Category Archives: indie publishing news

Monday Musings and where I’m at right now.

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Happy Monday! I hope you all are having a terrific start to your week!

I don’t have much to share with you this week–I’m only going to be talking about a few things that I’ve enjoyed in the past few days and catch you up with what I’ve been doing.

First of all, I want to thank all my subscribers who come back week after week to consume and participate in the content. Last week I made it to 500 followers, and WordPress gave me this cute little congratulations.

Blogging is a slow road and sometimes it feels like you’re blogging to no one and without thanks. Building your SEO and reputation is long, arduous work, but I love blogging. It gives me a break from the novel-writing part of my brain, and I enjoy dipping into the publishing part of being a writer/author. I like sharing my ups and downs, mistakes and the (few) things I’ve done right. I hope to continue my blog and offer useful and relevant content in the years to come. Thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you find all the information I post on here useful and relatable.

I finished my WIP last week, the second book of the second series I’m writing in first person present. Since finishing to now blogging about it, not only have I finished it, I’ve given it two editing sweeps. To be honest, I’m not sure what my publishing plan is, or how fast I’m going to release any of the eight books I’ve written this and last year and are now just sitting on my laptop. They all need to be edited to some extent, so they aren’t exactly ready. The first thing I want to do, though, is take a break from this series and write my reader magnet for my newsletter. While I write my newsletter, I’m going to learn how MailerLite, Bookfunnel, and StoryOrigin work. I’ll keep you posted on the blog. My reader magnet will only be available for newsletter signups, and I’d like to have a few subscribers before I start launching books. I have a glimmer of an idea for it, but I have to plot it out and write it. Soft deadlines are good for me, so I want to finish it by the middle of April. I’m giving myself some extra time because I’ll be learning a whole bunch of stuff and well, I don’t even know what my characters’ names are yet, so I better get brainstorming!

Excerpt from Finn and Juliet, book 2 of my Billionaires of Briarwood series.

Last week, I listened to a really great author interview on the 6 figure author podcast. Lindsay, Jo, and Andrea interviewed Elana Johnson. I might have heard her name here and there, but to be honest, I didn’t know who exactly she was before the interview, now I want to gobble up all her content! One of the things that really stuck out to me was when she said, “The package is the promise, and you have to deliver on the promise.” What she meant is, you need a good cover and blurb that is genre-relevant, and then what is inside the cover matches reader expectations of that genre. Not a lot of authors talk about craft because they’re worried about stepping on toes, etc. And to be fair, it’s difficult to tell an author her books need more work. I’ve only said that to a couple people in my whole life and only because they asked for advice. A writer never really stops learning, but I like how Elana phrased it. The package is the promise. And the promise is you’ve written a great story. Besides being a bestselling author, she also writes nonfiction, and I’ll be reading her books soon. To look at the first book in her nonfiction series, click here. And here’s the interview if you want to give a listen.

That advice is similar to what I’m learning in Suzy K. Quinn’s Self Publishing Formula class, How to Write a Bestseller. I wish I could outline everything I’ve been learning, but that wouldn’t be fair to Suzy, who’s making an income off the class and would be disrespectful to the time she put into creating the class, and it wouldn’t be fair to me, really, who’s paid for it. But I will say, she starts the class by encouraging you to think about the book’s package. The genre, the cover/vibe, who your audience is. Create a tagline, and put together what the book will be when it’s finished. That’s not so far off from Elana saying, your book’s package is your promise to your reader. With this reader magnet, I’m going to create the package first before I begin writing it. I suppose you could say that creating the package is the fun part, but having everything in place will keep the book on the straight and narrow and give me an ending point to look forward to. I can’t wait to start!

In other news, I got the first book in my series back from my paid beta reader. I only went over the overview she sent me. (She liked it!) I haven’t gone into her track changes yet since I’m not ready to start editing that book, but I’m excited to see the things she liked and the parts of the book where she thought I could use a little more plumping. The few things she did touch on I agreed with, but I didn’t want to edit it too much more without feedback. I feel editing too much without feedback wastes time because I can’t see all the mistakes myself. So I’m making progress! I feel like I’m hoarding a secret and I can’t tell anybody what I’m doing until I’m ready.

On a more personal note, I asked to go back to work vs. working from home, and they told me no. I think now working from home has more to do with cost-saving measures rather than protecting us from COVID, and while I wasn’t surprised they said no, I was disappointed. This means if I do have some anxiety because of the cut-off feeling I have not going in to work, I’ll have to figure out a different way to alleviate that anxiety. I’m not feeling too much of it lately–having another day off during the week has helped and I don’t feel so stressed with getting my words in every week. As far as my butt pain goes from sitting on a hard chair, I’m standing up more during my shifts and it’s fading. Anything I’ve read about pelvic pain that has nothing to do with an infection (which I don’t have–remember I’ve been to the doctor twice to make sure) says that it can take up to 12 weeks for the pain to go away. I’ve been taking Aleve, too, and sitting on an ice pack when I do sit and it’s making a difference. BUT if I’m not feeling better by the end of the month, I’ll schedule another appointment. You just never know.

For Amazon ads check in, I’ve spent under 8 dollars this month, and I’ve grossed in royalties almost 50. (Net, around $42.00). I’ll have to think about what I want to do with these books. I still get a lot of my royalties from KU but if I’m not going to write in 3rd person past anymore (or not anytime soon) I may put them wide. I’m not sure. I don’t feel like I have the energy to market them wide and I may just leave them in KU. I don’t know. It’s the age old question of what’s best for your business and leaving all your eggs in one basket vs. multiple streams of income. It’s a tough choice. At least this month I’m in the black, and it’s still nice to see that people are reading all four of the Rocky Point Wedding books. That read through is always nice, and the validation you wrote a strong series can keep you motivated to write more. Soon it will be the one year anniversary of book one and I think it will be time to make up a boxed set. Luckily Velllum is good with that, and it won’t take me long at all.

Read-through for all the books in the series is small, but I’m grateful readers are reading from beginning to end.

My friend and fellow author Sarah Krewis is planning a Facebook live on her author page on the first of March. She’s giving away a paperback copy of my book, Wherever He Goes. Follow her page here and mark on your calendar to join in! Thanks, Sarah!

taken from Sarah’s FB author page

I guess that’s all the news I have for this week. I’ll be drifting a little bit as I plot out my reader magnet. I always feel hazy when I’m not actively writing–but since I don’t have a team and prefer to stay hands on with most aspects of the publishing and marketing side of things, there will always be times between books when I’m doing admin and production stuff. I enjoy it all, but I do get antsy when I’m not writing.

Have a good week everyone, and thanks for reading!

Another case of plagiarism. My question is why?

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I follow Zoe York’s Facebook author page, and she brought to our attention another plagiarism case–S. M. Soto was found to plagiarize from author Kim Jones and Sylvia Day and possibly a couple other authors. I went to Twitter because you can always count on #romancelandia to give you the scoop, and it seems like this is the first person who shared Kim Jones calling out S. M. Soto, at least on Twitter. If you want to read the thread, click here. And if you want to read the Kim Jones’s Facebook post, click here.

A few other people confirm she did it. It’s difficult to give attribution to who posted first, but with the plagiarizing software out there, it’s easy for others to confirm it, like Claire Ryan who created her own software to help out. If you want to look at this thread, click here.

The author herself didn’t confirm or deny, only posted some wishy washy apology on her Facebook author page.

“As some of you may know, there’s been an issue with me and another author. I’ve been accused of plagiarism among other things. I wasn’t sure if I should even make a post but I wanted to share with my readers what’s been going on. On Sunday morning I was woken up by my PA over an alarming post she had seen. I immediately went to check my DMs, which were flooded with hateful messages, including one from the author who was accusing me. I immediately reached out to her and we had talked on the phone. I’m not one who checks my messages—in fact, I rarely do. I didn’t believe this would escalate as quickly as it did. What should’ve been a day of me enjoying my release party and spending the day with my family quickly turned sour. I understand that this shouldn’t have happened and I’ll be doing everything to make the appropriate changes. I can assure you I’ve never had the chance to read this author’s books so all of this is just a huge misunderstanding. I’m in the middle of rectifying this misunderstanding. Given the circumstances of the allegations, and after much thought, I have decided to unpublish the version that contains ANY similarities in wording or phrases to this author’s work. A new version will be put up soon after. I sincerely apologize for any misunderstandings and anyone that was potentially hurt. Being that this is a product with my name on it and I should be aware of every piece, every word, and every phrase that goes in, this is a decision I don’t take lightly, but do believe is necessary. I understand that this shouldn’t have happened and I’ll be doing everything to make the appropriate changes. Up until today, I’ve always stayed quiet about my personal life. I am a very private person and I don’t like bringing what’s going on in my personal life to my work life, which is the book community. I have a son, a family, which will always be my priority. 2020 affected us all in many ways and I was no exception to the hardships. I was able to get through some of the toughest emotional times I’ve ever gone through by having a few good friends along with my family by my side.The one part I will speak on is the witch hunt that has started. In the past forty-eight hours, I’ve contemplated leaving this community more so than I ever have before. The part that alarms me about this situation the most is the witch hunt that has started. The nasty messages I’ve received, the lies and stories that have been twisted, and the disgusting racial slurs and messages I’ve received. Yes, I am Mexican and I’m proud of it. I’m proud that I speak two languages, I’m proud of my heritage and my family. I won’t allow anyone to drag my family down. I won’t allow others to bully me into being ashamed of my race, ever. I could sit here and share all the messages that I’ve received but what good would that do? It will only fan the flames and create a bigger situation. It has become the standard for authors to share every tidbit of their lives with their readers, while I respect that, that’s not who I am. I like to keep my personal life separate. If you’re expecting that from me, you’ll be disappointed. I will share with you all what I find to be important. I reserve the right to share personal information to those who are closest to me. If you’re expecting a perfect author, then I’m not for you. I make mistakes daily. I lose my temper, I cuss more than I should, I shut down when I’m hurt, and you know what? That’s okay because I’m human and flawed. I’ve never portrayed to be anything other than a flawed human being. I don’t participate in drama or bullying posts. I’m always offline and I’m usually the last to know what’s going on with this community, and frankly, I enjoy being that way. There’s too much going on for me to add more things to my plate. I’m not here to do a he-said-she-said post. I won’t post screenshots, I won’t discuss what transpired on the phone call I had with the author. That will stay between me, my team, and my family—at least on my end. If you want to leave my group or not read my books anymore, I understand and respect your decision. I apologize for this misunderstanding. If you need me, please feel free to reach out to my PA. She’ll continue to answer any messages via email or Messenger. I’ll be offline until further notice.”

This makes the plagiarizing scandal that happened last year when someone stole work from Nora Roberts among others feel very close. I never heard the outcome of what happened to  Cristiane Serruya. Nora Roberts blogged about taking her to court and donating the proceeds, but Nora’s had other things on her plate in the past few months, namely the scandal when her first book in her trilogy ended on a cliffhanger and her poor readers who have to wait a year for the next book, and more recently, when Alyssa Milano was cast as the lead in a movie based off one of Nora’s books. Apparently, Alyssa is too political and maybe leaning too far to the left for some of Nora’s readers to be happy with the casting. It wouldn’t surprise me if Nora pushed that plagiarizing lawsuit onto her attorneys and forgot about it.

In any case, it seems like history will repeat itself this year, only we’ll swap Cristiane with S.M. Soto and Nora Roberts for Sylvia Day.

As a romance writer and reader, it’s hard for me to wrap my mind around that a romance author would do this to their readers. If you’re a real romance author, you want to nurture your readers, turn them into true fans. That doesn’t include duping them with books that have been ghostwritten, or filling your books full of another author’s work.

In the comments of the various Facebook posts authors and readers agreed that if you can’t write, don’t be a writer. Meaning, if you can’t write your own books, don’t publish. In the words of Kristine Kathryn Rusch, among others, there are easier ways to make money. The only thing though,I can’t think of anything that a normal person can do that can bring in the amount a fantastic-selling romance book can bring in per month.

Because sales rank and book price are public information, it’s aggravating to indie authors to see other authors raking in the bucks. Industry leaders can say, well, a book is #5 in the Kindle store, and at this price, they’re making this much per month. Maybe there is a thing about too much information being a bad thing. I quickly looked up S. M. Soto before the scandal spread too widely, and one of her books was set to bring in over $5,000 this month. Just one of her books, in just one month. The money is out there, and many authors are on a quest to find it–by ethical means or not.

It wasn’t hard for me to find places to hire ghostwriters. A search on Craigslist brought up a few local options, and also Upwork yielded some results. Fiverr brought up the most viable options, and I’m sure that’s where a lot of writers who want to use ghostwriters look first.

I don’t know what S. M. Soto’s personal life is like, or why she would hire a ghostwriter. I know in romance there’s a constant urgency to go go go and write more more more, a trap that I’ve fallen into myself resulting in some anxiety that I’ve been dealing with this past month and a half. Maybe she just needed a break and hoped that hiring a ghostwriter would give her a chance to breathe. We all need a break now and then, but when you’ve cultivated a following and they expect you to produce, I would imagine that can get pretty stressful. Romance readers are voracious, reading hundreds of books a year, especially in KU. If you’re courting that kind of reader, the pressure is serious to produce that level of content.

This won’t be the last we see of plagiarism. S. M. Soto wasn’t unique. Nora Roberts has taken other authors to court for plagiarizing her work, and in the indie space, authors (using the term loosely) like Chance Carter and Faleena Hopkins have been accused of hiring ghostwriters too. They were even associated with an underground group that sold already-published manuscripts.

I could never put my name on someone else’s work, a whole manuscript or even purchasing a plot. Which I didn’t know was a thing until only recently when someone in one of my Facebook groups was talking about it. I have to admit, plotting is hard. Trying to come up with characters, their backstories, conflict, stakes, and everything else is difficult. Not only do your characters need to grow and change, their backstories need to hold them back from what is happening in present time. Purchasing all that feels like cheating too, but there are freelancers who do it and sell off the outlines and there are authors who buy them and quickly write the book because the hard part is already done.

My problem is, my books have little pieces of me in them, and readers will eventually know they’re being duped by a ghostwriter because your books will lack sincerity and authenticity.

I think S.M. Soto even knew that when she wrote her FB post defending herself: she doesn’t get personal. But I can’t think of anything more personal than writing a book. That’s the real reason why authors want to sell books. Because when a book sells, and readers enjoy it, identify with the characters and their hardships, they are identifying with you, the author.

When we publish a book, we are putting pieces of ourselves out into the world, and that’s scary. We can talk about royalties and hitting the top ten, and those are things to aim for, but nothing means as much to us as a reader who loves our work and takes the time to say so either in a review or an email. Maybe you can’t pay rent with a good review, but there are other ways to get paid.

Tell me what you think about ghostwriting! Would you hire one? Let me know!

PS: WordPress ate half this blog post, or maybe my internet dropped and it stopped autosaving. At any rate, I think the first version definitely sounded better, but I tried to finish it up to the best of my ability even though I was pissier than hell. Haha! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Publishing Predictions of 2021: Pricing

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I love the new year! Not only for fresh starts, but because of all the publishing predictions that come our way. It’s so interesting to me how the publishing industry changes shape, like water poured into differently shaped containers. Authors and publishers will always be around in some form, but we have no idea what form it will take!

I was listening to the 6 Figure Author podcast last night while I was making dinner and cleaning the kitchen, and they broke down a few of Mark Coker’s predictions. He founded Smashwords, an ebook aggregator for authors who want to publish their book wide. He keeps his fingers on the pulse of the industry, and his hate for Amazon aside, it’s always interesting to hear his take.

If you want to read his predictions in its entirety, look here, and thank you to 6 Figure Authors (Lindsay, Jo, and Andrea) for discussing some of the topics, too! And if you want to listen to them instead of read me, that’s cool, and you can find their episode here. They talk about some of Mark’s predictions during the first half of the show.

Anyway, so what I want to talk about today is pricing your book. The decision takes a lot more thought than just wondering if you want to sell your book for $3.99 or $2.99, and one of Mark’s predictions states that authors will lose more and more of their royalties. Here are a couple of his reasons:

Subscription service. Of course, this is a jab at Kindle Unlimited, and it’s a business decision if you want to enroll and be exclusive in Kindle Select or if you want to be wide (on other retailers besides Amazon). What a lot of authors don’t think about though is do they want the sale or the page reads? And do they want 70% royalty or 35% royalty. I price my books at 2.99, which earns me a 70% royalty. I earn a little over two dollars for a sale, but when someone reads my book from start to finish in KU I only earn $1.64 give or take depending on how long my book is. (My small town wedding series falls between 69k-72k). Mark says that the subscription service devalues our work, and maybe that’s true. On the other hand, on the podcast they talked about how a subscription service allows more people to read than ever before. A KU subscription is about 10 dollars a month, and Amazon is always doing promotions. Enrolling my book in KU could find me readers I may not find other places because they can’t afford to purchase books singly. Kobo also has a subscription service, but authors don’t need to be exclusive to Kobo to join. Of course, this is what we want from Amazon, too, but don’t count on that happening.

Paying for advertising. No one wants to pay for visibility and discoverability, but there is no business where you don’t have to, either.

And it only makes sense to advertise on Amazon when a customer is already looking at books and in the mood to buy and read. Mark’s problem with this is we’re already paying Amazon to sell our book, we shouldn’t have to pay them to advertise it, too. When you think about it though, indies who are making a lot of money off their books don’t rely solely on Amazon Ads. Like I said in my other blog post about why I left an Amazon Ads FB group, indies making a living wage aren’t agonizing over the price of their bids. The bulk of their sales come from their newsletter subscribers, newsletter swaps, and in general, publishing consistently and letting Amazon do a lot of the discoverability work on their behalf. To be successful, you don’t have to buy Amazon Ads. Craig Martelle put it best: Amazon ads bring in new readers–your newsletter keeps them.

What should you look at then, when pricing your ebook?

How new are you? When you’re new and you spent a lot of time on that first book, you want to get paid for it. That’s what I’ve come across, anyway, speaking with new authors. That makes them price their book too high, and in a world where readers, yes, are used to a subscription model, you are not going to find sales. I found this book when I was scrolling through one of my FB groups:

I’m sorry, but this is her first book, and the look inside is all telling. She’s not going to get $5.99 for this book. She’s also wide, not in KU, so she can’t even count on a few page reads to bolster her spirits.

How many books do you have out? If you only have one, you’re better off pricing it as competitively as possible and quickly writing the next book. Once you have a large catalogue you’re freer to experiment. Have a permafree first in series, create box sets and run promos on those. The author above can’t use free days that a Kindle Select participant can. When you have more books published, you can have some of your backlist a little cheaper and charge more for the new releases. All my books are $2.99, but my catalogue is in KU and I don’t think too much about my prices because I concentrate on KU readers.

What is your genre? Supply and demand is a huge consideration when pricing your book. I write romance where there is a huge supply, but there is also great demand. It makes visibility difficult and there is too much supply for an author to overprice their books. Readers don’t have to pay to find books to read. In fact, a romance reader could download free books and read for the rest of their lives. There is just too much free content out there. Whether or not that reader is getting what they pay for is something else entirely and I’ve talked to death about quality on this blog. That poor author above writes romance, and she will never sell a book for $5.99 when that is more than half a subscription cost to KU for a month.

Mark Coker is all about readers trained to devalue our work, but it’s not just the publishing industry that has this problem. Spotify has been known for not paying their artists, and Audible will only give you a higher rate for your audio book if you are exclusive with them. And who wants to be now that their gross return system is all over the news?

If you want to be paid for your work, there are only a couple things you need to do: put out a good product–no one likes to pay for junk, and that includes a poorly written book–and nurture an audience. If you have a group of readers who will read you no matter what, you can price your books accordingly and know your readers will pay because they enjoy your books.

Amazon isn’t the problem. Subscription models aren’t the problem. It’s indies who are impatient and don’t publish quality. They give their books away to whoever will read them (especially in exchange for reviews), and they can’t nurture an audience because they don’t publish consistently. Everyday in the groups I see the indies who are doing it right, and the indies who are doing it wrong, like the romance author above. Of course, it took me a few years to figure out what I’m doing wrong, and now I’m adjusting accordingly and hoping to learn from my mistakes.

My main point is, your readers will pay you.You just have to find them first.

Another interesting article about pricing and how much authors are paid. It’s not just indies having a tough time: https://mybookcave.com/authorpost/how-much-do-authors-make/

Do you agree? Disagree? With me or with Mark? Let me know!

My Highs and Lows of 2020

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I’m tackling this blog post a little early since I plan to spend the rest of the month getting started with the first round of editing on my current WIP and celebrating Christmas. If we count from January 1st to December 31st, the numbers will be a little off, but not by too much.

2020 wasn’t the sh*tstorm for me as it was for some others. I still managed to write a lot of books, publish, and keep up with my blog. Let’s take a look at my numbers for 2020. I know some writers/authors who did a hell of a lot more than I did, but if I managed to get a little more work done than you this year please take it as a form of motivation for what you can do in 2021 rather than feel bad you didn’t get much accomplished. This year was unlike any other I’ve experienced and I count my blessings every day.

Books Published in 2020: 4 I spent all of 2019 writing my four-book Rocky Point Series. I published the four as a rapid release strategy at the beginning of this year. I don’t have a cultivated readership, and those books released without fanfare. How much have they earned me so far? These numbers are taken from BookReport, a Chrome browser extension.

This screenshot from BookReport says 8 books because the paperbacks are included in the count. I didn’t sell any paperbacks, and without the FreeBooksy promo I did in July, I don’t think my sales and read-through would have be been as good. And good is subjective. I have my sights set pretty high–these numbers don’t come close to what I want for my author business.

I am definitely not ungrateful–I know lots of authors would love to have these numbers. But when it comes to an author career, this is just a drop in the bucket–and I paid for those reads and sales with promos and ads. When I take a look at ad spend, I’m willing to bet I broke even. Which is fine, I’m finding readers, but without a newsletter or active FB author page, I have nowhere to keep them interested.

Sales as a whole for 2020: I have three standalones and a trilogy (also some novellas I don’t market) and these are my total numbers across all my books for 2020:

Take the 32 books with a grain of salt–I have boxed sets in there, as well as the individual Kindle and paperback versions. This number will also include the Large Print version I have of The Years Between Us. I was really hoping my series would take off, but I’ve made almost as much with All of Nothing ($634.16) as I have with the four Rocky Point books. And after I changed my cover, The Years Between Us has been doing exceptionally well too with sales of $609.24 for the year.

If you want to enlarge it, here is the breakdown for all books for the year:

Readers read a little bit of everything, which is fine. These books are an example of what not to do. Hopping around within the contemporary romance genre hasn’t done me any favors, but I’ve blogged about that and won’t bother going into it again. Needless to say, I learned a lesson and 2021 will be a new direction for me.

I also just want to add, it breaks my heart I never could get Wherever He Goes to move. I’ve run ads to that book relentlessly, and I just can’t drum up interest. I did a Kindle Countdown for it this year, and nada. Not one sale or KU page read off that promotion. It’s such a lovely little story and I hate I can’t make people read it. I’ve changed the blurb for it couple of times and I love the cover. Something isn’t right, but sometimes you just have to give up and move on. If anyone wants a free copy, let me know. Some reviews would probably help. 🙂

Thanks to BookReport for letting me pull those numbers so quickly. It’s a free Chrome browser extension and it’s a nice (free up to a certain royalty earning) tool to have around.

Total Ad Spend for 2020: After seeing my royalties for the year, how did I do with ad spend? I know with some ads I lost money, and I lost some money on single books while other books made up for it. Let’s see how much I spent in ads and if it will make me cry.

This isn’t as scary as I thought it would be:

It seems I did come out ahead with an ad spend of $1,289.91 over this year. Amazon tightened their creative guidelines and I wasn’t able to run ads to my first in series for the past couple of months, and you can see that dip toward the end of this year. I would have cranked up my ads for that first in series if they wouldn’t have done that as my series is a small-town holiday wedding series that would have been a perfect read between October and now, but Amazon is Amazon and there’s not much you can do about it besides go through with the headache of changing out covers, something I did not want to do.

Ad spend needs to include a FreeBooksy promo for $110, and a promo through eBookSoda for $29.00. Even adding those two things I came away with a royalty earning of $816.46. That’s four and a half car payments, or 136 cups of coffee at $6.00/cup or 1.25 rent payments. It helps to say things like that to put into perspective. But $816.46 definitely does not cover the hours and hours of writing, formatting, and cover design, not to mention podcast-listening and non-fiction reading I do for my books.

Still, though, you have to count your blessings. I’ve had people read and enjoy my books. That’s a great feeling.

Number of books written in 2020: 7. I wrote a six-book serial and just finished up a book one in a new series. These are all billionaire romance and that is the direction I’m going to take my writing in the new year. Each book is 85-90k which gives me a total of 595,000 words written, conservatively. I know some authors in some of my FB groups have written a million words this year, but I’m going to take my accomplishment and have an extra glass of champagne on New Year’s Eve. I don’t know what my publishing schedule will be like next year. My six-book serial has only gone through a couple of editing sweeps, and I still need to edit them a couple more times and listen to them, too. Then the formatting and cover design. At this point in the game, you’re supposed to take royalties and sink them back into your business, but my $800 would barely buy me three decent covers, let alone six. And if I went with a paid beta reader, $800 wouldn’t cover what she charges, not for all six. I’ll have to think about what I want to do in regards to that. I definitely don’t want to push them out without another set of eyes, yet I simply can’t afford to hire someone to help me, and that level of favor is a pretty big ask. Anyway, I’ll keep you in the loop on the blog.

Speaking of the blog, number of blog posts written: 73. I’ve tried to be consistent this year, and I made it to 450 followers, earning, on average 1-2 new followers per blog post. Here are the stats WordPress gave me when I looked:

I’ve written enough blog posts they could be a book. Add that to my novel word count, and I’m pretty impressed with myself this year. WordPress also gave me my top commentors, and I want to thank them for consistently reading and commenting on my blog. I appreciate you and you readers are who keep me posting week after week.

Coincidentally, when I logged into my WordPress account this morning, they congratulated me on being with them for five years. I think this is just a lesson to those who think an overnight success can actually mean that. Starting up a blog is hard work, keeping it consistent is hard, if not harder. Thinking of something to write about week after week, and staying relevant, is hard work. One of my friends loves to say, if you don’t like starting, stop quitting, and that is so true in this case. Building a blog, a following, takes patience and tenacity. Thank you for being here.

As for any other highs and lows this year, I wish for as many people who have read my books either through KU or purchased them, that I would have gathered a few more reviews. We’re told not to read reviews, but when we make graphics or whatnot sometimes it’s nice to add a glowing review to encourage people to buy.

So for 2020 here is my weirdest review from His Frozen Heart:

I’ll never begrudge a review, bad or otherwise because I think they’re all helpful and I appreciate anyone who takes the time to write a little something, and for her to say she couldn’t get it out of her head could be taken as a huge compliment. Stumbling upon it did make me smile.

I applaud anyone who has managed to get through 2020 with their sanity intact. Or at least most of it. I started working from home which has been a thrill–nothing like having a cat on your desk or being able to avoid those pesky coworkers. I’ve had a few personal problems crop up, but who hasn’t. My carpal tunnel pain is still under control with those stretches that Aidy Aaward posted earlier this year (I still thank her from the bottom of my heart for them) and with a few visits to the dentist, my mouth pain is under control too, though I am sitting here with one less tooth and hopefully a plan to rectify that situation next year. I started working full-time, but so far that hasn’t stopped my productivity.

I don’t know how many books I’ll write next year while the ones I have written now are releasing. I still have to figure out a newsletter because I know after five years of writing and publishing, that is where I went wrong. If I could redo any of my choices since I started this crazy adventure, it would be building a newsletter from the very beginning of my career.

My plans for 2021?

Start/build a newsletter. Stick with a subgenre. Network more with other romance authors. Stay grateful. Stay hungry.

What will you do in 2021?

Happy New Year!

Amazon Ads: A discussion

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A love a good round table talk about things that are working in the indie community. Be it a new marketing tactic or a new way of doing things, I’m all in. I may not take any action–mostly because I know I’m not already doing what I could using tried and true methods, like building a newsletter. But I really enjoy reading discussions about something I’ve tried and can compare what their opinions and expreiences, especially when heavy-hitters in the industry weigh in with what is working for them–and what isn’t.

Trust me, if something isn’t working for them–you’re not going to get it to work for you.

And as always, we have to think of what our definition of success is. When it comes to selling books, that may mean one stranger buying your book. That may mean your first review from someone you don’t know. When you get to the people who are trying to make a living, usually their version of success is making money to live on, quitting their day jobs, maybe using their royalties to have a more comfortable retirement. Indies just starting out think small. A book here, a book there, clicks and tons of impressions are all that is needed to spur them on. I get annoyed, mostly because if you think small, you’ll be happy with peanuts. Someday I would like to quit my day job. I doubt that will never happen, but if I don’t at least aim for it, it won’t, for sure.

So I was pleasantly surprised when I stubbled upon a discussion in the Self Publishing Formula Facebook group headed by Mark Dawson. Mark runs an ads course and is a very successful indie in his own right. Other big names who were chiming in included AG Riddle and Russell Blake. I really want to copy and paste parts of the discussion, but it’s a private group and I don’t want to get kicked out. If you’re an indie and want to join, the link is here: SPF Community.

AG posted a poll: Do Amazon Ads work? In later comments he amended his question to, Do Amazon Ads work right now? And I feel that while some people are still getting their ads to work, the consensus was actually, no they don’t.

At least, not in the way we hope they will.

Lots of things come into play here, and the one that I’m reminded of most is that while Amazon Ads won’t let your book sink down the rankings into obscurity, what you want the ads to do is help your book get sticky enough that Amazon helps you sell it. Email blasts, recommending your book, hitting the popularity list being chosen for a Kindle Daily Deal. Ads alone aren’t going to help you do this. This is what I gleaned from the conversation, and you can tell me if you agree.

Do Amazon Ads work?

*Yes. If you have a series. Someone commented and said that ads don’t truly work if you’re counting on read through to cover the cost of the click. This is a good point and why the number one piece of advice is to write in a series. But the ad is still putting book one in front of readers. It’s up to the strength of the book (is it well-written) and if the other books are available if the ad spend is going to be worth it.

Let’s look at the cost of a click for a standalone book at .99. You don’t get .99 off that sale–your max royalty amount is 35%, so about .35 cents. If you bid .35 on a click, you’re breaking even, right? That’s what I’m doing right now on my first in series. I put it on sale for .99 until the end of the year because it’s a holiday romance. My other books in that series are 2.99. With dynamic bids down, my clicks won’t always cost the exact amount I bid, and I may make .10-.15 on that first book. My others are priced at 2.99, in which I get my 70% royalty, or 2.09.

*Yes. If your book sells well at full price or is in KU. I’ll make more off a .99 cent book in KU than I will selling it for that price. I can spend .35 a click because a full KU read of book one will earn me 1.35. Which is a dollar in royalties.

*Yes. If you have all your categories and targeting situated. There’s nothing Amazon hates more than showing your book to people who won’t buy it. It’s a waste of time for them and for their customer. Customer satisfaction is all Amazon wants and if you’re trying to show your book to as many people as possible and you lose relevancy, Amazon will stop showing it. That’s tough for authors who genre-mash, write without thinking and have no idea what their genre is, or have poor product pages. I didn’t consider why an ad would stop working until I read Robert J Ryan’s book, Amazon Ads Unleashed.

*Yes. If your book is a good product and has the reviews to prove it. There’s not much to say here, and I’ll quote two of the comments:

Ads can only give extra visibility to what you’ve got – they can’t make it sell better. The product does the selling, not the ads.

Robert J Ryan

A very long time ago I got a degree in advertising. One of the bits of wisdom I remember is that good advertising will kill a bad product quicker.

Jennifer L Anderson

*Yes. If you know how to use them. Figuring out how the platform works takes a bit of time, and even though you may not spend much, if you want to see traction, you have to be able to afford some spending money for clicks. As I write this, I’m 19 dollars ahead for the month, but I wouldn’t be there if I couldn’t afford the 10 dollars I’ve already spent on clicks.

The problem is, Amazon ads will help you, but by a very thin margin. Using ads won’t make you a millionaire over night. I break even every month, sometimes make a little–a cup of coffee little. I have ten books out, I’m writing more (or trying to. My life has been a bit trying lately), and my covers, at least, I think, are on point even if I’ve done them myself. It took a long time for me to realize I wasn’t writing what was selling, and lots of authors do that. Maybe they’re writing fantasy, but they aren’t hitting the tropes. Maybe they’re planning a series, but only have book one released.

It’s obvious the better product you have, the more successful you’ll be. Mark Dawson has professional covers, and he writes in a couple popular series. Plus, he’s a good writer. I think all the big indies who have “made it” can safely assume their writing is good and resonates with readers. If you’re pushing water up hill as Robert J. Ryan likes to say in his book, then you need to take a look at the product, not blame the ads.

I enjoyed the discussion very much, and I hope you look it up if you haven’t. I think one of the key takeaways from the discussion is that everyone agreed they used to work better than they do right now. The market is super saturated, and by some very talented authors. We have to work with what we’ve got, and using other platforms in conjunction with Amazon ads may be the better way to go. All the big indies who joined in the discussion have large email lists and they use ads to bring new readers in, not keep readers from disappearing. That’s an important observation, and one I have taken note of.

Have you found a secret ingredient to make Amazon ads work for you? Let me know!

Impatient readers. A gift or a burden?

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You know what I love more than anything in the world? Realizing at 8 pm the night before a blog post is due that I haven’t written it yet! This week has been just a crazy time with some personal issues, a cat that won’t let me sleep, and a maintenance man in our bathroom. I’m exhausted, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t get much done on my book this week. I stalled out around 64k and I need to dig my heels in and get it finished if I want to meet my goal of the middle of December. For the first time in forever I don’t have the next book planned, so I may actually take that break I wrote about 6 books ago. Maybe.

What was interesting this week is a little drama over on the Nora Roberts blog. She released a first in a trilogy (which apparently ended in a cliffhanger) and already her readers are clamoring for the second. The comments on the blog got a little heated, and Nora and her publicist Laura shut it down pretty quickly:

For those of you who can’t read that one of her readers says: NR trilogies used to be published all in one year a month apart. now they are a year apart.
what the heck

Her publicist, Laura, came back with: The trilogies are longer, more complicated books. Nora needs the time to write them.

And Nora herself said: I did the three in three months in paperback trilogies once or twice. That schedule was by no means usual or regular. As it was, doing that cramped my writing schedule and seriously impacted my personal life.

I can’t write that fast!!!

It takes time to write, and it takes a lot of time to write these longer, more complex hardcover trilogies.

It does take time to write. Anyone who has written a book knows that. And the more subplots that are interwoven into the main plot, the more complicated and more time consuming it is. I’ve read several of Nora’s trilogies and she has each book with it’s own plot that gets tied up at the end but also an overarching plot that gets resolved at the end of book three. Those take time to plan.

You can dig through all of the discussion here, if you want.

The discussion upset Nora so much she had to write a blog post about it to, I don’t know. Defend herself, I guess. And in reality, does she have anything to apologize for? She publishes under Nora and her pen name, JD Robb, and her blog post says she write four books a year. That is more than some indies who aren’t under any publishing constraints.

And then Debra has a whole article written about her, and I happened to find her comment going deeper in to The Awakening thread:

Nora’s response is long and available at this article or in The Awakening comment thread I posted the link to earlier in the blog, but I’ll copy and past it here for fun.

Nora: I have personally explained the process to you, Debra. You are not stating facts but opinions. But you continue to contradict me, as you apparently think you know more about publishing than I do, and more than the industry professionals I work with.

FACT: Publishing the trilogy a year apart is not a marketing strategy. 

I haven’t finished writing the second book, and won’t begin to write the third until next fall. 

Your opinion that the publisher should wait a year or two—holding a completed ms, or two —is in fact not how publishing works. 

You’re not commenting, but contradicting and insisting against every fact given you that you’re right and I’m wrong, that Laura’s wrong, that everyone who disagrees with you is wrong.

Once again, I ask: Do you work in publishing?

If so you’d know that in order to publish a major release in less than 6-8 months means serious added cost—it’s called crashing for a reason.

This is not how the process is intended to work or should.

You can keep insisting you’re right, you know better than I do how publishing works. 

But that won’t turn your opinion into a fact.

The most interesting part though, is Debra’s opinion on the publishing industry:

Debra: Please stop making comments on a blog about the publisher setting release dates according to their timeline and not considering the customer? What is wrong with suggesting that the publisher can alter a release schedule? They can and they do. Many times. Assuming that just because we read Nora’s books we have no idea about anything that a publisher does is insulting. It is a business. It should consider its customer. Without the customer there is no business. This is business 101. I am sorry that you do not want me to state facts. Publishers can and do publish books in less than 6-8 months. Fact. It does not have to affect Nora’s writing time. Fact. A publisher does sit on MS’s when it is prudent or they are waiting for an event before they release. Fact. Publishing trilogies a year apart is simply a marketing strategy. Fact. I am reading the book for a second time. Fact. I will read it again before the next book drops. Fact. That does not mean I cannot comment on the fact that the publisher, that controls the release date, cannot change the release dates. If you do not want people to post facts-do not have a blog open for comments.

Of course, I don’t agree with her going off the rails on Nora Roberts. Nora does what her publisher tells her to do, and that’s it. All Nora cares about is writing a good book, and she does. Four times a year.

But what this does tell me is that Debra reads a lot of small press and indie. Indies and small presses who have a lot more flexibility in their publishing schedules. Indies who write books, save them up, and rapid release them especially so their whale readers can binge an entire series in one sitting. This is definitely a different kind of publishing than what Nora does, and quite honestly, I’m expecting the worlds to collide more frequently as more and more authors turn indie and more and more readers grow aware of that fact.

Debra has forgotten that even though Nora finishes a book she’s put into a queue same as other authors. With cutbacks there are fewer editors who edit the books, and her cover artist isn’t solely working on her book. Indies are in charge of their own editing schedules and buying a premade for a book cover doesn’t have much of a wait time involved.

Where does that leave us? Especially those of us who write romance? When customer demand outweighs supply, that can be a good thing, right? Except when indies try to write ten books a year and get burnt out on reader expectation.

Sometimes the customer isn’t always right. Sometimes she’s a Karen who feels entitled to getting what she wants when she wants it. I’ve seen that behavior more than ever before with COVID and the horrible things some authors have said about KDP (Amazon’s POD service) and IngramSpark. They forget that these call centers and POD printers are run by people. People who may have gotten sick and need to go home and quarantine to get better and prevent others from getting sick. I’ve seen some nasty treatment of workers for the POD companies right now and it’s disheartening. A sick employee doesn’t GAF where your proof is, Karen.

Indies are the same. We get sick. We have to look after sick family members, not just in COVID times, but all the time. Some of us still have day jobs and we write when we can. Some of us write through pain of carpal tunnel or other illnesses like depression. Nora, in a previous blog post some time ago has said she has dental issues and finds herself in a dentist’s chair frequently. Having had a tooth pulled a couple months ago, I can agree that teeth issues are not fun.

I won’t even get into quantity over quality simply because yes, some authors do need time to daydream, take walks, think about their book and where they need it to go, what their characters are telling them. Just because I’m not sitting at my keyboard pounding out letters doesn’t mean I’m not in some capacity writing every single second of my day. And it’s exhausting.

Debra got a lot of flack online for trollsplaining to Nora Roberts, but I’m interested in what she’s saying, even if she could have put it in a nicer way. Indies are spoiling readers. They want what they want, and they get it. And if you sign up for an indie newsletter, you get more than just the books. You get excerpts of coming books, deleted scenes, novellas, just-for-newsletter subscribers short stories and in some cases character art, word searches, crossword puzzles, and coloring pages, exclusive giveaways. It takes a lot these days to keep a reader of indie books happy, and if you don’t believe me, read Debra’s comments again.

So far, I don’t have a readership clamoring for my books, but I don’t think it would be a bad thing. At least, not until I have a Debra trolling my website hounding me for the next book.

What do you think?

Happy Monday everyone! Have a great week!

Catching up with what I’m doing and Bits and Pieces of Publishing News.

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Lately my blog posts have been a hodgepodge of little things to make up a whole post. It’s tough when you don’t have a lot going on, and sometimes I feel like my blog posts are the blind leading the blind. I don’t have much to offer in way of advice, particularly because I haven’t found anything that is working for me sales-wise.

Anyway, like everyone else, I’m glad the election is over, though I”m sure we’re far from finding peace. Hopefully that won’t deter readers from reading like it has over the past few weeks. I can’t tell you the number of authors who have complained about sinking sales. It is what it is. I’m in the hole with my ads this month and I paused all of them and created a few new ones to target holiday romance for my series. What’s really nice is that Amazon now lets you run ads to your series page which allows a reader to pick up all the books with one click.

We’ll see how that goes. I haven’t done the math to look at read-through for all my books, but I can do that now, out of curiosity. The last book was published in May of this year, so I only have five month’s of data too interpret. Using the read-through instructions and formula by Malorie Cooper on Dave Chesson’s Kindlepreneur website, read-through is dividing the copies of the second book sold by the copies of the first book sold. You have to do a little math if you’re in KU.

Remember, the number of KU pages read divided by the number of KENPC pages in your book will tell you how many books those page reads equal to.

Doing the math, I have sold 214 of the first book in my series between June 1st 2020 and October 31st. That total includes both sales and KU pages read.

I have sold 97 books (together with sales and KU pages read) of book two.

That’s a read-through of 40%. 40% of my readers who read book one went on to read book two.

A profitable series will have a strong read-through for all the books, and we can calculate read-through of book two to three doing the same math:

Book two’s sales and KU page reads was 97 books. Book three has a total of 76 books sold. (Together with sales and KU reads.) That makes read-through (76/97=) 78%

And read-through from book 3 to book 4 using all the same formulas: 88% read-through. Meaning 88% of people who read book three will finish the series and read book four.

According to Mal Cooper, my 40% read-through from book one to book two could indicate a problem. I already know from reviews that the reception of my male main character is lacklustre at best. As I’ve said in the past, a physically damaged character is neither sexy nor romantic. Besides trying to market the book as a beauty and the beast retelling, there’s not much I can really do. His injuries make the whole book. It’s nothing I can go and change to encourage read-through. My sales from book one to two will just have to be a lesson in the future. It’s also a reminder if you’re going to invest time in a series, you need to hit it out of the park or the other books won’t matter. Your book one won’t be good enough to entice readers to read them.

I will keep an eye on my ads, make sure they stay profitable. With the holiday season approaching, if I can grab a couple sales and come out ahead, it will be worth advertising.

photo taken from their website

In other news, IngramSpark has decided to give ISBNs away if you publish through them, like Kindle Direct Publishing has done all along. The only problem with that is if you publish on Amazon and use their free ISBNs, you can’t turn around and use those on Ingram. Then you take the free ISBNs from Ingram and all of a sudden your book is listed under many numbers, and that doesn’t sound good to me.

I realize buying ISBNs in the States is a big pain, not to mention very costly, but when people say you need to invest in your business, this is what they’re talking about. You need to protect your work. I buy my ISBNs from Bowker and use the same paperback ISBN on both Amazon and Ingram. That way my paperback is listed under one number. The one I paid for that belongs to me. That’s important to me. I also use an ISBN number for each of my ebooks. Some will say that’s a waste of money because Amazon will assign your book to an ASIN number, but then if you’re wide, you can’t use that ASIN number as that belongs in only Amazon’s system. So there again, you have different identifying numbers for every ebook platform you publish on.

There is has been argument in the past that you can’t use the same ISBN number for a .MOBI file and an ePub because they are different formats. Then you have people who say that a digital file is a digital file. When I went wide, I used the same ISBN number for my ebooks across all platforms and nothing bad happened. I can’t imagine this would even be an issue now that Amazon asks you to upload an ePub to their platform instead of a .MOBI file.

You can have Ingram distribute to Amazon, but I’ve heard of people having trouble with their books being available (listed “out of stock” instead) and you don’t have access to your KDP dashboard and you can’t run ads if Ingram supplies your books to KDP. It’s always better to go direct where you can. It might take a little hassle, but then, we went indie to stay in control, didn’t we?

I’m 20k into my new project, about a man tasked to finding a husband for his boss’s daughter in exchange for a portion of the company he helped build. It’s going well, though I feel like no matter how much planning I’ve done with this book, I’m pantsing it. Maybe I’m just tired or maybe I’m still not used to writing in first person present, but it’s coming along, and if I keep up the slightly faster pace than a NaNo participant, I should be done with it by the end of the month. We’ll have to see if that happens. I have a lot coming up in the next couple of weeks, namely a longer work schedule, Thanksgiving, a couple of birthdays and possible jury duty. I write when I can, though, so if not by the end of the month, by the middle of December, for sure. Here’s a sneak peak of a sliver of a scene I wrote the other day. There is potential for spin-off books, but I still have my 6 book series I need to polish to release next year. I’m grateful there is so much to write about.

Man in suit leaning against a grey stone wall. Text: I meet his eyes. They’re hard, bits of frosted green glass. “We’re beyond that now, don’t you think?” We aren’t talking about sex, we aren’t talking about love. We’re back to his fucking fifty percent and what he’ll do to get it. “I—” “I’ll fulfill my end of Dad’s bargain. Sit back and collect.” He nods, turns to go. “Don’t come back, Colt. There’s nothing between us anymore.” “Don’t fool yourself, Elayna. There never was.”
created with Canva Pro. Photo purchased on depositphotos.com

That’s going to be all for today! I hope you have a productive week! Good luck to those participating in NaNo!

Sales vs. Borrows: What they mean for your business and other rambling thoughts.

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Happy Monday from cold, chilly, and snowy Minnesota!! It’s not so happy for me since I had a hell of a week last week, and not in a good way. Unfortunately, I had a huge personal setback, and in the coming months I’ll be working a lot more hours at my day job. I don’t know what that’s going to mean for my writing. I type for the deaf and hearing impaired, and going from part-time to full-time may slow down my writing some. Not because I won’t have as much time, though that will be a factor, but I just can’t type that much without my arms and hands paying the price. Luckily, I’m in the editing phase of my books, but when it comes to future projects, they won’t be done as quickly.

girl looking over cliff text: trying to figure out your path feels like a dead end at times.

That’s okay because I’m still trying to find my way in this business, and I’m wondering if I’m really going to make it or if I have the energy to even keep trying. Everyone knows that a book a year is too slow for indie publishing (unless you’re the exception that proves the rule like Jami Albright), and I’ve seen time and again those authors who are able to only release one book a year struggle to find success. On the other hand, for the past three years I’ve been burning the candle at both ends, and all that has gotten me is a big case of burnout. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve enjoyed writing this series, and I can’t wait to publish them. But I’ve never made it a secret that I hate all the stupid crap authors have to do to find readers–newsletters, giveaways, author promotions, things like that, that take time to learn and author promotions are only as good as the authors and their books. It doesn’t help your career at all to join with an author who isn’t writing quality books. And because I haven’t declared a niche, it’s difficult to partner with authors who write what I do. I’m a loner in life, and I guess I’m a loner in this business, too.

Maybe, in a small way, it will be a relief to give myself permission to slow down. I could start reading again without guilt. I could watch Netflix without feeling like I should be writing. I’ve always scoffed at people who have hobbies other than spending all their time writing, like baking. I always thought if you weren’t putting in 20 hours a week writing that you weren’t taking it seriously, and I admit, I had a lot of scorn for people who let their personal problems get in the way of their writing schedules. I mean, I wrote books through a divorce, through carpal tunnel surgery, through my precious cat’s bladder surgery, through my son’s surgery on his back in February of this year. (And he’s still healing.) None of that stopped me. I love to write, didn’t let anything get in the way of the career I was trying to build. I won’t say it’s for nothing, because I have a decent backlist and it didn’t take me long to write and publish them. But if you factor in ad spend, I only earn pennies a day, and I’m at the point where I’m wondering if it’s really worth it. Publishing is like the lottery, you can’t win if you don’t play, but cutting down my word count to a few thousand a week sounds pretty good right about now. Yeah, I’m writing this crying my eyes out. You don’t have to tell me I need to find balance, but in a world where there are 8,000 titles published every month, it’s a bit difficult to find anything meaningful in what I’ve chosen to do with my free time. Maybe the next book I write will go on wattpad. More people will likely read it if it’s free.

Anyway, I should start a weekly “Crazy Crap I read in a FB Writing Group” segment to the blog. To make matters worse, I just joined another group, this one is called Publishing with IngramSpark, and I already hate all the stupid questions they ask that they could find the answers to if they took a minute to Google instead of asking someone to waste their time. That’s not what I wanted to bitch about however.

[Insert grin here.]

Last week there was a woman who posted that she took her book out of KU ten days after enrolling in KDP Select. Everyone told her that wasn’t enough time to make a decision like that, and I told her that a wide audience and a KU audience were different and you need time to cultivate both of them. Hopping back and forth isn’t the answer. She said her reason for going back to wide is she preferred having sales over KU borrows. Now, she wasn’t getting any borrows–if you’re not doing ads KU subscribers aren’t going to know your book even exists. So her sales dried up and weren’t replaced with KU reads. That’s common switching from wide to KU.

But it made me wonder: would you prefer a sale or a borrow? A sale gives you the royalty and the sales rank boost, a borrow will only boost your sales rank–you don’t get paid unless the customer starts reading, and even then you may only get partial royalties if they don’t finish. That’s information Amazon doesn’t share with us. It would be nice to know if out of 330 pages read, if that was one person who enjoyed the book, or several people who borrowed and couldn’t get past the first chapter then returned it unfinished.

An author who may not be confident in their book may not like being in KU. Is it safe to say only the “really good” books thrive in KU? The ones that are well-written and have a fantastic story that make the reader read until the very end? You can only reap the benefits of KU if your book is good enough for a reader to make it to the end. And forget it if you’ve written a series without a strong first book. No one will read the others, and the books will sit in KU without reads or sales. I looked up her books, and she had one book, and one on preorder. She’s searching for the brass ring, but she’s not going to find it with so few books and jumping around from platform to platform. I wish her all the best.

Being that this will be my last blog post of the month, and that November is one of the craziest months of the year for me (my daughter has a birthday, Thanksgiving, and my birthday not to mention any Christmas shopping I want to do happens in November because I refuse to go into a store in December) my blog posts for the rest of the year may be a little spotty. I’ll share my stats now, and then maybe do a year-end recap toward the end of December. And no, I’m not doing NaNo this year. I never do it. I’m never in a good place in my publishing schedule to do it, and I won’t set anything aside to work on something new. This is probably the only time my tunnel vision has helped me. I don’t like working on multiple projects–I won’t get anything done that way.

Anyway, so my ad spend, while not as fabulous as it was in August (still waiting for those royalties to dump into my account) I spent $48.36 as of this writing, the 25th of October. I’ll probably spend $50.00 maybe a little more, by the end of the month. This is over ten ads. I had to stop the ads for Wherever He Goes. I lost eight dollars before I paused them. I don’t know what’s wrong with that book, but I’m never going to make it move. Maybe it’s still the cover, maybe I can’t make the blurb work, but I’m tired of trying. I love the story, but it’s not going anywhere.

For sales, I’ve made $116.99. I’ll probably make it up to $120, maybe $125 by the end of the month.

After ad spend I’ll make about $75.00 in royalties. It’s not terrible, and my next books won’t be in third person past, so it is what it is. That goes back to the burnout thing and wondering where my writing career is going. Success is a great motivator, and if you don’t have any, it’s tough to keep going.

If you’re wondering how I’m doing without Twitter, I’m doing pretty great, actually. I don’t miss it as much as I thought I would. I’ve only popped on once to follow back and someone messaged me to ask for support during a virtual author interview over on FB. If I tweet anything new, I can do it from the platform I’m on, like the WordPress reader or the Bookbub blog, and that helps too. Maybe I’ll go back, maybe I won’t. For right now I don’t see the value in it. Hopefully, that will change.

Have a wonderful finish to October, and don’t forget to vote! Do it for my birthday (November 28th)–that would be the best birthday present a girl could ask for.

Until next time!

Tuesday Thoughts, Large Print, and Getting Rid of Twitter

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Hi, everyone! I know I usually post on Mondays, but to tell you the truth, I’ve been struggling with finding things to blog about lately. I go through that sometimes. I feel like anything I have to say has already been said a million times by someone else, and especially when it comes to writing and publishing, I don’t have much new to share.

I did decide to take a Twitter break, and if you follow me, you can either friend me on FB, or like my FB author page and we can touch base that way. I just couldn’t take the negativity anymore, and it was bringing out my own negativity toward other people. Twitter as a whole is very emotional, and I just can’t handle how sensitive (and insensitive) people can be and when they lash out because of it. I’m not a fragile flower, but geez, there are only so many times I can be “put in my place” without feeling it. To be perfectly honest, I don’t feel like a whole lot of people are writing over there anyway, and it’s not such a great place to find supportive writers who want you to succeed. Last week, I made a graphic and congratulated an author on her release, and she never bothered to retweet it. I think that was the start of me being so discouraged I just wanted to leave. If you can’t support me supporting you, then why are you on there?

twitter logo bird with a red circle through it. no more twitter

I didn’t delete my profile or deactivate my account, but I did pin a “see you next year” tweet to my profile and I deleted the app off my phone. I logged out on my laptop to remind myself when I go on there just to go on there that I’m trying to break the habit. I’m sure it’s one of those things where I’ll go through withdrawal for a few days and after it’s over I’ll feel better.

I blogged about doing large print for The Years Between Us, and I got the proof in the mail the other day. It looks great! I approved the proof and I didn’t have any problems with KDP flagging it as duplicate content. I may do some other books as time allows, though Amazon has stopped putting Large Print as a buying option on the book’s product page. So even though I know there are visually impaired people who would appreciate a Large Print book, I have to weigh time versus return on investment. In the scheme of things, doing the Large Print didn’t take very long, so I could do most of my backlist in the next year or so if I did one per month. We’ll see how it goes. I buy all my own ISBNs, and I have to keep in mind that expense as well. With the way Ingram has been glitching lately and not accepting Vellum files, this book is only available on Amazon, and I didn’t check the box for expanded distribution. I’m impressed that I could price it at 14.99 and still make a couple dollars. In expanded distribuion, I would have made fifty-six cents.

I’m still editing my series, and I suppose that’s going to be something you’ll hear from me for the next little while. I get discouraged when I think about needing to figure out newsletter stuff. I’ve looked around StoryOrigin, and I don’t think I’m going to be using it for right now. I feel like authors forget that cultivating a newsletter list is more than just getting people to sign up for it. You’re supposed to be collecting emails from readers who are going to be fans of your work and support you. I may get the newsletter stuff figured out so I can encourage them to sign up in the backs of my books and aim for as many organic signups as possible. I don’t want to lure readers with a free book to sign up. I know that’s the thing to do, but freebie seekers will cost money eventually because you’ll pay for them to be on your list but they won’t buy when you send out email blasts about a new release.

You guys, I know the rules, but I’m tired of playing this game. I just wanna write and make money doing it. Yep.

Well, I don’t have much else. I did Bryan Cohen’s ad profit challenge, but he didn’t offer anything new from what he showed us in his last challenge. I don’t think I’ll be doing any more of those, though I have met some nice people doing them.

I’m always on the look out for new non-fiction to read, but I haven’t been reading much since I’ve started working from home. It’s a lot easier to get words down now that I am, and I’m reading less. Which is probably why I’m all dried up when it comes to blogging. That said, I’m still listening to podcasts, and the Six Figure Authors podcast has Sara Rosett on this week. She wrote a non-fiction book about writing a series. Since that is one thing I’ve managed to make myself bend for (I prefer standalones) I figure anything that could make the process more tolerable (and profitable!) I need to look into. I ordered How to Write a Series, and I will tell you how I like it. I didn’t realize there is also a workbook that goes with it until I accidentally clicked on it trying to grab the link for you all. Check them out!

You can find these on Amazon here.

If you want to listen to her interview on the podcast, you can find it here:

Thanks for reading!

Author Musings and what I’m working on now.

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a woman looking through binoculars. text says looking forward to the weekend

I’m sorry I didn’t post on Monday! There hasn’t been a lot going on and I didn’t have any updates. I finished the last book in my series, and I’ve already read through it, fixing typos and deleting repetition. Since then I’ve started at the beginning, and I’m in the middle of my second editing pass of book one. I can tell I was still getting to know my characters and getting used to writing in first person present. Hopefully I won’t have to do this much editing for the other books. As I said in a different blog post, I’m not going to edit the hell out of these. I want to clean them up, but I don’t want my writing to sound cardboard, either. It’s a balancing act, for sure.

Just to see how easy it is to make a Large Print version of my books, I did The Years Between Us, and I ordered a proof that should be here Saturday. Vellum has a crazy easy way to change your file into large print (just check the box!) and adjusting the spine to my cover in Canva was pretty easy too. The only thing I’m worried about now is that someone in one of the FB groups I’m in said Amazon blocked her Large Print book because the content was too similar to another book she published. Of course it’s similar, its the same one! While there are a lot of authors who have successfully published large print versions of their books, I’m worried now that when I look over my proof and approve it, Amazon’s quality content team will reject it. I buy my own ISBNs from Bowker, and this person uses the free ISBNs from KDP print, so I’m hoping that my own ISBN will help. She’s appealing their decision to block her book, and I hope I don’t have to go through the same process. It’s tough because I’ve heard that Amazon is just swamped and to get any real help can take days if not weeks.

I’m doing Bryan Cohen’s Amazon Ad Profit Challenge, though right now he’s going over information that I’ve heard many times before in his other challenges. He always puts new information into every challenge, so it’s worth it to take the time to watch all his videos, even if they feel repetitious. His FB group is very busy (with 11k members!) and I scroll through it a lot more than I should. It’s interesting to see how freaked out people get about putting up an ad and then not seeing impressions or getting any clicks. If you’re doing the challenge, or even if you’re not and you’re not seeing any activity on your ads dashboard, you have to remember a couple things:

  1. Ads sometimes never turn on. Your dashboard may say they are delivering, but they never do deliver impressions or clicks. You can turn them off if you want, but there’s no harm in keeping them going. They aren’t costing you money, and you never know if one day they’ll start to deliver.
  2. Make sure if you’re running category ads or automatic placement ads your categories are relevant to your book. What people don’t understand is Amazon won’t show your ad no matter how much you bid if they don’t find your book relevant to the audience you’ve chosen. You can add new categories to your book (besides the two that you chose when you published) by emailing KDP or Author Central and asking. This also means if your book is a new release and you don’t have any also-boughts associated with your book yet, it may take a while for Amazon to understand what kind of book you’re selling.
  3. Sales have dropped for everyone. People are dismissing the election, COVID, and the holidays that are coming up. You know, people only read when they feel like reading. Run all the ads you want, but if people are busy, stressed out, or have other books in their TBR piles, your sales are going to slow down (I’m looking at you, Sept 2020 book-dump).
  4. Your book isn’t the best out there. As I’ve said in the past, 2,000 books are published every month since COVID has come along and obliterated life as we know it. You may think your book is special and that people can’t wait to get their hands on it, but come on. You have to be realistic. You’re fighting against a tsunami of books, a handful of ads isn’t going to cut through all that noise. Be patient, create more ads, make sure your metadata is relevant to your book, and try to get some reviews.

I can sound a little callous, but all I can do is shake my head at the frenzied posts people write after they’ve created an ad. We all want our books to sell, but sometimes we forget that we are selling books, and the most important thing is the story. There was even one person who started the challenge, and then she was like, “Do you have to have a book published to do this?” Ummm. Yes? Otherwise what you running ads to?

I can understand being excited to market your books, but you gotta keep in mind you have to have a product people want to buy or your marketing efforts will be for nothing.

I really don’t have much else. I try not to get too involved with the FB groups. I’m slowly realizing that a lot of people ask for advice, but they are not in the mindset to take that advice. They’re going to go their own way no matter what you, or anyone else, tells them. They already have it in their head that they’re going to do what they are going to do, and that’s it. You can point out their cover isn’t good, or won’t fit in with the genre, you can tell them the blurb they spent hours working on still isn’t good enough, you can tell them anything, but if they aren’t ready to accept what you’re telling them, it’s a dead end and a waste of time for you. It goes against my nature to give up on people because I’m a helper, but I’ve wasted a lot of time in the past helping people who didn’t really want it, and the only loser in those scenarios was me. People definitely need to learn from their own mistakes, and that might mean losing out on sales and wasting money on ads because they were too attached to their cover to change it. Not my circus, not my monkeys.

The weeks are flying by, and I didn’t have anything to write about last Monday, and I have no idea if I’ll have anything to share this Monday. I think a lot of people now are just trying to get through the election and the end of the year. If you have a question or want my thoughts on anything, give me a comment and I’ll blog about it. I’ll do what I can to help!

If you’re curious about Bryan’s ad challenge, you can still sign up. He keeps the videos up for a few days after the challenge, and you’ll have plenty of time to start from the beginning. Look here for his first video: https://www.bestpageforward.net/oct-2020-challenge-prep-work/?fbclid=IwAR0Heh32rbee0G8FYemPAPCSQnyqVBKFiOkiIB-3E_5hz3IFjBjtzHb1wVA

Until next time!