Category Archives: author update

Mid-Year Check In and Author News

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open journal with rose petals and pencil. text says midyear check in and author news

It’s not exactly mid-year–we’re two months past that, but I thought I would write a check in, look back and what I’ve accomplished this year, and try to drag myself out of the self-pitying hole I fell into these past few weeks due to circumstance beyond my control.

January started with a bang, as that is the month I published my Lost & Found Trilogy. By no means did I have a strong launch, and while Give & Take, the first book in the trilogy, has sold better than a lot of my books, the trilogy in total has earned less than a thousand dollars since release. Depending on where you are in your career, that may sound pretty good to you, but I’ve put money into ads and promos and actual take-home from that total is less than five hundred dollars. Still though, despite my ongoing doubt about the covers, readers seemed to have liked them so far, and I’m going to put the first one in a promo in September and see how it does.

February, March, and April were slow months, only because I was busy writing my rockstar trilogy. I thought the first book was going to be a standalone but it turned out, like most side characters do, they wanted their own stories told, and I spent December of 2022 to May of this year writing them. Editing took some time, more adding and rewriting than I’ve done in the past to make them cohesive since the two others weren’t planned until I was almost done writing book one. I did the usual Amazon ads for my backlist, struggled with if I wanted to be on Twitter anymore, helped a friend edit and format one of her books, and mostly kept my head down.

In May, I published Faking Forever, a fake fiancée standalone I wasn’t sure about. I haven’t checked the reviews to see if anyone liked it or not. The reviews from Booksprout were favorable, but it’s not often, in my experience, people will really tell you what they think. Since I published it, it’s made less than a hundred dollars, and I really don’t know what to do about it. My other standalone, Rescue Me, has made around five hundred since I published it in October of 2022, but that’s also been on sale for a while now and I ran Facebook ads to it. That five hundred is not take-home, but if I look at how much I spent on ads to push that book, I just get depressed, so I won’t do that here. I’ve been thinking about pulling it off sale and putting Faking Forever at .99 to see what that does. I have a hooky hook for the ad copy, so I may do that at the end of the month and see what happens. I won’t do that until my SNAFU with KDP and the last book in my rockstar trilogy has worked itself out, but more on that later.

June and July were for getting my rockstar trilogy ready to release. Lost a beta reader and a friend, so that was disheartening, not only because I was counting on her feedback, but you know, it’s tough when people move out of your life for whatever reason. My other beta/friend/co-worker is still plodding along even though my books are (kind of) up. I told her I need to get them going for marketing purposes and if she finds anything I didn’t, I can change out the files later. She found only a couple things in book one, nothing major, so I’m confident that books two and three are just as clean. It’s not like I haven’t released books without feedback before, but I was trying something different that didn’t end up working completely in my favor. Such is life.

This month, August, I had a free book promotion opportunity fall into my lap. I had passed it by and then it opened up again, so I decided to take that as an omen and enter my book. I put Captivated by Her for free from August 4-6, and I’ve been moving some books–528 at the time of this writing, but we’re only half way through the promotion. Not a lot of people read free books, though, and so far that movement hasn’t gone on to the other books in my backlist. I guess we’ll see in the coming weeks if anyone reads it and goes on to buy/borrow Addicted to Her. I think the cover changed helped, but that duet has earned only a little over three hundred dollars since I published them in June of 2022.

I also lost a cat this month. Blaze was sick when we got her (we didn’t know that though), and we’ve had nothing but ongoing medical issues with her for the past five years. It was a relief to make the decision after some bloodwork, but I miss her dearly and it’s been such a blow to my mental health as this is the first time in over twenty years we haven’t had a cat in our apartment. We can’t get another unless my financial situation changes because we were grandfathered in when this property management took over our apartment building. We’ll be starting from scratch with them, and I can’t afford the pet deposit or pet rent they’ll charge us if we wanted another. I’m still missing Harley, too, so I’m just not going down that path right now, and maybe never will again.

So to recap the year so far:

Books published: 6.5-7
Royalties: $1,711.49 as of this writing. (I write my posts in advance so add, oh, I don’t know, ten bucks to that total unless for some reason I got extremely lucky.)
Ad spend: I don’t feel like doing the math, but I’ve spent $569.00 on Amazon ads, ran an FB ad to Rescue Me off and on for a couple of months and bought a Freebooksy promo through Written Word Media for Give & Take at $120.00. So obviously, the total royalties are not all take-home, but rarely is any author’s.

I haven’t found a way to get “sticky” with Amazon, struggling to “level up.” Each book I write has the “will this be the golden ticket?” feel about it, and then each book has a lackluster turn. I cleaned out my newsletter subscriber list–I got rid of 103 inactive email accounts. MailerLite is making me move over to their new platform so once my trilogy is out and I’m done sending newsletters for that for a bit, I’ll do the migration. Apparently it’s not smooth, and I’m worried about the setup I have with BookFunnel. I learned just enough to put in place what I needed for them to collect email addresses for me when I give out the link to my reader magnet. If that gets messed up, I’ll have to learn it all over again, and that will be painful since, for the most part, I’ve given up drinking for my physical health.

Ghost Town’s Fate:

So, I was able to publish book one and two without an issue, but I was one of the (un)lucky ones and KDP asked me for copyright proof for the cover images for book three. I sent them what I had from DepositPhotos–screenshots of the licensing agreement that they give you when you download/purchase. I also gave them a screenshot of my DepositPhoto’s account profile. I’m lucky that my email address and my physical/mailing address match what I use for KDP as well, so they know it’s me. The first rep approved my proof and told me to go into my account and resubmit the books for publication. I did that, but then got another email from their content team and was asked for proof again. So I sent what I had before, plus the screenshot of the first rep’s email that said my books were okay. It didn’t take them long to get back to me and say my books were approved and would take up to 48 hours to publish. So, that is where I am now–this morning when I got up, they were still in review, but while I was writing this, I checked my dashboard and they have moved into “Publishing.”

So I’m going to assume that the third book is going to go through after all, and maybe by the time you read this, it will be live. (At the time of this writing, it’s only been 15 hours since the last email correspondence.)

As far as reviews, I put the books on Booksprout, and this trilogy is the slowest to get picked up since I started offering books. Only 16 of 35 copies have been claimed for each book, and either it’s because they’re long (I did warn readers of that in my note to readers section) or because no one cares about aging, depressed rockstars. Maybe both. Whatever the case may be, I hope this isn’t going to be more of the same when the books move out of preorder and are live. Once the third book is actually published and accessible, I can start ads to the trilogy, but I hope these do better than my gut is telling me they will.

I have to be honest, all this put me in a real downward spiral last night, and just an FYI, crying in the grocery store is not a good look. It also gave me a really queasy feeling for the past two days and I have not felt well. You’re probably thinking I sound burnt out, and I probably am. When that book goes through I’ll have published 7 this year, 8 if I get my Christmas novel done and published by November like I hope. I haven’t made much progress on it, as I went through my Ghost Town paperback proofs myself (glad I did) but that took an extra little bit of time. When I finish the first draft, I need to put it aside and take a real break while it breathes. Watch the shows I want to watch, read through some of the books on my Kindle (I still need to read the Hunger Games sequel before November). Network with some authors in my FB groups, experiment with making videos for TikTok. I need to find my joy because it has been sucked right out of me, and never did I want to throw my laptop over my balcony as much I did last night.

I don’t have any books planned for the next little while. I have that King’s Crossing 6-book series I need to polish up and publish starting in January. I’m having second thoughts about the covers, and my proofer/coworker went through them some time ago, and I haven’t looked at her feedback yet. That will be a project and I will love to get those off my plate. I also haven’t read them myself in a long time, so it will be fun to read them one last time before I publish.

Anyway, so stats here show that this blog post will take 10 minutes to read, so I’m going to wrap it up for now and get going on my Christmas novel. Have a great week, everyone, and thanks for listening!

Author News and Short Update

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I’m not really in the mood to blog today. We put our kitty, Blaze, to sleep last week. After some testing, it was determined there was more wrong with her than just the bladder stones we were going to have removed. It was a really tough choice because we didn’t want to keep her alive for us. Her quality of life has been declining since we got her, and mentally I just couldn’t see her suffer anymore. The tests, euthanasia, and then the cremation still took a huge bite out of my finances, and my GoFundMe is still active. Any little bit would help, but at this point, I’m just glad her suffering is over and I can let my heart heal. After losing Harley not so long ago, not having any pets is a shock, and a situation that will take some getting used to.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/blazes-bladder-surgery

In other news, Captivated by Her is in a promo August 4th through the 6th and will be free on Amazon. This event will have over 200 free books available, and if you want to keep on the lookout for this promo for your own reading device, or if you want to share the link with your readers, you can direct them to https://naleighnakai.com/. They can sign up for the newsletter before the weekend, or they can look there starting on Friday the 4th. I’ll send this out in my newsletter, and I’ll probably be pretty annoying on social media this week. I need to do better promoting my books and more active when I’m joining in promotions like this. We all have to do our part to drive traffic to the site, but it’s a real change in mindset to post and be active. I don’t want to have a reputation in romance circles that I’m not a team player. There’s no better way to kill your career than for other authors to think you won’t put in your share of the work. So I’m going to put on some music and enjoy myself. I love my books and I want people to read them. They can’t do that if they don’t know they exist. I just gotta put on my pretty big-girl panties and get it done.

I’ve been reading through the proofs of my rockstar trilogy and I haven’t found much. My proofer is still working on them too, but I’ll be putting them up on Booksprout in the next week or so. I’ve only found a couple of true typos, the rest are just nit-picky things I don’t need to change but will because that’s how authors are. A reader wouldn’t care, but this will be the final time I read these. If my proofer finds anything wrong that I didn’t, I can change the files one last time before they go live, but I did a really good job listening to these, and I don’t think it’s likely she’s going to find anything I haven’t.

Anyway, so that’s all my news, and I’m going to try to keep pushing forward though Blaze’s toys scattered around still makes me sad, and my daughter was crying because she accidentally gave her fresh water the other night before we went to bed. It will be an adjustment–we’ve had cats for the past 20 years. But I need a break. My mind and heart are so tired of being worried about animals. As much as I miss them, I just need to breathe. I have a lot going on with my books in the next few weeks, and my daughter is getting ready for her last year of high school. Things will be okay. We move on.

I hope you all have a great week, and don’t forget to share that promo with your readers–not just even because my book is included–there’s a lot of good books of all genres in there.

Until next time!

Author Update and Personal Organization

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Time to read: 5 minutes

My Christmas WIP is coming along. I’m 45k into it, and I’m actually kind of surprised I’m as far as I am. It could be it’s because in some way, this plot has been rolling around in my brain for years, or it could be I’m having a lot of fun writing the two. I don’t know, but I started writing Sawyer and Evianna on July 6th with a deadline of August 31st. I’ll be done before then, and I’ll have a few extra days to let it breathe. Last night I went back to the beginning, read from the first page, and made notes of all the breadcrumbs. This isn’t my first twisty book, and I’m getting better at writing them, but it’s helpful for me to keep track so I know what scenes I need going forward.

My proofer is plodding along with my rockstar trilogy, but I just bought my own set of proofs today. Unfortunately, giving up any kind of control just isn’t going to be in the cards for me, so I’ll proof them too, and together I hope we can spot all the typos. Listening to them is the best way to fix missing words, syntax issues, and misspellings (the voice sounds funny if you misspell a word) but it doesn’t catch everything. I always find stuff to fix when my books look like books, So that will be my main priority once they come in the mail.

I’ve been thinking of ways to set a schedule for some social media posts, and I would like to get into TikTok. Not even just because I think it’s a sure-fire way to sell books (like the Kindle Gold Rush, I think the TikTok Gold Rush has passed for everyone but a lucky few) but because creating content is fun, can be used multiple ways, and does eventually find readers. It wasn’t so much what to create (though pulling quotes and writing copy is an arduous task), but focusing on which books. I posted my question in a group on FB and one mistook my scheduling as a want to get an edge over the TikTok algorithms, which is not my intent, and impossible to do anyway. No, when I say schedule, what I basically mean is organization for my own mind (her question prompted the word ‘organization’ which was the correct word I was looking for). I have a duet, two standalones, a trilogy, a forthcoming trilogy, and soon, a holiday novel. I don’t want to create videos and post all crazy, but focus on one book for a week or so, then focus on a different book, etc. I know you can’t push a book for too long or readers will get tired of the same old same old. When you only have one book out, that gets dicey. You run the risk of people saying, “That book again? Doesn’t she have something new coming out?” So I was thinking a month at a time, but that’s too long. Especially if you’re posting multiple times every day. Maybe even go down to a week for each book before starting the cycle over again. Someone in the group did say not to be scared of recycling content–if a video gets few views, post it again. And that’s great advice–especially if you post at different times of the day.

One of the biggest reasons that gave me pause isn’t the idea of showing my face, but something a little sillier: The kind of music to attach to the videos. I’m not on TikTok yet, but I’m under the assumption there are a lot of different artists and songs to choose from. I did a reel on Instagram, and IG gives you a lot of choices too. I’m not a music connoisseur at all. I have certain songs I like and play them over and over again. I don’t listen to Taylor Swift and she seems to be a top choice. Like a book you want to sell, you have to look at the title, the cover, the blurb. I guess for a video to hit, you have to look at the content (the actual video) the tagline/ad copy, and then the song/music you choose. I’m getting better at ad copy, writing one sentence hooks, etc, and a lot of the reels and TikToks I’ve seen aren’t made with complicated videos. The packaging, I guess you can call it, will be important, and eventually the kinds of videos I create will build a brand.

Some people say to jump right in, don’t overthink it. I’ve never overthought anything a day in my life. I’m lazy and overthinking is too much work. But I’m a planster, and with any project, I would like to have an idea of what I’m doing before I start. I grew up around lakes, and I never jumped in feet first. I hate the mud at the bottom.

That’s about all I have for today. Summer is two-thirds over, and I hope you’re getting to relax, get some things done, and enjoy the weather. My sister and I are going to see Oppenheimer on Tuesday, so that will be fun, and in August, my daughter wants to see Barbie. Later in August, I’ll be busy launching my trilogy, and when I start up my TikTok account, I’ll blog about it. Now that I’m not on Twitter anymore, I have a little bit of time to spend on that platform.

Anyway, I hope you all have a great week!

Author Update, Monday Musings, and Why I’m Not Joining Threads

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Happy Monday to you all! That looks a lot chirpier than I feel, but that’s nothing new. Actually, I’m in decent spirits despite having to pretty much swear off social media for my mental health. Not tweeting anymore has been nice, though after a three day break I went on to see if I was missing anything. Apparently a querying writer made waves when she tweeted her disappointment and disgust that an agent would reject her manuscript because she already had a client working on something similar. I don’t know why that writer thought she should blast that agent on social media (no names were given, but still) when it seemed perfectly reasonable to me. If I had an agent, I would want them to protect my interests first. Then there was more discourse when an agent said she had to love a story and know it would sell before she signed that author. Also, seems like a no-brainer to me, but apparently that almost started the next world war. Honestly, it’s not a great time to be an agent, and if I were one, I wouldn’t be on Twitter. My mental health couldn’t take it, not that I really can these days anyway, and it’s a relief to push that aside and accept I don’t fit in there, never have and I never will. Wouldn’t want to fit in there anyway with the behavior people are displaying. Maybe I’m just not angry, I don’t know, but I definitely don’t have the rage simmering under my skin a lot of people seem to have.

That’s why I’m not joining Threads, the new social media platform by Mark Zuckerberg. I just don’t see it being an answer to the social media void that I’m experiencing right now. People are downright hostile, and in this climate of fewer books being published, how difficult it is to find an agent, how difficult it is to self-publish and find an ounce of discoverability, it’s just another place for people to spew their annoyance, frustration, and sometimes downright hate. I don’t have a thick enough skin to handle it and I would rather just write my books, pay for ads, nurture my newsletter and forget social media all together.

I’ve been spending a little more time in my author Facebook groups, and I helped a couple of people with their covers, troubleshot Amazon Ads for one author who couldn’t understand why they were rejecting her ads (her book covers had blood on them and that’s against their guidelines) and that felt good. Got jumped in a romance group for giving my opinion on a plot because all he really wanted was validation (my mistake), and I suppose you’re never going to get away from people who only want to be agreed with. People can’t seem to scroll by if they disagree, but my tolerance for being bullied has reached an all-time low and I left that group. For now I hang out in the 20booksto50k group where if you disagree, that can actually turn into a thoughtful discussion amongst authors, and two other romance groups I’ve been apart of for years. Mark Dawson’s SPF group is okay, but there tends to be a lot of rumors that circulate there and even though Mark is a huge Amazon supporter, people like to dump on Amazon and I don’t have the patience for that.

So, as much as I know a reader should be able to find me online somewhere, I struggle. I was trying to make Instagram my “hub,” so to speak (I even posted a reel!), but deciding on the kind of content I want to post there keeps me from posting anything. I could/should start posting more on my Facebook Author page. There are several successful authors who keep up their Facebook pages, and considering my ads are clicked on the most by women ages 65+, Facebook is where a lot of my readers are. But I still can’t get past the “people know me there” dread because of the 100 some followers I have, mostly they’re my friends and family. I have a lot easier time posting about my books to strangers, but the only way I’m going to attract strangers readers to my page is if I post, so there’s a conundrum I’m not ready to figure out yet.

In other news, my proofs for my trilogy came, and they are so gorgeous. These are probably the prettiest books I’ve made, and the spines and covers are perfect. Here’s the video I made for IG. It shows the front cover of book one, and the beautiful formatting inside. The video isn’t the best (I need practice!) and I put it on YouTube since it would be easier sharing.

And here are the three of them together:

They are all with my proofer now and I gave her a gift card to her favorite grocery store for her time.

While she’s doing that, I’m 25k in to a Christmas novel I’m going to release hopefully in November, if things go right. I have most of the story plotted out and I know how things are supposed to go, so I don’t think it will take me any longer than it normally does to write 80k words. Standalones are fun, and there won’t be any surprise sequels to this book. All the secondary characters are already matched up or unattached for a reason, and I did that on purpose. It seems my downfall is when my characters have single friends, so I made sure I didn’t tempt myself.

Things are going okay, personally, too, though I do have to fight off the writer lonelies every once in a while. I have very few friends anymore to talk writing with, one of the sad outcomes about my split with my ex-fiancé. We would constantly talk books, marketing, publishing, and the silly things we’d see online. A year later and that’s still a hole I just haven’t managed to fill, and probably never will. Now if I see something outrageous or I have a comment on something, I keep it to myself or sometimes message a friend. But I can’t tell her every little thing and being that our lives are different, she probably doesn’t care, either, haha. It’s not really a secret that I live and breathe writing, publishing, and marketing because I don’t have much of a life beyond that, my kids, and my job. Finding somewhere to fit in is difficult for a lot of people, so I’m not embarrassed sharing my struggles.

That’s all I have this week. Bryan Cohen is hosting his 5 Day Amazon Ads Profit Challenge starting on Wednesday the 19th. He taught me all I know about Amazon Ads and besides my newsletter, it’s the only way I sell books. There are days where I don’t make much– a sale and a handful of page reads, but it’s better than having an empty sales dashboard. 2023 is the first year I’ve had zero no-sale or no-page read days. Zero, and I attribute that to niching down to billionaire romance, being more serious about my covers, and knowing how to run ads. I’m not saying I’ve never lost money, but that’s pretty much a given when you’re experimenting and testing. BUT Bryan helps you control that, so if you’ve been meaning to learn Amazon Ads, this a great free way to do it. Here are the links, and they are not affiliates. I don’t get anything when you sign up–I just share the info because I think his free class is a great place to start if you want to learn.

Sign up: https://learn.bestpageforward.net/jul23/

Facebook group for the challenge: https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012

Have a great week!

When do you know when your book is done?

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books and flowers with quote: “A writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.” --Samuel Johnson, Works of Samuel Johnson

Since I’ve been listening to my trilogy, that’s a question that has been on my mind the last few days. Listening to my books to find typos, missing words, extra words, and syntax issues is the last editing step I will never skip. In an FB group someone said they paid a proofer (an exorbitant amount, in my opinion) who missed too many errors for the price she was charging. Listening to your manuscript can help you find and fix all those issues, and from the feedback the reviewers give me on Booksprout, I catch 99.9% of mistakes. (One reviewer found only one typo in Faking Forever, and I was so proud of that!)

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a second set of eyes on your books if you can find a set that doesn’t cost and arm and a leg, but like I wrote in my last blog post, finding people you can trust is impossible at worst and difficult at best.

So, when do I know when my book is done?

I honestly don’t spend a lot of time on my books and you can take that however you want to. Product quality will always be subjective, and I see that all the time online. People who can write quickly are judged and accused of putting out crap, as if spending more time on your manuscript means you’ve got the next great American Novel on your hands, ah, laptop. Not everyone wants to spend the next five years writing their next book. In fact, if someone told me I had to spend five years writing my next book, I wouldn’t even start. Some writers don’t bother to even finish a WIP before it’s on to the next shiny thing, but I can’t have projects overlapping in my brain. I need to finish one and then go on to the next. It’s just how I am.

books and flowers with quote: It’s being ready to accept rejection. You can work on a book for two years and get it published, and it’s like you may as well have thrown it down a well. It’s not all champagne and doing interviews with The New York Times. George R. R. Martin

When I write a first draft, it’s pretty clean. I don’t like to edit, though I’m getting better, and I never rewrite unless I find an inconsistency and I have no choice. There’s nothing I love more than reading my own books, but knowing I have things to fix makes me crabby and I try to avoid it. I edit as I go along, especially inconsistencies I know are there. Everyone will have their own process, but if you hate editing, plotting your books to avoid plot holes and knowing your grammar and punctuation to avoid errors can give you a cleaner first draft.

Standalones are easier than duets or trilogies just because you’re not dealing with so many words. The trilogy I’m working on now wasn’t supposed to be one, and I’m thankful I don’t publish as I go. I would have been in a world of hurt when it came to details that link all the books together. I had no choice, anyway, once I decided there was going to be a book two and three because there was so much foreshadowing to book one I needed to add.

books and flowers with quote: If you're going to publish a book, you probably are going to make a fool of yourself. --Annie Dillard

Once I get them all written, I immediately reread them all and make notes of character details like eye and hair color, and who knows what. That was a big one for this trilogy as this has a twisty murder in it, and I needed to keep track of what information each character had. Even at the end of the trilogy, not everyone knows everything, and I had a few pages of notes to keep everything straight.

I read book one more times than the others, but books two and three got their share. The story is set in stone by the time I listen to them. In a perfect world, I would have a beta read them before I listen, but the more productive you are, the harder it is to find someone to help you. Especially if you can’t afford the help and are looking for free or are trading services. I had a free beta lined up for book one, before I knew it was going to be a trilogy, but after I decided to add books two and three I didn’t ask her. I know I write fast, I know I produce a lot of books, and that is just too much for someone to take on. Not many people agree with the idea you should edit your own work, but sometimes that’s just how it has to be.

I have a pretty decent memory and usually know when I’ve messed up with consistency. It’s difficult when a character says one thing at the beginning and near the end says something else. That usually happens because they’ve grown in the middle, but you have to make sure that growth is on the page and not in your head or the character’s head. If you’re having trouble picking that stuff out for yourself, you probably need a manuscript critique or a developmental edit if you can afford it.

In book two of my trilogy, Eddie wants to keep his relationship with Clarissa a secret. Well, he says he does, but every little thing he does negates what he says. He moves in with her, tells his best friend he’s living with her, is in love with her, and was having an affair with her while she was married to his bandmate. Parks in the driveway instead of hiding his car in the garage. Doesn’t mind when other people find out he’s seeing her. Little things add up to the fact that while he said he wanted to keep their relationship a secret, he really didn’t want to. He was doing his best to out himself even if he didn’t realize it. It even took me a while to realize that’s what he was doing, but after that clicked, it made total sense. He was tired of hiding her, and I hope my readers understand that. It’s funny when things like that make it into your writing, almost like a subliminal message. I only mention this because I thought I had a big problem with consistency. He was continually saying one thing but doing another. It wasn’t intentional, but it was, and I’m actually really proud of that. (And super glad I didn’t have a ton or rewriting ahead of me!)

flowers and books with quote: The process of writing a book is so removed in my mind from the process of publishing it that I often forget for great stretches that I eventually hope to do the latter. --Karen Joy Fowler

I have to be pretty sure my books are how I want them before I start listening to them. How do I get to that point? I don’t get tired of my books, per se, but there is an eagerness to get them done and move on to the next thing. I don’t have a problem with perfection, and anyone reading in their genre and who can be honest knows some of the best selling books aren’t perfect either. I’m proud of my books, but doesn’t mean I’m going to reread them 120 times and haggle with myself over comma placement. If you don’t know about a comma, listen to the sentence both ways. You’ll right away if it belongs or not. For me, there’s only so much you can do for a book after it’s written. I’ve done my best by it and it’s time to nudge it out of the nest to see if it can fly.

Of course, you don’t want to publish too soon. I’ve seen this happen and the results can be… not good. You really don’t want readers to pay for a subpar product, and if my proofer finds stuff in the paperback proofs, of course I’m going to fix them. I wouldn’t ignore her findings because I’m in a hurry. That’s what she’s there for.

I’m not sure if I answered the question, “How do I know my books are ready to publish?” It’s more of a feeling, a proud sense of accomplishment that they’re done and ready to go out into the world. They sound good, the plot is solid. I had reservations about Faking Forever. I didn’t like Fox, and I was worried other readers wouldn’t like him either. But I wasn’t going to rewrite it or scrap the book. There actually was nothing I could rewrite. The story was what it was. The only thing I could have done was not publish it at all, but it was already there, already done, and I took a chance. That was a book that didn’t have a proofer or a beta reader. I put it out 100% on my own. Maybe had I had feedback first I wouldn’t have felt like I did. Or I might have felt worse. Who knows. I’m not looking at the reviews. You can do that if you want to see how readers like it.

Books with flowers and quotes Self publishing is not as easy as it is portrayed! When you think you have finished your book, proof read, proof read again, and again, and again. Don't believe it is ready until you have a hard copy proofed! --Phil Simpkin

You have to listen to your instincts and be honest about what your plans are. There are some writers who don’t ever plan to publish. They are in love with their characters and completing and publishing would mean they aren’t able to spend time with them anymore. That’s okay. I like publishing and I like knowing readers are reading my books. But I also like moving on to the next project. I’m trying to savor the process more–writing the blurbs, doing the covers, even uploading them on KDP. But trying not to be so quick is hard. Not really because I’m tired of working on that particular project, but because I’m excited to publish. It’s a lot of fun to put my books on Booksprout and send my newsletter ARC copies.

Probably the best advice I can give you is to not chase perfection. You’re not going to find it. I’ll reread books I’ve written and of course I find things I could change. That only means I’ve grown as a writer between writing it and that reread, but that doesn’t mean a reader won’t enjoy the book that exists. Kristine Kathryn Rusch has a talk about chasing perfection, and I post it every now and then. I think it’s a great. We’re our own worst critics and you can’t let that keep you from moving forward.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week!

Author Update: Knowing your limits and what I’m working on now.

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flat desk. mac laptop, paperclips. pink flowers. text: author update: knowing your limits and what I'm working on now.

Happy Monday! This week holds the first day of Summer, though we have felt the hotter temperatures for a while now. I don’t mind, and I frequently lie out on my apartment’s balcony with a podcast and soak up all the sun. This week is my sister’s birthday and we’re taking a road trip to Bismarck, North Dakota to eat at Cracker Barrel, bum around, and look at a different boring city with nothing to do there, either. But there are plenty of fields and plenty of cows, and I need a break.

I’ve been giving my trilogy a rest (to the best of my ability) and reading The Hunger Games books because I promised my daughter I would read the prequel before the movie comes out in November. Soon I’ll start listening to them (my books, not Suzanne’s), and I’ll have to divide my time or else I won’t them read and my books won’t get done for my proofer. I want to give her most of July so I have time to enter in the typo fixes and any cover changes I need. I only set an August deadline because if I don’t, I won’t work on my books in any meaningful timeline. But once I do set a deadline, and I announce to my newsletter that I have books coming out on a certain date, I’ll honor that. My publishing schedule is important to me; my integrity is important to me. Readers won’t trust you if you tell them one thing and then do another, and that’s why I got ticked off when one of my betas backed out of reading for me. (In the back of my mind I must not have trusted her because I still worked on them while she had them. I would have been even angrier had I waited thinking she was going to honor our agreement. It’s sad, but my lack of trust in people has served me well, and I don’t think I’ll ever change.)

Every week that passes, I see behavior like this in the writing community, and I don’t question why people are doing more and more on their own. If you want something done (and done right) you have to do yourself, and that’s evident in the uprising of sneaky AI covers, scammers charging for services they don’t have the right or experience to provide, and people unwilling or unable to keep their end of any bargain or contract they enter into. I’m always amazed when I look up the stats for my blog post on how to do a paperback wrap in Canva:

stats: 5.4k views, 13 likes, and 21 comments

I really shouldn’t be though because book cover designers aren’t cheap and with AI and scammers creating their own book cover design businesses who don’t understand you need to find your stock photos from a reputable (read: Amazon accepted) source, authors are just needing clear instructions on how to do it themselves because they’re the only ones they can trust to do it correctly.

I’m at the point where I have one online friend who will help me with blurbs and some shorter beta reading and a real life friend/co-worker who’s willing to help me proof my books. I’m tired of trying to weed through people who like the idea of helping but when it comes time to actually put in the work, they balk. It’s especially infuriating when you see them later tweeting about the time they are spending on their own work since they dumped yours. I’m bitter and refuse to put myself in that position again. So, when you offer to help someone, please follow through. It really hurts to get dumped. I’ve helped many authors since I’ve started this indie stuff. I’ve done everything from editing to blurb feedback to formatting, even some simple cover design work, and I have never, not once, backed out of a project. I do all of it for free (unless someone insists on throwing me a bone, but it’s not required) simply because I know how difficult trustworthy and affordable help is to come by. I couldn’t imagine getting halfway through a project and telling someone I couldn’t help them anymore. Even the idea makes me sick. Of course, like I said, life happens, and if my kids had an emergency, or my health was suddenly in peril (my mom and her mom both died from breast cancer) then that’s something else, but realistically, if you’re backing out because you bit off more than you can chew, that’s your own problem. What’s the saying? Don’t make your problem my emergency? Know your limitations and don’t offer to help anyone if you really don’t want to. Honestly, it’s a lot easier to say no than it is to back out of a project when someone is depending on you to finish. I’m not one for predictions, though I enjoy reading them at the beginning of every New Year, but I will say this: I think more and more indies will put out their work without any help. It’s just getting way too hard to pick through the scammers to find the dependable people, and indies are going to forgo the whole thing and just put their books out themselves. Whether or not they can put out a quality product is one thing, but the community is driving us to to do everything ourselves because it either costs too much or it’s too much of a headache to find someone who won’t screw you over.

Anyway, while my friend has my paperback proofs, I’m going to start writing my holiday novel. I found a notebook with the first chapter of a book and some plotting. I wasn’t experienced enough to connect the dots, and I tabled it. This was before COVID, maybe even a couple to three years before, so this shaky outline is old, but the plot has stayed with me. I’m going to turn it into a Christmas standalone. When I was plotting it, I hadn’t started my pen name yet, so I wasn’t writing strictly billionaire. When I go back, I’m going to have to figure out how to keep him in the situation he’s in because the original character didn’t have money and was essentially trapped where he is. But, I’m excited to use this plot, and I’m aiming for a November release. Even though it’s a Christmas novel, it will be dark, and I’m going to shoot for about 80k words. This will keep me busy during the remainder of the summer and into the Fall. I’m helping someone with formatting and editing, and I told her yesterday that Novembers can be busy for me. Decembers with Christmas can be too, but November will be particularly busy with my daughter’s golden birthday on the 18th, and my birthday on the 28th, and Thanksgiving I usually cook for. I wanted her to be able to plan accordingly but I won’t be working on any of my stuff by then. A standalone should be easy-peasy considering the two trilogies I’ve put together this year, and meeting my self-imposed deadline should be a snap.

I earned out my Fussy Librarian fee ($75.00), so that’s nice. (It was on the 9th of June.) I haven’t done the math to see what my read through is for the trilogy, but since my free promo wasn’t that long ago, my numbers would be way off anyway. It seems like I get decent read through, at least, book three is making money, so that’s something. We hear a lot about saturation. Is the market saturated? Too many books, not enough readers. Too many promos and not enough readers. I’ve read where these newsletter promos like Freebooksy, Fussy Librarian, and E-Reader News Today aren’t working as well as they used to. Being that I never used them FL or ENT, I can’t say one way or the other. I’ve used Freebooksy in the past, and I have proof a lot depends on your cover, if you write in a series, and how good your book is. I did a Freebooksy for the first book in my very first trilogy and it didn’t do well. My writing just wasn’t there and it didn’t earn back my fee. Same with All of Nothing. The writing was better, but that’s a standalone. Paying $120 dollars to give away a standalone doesn’t make any sense, and I didn’t have read through to other books because that’s an enemies to lovers and the only one in my 3rd person backlist. I’m going to keep an eye on how well my promos do for my 1st person brand. So far, the ones I’ve done have earned their fee back and then some, which is how you want it. But I made a conscious effort to niche down, change POVs, and write in more series. We’ll see if it pays off.

That’s about all I have for this week. I have plenty to keep me busy for the next little while, and I am really really excited to put out my rockstar trilogy. I thought my Lost & Found Trilogy was some of the best work I’ve ever done, but I’m really eager to see how readers like my rockstar stuff. I’m very proud of them, and I hope my readers love them as much as I do.

I hope you all have a good week, and if you ask, I can regale you with all the cow pictures I take on the road.

Until next time!

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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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!