrifice, you can check out her Divine Evil which opens with a little girl watching her father participate in the ritual. It’s a flashback and has to do with what the book is about when the little girl is an adult and goes back to her hometown. I had to Google for the name of it, as I read it a very long time ago. The paperback said it was published in 2009, but I wasn’t reading much then, so it may be a re-release. Yes, I looked and the original copyright is 1992–I’m not crazy after all! Good to know!

I have found while reading both indie and trad books, taboo subjects are best swallowed when they are written well and have a reason for existing. In some of the indie I’ve read, authors confuse violence and shock value with conflict and insert unnecessary violent scenes when, with better writing, they needn’t have added it at all. Alluding to and writing it explicitly on the page are two different things, and you have to decide for yourself if writing it out in gory detail will enhance the story. It may not, and referring to it can suit your purposes all the same.

I’ve only been thinking about this because my trilogy involves cheating, and that, too, is a taboo subject for some people. In doing a brief bit of research before I started my rockstar trilogy, cheating among band members is, perhaps not typical, but it can happen. I’m hoping that cheating in a rockstar romance is considered tropy and not unsavory.

What are some of the things you can do to set up your book to have a better chance sales- and review-wise?

*Warn your readers. I’ve said in the past I don’t need trigger warnings and for the most part, don’t include them in my blurbs. There are a couple reasons for that, one mainly, is the rumor that Amazon will bury your book’s discoverability if you include a trigger or content warning in your blurb. Some bigger authors can get away with that–they have a loyal fanbase and don’t depend on Amazon’s algorithms the way smaller authors do. Amazon can bury your book’s ad, too, so they get you twice if you run ads to your books. Simply saying your book includes sensitive themes may not be enough. What people consider sensitive can vary greatly and being vague in hopes of tricking Amazon may not help. What you can do is add all your triggers to your website and point your readers there in an author’s note at the beginning of all your books. That may be a better way to go.

I use Booksprout for reviews before launch, and I will definitely include a trigger for the trilogy. They are also long so I’ll add that as well.

*Have a reason for including the taboo. Most taboo subjects will have a plot reason for being in your book, but make sure that if you’re writing a rape scene or you’re going to get graphic with child violence or the inhumane treatment of animals, that there is a need for it. Is it a clue in a thriller/mystery? Does the act move the character development forward . . . or backward? Violent scenes are not filler and shouldn’t be used to manufacture conflict.

*Have your characters learn from it. Cheating is actually fun to write about. Characters feel guilty falling in love with a person who is “taken.” They can learn a lot about themselves and other characters when they explore doing something that would be considered off limits. If you’re going to write about something taboo, make sure your characters (and maybe your readers as well) learn from it. Why is it taboo, and how do they justify the act? When is it okay to do it, and when is it not okay? Where is there a line? I love a morally grey character. That’s life, and none of us are perfect. We cheat on our income taxes, don’t correct a cashier when she forgets to ring up an item, don’t return money we found on the ground. Little things that would cast someone in a bad light if someone else found out about it. It doesn’t make us bad people–we have a lot of different facets that make us who we are. A reader will have an easier time reading something like cheating if your characters learn from it, or if there is a really good reason for why it happened in the first place.

I finished watching Daisy Jones and The Six last night, and there is some cheating and some alleged cheating, in it. I don’t want to spoil the book or the show for you if you haven’t read or watched either, but at one point the question came up, if you’re married to someone but are in love with someone else, should you honor your vows? Do you stay in a relationship you don’t want to be in? You never want to be with someone if they think you’re an obligation, and Daisy Jones explored that. In book 2 of my trilogy, Eddie fell in love with his bandmate’s wife. It turns out Clarissa was being abused, and Eddie protected her. She was too scared to leave her husband, and Eddie took matters into his own hands, another piece of the plot.

I’m not sure how well my trilogy will be received, but all I can hope is I executed them well enough that while readers may not condone what my characters are doing, they can feel sympathy toward them.

I don’t have much else this week. I compared my royalties with my ad spend for March, and I came out ahead, whoo-hoo! You really gotta watch those ads. Sometimes they can take off and eat up your money faster than a kid can eat through a box of cookies. I would have to do more math, but I’m ahead by quite a bit this year already, my trilogy doing good things, and my one-night-stand standalone doing well at .99. I think I’m going to leave it at .99 for a while. The FB ad is running with some likes and shares (social proof is always a good thing) and I make page reads off it, too. It can be my “gateway” book into my library for those who aren’t Kindle Unlimited subscribers but want to try my books. People are risk-averse, especially with new-to-them authors. Even priced at $4.99 for a full-length novel, if you’re writing in a series, you’re asking a reader to spend a lot of money on you. So I’m comfortable leaving Rescue Me at .99 indefinitely, I just need to make sure my FB and Amazon ads are running at profit to that book since I only make 35% royalties off ninety-nine cents, or a 1.32 for a full read in KU.

The third book is going well. I’m 19k into it at the time of this writing, but will be farther along by the time the post publishes. I’m hoping to be done with it at the end of this month–I still have my eye on publishing the first one in August.

That’s about all I have! It’s April, and it doesn’t feel like spring, but it will be nice when the weather starts warming up. We have a lot of snow, so I’m praying that the river near our apartment building isn’t going to flood. Not like a terrible flood–it usually does a little every year, but the amount of snow we got in the past couple weeks alone is worrisome. I will keep you posted!

Have a great week, everyone!

Monday Author Update and Plot-Driven vs. Character-Driven Novels

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Words: 1155
Time to read: 6 minutes

I have zero things to write about this week. All I’ve been focused on is getting words down for this trilogy, and as of right now I’m 62k into the second book. I am loving this couple though, and turning that standalone into more books was a good choice.

These are character-driven books, and every once in a while I get a touch of imposter syndrome. Are these books going to be boring? Is there enough going on? But I’ve come to realize that character-driven books are what I write. Probably the only book I’ve ever written where characters are actually moving around on the page is Wherever He Goes, but that’s a road trip novel. There’s not much of a road trip if they aren’t moving and things aren’t happening. I’ve described my books as “quiet”–characters exploring themselves and how they need to overcome their flaws to get what they want. There’s a fine line between a character-driven book that’s “quiet” and a book that drags. I don’t get a lot of feedback before I publish, but I’ve already had some volunteers for this trilogy. I’m going to need them, I think, if only to reassure myself that the books move forward and keep readers interested.

The biggest tip I have for anyone who wants to write a character-driven book, or think they are, is you can’t be repetitious. My books depend a great deal on dialogue, but that means when characters are speaking to each other, new information must be presented at all times or there must be some kind of internal revelation. If your characters are only rehashing what has been spoken of previously, you’re wasting your readers’ time. Always know what you want out of a scene, and if you have characters talking just for the hell of it, usually that’s a sign you don’t know what your characters need, what they want, or how they’ll go about getting it. With every conversation, information must be revealed for the first time and/or a personal discovery must be made because of that information. Most of the time, that’s not difficult, but sometimes, especially in real life, people need to hear something more than once for it to sink in, or they need to hear it from more than one person. That’s not a great thing in a novel and rehashing can slow your pace and bore your reader. Try to make each scene count.

Some people might be a little confused between what a plot-driven novel is and what a character-driven novel is. There are plenty of resources out there if you want to explore, but I like this slide by a presentation Melanie Harlow did a while back.

Surface problems are usually not that important in a character-driven romance novel. It’s the emotional wounds of the characters that keep them apart and are a bitch to overcome. The emotional wounds and the flaws they must overcome is what the 3rd act breakup is all about–if there is one. As you can see, the emotional wounds are what causes the true conflict in a romance novel, and if you don’t have those, everything that keeps your couple apart is superficial and readers won’t be invested in your couple staying together for their happily ever after.

Melanie spoke at the 20booksto50k conference last November, but her talk is incomplete and the audio for what is available is poor. But, I mention it because the slides are available, and they are a goldmine of information if you want to download them. https://drive.google.com/drive/folder… She’s also part of a steamy romance panel, which I haven’t watched yet (hello work/life balance) so I can’t comment on quality, but you can check it out here.

Also, there is an Emotional Wounds thesaurus available, and it’s great for digging and thinking up ideas for how to make your characters miserable. You can check it out here. https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Wound-Thesaurus-Writers-Psychological/dp/0989772594

screenshot of cover taken from Amazon

My Freebooksy for the first in my trilogy went really well. For the two days it was free, I gave away 3,797 copies. I think people are still confused how this can convert to royalties earned, and I’ve said in the past that a Freebooksy only works well if you’re giving away a first in series. Read-through is where the royalties come in. Also, if you’re in Kindle Select some readers will borrow your book instead of downloading it, and if they do that, you get paid for page reads. You have to weigh the pros on cons of paying to give your book away. It won’t give everyone the return on investment they’re looking for. In my case, between borrows and read-through, I earned back my fee ($120.00) in 4 days and so far have had a ROI of 131%. (ROI = Net income / Cost of investment x 100.) People don’t read right away and my book is sitting on 3,797 Kindles. I can only hope that as the weeks and months go by that people get to my book in their TBR piles and go on to read the other two books in the trilogy.

I admit I dropped the ball and didn’t have Amazon ads running during that time. That will probably turn into a mistake for me as I had nothing propping up that promotion. The only other thing I was doing was running an FB ad to Rescue Me, and I already said last week how that turned out. Right now I’m running an ad to Captivated by Her, but I’m watching it closely as the last time I tried, I didn’t get any sales for the clicks. I ended up pausing the ad. I have it on sale for .99 right now and I used a different graphic to go along with the ad. I’m hoping for a better outcome.

The next big push might be a Freebooksy for Captivated when my next standalone book comes out in May. Though I did want to try Fussy Librarian and Robin Reads as well. It’s hard to believe that I’ll have had 7 books come out in 11 months, but I know some authors can do that all day long for years. I think this pen name is coming along though, and I have no regrets pivoting.

Screenshot taken from Jane’s website.

The only thing I have left is what I’m loving right now. I’m excited I signed up for a TikTok class with Jane Friedman and Rebecca Regnier. It’s $25 and the slides (if there are any) and a replay is available if you can’t watch live. TikTok is probably going to be my next step in trying to get the word out there for my books, but I like to explore and learn before jumping in. If you want to sign up, you can do it here. https://www.janefriedman.com/tiktok-basics-for-writers-with-rebecca-regnier/

That’s all I have for this week. Until next time!

What does investing in your business mean to you?

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We all hear that we need to invest in our business. To different people that can mean different things. When it comes to being an author running a book business, there are a lot of different ways to shove resources at your books.

Money. When you’re an indie author, there are a lot of places your money can go. You have to decide where that money goes and prioritize that spending. ISBNs are not cheap in the US, book covers can be expensive, too. Subscription services like Office 365, Canva, WordPress, and Bookfunnel, just to name a few, eat up a lot of my business money. Then on top of that you have ads and promos, an email aggregator for your newsletter. The list is endless. But you have to put some money into your books or you’ll never get to a place where you can sell them.

Education. One of the things I didn’t realize when I started publishing was all that I was going to have to learn. Back in 2016 we didn’t have Vellum for formatting, and I didn’t start using Canva for book covers and graphics until about 2018 when my friend Aila turned me on to it. Like most software, I didn’t like it right away because I didn’t know how to use it. Now I love it, even though I still don’t know half of what it can do. The same goes for my Mailerlite account. I watched several YouTube videos to learn how to set up an automated welcome sequence, and I had a heck of a time figuring out landing pages and how to connect my Mailerlite account with my Bookfunnel account.

Some things you can find out on your own through free resources, and there are some things you might want to pay for. I always start with the free stuff first and move on to paid classes if I don’t learn what I need to know. There is always someone selling something, an Amazon Ads course or a book marketing course that promises you you’ll sell 1,000 copies of your next book. Around the holidays, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I have terrible FOMO because a lot of that stuff goes on sale. I’ve wasted money buying classes I shouldn’t have. I paid $49 for a ticket to Mini InkersCon hosted by Alessandra Torre that I never attended, and I paid that much for a virtual ticket to the 20booksto50k Vegas conference back in November. I didn’t attend live so that was a waste of money as later, they put a lot of the speakers on YouTube for free. I regret not trying to attend as I missed a wonderful talk by Melanie Harlow that would have been worth the entire price of the ticket. There are a lot of craft classes, book cover design, and editing courses. I have to admit, I’m kind of a class junkie (if you didn’t know that by now) and I have classes I bought through Mark Dawson’s SPF that I haven’t finished, and also classes I purchased through Jane Friedman I have saved on my computer. I have always loved school (I would love to try to get my MFA before I die) and I’m always $50 away from my next class. But I think the idea behind a class is you have to be open to learning what you don’t know. I’ll end this section with this Tweet from a few weeks ago. Learning is vital to your business and you’ll fall behind if you think you know everything there is to know.

Time. Time is precious, and you’ll waste a lot of it doing things that don’t help your book business grow. It’s up to you how you want to spend your time where you think it’s best for return on investment. You can say you’re “networking” hanging out on Twitter all day, but be honest. Are you networking or scrolling to waste time? Is there a better place to network? A Facebook group with authors in your genre, perhaps? If you’ve hit a hard spot in your WIP, it’s easy to find something else to do, but when time is a limited resource because we all have more on our plates than just our books, you’ll find you can be stuck in the same spot for a lot longer than you’d like. Marketing shouldn’t take up that much time–you can’t forget that without books (product) marketing doesn’t mean much. In Elana Johnson’s book about writing and marketing systems, she recommends keeping track of where you spend your time. You may realize that getting out of bed a half an hour earlier, timing yourself on Social Media, or skipping another episode of your favorite show can open up the writing time you need to move forward.

What else can you do with your time?
1. Classes, like I said above. It does take time to do watch the classes and probably the main reason I have so many unfinished. I’d rather write.
2. Read in your genre–with intent but also to fill your creative well. Reading in your genre is really important. Not only do you see what’s selling, but you’ll learn what reader expectations are and how your comp authors are delivering it.
3. Sleep. That sounds crazy, but you’re not going to get good words down when you’re tired.
4. Practice. If you’re taking a class about book covers, you need to practice those skills. I watched a lot of videos when it came to learning Vellum, and the first couple of books I formatted weren’t only to publish but to learn the software. Even if you take an ads course, you still have to put your knowledge into practice on the actual platform. These platforms don’t make it easy, either, when they’re constantly changing their dashboards. It still takes me a while to properly set up a Facebook ad, but without ads, no one will know about my books, so that’s a return on investment I can get behind.

My friend Cara said I could use her response to my tweet in my blog, and this is what she said when I asked what investing in your business means to you:

https://twitter.com/CaraDevlinBooks/status/1629241819526463496?s=20

Effort is a big one, and something I didn’t consider. It takes a lot of effort and energy to keep going, especially when you’re not seeing the results you want. As I just started a new pen name last summer, I’m no stranger to the amount of effort and energy you need to start over. Unfortunately, it can take a while to see if those decisions will pay off.

Sometimes we have to experiment with what will work and what won’t and be willing to let go the parts that aren’t working and try something new. I let go of Twitter a long time ago, and I’m glad. Now when I tweet about my books and get zero response, I can feel good knowing I have other ways of finding readers.

I did a little experiment myself this month and put Rescue Me on sale for .99. I ran an FB ad to it, and while I’m two days short of the end of the month, I’ll tell you how it went. This is my FB ad:

This is a standalone without any read-through potential unless they go on to read my duet or my trilogy. A .99 book on Amazon will only earn you .34 per book, so after you pay for a click (my cost per click is .14 on this particular ad), the ROI may not be that high (in this case, .20 per sale). Kindle Unlimited is good though, and if I get page reads for the entire book, I earn approximately $1.32. As of Sunday morning, I spent $72.20 on that ad. I’ve been running it for the entire month of February. Between sales and pages read, I’ve made $97.99, ($24.98 sales/$73.01 pages read) for a return on investment of $25.79. Maybe you don’t think it’s that much. Maybe you think it’s not worth it for only 25 bucks, but that’s where you have to think about what you want for your business, how much you’re willing invest, and what kind of resources you’re investing (for example, time to learn the FB ads platform and money for the clicks). There’s more to a sale than the royalties you earn. You could get a review, you could find a new fan. You could get a new subscriber to your newsletter. If anything, you’re finding out what kinds of ads work and what kinds of ads don’t. I would have made 0 royalties if my ad didn’t work. So, was it worth it to me? Yeah. But I won’t leave Rescue Me on sale forever. Maybe I’ll try this experiment with the same type of ad for Captivated by Her. There’s read through potential for that book as it’s the first half of a duet.

I also paid for a Freekbooksy for the first in my Lost & Found Trilogy, but I’ll wait to update you on how that went. It’s only 4 days old and I’m $23.00 shy of earning my fee back. I can run down how my February did as a whole, but let me tell you–I forgot I was running Amazon Ads in Canada. Bad move. They really took off and unfortunately, they didn’t have the sales to go along with them. That was my mistake and I’ll have to eat the ad cost. There’s a lesson to learn every day.

Thanks to Cara Devlin who said I could add her response to my tweet in this blog post. Her covers are gorgeous and if you like historical romance, check out her books.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Cara-Devlin/author/B083ZMCWM8

Have a great week, everyone!

Author Update and Monday Musings

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Well, I finally finished my first rockstar romance–the book that turned into a trilogy. It topped out at 107,709 words, and I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s fine. That word count will change when I edit it, adding more foreshadowing to the next book (now that it is very loosely plotted out) and after some beta feedback, maybe there will be a scene or two that I can cut (though after reading that, a scene or two won’t help with the overall word count, haha).

It felt like it took me forever to write this book, when in reality, it wasn’t that long.

According to the file information, I created the file on November 10th, and I finished on January 28th. That’s 78 days, and 1,380 words per day. If you ever feel like a project of this scope is out of your reach, just remember, that’s fewer words per day than what’s required to win NaNoWriMo. I don’t write every day, and some days I’ll have a 0 word count and other days I’ll make up for it with a 5k day. You have to find a system that works for you, and if you have a problem with productivity, I recommend Elana Johnson’s book. It helps to know what kind of author you are as well, and she can help you figure it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Marketing-Systems-Inspiration-Self-Publishers-ebook/dp/B08B4MN9BJ

I don’t have too much else to share. My third book in my trilogy should be live when you read this. The books on my VM Rheault Goodreads page are all messed up because subtitles on the ebooks don’t match the paperback and there are two entries for the same book. I asked in the librarians group to fix Rescue Me when that happened and the last time I checked, they hadn’t. When Safe & Sound is live and the ebook is posted over there, I’ll ask again to fix Rescue Me and the entire trilogy. I hate going over there, I hate inadvertently looking at my ratings. When you’re on your profile you practically have no choice, and I hate having to be there for anything at all.

Speaking of reviews, there was so much talk about them last week on Twitter and it drove me insane. One author complained about a 1 star review, and she received so much support. I don’t understand. I don’t understand complaining, and I don’t understand those people who say, “It’s says more about them than it says about your book.” Are you for real? I’m pissy enough right now to say, SOME BOOKS DESERVE ONE STAR REVIEWS! Not every book on the planet is going to be worth 5 stars, or even 4 stars, and her complaining got her called out on TikTok and grabbed her a couple more one stars on Goodreads. She said she wanted a supportive place to vent, but a public Twitter profile is not a supportive, or safe, place. There are no private places on the Internet. The only way you can be private on Twitter is if you lock your profile down, and if you’re on there to network and sell books you won’t cut off your reach that way. Blocking people won’t help–anyone can easily open an incognito window and search your name or create a fake account to stalk you with. There are crazies who screenshot everything because they have no life. She said she deleted that tweet, but I’m sure that tweet still lives on in many many computers and phones.

What bothers me the most though, and what authors can’t seem to understand, is that if you’re using Twitter as a promotional tool, you’re using it to find readers, and it’s no longer an author space for you but a reader space. You shouldn’t complain about reviews or sales because your READERS are seeing that. If you launch a book and you’re tweeting about it all day for weeks on end, but you only grabbed three or four sales out of all that promo, the last thing you should do is complain about it in the very space you were looking for readers. It’s disrespectful to the people who did buy your book. A reader space and an author space is NOT the same place, and I see this all the time. If I see you promo and then in the next breath complain you have no sales, that is a sure fire way for me not to want to buy any of your books. I’m on Twitter to network, share publishing news, and if I mention I published something, it’s to prove I walk my talk. I can’t tweet about writing, publishing, and marketing if I’m not doing those things. It’s silly, and I learned early on the very best thing I could do for my books was to separate what I do online into two areas: my nonfiction like this blog and Twitter, and my fiction like my newsletter and ads.

I’m only at 800 words right now, so let me tell you a little story–I have a friend who is a staunch MAGA supporter. Very vocal about it. (I’m not sorry to say I muted her.) Some people don’t like your political views thrown into their faces, and she kept saying she wasn’t going to hide who she was. Okay. You’re not hiding keeping something to yourself, but whatever. So she was supposed to be part of this anthology, and she was so vocal about her MAGA support that her editor had to cancel the anthology. No one wanted to work with her or the editor since the editor was affiliated with her. This caused her to apologize profusely, but the damage was already done. You don’t have to tell everybody everything about yourself, and you certainly don’t have to put every little thing online. Sometimes it pays off, like Chelsea Banning going viral, and sometimes it doesn’t. I guess only you can weigh the pros and cons of sharing something like that.

Surprisingly, that’s all I have to share. I hope you were able to accomplish a lot this first month of the new year!

See you next week!

Plot Twist! Turning a standalone into a trilogy.

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While I was writing, as I am wont to do for 30 hours a week because I don’t have a life, I stumbled upon something that was a surprise I honestly didn’t see it coming. It’s not entirely unwelcome, but it will put a wrench in my plans for this year. If you follow the blog at all, you’ll know I’m almost done with a rockstar standalone. At 94k at the moment of this writing, I know exactly what I need to finish up–how many words I’ll need is another thing, but no more than 20k, for sure. It’s a long book about a depressed and washed up rockstar whose manager hires a life coach to get him back on track to record another album. This rockstar has bandmates, and they’ve been kind of hanging out, literally and figuratively, and I had no plans whatsoever to give them their own stories…until I wrote this line on Thursday evening….

Brock sighs, and I understand all that sigh encompasses. An end of an era, but the start of a life they’re unsure of. They don’t have Liv in their corner, a future with a woman they love. Divorced and single, they’ve been drifting since Derrick’s death, the band the only thing anchoring them to the ground. If Ghost Town disappears, they’ll have nothing.

Twisted Lies and Alibis by VM Rheault

That made me sad… I don’t want to leave Brock and Eddie with nothing, even if I don’t know who they are, even if I haven’t invested in them one little bit and in my head they are completely interchangeable.

And so began the idea to turn this standalone into a trilogy….but it will require some work. Here’s what I’ll have to do:

Turn the secondary characters into people and write them into the story. Like I just said, I didn’t consider them anything more than prop characters and they barely have families much less backstories and almost no page time besides brief scenes here and there. Readers will need to get invested in their lives and who they are as people or they won’t care there are books about them. That may require some rewriting on my part and giving them more page time. Usually when I write a series, I plan them out first allowing me to foreshadow what will happen in the other books. They both have children and ex-wives, and that’s about as far as I got. Not a good foundation for two more books.

Who would their love interests be? This is a tough one because I had to sort out who I’ve already mentioned and how I could turn them into romantic partners for my characters. This book is about Sheppard Carpenter who is having an issue moving forward when one of his bandmates dies in a freak accident on stage and it triggers his depression. The bandmate, Derrick, who passed away, left a wife behind, and depending on why they were married and for how long, I think that could work. I don’t know anything about Clarissa, either (even her name is a placeholder because I’m not sure if she’s going to keep it), except she was filing for divorce at the time of her husband’s untimely death, and that could work in my favor. Olivia, the life coach who is helping Sheppard, wrote a self-help book some time ago and has an agent she’s still friends with who could potentially be the other love interest. I made her old…in her sixties, but that’s an easy fix. But book one is set in California, and Agatha’s based in Minnesota. How would they meet, and what’s her story? The possibilities are there, and that’s what counts.

What are their backstories? A good romance needs two people who have a lot to overcome to be together. Since I’m working with a primarily clean slate besides their names and a mention or two of their families, the sky’s the limit….but I’ll need to sit and brainstorm because I need to think of the tropes and emotional wounds I haven’t used before. The tropes aren’t so bad–they’re easy to change to differentiate one book from another, but unique tragic backstories, or front stories for that matter, need a bit more creative juice and in the best case scenario, I’ll figure them out soon so I can plant seeds in this first book. The best series string readers along so they have no choice but to read the next book and the next book. If I can’t even imply what book two will be about, you can forget read-through.

How long will these books be? I was thinking the standalone would be 110k, but if I kept up that pace, we’re looking at another 220,000 words. Sheppard’s and Olivia’s character arcs are long….they need space because they are both grappling with so much and they have so much to overcome mental health-wise for them to be together. I might be too close to my story, but for now, all my scenes seem to be needed for their character development, so we’ll see. I’m still writing it and I haven’t reread from the beginning. I also already have a couple betas lined up so maybe they can help me cut it down a little bit. I’m not opposed to longer stories, but if I have two more books in the works at 110k a piece, I’m looking at a minimum of another 6 months of writing. But, if I do keep the books that long, at 330,000 words, it will be my second biggest project (my 6-book series is over half a million words long, and my 4-book small town winter series is 288,000 words).

Covers. I already had a tentative cover if this was going to be a standalone, and quite honestly, I’m getting tired of doing my own. Doing standalones is a lot easier than coming up with a concept I can handle with my limited skills and finding stock images that I haven’t used before but accurately portray how old my male characters usually are is getting harder and harder. You can tease me all you want, but I’m not cutting their heads in half, no matter how much easier that would make my life. I’m also up against Amazon’s advertising guidelines, and I’m not popular enough to sell books by my name alone. I said a long time I don’t care if they reject my ads, but it’s a lie. Amazon ads are a big part of my marketing, and if I can’t advertise a trilogy, that’s page reads down the drain. So knowing I would have to do three covers instead of one is a small deterrent, but nothing that would keep me from the project.

Covers Update: As I wrote this blogpost on Thursday, I did some cover experimenting on Friday, flipping through stock photos for hours and hours. Literally, hours and hours. But, I think it might have paid off as I came up with a tentative concept for the trilogy. I was so pleased I found the cover models, I have already purchased them (do you know how difficult it is to find men that look like old rockstars???), and since I always let you in on my creative process, I’ll show you what I came up with. For some reason I don’t feel the doubt (and still feel, to be honest) that I did with the trilogy that’s releasing right now, but I still can’t say for sure if these will end up being the final thing. They kind of appear washed out and I may need to change the background, but I used screenshots and they’re grainy, so we’ll see what working with proper photos will do. It’s funny, while doing research for rockstar romances, that there isn’t one definite kind of cover. Of course, there are shirtless men galore, but I can’t go that way, and besides maybe a stage/audience in the background, there are no similar styles. A lot of times, like mine, the model isn’t even holding a guitar. That can be good for a designer in terms of flexibility, but bad for creating something that will for sure work to bring in sales. Anyway, I’ve never been one for a cover reveal, so here they are with tentative titles–those definitely are subject to change:

All in all, it sounds like I’m going to do it, especially since I have covers now, and it would be a nice addition to my backlist. It puts a glitch into my publishing schedule though, as I was going to put out two more standalones after my trilogy releases before I start publishing my 6-book series. I’m only pushing back my series because I really really really wanted some kind of audience already in place when I release these books. I honestly think they are going to either make or break my career (think Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series)… and I wanted to give them the best possible chance. I can only do that if I have some branding and a backlist in place already. I’m growing my newsletter, and I’ll be looking at promo opportunities through Bookfunnel as soon as THIS trilogy releases in full. The second book is out today, and I have had some good feedback on the first book. Releasing another trilogy before the series goes live would be great, but I need time to write. I have a standalone (billionaire’s fake fiancé trope) already queued up for April, and if I waited until July or even August, that gives me 7 months to finish this trilogy before I start needing something to release. That’s kind of pushing it, but as I have been dragging my feet with this book anyway, it would give me a deadline to work toward. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have strung out the Lost & Found Trilogy a little more, releasing two weeks apart instead of just one to buy me a more time, but that’s okay. That just means less time on Twitter, which is no big loss. I’ll miss touching base with some of my friends, but all the negativity is getting me down again. When authors have to drag other authors down so they feel good about themselves, that’s when I have to cut out. If you think you can write better, then go do that, publish, and market your bestseller. It’s obvious people like that think they have one, so prove it. Shut your mouth and go do that. Jealousy looks terrible and I hope one day their bitterness bites them in the butt.

If you want to read more about turning a standalone into a series, here are a couple of articles that helped me:

Writing A Series – And How to Grow A Series from a Standalone Book by Kate Frost

The Essential Guide for Writing a Series vs. a Standalone Novel
Written by Kyla Jo Magin in Fiction Writing

That is all I have for this post and I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Have a good week!

Monday Author Update

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Believe it or not, I don’t have much to say this week. If things went correctly with KDP, the first in my trilogy should be live today. Over the weekend I set up some Amazon ads for the preorder hoping that the ads would have a little time to click in. Being I’m writing this post on Saturday afternoon, the ads are still in review, but I’m hoping they are moderated and approved with little fuss. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be–the men are clad in a suits from head to toe, after all. [Insert rolling eyes here]

If you remember from a previous blog post, I put all three up on Booksprout for reviews, and one kind reviewer read all of them and pointed out a couple of typos. Two real typos and a stylistic choice among three books is amazing, I think, and I was grateful she took the time to let me know. The typos appeared in books two and three, so I was able to find and correct them and upload new files before the preorders went live. I was happy.

I’m reluctant to schedule any promos yet because I want them all to release before I do. I haven’t had any unfortunate encounters with Amazon besides them blocking one of my Large Print books that I eventually gave up on, but I have heard of preorders being canceled for no reason and other glitches, so I’ll wait. I don’t know how busy the promo sites are in February, but hopefully I can get something lined up before the first in my trilogy drops off its 30 day cliff. I also want to set up a promo for Captivated at the same time using a different site and maybe the two promos will feed each other and I can get a nice lift on this pen name.

Otherwise, I spent a couple days beta reading for a friend and that put me behind a tiny bit, but I haven’t needed a reason to set my WIP aside. I’ve been dragging my heels from the start, and I have no idea why. At 80k I’m almost done, maybe 20-30k more, but I just need to sit with a notebook and write down every single scene that’s left so I don’t have plotting excuses. I had set the end of January as my original done-by date, so I guess we’ll be going with that despite my good intentions to finish faster.

Last week was pretty quiet, and surprisingly I don’t have any news or Twitter gripes. Like I said, my Booksprout reviews have started coming in, and sometimes I get a little annoyed when someone who says they aren’t the target audience reads it and doesn’t like it. I kind of feel that if you’re not the audience, don’t bother because you already know you won’t like it, but she complimented me anyway saying the concept was too good for her to pass up. (I’m hoping this means the blurb is good!) She gave me 2 stars because she didn’t like Jack, but what are you gonna do? She didn’t say my writing was bad or that I needed an editor, so I’ll take the good for what it is and move on. If you want to read it, she’s already posted it on the product page of Give & Take. In all honesty, I don’t mind. A book with all five-star reviews seems shady anyway. In private feedback I thanked her for her time and if she reads the other two books to let me know what she thought of the trilogy as a whole. We’ll see as she didn’t respond, but maybe my graciousness will lead her to read more of my books in the future. I will gladly take an honest and well-thought out review over a five-star lie. Though I will always love Jack no matter what anyone says. He’s just a little misguided.

I suppose you can have a heart attack now because that’s all I have for this week. Cross your fingers for me that my trilogy launch goes well, and that I make more progress on Twisted Lies and Alibis. We have two weeks left in the first months of 2023. Make them count!

Monday Motivation and My Word for 2023

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Happy Monday! We are now nine days into the new year, and I’ve always been a big fan of beginning how you wish to continue. Sometimes that’s not always possible as we learn new things along the way, but setting manageable goals and ways to get there instead of expecting too much of yourself and getting burnt out is a recipe for self-esteem issues, a hit to your confidence, and an overall sense of failure. Instead of trying to do all the things, tell yourself you’ll make one positive change this year that will help you get closer to your goals. That might be learning ONE ad platform, finding ONE podcast you like and going for a walk while you listen to it, or signing up for an informative newsletter (or starting your own!).

So my word for 2023 is INFORMATION. I’ve always been really surprised (shocked really) that more indies don’t care what’s going on in the industry. They’re an author, a publisher, a small business, yet they don’t care about learning what’s going on in the publishing world. It’s mystifying to me that when Draft2Digital bought Smashwords how many indies didn’t know what that was. Smashwords has only been around since the beginning of indie publishing and was one of the first distributors for authors if they wanted to sell their ebooks wide. That’s one example of how not keeping your fingers on the pulse of the publishing world can hurt you and your sales in the long run. They were missing out on one of the largest ebook sellers online! Not to mention Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, has given a lot of great interviews over the years that I have enjoyed listening to. Take an interest in the industry that you made into your career (or at least an important hobby) and stay on top of news in the publishing world and your genre.

In the past year or so I’ve been lax with listening to podcasts and keeping up with my Clubhouse rooms. When all you want to do is write, it’s tough to find time, especially if you have a day job and kids or other responsibilities. But I have to remind myself I don’t need to listen to all the things or read all the newsletters and blog posts and I only have to listen to one or two every week or skim a couple of newsletters when I empty out my email box. You never know when you’ll hear a nugget of information that will elevate your career to the next level, or maybe you’ll hear something you can pass along to a fellow indie that will help them with their business.

In no particular order, here are my must-haves for 2023. While I don’t listen to every single podcast episode or read every newsletter, I like to subscribe and at least skim the subject lines in my email to make sure I’m not missing information I’m interested in.

Newsletters and blogs I’ve subscribed to:

Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed is great for publishing news. I love all things Jane, and recommend listening to her podcast appearances, reading her blog, and grabbing a copy of her book, The Business of Being a Writer. While you may not think traditional publishing news is worth knowing, what the Big 5 do and the choices they make do affect us. She gives equal time to both trad and indie publishing, and hosts many affordable writing/publishing/marketing classes. I’ve taken some of them, and if you’re not following Jane, you’re missing out. Sign up for her newsletter and blog here: https://www.janefriedman.com/free-newsletter/

Jeffrey Bruner/Fussy Librarian. Fussy Librarian is a paid promo newsletter and I while I haven’t used them yet (planning to next month when my trilogy is released) they have an excellent newsletter full of curated blog articles all in one place. I love skimming their articles and sharing bits on Twitter. You can subscribe here: https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/newswire/for-authors/subscribe. And I will definitely share how my promo does!

Written Word Media. Written Word Media is home to promo newsletters like Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, and Red Feather Romance. They host a yearly indie survey and blog about publishing trends in marketing. I’ve used their promos to great success (the Freebooksy I paid for in November moved almost 3,000 books and I’m still getting read-through). You may not care about trends, but they are my favorite thing. They tell you what readers are reading, what they’re interested in, and to an indie who wants to find readers, that can be invaluable. You can sign up here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/sign-up/

Draft2Digital. I can’t mention them without suggesting you sign up for their blog! While Draft2Digital is used by authors going wide with their ebooks, they still offer lots of information to authors in KU. I love Dan Wood, Kevin Tumlinson and Mark Lefebvre, part of the D2D team. They are doing such great things for indies such as the free ebook/paperback formatting tool that is available even if you don’t use them to publish. What’s fun is both Kevin and Mark are indie authors so they know what indie author life is all about. If you don’t have an account with them, you can bookmark their blog here: https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/

BookBub. Even if you’ve never used their ads before or tried for a BookBub Featured Deal, you probably try to maintain a profile there, maybe even ask readers to follow you. Their author blog is full of marketing advice and if you like making graphics, they show you the best ways to make an impact on readers. I love their blog and I recommend their articles on Twitter frequently. You can sign up here: https://insights.bookbub.com/

Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur has a wealth of information on his blog, and reading all his tips and tricks and using his free tools feels almost illegal. I purchased Publisher Rocket years ago and have never regretted it, but there are a lot of free things he offers too, such as a QR code generator and barcode generator for paperback books. He stays on top of industry news and his blog is a great place to keep up to date. You can sign up here: https://kindlepreneur.com/

Getcovers. You may think this is an odd choice of a newsletter, but being that I create my own covers, their tips are actually a lot of fun to read. I love looking at the covers they create from stock photos and every once in a while I try to duplicate them. If I ever get tired of doing my own, this is where I’ll go, and you can sign up for their newsletter here: https://getcovers.com/blog/

Once you get going with some of these, you’ll find others to sign up for. I also get newsletters from Matthew J Holmes about Amazon Ads, Bryan Cohen about Amazon ads and other industry news items (sign up for his January ads challenge that starts on the 11th and you’ll be added to his email list), Tiffany Yates Martin and her editing blog, Nick Thacker and his curated blog of industry articles, Joanna Penn (more on her later) and her blog and podcast, and David Gaughran who has a wonderful blog and YouTube channel regarding all things indie. That might be a lot, but this industry is a fast business and thing move quickly.

But if you’re like me and like to get stuff done while listening, here are the podcasts and YouTube channels I can’t live without:

Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn. I love all her interviews and the sections she has at the beginning filling us in on what she’s been doing and her Futurist segment are favorites of mine. You can follow on YouTube, and she also will let you know when she has a new episode if you follow her blog. Here’s an interview between her and Jane Friedman I’ve been salivating to listen to. I just need to get my crap together and stop watching Turkish dramas.

Another podcast I love listening to is Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula. One of my most favorite interviews they’ve done is with Melanie Harlow. I think I mentioned her interview before, but if you’re a romance author, definitely devour anything she has to say about writing and craft. She’s phenomenal and you can learn a lot from her and the podcast as a whole.

The last is the Six Figure Authors podcast. While they don’t record regularly anymore, they did record one extra episode since they retired. Their backlist of episodes is evergreen, however, and you can still learn a lot. I refer these two episodes to Twitter people more than any other, though not sure it does much good. Haha.

I love consuming information about the publishing industry. I love being able to help other authors with that knowledge by passing it along via this blog and Twitter when I’m over there. I’m still trying to break the habit, but it’s so easy to scroll and when I clean out my email I schedule tweets with useful blog articles I pick out of all the newsletters I’m subscribed to. Not really sure if it helps anyone, but it doesn’t take long to share and maybe it can help someone, no matter how insignificant.

I have a few things I’ve been doing the past week. I re-edited my novelette I published back in 2016. It was all telling gibberish and it took me a day and a half to pretty much rewrite it. I’m not sure how many felts, saws, wondered, realized, and heards I took out of it, but it’s a lot tighter now and I won’t feel bad anymore if someone happens upon it. I also added two more short stories I had sitting on my laptop because I didn’t feel right charging .99 for 10,000 words. That would be something I would give away if I were wide, but the best I can do is sell it for as cheaply as I can. I had to rework the other two stories, too, but they sound better. I published one on here a few years ago, and I had to trash the blog post as they are in KU now. The other one I’m going to turn into a series at some point. It’s about an attorney who lives underground a huge city with a certain population who doesn’t mix with people who live above. It’s actually kind of a throwback to Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman’s Beauty and the Beast I grew up watching. There’s something romantic about it, living underground, and I’ve been thinking about a project like that for a very long time. To get the dark vibes I’ll need, toward the end of this year after my other series is finished I’ll read lots of mafia. I want it dark and dirty. I’m showing my age, but I should watch this again. It probably didn’t age well, but it would be interesting too.

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/2397-beauty-and-the-beast

I’m still 72k into my rockstar romance. I was distracted by a Turkish drama that my friend Devika recommended on Twitter. It was good, and a craft lesson in writing a dual timeline if you’re interested in that kind of thing. The pacing was phenomenal, and while it didn’t end exactly as I wanted it to, I think all the characters had their HEAs in their own way. If you’re interested in 16 episodes of angst, and who isn’t, look up Love 101 on Netflix. It’s an Original Series, so you won’t find it anywhere else.

https://netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Love_101

I’m going to finish my book this month. I started it in November, so I’m done messing around. My characters want their own HEA and I’m eager to finish a series I started two years ago. I have four books left and that will eat up the rest of my year.

Have a good week, everyone, and listen to Joanna’s interview with Jane! 🙂