When Transparency Does Any Good

Posted on February 29, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

When I was little, I grew up on Rainy Lake. Like, right on the shore. My dad would plow a skating rink on the ice for my birthday (which is in November) and I would have skating parties on the little inlet we lived on. Sometimes there would be winters when we didn’t get much snow, but the lake would still freeze over, and there was this one particular spot that froze solid, but was crystal clear. You could see all the way down to the bottom, the rocks and sand and weeds, and as you can imagine, if you stared long enough it could make you a little sick inside. You knew you were safe, but that didn’t stop your stomach from rolling, from telling your brain that you weren’t where you were supposed to be. The inlet wasn’t very deep, and I would feel almost the same in the boat, the water so clear you could see the fish swimming beneath you. The ice though, there was something almost unnatural about lying on it and staring to the bottom, and I’ll never forget how it felt.

We need transparency in publishing. It’s important that we share what we know. A few years ago the hashtag #publishingpaidme on Twitter exploded and so many authors came forward to share their experiences. You can read about it here: https://www.vox.com/culture/2020/6/17/21285316/publishing-paid-me-diversity-black-authors-systemic-bias and here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/08/publishingpaidme-authors-share-advances-to-expose-racial-disparities

Those authors and numbers are out of my league, but indie authors still share–I’ve blogged before about all the goose egg tweets on Twitter at the beginning of every month, authors lamenting that their sales dashboards flip to zero on the first. I have my own feelings on why this is kind of icky, mostly because author and reader spaces are merging closer and closer together and you really don’t need readers seeing your numbers. As my author platform grows, even I wonder how to keep this blog professional and unoffensive to any reader who happens to stumble upon it (grinding sausage that appears on a yummy breakfast platter is kind of disgusting, after all). Not to mention, when we talk royalties, or lack thereof, readers get sucked into that and it’s not their place.

I was actually kind of hoping that moving to Threads would solve that issue, of seeing goose egg posts, anyway, but authors are still sharing, even if it’s more of an informational post vs. the complaining I would see on Twitter.

Threads post that says: If you're wondering what I've made today as a self-published author...And I have many books self-published. Many. And you might be thinking, "well maybe you just suck as a writer." Maybe I do. But 10+ years ago I had 5 books traditionally published, so at least 2 big publishing houses didn't thi so. No matter what route you go, (self or traditional) this career is not for the weak. And most authors do not make a living. This isn't to scare you off, but to prepare you.

Dashboard

today's royalties:

$.50

I don’t mean to call her out, and I can’t anyway. I don’t follow her, don’t remember what her handle is, but I do disagree with a couple of things–one, for sure, is her saying most authors do not make a living. This is far from my experience, being that most of the romance authors I do know make a living, and telling authors that does them a great disservice. Just because you are not making a living doesn’t mean others can’t. And that leads me to the question of why she posted at all. To “warn” authors this is hard game? For sympathy? I can’t find the post now, which is probably just as well, so I’m not even sure if she got the responses she was looking for. I can’t look at her backlist either and I wish I would have paid more attention to who this poster was, but I screenshot it for a friend and as most timelines do now, it refreshed and the post was lost. I didn’t respond, though I wanted to. That was me turning over a new leaf, so I guess I’m showing you all my backside instead.

I messaged my friend and asked her, why do you think she posted it? And she speculated that she was just putting the information out there, as some sort of transparency play. Okay, but–and this is where I have the hard time–we’re missing half the conversation here, are we not? Because you’re not selling books, there’s a reason, and I feel that deserves some conversation. If you’re willing to put out your goose egg posts, I think you should be prepared to explain why. Why if you have what sounds like a solid backlist, why are you not selling books? I don’t think we talk about this enough. It’s one thing for a debut author to publish to crickets, because that happens. You have one book, rely on free social media, and unless you get lucky, that will only take you so far. But if you’ve been in the business for any length of time, you should have a handle on promoting your books and you should have figured out by now how to sell them.

But no one wants to ask why, and that missing half of the conversation is really important. It’s where the real learning starts. No one wants to admit mistakes though, or no one wants to admit that maybe they don’t know what they’re doing and haven’t bothered to learn. Maybe no one wants to admit that their covers aren’t hitting the mark or they aren’t promoting their books. That they haven’t started a newsletter and don’t want to learn how to run ads, if even just a few dollars a month to expand your reach. No one wants to admit that maybe they aren’t networking with authors in their genres, looking for cross-promotional opportunities (not that you can participate if you don’t have a newsletter anyway), or no one wants to admit they loathe Facebook and don’t have an author page.

I really think that if you’re going to post goose egg numbers, then you should be prepared to explain why. It’s not exactly taking culpability, but obviously, if you’re writing and publishing you want your books to sell. She may have seen this as educational, but after 10+ years in the industry with “many” books under her name, she doesn’t find it a little embarrassing too? Or she writes publishing off as “difficult” and the lack of sales isn’t her fault.

Sometimes you can look at an author’s books and see why they don’t sell. They don’t have many, or publish with years between books. They only write standalones which can be a hard sell since we all know read-through is where the real money comes in. Maybe they can’t afford a good cover and make do with what they can make for themselves in Canva (or they turn down better and free help because they want to do it alone). But if that’s the case, any of those, isn’t it worth mentioning? I’ve made plenty of mistakes–and I admit them on this blog all day long. I wasted a whole year on my Lost & Found trilogy because I didn’t like the covers and didn’t push them as hard as I could have. It’s just as well, because a year later I reedited them and I’m much more confident promoting them. Sometimes you need to revamp a book and maybe she needs to take some time to redo some of hers. Even a fresh blurb can make a world of difference. https://selfpublishingadvice.org/a-new-book-blurb-could-revolutionize-your-sales/

It would have been nice to have known what she thought of her low sales, what she thought she could do to fix it. There’s always something you can do–it’s not up to Fate or there wouldn’t be people making a living off their books. You have all the control in the world, but acting like you don’t doesn’t make it so.

It’s just interesting to me, and I like thinking about stuff like that. Be transparent, sure, but tell the whole story, otherwise, you’re just lying on a clear sheet of ice feeling sick inside.

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

Posted on February 19, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Words: 1707
Time to read: 9 minutes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time!

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

Posted on February 5, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time!

Monday Author Update: Newsletter/Email Guidelines

Posted on January 15, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click on your profile name:

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

Click on the one you want:

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

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

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

Here is the MailerLite DNS tutorial.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Until next time!

Author Update…Happy December!

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

There isn’t much going on in the land of indie these days…no controversial issue that I have to weigh in on. That’s a good thing, but it does leave me little to talk about every week. I used to listen to a weekly talk on Clubhouse about marketing romance books. It lasted for a bit, but the hosts took a summer off and never came back. Though I missed the Wednesday morning chats, I understood why. There are only so many things you can tell an author about marketing before you’re just repeating yourself because true marketing lies within the books you’re writing (tropes, reader expectation, and craft don’t get talked about nearly as much as they should) and how you package them. It’s something of a no-brainer to write to market, to cover to market, to make sure your blurb is clear and intriguing. You can’t give out many tips about that–and especially to those who don’t want to follow that advice. In relation to that little story that sounded as if it were going nowhere, there’s not much going on that I need to rehash but rather than not blog, I’ll give a quick recap of the past two months and what I’m going to be doing for the month of December.

I’m done with TikTok. I enjoyed it while I was on it, got into the groove of making videos on Canva without it taking all day, and thought maybe I could actually turn it into a marketing tool like so many other authors have. But like with most things, a few bad apples spoiled the barrel, and my innocent videos kept getting take down because they were supposedly violating community guidelines (and like KDP/Amazon Ads, they won’t tell you what you did so you can avoid doing it again). When I blame bad apples, I’m blaming the dark romance authors who used it to post explicit content. And I don’t even really blame them for that–marketing on TikTok is a goldmine if you can get it to work–it’s that TikTok doesn’t want that kind of thing on their platform and dark romance authors had to find new ways to outsmart the bots that would take those videos down. Now words like “hurt” and “death” and “die” and a long list of other words (a lot having to do with sex like “come”) will get your video pulled, and sometimes not even pulled. They won’t let you post it at all, which is what happened to my last video… I used the word “hurt” in a way that I didn’t think warranted that kind of consequence. There are so many dirty snippets that authors can still get away with posting, I just gave up. I don’t like dealing with the unfairness of it all, and you can call me a whiner because we all know life isn’t fair, that’s okay, but one of my biggest pet peeves is when people are not treated equally. I don’t like the way they arbitrarily enforce their guidelines and I’m not going to put up with it anymore. My books are angsty, not dark or dirty, and when I see other snippets getting away with it when mine don’t, it’s frustrating and I’m not going to play that game. Maybe the occasional blocked video wouldn’t bother me but when that happens, your whole account is suppressed and other videos aren’t shown as often as they normally would, and I don’t have time for it. I still have my profile up, and maybe I’ll still scroll now and then because I was finding books I wanted to read (yeah, because of the dirty snippets) but I’m done posting videos. My last appeal took over a week to go through and I’ll try finding other ways to market my books.

I started reading the first book in my series to get them ready to be published. I did a good job on the last editing sweep I did, and four chapters in, I’m not finding too much too fix. If I can easily edit out a “when” or a “while” or take out an “as” phrase (she did this as he did this) I do it, but I am keeping in mind I don’t want them to sound too edited, and if the words flow well, I leave them be. I want to say I want to be done reading this book by the end of December, but I need to be done a lot sooner than that if I want to start publishing by March. In the weird way that I am, I need to have them all done and ready and final files uploaded to KDP to put them on preorder. It’s just the way I am and I’ve stopped trying to fight it, but it will free up brain space to move on and work on something else.

I have an author interview set up for later this month, and I’m looking forward to posting that. I’ve been having a difficult time finding people who are a) actively writing and publishing and have something to share, and b) willing to give me their time, which is why I don’t think I’ve had a guest post or author interview since last spring when I had my hysterectomy and scheduled almost two months of guest posts to cover my time recovering. Guests posts and author interviews aren’t a staple of this blog, but I like offering other viewpoints and experiences. I believe we all have something to share and learn from each other.

You guys know I use ads and lately I’ve been using FB ads more than ever before. I’m starting to dislike sharing sales numbers (just this morning I saw a thread on Twitter asking people what their earnings were last month), but I also want to prove that my FB ads are working and that I’m earning more than I’m spending. That puts me in a tough spot because how else am I supposed to prove to you that I’m selling books if I can’t be transparent? I realize what a conundrum that is, but let me pull the numbers and see what I can do.

October had the best sales month I’ve had selling this pen name, but I can’t say for sure overall. I’m not going back to my 3rd person books because that would be time consuming and irrelevant anyway since I wasn’t playing with FB ads then. I didn’t quite make 4 figures, October coming in at $735.20. Those were primarily my rockstars, and that’s mostly because I was running the most ads to those books. But they’re selling because the covers and titles are good and the blurbs are strong. I don’t care how fancy your ad is or if you have the hookiest hook…you’re not gonna sell if your cover doesn’t look good and match your genre and if your blurb isn’t strong. I told you about my read-through for my trilogy last week, so I know all the books are getting read. I sold some of my other books too, but my trilogy makes up the lion’s share of that figure. For ad spend, I spent $77.52 on Amazon ads, which is a little more per month than I’m used to spending, but I have an auto ad for Rescue Me that goes gangbusters every month. My sales aren’t gangbusters for that book, but I let the ad go because it brings awareness to my name and the books I have, and the clicks aren’t that expensive. For Facebook ads, I spent $87.00 for one ad and $8.77 for a different ad, and that brings my royalties for the month to $561.91. I don’t think anyone would complain about that. (Unless you’re a 5- 6- or 7-figure author. Then you’d probably die. Haha!)

November was almost the same. Before ad spend I had royalties of $593.45, which was a bit lower, but I think I also slacked on keeping my FB ads running. I schedule them for 2-week blocks, but really if I’m getting low cost per click and people are liking and engaging with the ad, I should just let it go and check in periodically instead of having to remember to extend the end date. Anyway, so with how Facebook bills out, I paid the same amount–$87.00. I didn’t boost a post, so I didn’t have the $8.77 I spend last month as I did in October. I also didn’t spend as much on Amazon ads, that total coming in at $41.09. After those two ad spends, I brought in $465.36 in royalties, which I am not going to argue about. I think most of that is my rockstars too, but now that my other trilogy is edited and re-covered, after Christmas I’ll start running ads to them too. I think with the number of books I have out, if I ran my FB ads properly, I could hopefully make $1,000/month. The steady income would take some pressure off but I would have to make double that for any real impact to be made. (For example, if I did make a steady 2k a month, I could drop down to part-time at my job and write more.) Perhaps after my series is out I’ll have a chance of doing that. I’ll have 17 books published under my initials–that has to move the needle, you’d think.

Anyway, so I’m not screenshotting my dashboard–you’ll have to take my at my word that’s what my royalties are, but there’s no reason to lie. If I wanted to lie, I would tell you my numbers were a lot better than that. Haha.

I finally migrated from the old MailerLite to the new one, and it doesn’t look much different. It wasn’t too difficult though it took a few minutes for the signup link on my author website to click in and I tried to sign up a few times before it worked. Linking my Bookfunnel account and migration to MailerLite was a bit trickier, but all I had to do there was generate a new API code and replace it with the old one on my landing page settings for my reader magnet. After I figured that out, it was okay. Luckily, and surprisingly, I remembered how I set it up last time, and I didn’t need to ask for any help. My signups and landing pages are very barebones and I only send one welcome email so my welcome sequence is very short. I haven’t segmented any of my subscribers, and it seems all my subscribers migrated over, but I saved them all first before I did anything. I haven’t sent out a newsletter since I did that so we’ll see how that goes. As far as I know, no one has signed up to my newsletter either, but I’m hoping with all the tests I ran everything works out.

I may not be completely taking time off from my books, but I did make time to read a book I found on TikTok–200 pages of pretty much just sex. Not that I minded, as I said above, the sexy snippets are what helps me find the books in the first place, but what you see, at least with that particular book, is what you get. There was no character development, hardly any backstory for either character. They didn’t even tell each other I love you, which was a real let down after all that…physical connecting. They didn’t break up and get back together, which is my favorite part of a romance book. So, I plowed through it in just a couple of hours, but it’s nothing I could ever write. I need more substance to my books, need my characters to grow and change and realize without a shadow of a doubt, if they lost the other person, their lives would never be the same. I need tender moments in the dark and gut-wrenching, down-on-his-knees proposals. To me, that’s what makes a romance novel. But there are many different types of books and many different types of authors and of course, many different types of readers. We all will find our audience, and that’s okay. I gave her .95 in KU page reads and I read something that wasn’t mine. We both win.

Later in the month I’ll do my year-end summary. It’s too early to do that now–there are still four weeks left of the year I’m not going to brush aside. Looking ahead too far means you miss what’s right in front of you, and there are still good things to come with the remaining weeks of 2023.

How are you going to spend the rest of the year? Any big projects you’re going to wrap up? If you won NaNoWriMo last month, congratulations! I will talk to you all next week. 🙂

Until next time!

Brief Author Update and KDP Changes

Posted on November 13, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

I haven’t been doing much except re-editing my Lost & Found trilogy and redoing the covers. I said in a previous blogpost that book one didn’t have the problems books two and three had, but I was mistaken. I went back and edited it more thoroughly which took time, and then I read all three of them again just to make sure I didn’t edit in any typos. My proofs come today, but I’m not reading them–okay I might spot-check them, but that’s all–I’ll page through them to look for formatting errors and make sure the back matter is how I want it, and then I need to move on. They are going to be as good as they’re going to be and I’ll have to be happy with that. I’m pleased with cover changes, and I hope that it will bump up sales. I haven’t been pushing them because I didn’t like the covers, but now I can promote them with confidence. I’ve said I don’t have imposter syndrome, but maybe I do. I’ve never been fully confident thinking my books are any good to read, but my trilogy is good, and I remembered that editing them. It’s a good story arch, and I want people to read them.

Just because I like the story, I’m reading my duet over again. Not with the express desire to edit them, though I am making changes and editing out the “when” sentence structure if I come across it. I also like “because” and with a quick sentence rewrite, I can usually edit it out. These aren’t bad–I hadn’t fallen into a writing tic while I was writing these, and I’m reading more for pleasure than to edit them. After those are done, I have a lot of admin stuff to do, and I’ll spend most, if not all of my free time in in the second half of November and all of December getting them done:

*Changing from the MailerLite Classic to the updated and newer version of MailerLite. We need to do that by February and I’ve heard stories ranging from it’s super simple to horror stories of lost email addresses. There’s a tutorial somewhere, so I need to watch it. Luckily, I don’t have anything complicated there, just one landing page and one welcome email that is sent to everyone regardless of how the sign up. It should be cut and dried, if not, dare I say, easy, but we’ll see. I’m going to set aside a whole day for it because I don’t want to stress myself out. This is a good time to redo my welcome email anyway, make it prettier, but I think I’ll have to redo the integration I have set up with Bookfunnel. I have 771 subscribers right now. I’m not running an FB ad to my freebie at the moment, so the past few subscribers I’ve managed to gain have been through the back matter of my books only. I’ll send an email letting my subscribers know that my Christmas novel is live, then I won’t send one out until I’ve moved my account over. That’s the top item on my to-do list for now.

*Publish my rockstar trilogy to IngramSpark. I always let a couple of months go by between publishing on KDP and publishing on IngramSpark. I’ve heard it’s good to let them settle, and it’s what I’ve always done. I’ve never had an issue publishing to IS after KDP, so I’ll keep doing it that way. The interiors are the same, but I’ll have to tweak the covers. IS uses different paper and the spines are thinner, which means I usually have to adjust the font to avoid it lapping over to the front or back covers. I can’t do that until my trilogy is done and published with new covers. I want to put the Lost & Found covers back there pushing readers who like trilogies to buy my other one. This is a back matter page of Safe & Sound telling readers I have my rockstars available:

I made the graphic in Canva. One of the best things you can do is use your back matter wisely! I do the same things with all three of my standalones–if you like this standalone, I have another available, and you can find it here.

*Make hardcovers for the rest of my books. I offer hardcovers of my Cedar Hill Duet and Rescue Me. That was all the further I got with my hardcovers, but now that my books will be 100% finished, I can make hardcovers of the rest. I’ve never sold a hardcover (only a handful of Large Print I can’t offer anymore because KDP blocks them as duplicate content) but I like how the buy-page shows more than one buying option and it shows readers that I’ve invested in my book to make other versions available.

*Try to enjoy the downtime and the holidays. That list will take me more than a few days, and while I’m not writing, I’m going to try to enjoy the holidays. I have a tooth that’s going to need to come out soon (I have PTSD from a root canal gone bad and I will never subject myself to another one) but I’m going out of town from November 15-18th and I would like to have it done after I come back. There’s no good time to have an extraction, and my November is busier than it’s ever been, but having an achy tooth in my mouth ups my anxiety, and I would like it out the sooner the better.

*Plan my next books. I’m thinking of another duet, but bigger ones, 150k per book or so. I want to incorporate the underground king concept I blogged about here, with the kidnapping/psychic element that’s been knocking around in my head. To write these as well as I want, I’m going to need to read some dark mafia books. I want these dark too, but not in the sex kind of way, well, not only the sex kind of way. Drugs, crime. Violence. The vibe I was looking for when I wrote All of Nothing. I don’t have a plot yet, and I still have to put my series up, but it’s never to late to plan.

*Try to enjoy walking more. I have a lot of negative feelings associated with going for walks, and I’m trying to sever those ties. When my ex-fiancé and I would talk, I would go outside for privacy. As our relationship deteriorated, I didn’t go outside just for privacy, I would go outside because we were fighting and I needed to walk off the nervous energy (and the fear but let’s not get into that). Walking now brings back a lot of those memories and feelings. We’ve been split up for a long time, and I’m used to him not being in my life anymore. Our five years together were more tumultuous than happy and splitting up was better for both of us. Still, those feelings are still there, and I need to push them aside to enjoy walking again. I also walked to get air at the beginning of the pandemic to try to quell my anxiety. I wasn’t anxious because of COVID though I know many were. I was anxious because unbeknownst to me at the time, I picked up a box of Snuggle dryer sheets, and they were wreaking havoc on my girlie parts (more specifically, they gave me bacterial vaginosis). Three years later, I’m still having issues my gynecologist doesn’t seem to understand, and now walking brings back those feelings too–of sucking air into my lungs, trying to calm down because while those dryer sheets were screwing up my body, they were also screwing up my mind. I’m still dealing with the side effects of that unfortunate purchase, but at least I know the cause of my health issues. There’s nothing keeping me from going for a walk and enjoying what that time outdoors used to mean to me–plotting my next book, listening to music, listening to publishing podcasts, and enjoying the health benefits that come with moving your body. I’m already doing better for myself recognizing those ties, I just need to do better with making time to do something about it.

I should probably make this a different blog post, especially since I don’t know if I’ll have time to post anything next week, but I wanted to chat about some of the new features KDP has been rolling out.

The first one is KDP will allow you to schedule when your paperback goes live. This isn’t the golden ticket people think it is though. While it’s nice you can schedule a release date, that doesn’t mean it’s on preorder. The only way you can schedule a preorder of a paperback is to publish it through IngramSpark, and I really discourage you from using IS to fulfill Amazon orders. You’ll end up with a bunch of problems, that, unfortunately, will be difficult to fix with the way I’ve heard IS’s customer service is since the pandemic and Robin Cutler’s exit. I’ve also heard that you need to have your files available before you choose a date (this was in an FB group and I have no idea if it’s true or if placeholder files can be used), but that actually makes sense, because the only nice thing I can see about pre-scheduling is that you can order author copies before your book goes live, and they won’t have the ugly stripe over the front. Paperbacks aren’t a big consideration when it comes to my books–most of my sales come from KU. I like to offer paperbacks, and Vellum makes it easy to format them and make them pretty. Lots of people were excited about this new development, but they still need the 72 hours to review your book and you can’t order author copies until your book has passed that review. As far as I can see, nothing much has changed there, except you can schedule and check it off your launch list.

For more information about using IS with KDP, look here: https://www.authorimprints.com/ingramspark-pre-order-amazon-kdp/#:~:text=Pre%2Dorders%20are%20accumulated%20in,or%20before%20the%20publication%20date.

The other thing KDP is playing with now is opening up audiobook creation using AI. So far, it’s by invitation only and in the beta stages. Beta in KDP language can take years (look a how long the new reports were in beta and how long the old reports hung around) and how long it will take to open to all of us (or at all) will be something to keep an eye on.

Of course this caused an uproar in the writing and author communities. Some are really against AI anything, and some totally embrace whatever AI has to offer. I like to be in the middle–there are good and bad aspects of it, and I think if you totally brush it aside because of the bad, you can miss out on the good. I don’t like using AI art for covers, and it’s becoming prevalent with romance authors because hot men who haven’t been used to death are becoming harder and harder to find–especially for authors on a budget who can’t afford to look beyond DepositPhotos. The only problem is, I can spot these a mile a way and all the covers that use AI to generate a man standing in a suit with a blurry background behind him are starting to look the same. No matter how long or how hard I have to dig, I will always buy stock. I believe in paying the photographer and I believe in paying the model. I don’t think creating an audiobook is entirely in the same category as using art. AI in this regard, I believe, is just technology moving forward. There is already text-to-voice options on devices, and using AI in this way is just opening up accessibility for readers who want to listen to the books they consume and for authors who can’t afford to pay a narrator. I don’t like gatekeeping and telling someone they shouldn’t create an audiobook because they can’t afford it is in its own way. There could be drawbacks to using text-to-voice, and we won’t know what those are until authors start reporting back. There needs to be way to correct the voice if it pronounces something incorrectly. The voice has to sound natural, but those voices are getting better day by day. On the author side, you have to take the time to listen and edit if that option is available. You can’t just upload your book, let AI spit out an audio version and put it up. There was one woman on Twitter who was using AI to translate her books into German, but she wasn’t using someone who knew German to double-check the translation. That’s irresponsible and scary. God only knows what it was coming up with. The last thing I want is to be a laughingstock in Germany. Good luck to her, I guess.

When it becomes available, I’ll give it a try. Apple already has given its authors a chance to create audiobooks with AI, (and people were excited about that, so I don’t know why KDP is getting flack) so it will be interesting to see how this goes. Just because I try it doesn’t mean I’ll publish with it. I might not like the voice choices, or because I write dual first person POV, I may not be able to publish using a female voice for the female POV and a male voice for the male POV. I’m definitely not going to shun something before I can even experiment with it. Ethics aside, you have to think of what you want for your business. I don’t listen to audiobooks–my mind drifts too much for me to concentrate–but I’m hearing now that listening to an audiobook is experience. It’s doubtful something that KDP offers will compete, but it’s nice to have to the option.

That’s about all I have for this week. I’ll be out of town November 15-18th. We’re driving down to the Twin Cities and we’ll be going to Mall of America, looking at a few museums, and going to the zoo if the weather permits us to be outside. I may take a pass at blogging or just put up a quick post I’ll write Sunday. Things won’t be calming down much after that either–we have The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes to watch that following Tuesday, then Thanksgiving. We’ll be at the end of the month after that, and I have my birthday to celebrate. We’re going to Napoleon and out for a fancy dinner so I’m really looking forward to that. All in all a very busy month and I think I’m going to sleep all of December.

For my last piece of news, A Heartache for Christmas is available right now–it went live today! The reviews have been coming in through Booksprout, and readers are really touched by the story (and I am really really in love with the cover!). You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/Heartache-Christmas-VM-Rheault-ebook/dp/B0CM2BLRPF/

Enjoy your week, everyone!

The Secret to Leveling Up?

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Like any author publishing today, be it indie or trad, I’m always looking for ways to level up. Take your career to the next level. We hear a lot of advice, some I’ve repeated here: learn an ad platform, network with authors in your genre for promo opportunities and newsletter swaps, write and publish a lot, that kind of thing. It can be frustrating when you think you’re doing everything right, and the success you’re hoping for is still out of reach.

I can personally attest to how frustrating that is, to the point where I think that maybe this whole writing career thing isn’t meant to be, and it will always be considered a hobby by the people in my life and the IRS.

I read some advice about leveling and it was enlightening as well as confusing. She said, and this is an author who makes six to seven figures a year, to focus on writing the next best book you can.

It made me a bit crabby (no offense to the advice-giver because I love her and she does a lot for the indie community), because when you’re writing a book you intend to publish, you’re always thinking it’s going to be your best book ever. Back when I wrote All of Nothing, I thought it was an 85k word masterpiece. (Little did I know it would take several edits after initial publication for me to be happy with it, and one that I actually did not long ago.)

This is akin to the question, how do you know what you don’t know? But, if your books aren’t selling, and you’ve tried ads and newsletter swaps and you’ve bought a Freebooksy promo that didn’t move books, there is unfortunately, room for improvement.

Craft is difficult to tackle mostly because it takes so long to make any kind of positive progress–depending on how you already write, it could take months or even years and hundreds of thousands of words. You have to write a lot to get better at it, and not only do you have to write a lot, you need constant feedback on that writing so you know what’s working and what’s not. How do you level up your craft?

*Join a critique group or work with an alpha reader who reads as you write.

*Get lets of beta reader feedback. And find people who are honest. If your characters are flat, you want, and need, to know about it.

*Read the kinds of books you want to write. One of the very first “complicated” series I read when I was thinking of writing my own books was a romantic suspense series by Lisa Marie Rice. She’s since expanded on those books, but the four I read have stuck with me for years. In fact, I want to read them again just to see if they are as good as I remember.

*Just swallow it and admit series sell and read-through is what will make you money. I love writing standalones, I do. The Christmas novel I just finished is a standalone and I fixed it so I couldn’t write any sequels from it. But the fact is, series sell because readers love reading them. But, from a writer’s standpoint, they’re difficult and stressful. They take planning, something a lot of pantsers aren’t willing to do too much of, but you need to have some details fit together from every book. If you’re a new writer, that’s hard to do. There’s a lot of details to remember, breadcrumbs to drop. You can start “small” and write a duet, then as you get more experienced, add books.

Writing a book, and a good one, is a group effort until you can get the hang of it. But what if you already think you have? When I read that advice, it didn’t know what to think. I feel like my writing is pretty good, I get positive feedback from reviews, readers reach out to me to say how much they enjoy my books. I have the skills, ability, (talent?) to write a long series–my six books I have coming out next year–and the beta feedback I’ve already received–is proof of that. So, I mean, what can you do if you think your work is already there?

If I had an answer, I’d probably be a six-figure author myself. You can study the market and see if what you’re writing is not hitting the target. Romantic suspense, psychological and domestic thrillers, and several other genres and subgenres will always be popular, but if you’re writing something mainstream and still not selling, maybe you aren’t including enough to meet reader expectations. Maybe your mystery plot isn’t twisty enough, or your characters are flat–meaning their backstories are bland and you haven’t given them enough to fight through.

Be that as it may, you can write the most perfect book in the world, and no one will be able to read it if no one knows it exists. There is the idea of word of mouth, and that does work if your book blows people away. It’s not like you can ask every reader who reads your book to spread it around like an STD, they have to want to do it, be passionate enough about your book to do it. If a booktoker doesn’t get a hold of it though, you’ll have to run ads or buy a newsletter promo spot. Those don’t work unless your cover is good, so part of leveling up may be refreshing book covers or doing better than you have in the past.

It helps to have a hook too, something I didn’t have with my first billionaire trilogy. I have decided for their book birthdays in January that I’m going to redo their covers and come up with better hooks for ad copy. Obviously, doing what I should have done a year after the fact was part of that commenter’s point. You lose a lot of time and opportunity if you don’t do what you should have done at the start. Still though, you can get some marketing juice from a relaunch–especially if you actually make improvements and the changes you make aren’t lateral moves. Maybe that means hiring someone like GetCovers to redo them, or learning new techniques on your own. Maybe that means letting go of what you want and putting a cover on your book that will sell.

As for me, we’ll see what my series does next year. I’m rethinking the covers since I made them last year and my tastes have changed. I also need to read through them one more time and make sure the writing is there. My beta/proofer found a few things, too, so I’m glad I sat on these books and waited to publish. Before I do that, though, I need to get my Christmas novel ready to go, finalize the cover (I changed the man again) write the blurb, listen to my manuscript, and get the paperback proof to my beta/proofer. Then the new covers for the trilogy, and then my series. I’m already thinking of what I’m going to write next while those release, six books at two months apart will give me all of 2024 to write something else.

Anyway, leveling up can take different forms, but there is always room for improvement. If people have read you and are willing to give you feedback, take their advice to heart. It’s okay to listen and realize that what you thought was good isn’t. It’s what you do with that and were you go from there that will help you really level up.

Have a good week, everyone!

Ethics in Indie Publishing

Posted on August 28, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Independent publishing has opened up a whole new world for scammers who want to make a quick buck, and we all know those kinds of people don’t have morals or scruples. But we don’t hear a lot about ethical behavior of the “kind of” innocent kind, at least not until recently with the rise of AI. I have a lot of opinions on AI, many I keep to myself because for the most part, it’s none of my business what other people do. I’m not going to take part in the witch hunts I see happening online, authors guilty until proven innocent. People can make mistakes, can be misled, or, can actually make the choice to use AI for whatever reason, and I’m not interested in being judge and jury for those people. I’m too busy with my own stuff going on, and honestly, unethical behavior happens everywhere, every day. You can’t take it all on (and for the sake of your mental health, why would you want to?).

I have spoken out about some of it, though, beta readers who take your money to beta read but actually don’t put in the work, “cover designers” selling Canva templates and calling them their own designs, editors who are paid to edit, when they shouldn’t be anywhere near a red pen. I don’t like when I hear about people getting ripped off, mainly because I don’t believe in paying people to do something you can do yourself. You can create your own cover using a Canva template for free–there’s no need to pay someone 50 to 100 dollars. You can do the bulk of your editing for free too, if you take the time to listen to your manuscript before sending it off, and there are a free resources for formatting, Draft2Digital and Reedsy to name two off the top of my head.

Like almost everyone in the indie space, I’ve been a victim of some unethical behavior, and I have been for as long as I’ve published. Editors who sit on manuscripts for months and then when they finally get to your work, they don’t give you the experience (*cough* time and effort *cough*) you gave them money for. They say you get what you pay for, but that’s not necessarily true–some people don’t actually know they shouldn’t be charging for the services they are. They don’t know they’re poor editors, they don’t know it’s an ethical grey area to sell Canva templates. Once on Twitter I saw a freelance editor bragging about some kind of award ProWritingAid gave her, and I was dumbfounded. I knew she was putting her clients’ manuscripts through it. Perhaps that’s part of her “editing process” but her clients are paying for that–it’s definitely nothing she should have been admitting in public. After seeing that, I never would have hired her for anything. I can run my own manuscripts through PWA if I wanted to use it (the Hemingway Editor is a free version of this). I don’t need to pay for someone else to do it.

The question, I guess, is how do you know what you don’t know? You have to be honest with yourself for one thing. A “cover designer” I called out starting her business selling Canva templates said she liked “simple designs.” No. She just admitted she has no skills. If you’re an author and you can’t edit your own books, you shouldn’t think you can edit for other people and get paid for it. If you don’t have time or the inclination to beta read, don’t offer or don’t accept a job. Honesty and integrity begin with yourself and it will extend to your clients. If you need the money that badly, get a second job. Ripping people off, no matter how unintentionally, is still ripping people off.

On the author side, is it ethical to use AI? I’m not going to poke that bear. I think in some instances it is okay to use AI. I chat with Al, brainstorm with him, and it’s fun to bounce ideas off him when I’m stuck with a plot issue or need sparks for ad copy. I don’t feel it’s any different than searching for a plot generator and sorting through the prompts, or making a huge list of tropes and pulling one out of a fishbowl when it’s time to write a new novel. Of course, that’s very different than asking him to write a short story and then turning around and submitting it to an online journal. I would never do that, and all my books are written by me and only me. I don’t copy and paste. Never have and never will. I like to write; I wouldn’t outsource that. If there ever comes a time when I think I might, I’m tired of writing in general and should quit altogether. In connection, I would never use a ghostwriter to publish a book then claim I’m an author, but people do that. I saw on Twitter one “author” who queried a ghostwritten book and landed an agent. I think that’s kind of disgusting, especially since books go through extensive editing and likely that person won’t have the skills to do that.

Dealing with people who don’t have any ethics, or who don’t know they are being unethical, is what makes indie publishing difficult. It’s a minefield and it would be a lot easier for everyone involved if people stopped trying to make a quick buck out of everything. Life is hard, though, and I don’t see that happening. Authors can’t afford to hire a professional at every turn, so we do what we can, cut corners, or try to, and sometimes we get burned.

But, when we do that, as authors, sometimes it’s our readers who get burned, too. When you’re trading a product for cash, your product needs to be the best it can be, and not everyone can do that alone. I’m not fond of gatekeeping–it’s one of the pillars of this blog. To give you resources to do things for yourself, be it editing, cover design, or formatting. But I’m well aware that even with all the resources in the world, not everyone can do all the things on their own, and the unfortunate fact is, if you can’t put out a decent product by yourself, you can’t find someone to help you for free, and you can’t afford to pay for a service, then maybe it’s just not your time to publish. I don’t say that with a light heart, either, but your customers and you readers deserve more.

I have a short list of things I see authors do that I would never do when it comes to my own business. I would never put book one of a series in KU but publish the others wide in an attempt to force readers to buy them to keep reading. People try to have it both ways, and I blogged about that here: KU vs. Wide (Can you have your cake and eat it too?) I would never enroll my books in KU and still put them wide, hoping to take advantage of Amazon, but authors do, and even brag when they aren’t caught. I would never not finish a series. I think starting a series and abandoning it is terrible for your readers and you look untrustworthy and like you have no follow-through. I would never post on social media that I’m writing a book and then not actually write it. I have changed my mind once or twice when blogging here, but any books I’ve committed to where my readers are, I have finished and published. (Let’s just say that fantasy series I blogged about will never see the light of day. I’ve put it away for good, and I am really really okay with that now.)

This whole thing started with a Facebook post accusing GetCovers/MiblArt of unethical behavior, notably plagiarizing covers of bestselling books. I won’t point to the post or the person who wrote it because most of the Facebook groups I’m in are private and it’s against group guidelines to share. I took the post with a grain of salt because while you can accuse anyone of copying a book cover, the fact is, it’s done all the time. Maybe not purposefully, but it is done. One of the best practices of covers is to blend in with your genre while having one or two elements that stand out. Anyone will tell you to go through the top 100 in your genre and see what other authors are doing. That’s standard advice. If an author asks GetCovers to do their cover like the latest LJ Shen’s billionaire romance, that’s what they’re going to get. That’s hardly GetCovers or MiblArt’s fault. It’s not even the author’s fault because they’re following advice that’s pretty common. Designers have their own code of ethics that prevents them from stepping on each other’s toes, and that’s great. We should all support each other, but some of those guidelines are hazy and grey, and sometimes it just comes down to common sense and courtesy–like a lot of ethical subjects. I didn’t talk about the ethics part of copying a cover, but I do talk about the “sameness” of billionaire covers here. If you see ten covers with the same background stock photo, maybe it wouldn’t be that hard to avoid that photo. If you see the same font used for titles, use something else? I don’t know the right answer because I do the same things. Your books need to look like they belong, but using the same background, font for your tile, and color scheme may not do what you want it to do. You’re not Nicole Snow, and the only person who is, is her. Build your own brand instead of trying to piggyback off of someone else’s–that’s probably the best advice you can follow. Plus, it’s more ethical and will serve you well in the long run.

As always, this post went longer than I wanted. If you want to read more about ethics in publishing, look here:

Ethics Tips for Self-Published Authors BY ANDREA MORAN

The Ethics of Self-Publishing: Staying Honest and Fair

Author Ethics and Utilitarianism (Or, “Why Authors are Bad People”) by Derek Murphy

Thanks for reading, and drop me a comment if have any thoughts! I’d love to hear them!

So…Much…Indie Publishing…News!

Posted on May 22, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

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!

What I learned from an author’s literal, overnight success

Posted on December 19, 2022 by Vania Margene Rheault

This month was a good month for Chelsea Banning who tweeted about her book signing. When Henry Winkler quote tweeted it, other high-profile authors in the writing community picked her up and offered her support as well. If that wasn’t enough, news outlets like CBS tweeted about her too, and as a result her book sold hundreds (maybe even thousands) of copies.

I have been sitting here, jaw dropped, just staring. Ommmmmggggg pic.twitter.com/7RDvk48RW4
— Chelsea Banning UPDATES ONLY🛡👑 (@chelseabwrites) December 5, 2022

This is Chelsea Banning's signing. Pass the word, you guys so EVERYBODY SHOWS UP! Be there, Ashtabula! https://t.co/4BepEdEwGj
— Stephen King (@StephenKing) December 11, 2022

Chelsea Banning tweeted her frustration at only two people showing up to the signing for her debut fantasy novel "Of Crowns and Legends" after a few dozen people RSVP'd to the event. https://t.co/Ny5D9WcuME
— CBS News (@CBSNews) December 7, 2022

I could fill my entire blog post with tweets mentioning her, but instead, you can search Twitter for her name or follow her here.

Not every one was happy for her, and like Brandon Sanderson’s success with Kickstarter there were some people who, let’s just say, weren’t thrilled with her sudden luck. That’s fine. Some people think success isn’t due unless it’s earned through back-breaking hard work, like somehow how hard you hustle should be equated with the level of success you can achieve (which is a terrible American way of thinking, to be honest, and if it were true, I’d be a millionaire by now).

Instead of feeling sorry for myself and how few books I’ve sold in my lifetime (which I didn’t, but I know there were some who did), I thought I would use her luck and success as a learning experience. What did I learn watching her career explode right in front of my face? Let’s take a look.

Have a great product. One of the biggest lessons you can learn is to put out a quality product because you never know when or where that bump will come from. It’s much easier to share someone’s work if it’s good quality. While Henry Winkler, Margaret Atwood, and Stephen King didn’t personally endorse her book or share a tweet with her book cover in it, her momentum may have halted in its tracks if her cover was bad or if her book wasn’t good enough to share. Not long ago I blogged about an author whose TIkTok went viral. He sold hundreds of copies of his book, but it wasn’t well-edited and his reviews reflected that. I felt so sorry for him and his read-through. While you don’t know what you don’t know, and we’re always putting out the best quality product we can at the time, having your book at least looked over by betas who can spot typos or hiring a proofreader and getting an inexpensive cover from GetCovers can go a long way if you’re a broke DIYer.

Have a way to capture readers. Chelsea went viral on Twitter and her followers reflect that. She went from a small following to over 10k almost over night, but we’re told the best way to keep a reader is to start a newsletter and grab their email address. (Chelsea has one through MailChimp and you can sign up here.) With the uncertainty of any social media platform (Musk taking over Twitter evidence of just how shaky a platform can be) it’s better to keep your readers on land you own. When you start a newsletter, you can export your list regularly so if you ever need to change aggregators, you can and not lose any subscribers. Please don’t try to set up a newsletter through a personal email account or something like vaniarheaultauthor@gmail.com (that is a legit email for me but I don’t check it so email me there at your own risk), as it can be illegal to do so. For more information about making sure your newsletter is compliant, check here, and you can find another great resource here. I go through MailerLite, though I don’t have a double-opt in feature. When I run ads to my reader magnet, people can give me their email address voluntarily and at the end of the book, they have another chance to sign up if they didn’t before. My unsubscribe link is clear at the bottom of every email, and I do get some occasionally. I like it because I can create pretty newsletters with specially placed text boxes and images–nothing like what you can do with gmail.

Have something to offer your new (new) readers. I don’t know what Chelsea’s situation is, and of course you can’t predict when something like this will happen, but I hope she has another book coming soon! If not, she can use her newsletter to keep readers engaged between books–and maybe she already has a reader magnet she gives away to her subscribers. Like Brandon Sanderson before he started his Kickstarter, he already had the four books written and was able to capitalize on his hard work. It’s also a great marketing tool to be able to say all the work is already done. If Chelsea doesn’t have a second book in the works, maybe she has an idea and can put up a pre-order for the next book. That’s another reason why writing in a series is a good move, and having them look like they all belong together encourages sales and read-through.

Put yourself out there. That is probably the biggest takeaway I learned from Chelsea’s experience. She stepped out of her comfort zone and approached a bookstore to host a signing. If you were a little jealous of her success, look at what you’ve done to step outside your comfort zone. She tried, set up an event on social media, and when it didn’t go her way, she shared that, too. That alone is worth more than a pat on the back, and more than likely, that bookstore was happy to host her because, looking at number one, her book is professionally put together. I have an independent bookstore not far from me, but I have never asked them to carry my books on consignment or otherwise. I know they do, as I flip through the local authors section every now and then and there are always books with the KDP Print stamp in the backs. I just have never bothered as being on a bookshelf has never been my dream, and I know my readers are mostly in KU. But if all you’ve ever wanted is to see your book on a shelf, then what are you waiting for? Your courage could lead to bigger and better things like it did for Chelsea.

I’ll never resent anyone who puts in the work and reaps from that work. With the start of the new year upon us, how do you plan to create your own luck?

I don’t have much personal news for myself. We had a lot of snow last week, and I ran over something and now my car is leaking oil. I can’t get it in until Tuesday, so fingers crossed I can get my errands done without trouble before I can get it fixed. I wanted to be at least 50k into my rockstar romance by now, but it’s been slow going, and I’m only at 46k at the time of this writing. Hopefully when you read this I can be at 50k because I can write all weekend without much interruption. I have 30 days before my first book in my trilogy releases and I’m going to try to do a few things from the 30 pre-launch plan that came with Stephanie Burdett’s social media kit that I wrote about last week. If anything, at least I can get my FB author pages going so they don’t look so empty. After Christmas I’ll put all three paperbacks on Amazon and list them on Booksprout for reviews. And for a kick, I’m still going to put book one of my duet on a couple of free days and buy a promo or two bump up my pen name. Just a lot of waiting, but I have my WIP to keep me occupied, so it’s all good.

There’s one more Monday where I’m going to post my end of the year recap, and unless I have something I want to say, I’m going to take Monday the 2nd of January off for a little break. I always say I’m going to take a break, but I never do, so we’ll see.

Have a great week!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Category Archives: indie publishing news

When Transparency Does Any Good

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

Monday Author Update: Sweet Nothings.

Monday Author Update: Newsletter/Email Guidelines

Author Update…Happy December!

Brief Author Update and KDP Changes

The Secret to Leveling Up?

Ethics in Indie Publishing

So…Much…Indie Publishing…News!

What I learned from an author’s literal, overnight success

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