Category Archives: self-publishing

Mid-August Check-in and What I’ve Been Doing

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August 2019 blog photo

I usually have some writing-related blog post today, or commenting on something in the publishing or independent publishing space, but today I’ll just update you on what I’ve been doing, what I’m reading, and the things I’m going to try to do before the holidays hit. Christmas is in 128 days, if you can believe it!

It’s hard to believe summer is almost gone, and my daughter (maybe your kids already are) is going back to school in a couple weeks. I’ve done a bit of back to school shopping for her and ordered her pictures online.

I live in Minnesota, so I’m not looking forward to summer’s end. In fact, it’s always nice if the snow can hold off for as long as possible. Last year, we had a bad winter while I was recuperating from surgery and if we only get half the snow that we got last year, I’ll be happy. I’ll be figuring out my new writing rhythm when my daughter goes back to school, and that will take a little time to adjust to, but it shouldn’t be that bad. My work schedule won’t change, so that’s nice.

I changed All of Nothing‘s cover, blurb, and keywords. It’s still too soon to say if they made a difference.

But I am also doing the same for Wherever He Goes.

This is the old cover:

wherever he goes old cover jpg

Pretty and sweet. I have no qualms about it, but it also doesn’t give off the steamy contemporary vibe. So I changed it to this:

wherever he goes new cover jpg

They are both dressed, but I feel it ups the steam factor a bit. I also rewrote the blurb, but I won’t get into that, eventually I’ll get to the keywords. Looking for those will be interesting, as it’s a road trip romance, and that’s a sub-genre I know exists, but I haven’t seen the category for it on Amazon. I ordered a proof so I can see how it looks in print, but the ebook cover is already live. I’ve gotten great feedback on it, so for the skill I have and for the cost I paid ($7) I think it’s a nice change.

Of course, IngramSpark is giving me another pain in the ass about it. Since I published on Amazon, they are saying my ISBN is in use and not mine. I didn’t click on expanded distribution on KDP Print, so the ISBN should be (and is) available for other retailers. It’s just more going around in circles I’m going to have to do with them. Plus they keep insisting I didn’t build my cover within the correct guidelines, but I did. So, I think after I get this book straightened out with them, I won’t be using IS for expanded distribution anymore. Until they can become more indie-friendly, I’ll stick with Amazon.

I can honestly say that through all this wide business and going back and forth, I’ve learned what matters and what doesn’t.

Now that all my covers are how I want them to be for a while, I’ll be focusing on finished up my quartet. Officially called A Rocky Point Wedding (Books 1, 2, 3 and 4) I started book four a couple days ago, and I’m 10,000 words into it. At this point I’ll be trying to figure out covers and get a more concrete idea of what I want. I don’t know what I want yet, and when I don’t feel like writing I poke my eyes out look at stock photos. If I thought doing my trilogy was a pain, this quartet will be the death of me.

I am planning on a slow release . . . possibly one book a month, and while I’m releasing I’ll take a break write a new standalone that I’ve been planning for a while.

But first, book four. This book has its own plot to figure out, plus wrapping up wedding stuff. I do have a book 0 I could write if I ever feel like revisiting Rocky Point, or if I ever feel like starting a newsletter, I could write a prequel novella and offer that as a newsletter sign-up cookie. So there’s that potential, anyway.

I’m reading a really great book right now called Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Paperback by Manjula Martin. It has a lot of great essays in there by authors like Cheryl Strayed. They talk about giving work away for exposure and opportunity, living in poverty while trying to make it big, what they do with their advances if they do. I’m enjoying it a lot so far, and I recommend it if you’re interested in the money/business side of writing.

If you like books like that, I also recommend The Business of Being a Writer (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by Jane Friedman. She breaks down the publishing industry and what you can do to make money off your writing. Being that it’s always being said writers can’t make a living wage anymore, I like to hear other people’s opinions.

August 2019 podcasts graphic blog post

I listen to a lot of podcasts, too, and here are some of my favorites:

Joanna Penn. The Creative Penn Podcast

We know she’s a powerhouse in the indie space, and she has a lot of great guest interviews. I don’t listen to every episode, and I have to pick and choose what tips I jot down for my own use since she’s a big believer in being wide, but overall I her podcasts are very useful.

***

The Sell More Books Show hosted by Jim Kukral and Bryan Cohen

These guys used to talk about the news, and they still do, but they have started to pad their podcast with “news” of indies making money. They don’t get into the hows or the whys (not in great detail, anyway), and if you’re not a member of the 20booksto50k group on FB (where they cull these stories) you’re not able to dig out the nitty-gritty details for yourself. I understand there are slow news days, and I listen for the big stories like Dean Koontz moving to Amazon from a Big Five. They pull stories from other places like the Hot Sheet by Jane Friedman and Porter Anderson, and if you don’t subscribe to that newsletter, this is one way to hear about the stories they report.

***

Stark Reflections by Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Mark’s a super nice guy, and I can’t wait to meet him at the Career Author Summit in Nashville in 2020. With so much history in the industry, his podcasts are very interesting to listen to, and he also has a bevy of author and publishing expert interviews. In the last podcast I just listened to, he interviewed Craig Martelle, who puts together the 20booksto50k conferences with Michael Anderle.  As with Joanna’s, I pick and choose what I want to listen to. Mark moved from Kobo to Draft2Digital, so it goes without saying he’s a big cheerleader of also being wide.

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Self-Publishing Formula hosted by Mark Dawson and James Blatch

I listen to this one off and on. He has great interviews with authors and industry professionals, too, and again, I just pick and choose what I like to listen to by reading the details of the podcast episode. Sometimes they can get a little heavy with advertising their courses, but they all sell something, so listening to them tout their wares is going to be part of listening to a podcast.

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Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast hosted by Lindsay Buroker, Joseph Lallo and Jeffrey M. Poole and Laura Kirwan.

These guys took a break this summer, and so far Lindsay hasn’t said when they are coming back. She alluded to them changing their format, so I’m looking forward to them doing more episodes. Even if you don’t write Fantasy or Sci-fi, this is a great podcast to listen to. Keep an eye out for new episodes.

***

Print Run Podcast hosted by Erik Hane and Laura Zats

Erik and Laura are agents at a literary agency in Minneapolis, MN, and that was one of the primary reasons for listening. They talk about a lot of the literary stuff in the state, and if I had a more dependable car, I would go to some of them (the Twin Cities is a 4.5 hour drive away from where I live). But anyway, being that they are agents, they give an inside look at the traditional publishing industry. The last episode I listened to, though, they talked about Dean Koontz and his defection move from the traditional publishing marketing space to move to Amazon. They didn’t say very nice things about it, or about Amazon in general, and be aware, if you’re an indie making money off Amazon, that that is their stance. If you can look past their bias, their takes on books and publishing can be interesting at times, though they defend traditional publishing and an agent’s place in it (of course). Publishing is publishing though, and whether indie or trad, they all fit together, so keeping an ear to the ground isn’t a bad thing.

ku graphic

My books have been moved back to KU since the first of August. I boosted an announcement to that effect on from my FB author page and that grabbed a little attention. I used the audience I created for one of my ads for The Years Between Us that didn’t do anything because my ad copy was poor and the pictures I used weren’t the best. I ran two ads for three days a piece and I think I got one sale. But I blame the ad and the copy and the fact I was just messing around to get a feel for the platform. Anyway, so I already had an audience I’d created for that, so I used it and I think I got about 150 likes ad and a little engagement. It will take some time to let people know my books are in KU again, and I haven’t been very vigilant about it because I’ve been changing out covers.

Seeing page reads again is fun, I’ve made $21.00 since moving my books back to KU. You can look at my numbers in this blog post, but I can tell you that during my two months wide I made $66.00. So in a week with just a little boosted post on FB I’ve made 33% of what I made with wide while spending money on a Freebooksy ad. I feel better being in KU and I don’t check my numbers all the time like I was doing when I was wide. That is all KU reads though, not sales. I think I may need to research price more as maybe $4.99 is a bit too expensive for books by an unknown author. I said in a previous post that it was freeing being back on one platform and it is. I feel like I can focus more on the work instead of sales, and with a small backlist, writing is more important to me right now.

Well, that’s the personal update I’ve got for you. In my next blog post I’ll tell you about my experience with Booksprout, and if it’s useful or not.

Thanks for reading!

end of blog post graphic

Choosing Amazon to self-publish. What’s so bad about it? My answer? Nothing.

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amazon love hateWarning! Lots of thoughts that are a bit scattered, but I try to keep them coherent at least. I’ll blame writer’s brain and the fact that I’m almost done with book three of my series. Yay!

Okay . . . carry on.

 

If you read my blog here in there, you’ll know my feelings toward Amazon are complicated, with a capital C.

But I’m not alone.

There are lots of people who think Amazon is either a devil or an angel, depending on who you talk to, and if it’s on Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. (On Sunday you might find a select few in church praying for Jeff Bezos’s soul.)

Dean Koontz’s book deal with Amazon only added gasoline to this already wicked fire. Was he smart? Greedy? Some accused him of starting the toppling of the traditional publishing model, although a few other bigger-named authors have inked deals with Amazon too, like Sylvia Day, with less scrutiny.

Everyone is quick to point fingers, but the fact is, traditional publishing has been on a decline for years because they cling to an old model that is no longer working in the changing landscape.

Depending on huge bestsellers like Stephen King, Nora Roberts, John Grisham, and James Patterson is harmful. People who champion this say coddling the big authors funds the little authors. But I questioned this in two ways. The mid-list is shrinking. Who exactly are they funding? And more importantly, if new authors are not being sought out, their careers nurtured, who will replace these top authors? We can’t depend on all authors like Stephen King to have children who will take over their publishing empires.

One of the most frustrating things about traditional publishing is the lack of risk-taking. Yes, they are the gatekeepers of quality, but while they are busy keeping quality inside their walls, they are also keeping quality out, too. Only so many books are published every year—and those numbers include already established authors. There’s no room to grow.

Yes, they are the gatekeepers of quality, but while they are busy keeping quality inside their walls, they are also keeping quality out, too.

No one ever said if you want to be rich write a book. Some publishing houses or small presses won’t give an author an advance anymore, and if they do, it isn’t much.

Traditional publishing asks a lot of writers who want to be published:

  1. Query an agent. This could take months, if not years.
  2. Go through edits with said agent, if you’re lucky enough to follow the lengthy guidelines required to query each agent and have one sign you.
  3. Wait for your agent to sell your book. If she can. And that’s contingent on a few things: what kind of book you wrote, what’s selling, and what other agents are peddling. There are not many editors to go around.
  4. Then you might have to go through more edits with that editor.
  5. Wait a year for publication.
  6. Market your own book (with a cover you may not like and edits you don’t agree with, but you wanted to be traditionally published, right?).
  7. Make a fraction of book sales because your agent and publishing house take a percentage off the top.
  8. Hope your first book sells so maybe your agent and editor will take a look at another book.

Never mind that after you’ve gone through all of that, depending on what kind of contract you signed, your book isn’t yours anymore; your rights are gone.

To be honest, the more I learn about traditional publishing, the less it appeals to me. And to other writers. And where do writers turn when they want to publish, but don’t want to go the traditional route?

Amazon.

To be clear, publishing with an Amazon imprint is still considered being traditionally published. You can’t be considered without an agent. Which does make me a bit confused. If agents are so vocal about Amazon ruining traditional publishing, how will an author find an agent willing to submit their manuscript?

I listen to Print Run Podcast and the two agents who host make it clear how they feel about Amazon, Amazon’s view on books, and what they are doing to publishing as a whole. Take a listen to their latest episode where they discuss the Koontz defection, and cross them off your querying list if you want a deal with Thomas & Mercer or Montlake.

And that brings us back to what traditional publishing thinks we should do. As authors, we want our work read, not shoved under our bed because an agent’s intern was having a bad day and rejected our query.

We turn to Amazon as self-publishing authors.

But that isn’t what enrages the traditional publishing industry. What makes them so mad is that authors who publish on Amazon are making money, and there’s nothing they can say about it, or anything to defend themselves. I’ve seen proof of writers who can make good money publishing quality books. Consistently.

Living wage money.

In traditional publishing, where does the money go? To the CEOs of the huge corporations that own the publishing houses, and to the big authors who earned the gigantic advances. There is no mid-list in publishing anymore. We’re all over on Amazon earning 70% royalties and keeping our rights to our books.

Yet, somehow this is all Amazon’s fault. Mostly because Amazon is accused of not caring about books. It’s brought up time and again Jeff Bezos started moving books because they are compact and couldn’t break.

The traditional publishing houses, and anyone associated with them, holds on to the philosophy Amazon doesn’t care about books. I can say the same about the traditional publishing industry, too. If a book doesn’t sell, you’re out. Your career, too. There are no second chances, no molding of careers. Can an industry who doesn’t pay their authors, or help them sell their books, say they care about the writer or the book? They aren’t publishing for art, they’re publishing for money, and authors aren’t getting a piece of the pie. Caring about a book and caring about selling a book are two different things, but they don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I love my books. I love selling them, too.

Maybe books are loss leader on Amazon, but that doesn’t change the fact that Amazon gives every writer something that an agent or traditional publisher won’t or can’t.

A chance.

A lot of authors take that chance and turn it into a four, five, or six figure career.

And Amazon is the bad guy?

I get Amazon lets too many things slide: book stuffers, plagiarism, letting indie authors publish crap that wastes customer dollars if they don’t look closely enough at the product. But the thing is, it doesn’t make them any different than any other company. Everyone has bought something brand new from a store that didn’t work when it should have. People buy cheap crap, because stores sell it, all the time. It doesn’t make it right, but Amazon isn’t doing anything new.

You can say they treat their employees like crap, but again how is that different from any other company? We all have not-so-nice things to say about where we work. Walmart is a huge culprit of this. Not long ago it came out that their workers were working off the clock to get all their work done.

Questionable ethics abound. Starbucks employees are racist. McDonald’s serves unhealthy food. Jimmy John’s founder trophy hunts. No one stops drinking coffee, and McDonald’s is still the number one fast food restaurant in the United States.

Authors don’t have a problem making money doing something they love. And if everyone else does, it’s time to do something about it.

Traditional publishing isn’t letting more authors in. Every year they keep more out.
Barnes and Noble is still in shambles, though it would be great if the new owners could give Amazon a run for their money. Apple Books doesn’t seem to be a contender, and you have to jump through more hoops than a circus tiger to publish with Google Play. When I was wide, Draft2Digital wasn’t able to publish my books there.

Everyone can complain about Amazon, but no one is stepping up to compete. Shouldn’t that be what the traditional publishing industry’s job?

Dean Koontz obviously felt that his publishing house wasn’t going to give him what he wanted or needed for the next handful of books in his career.

That’s not Amazon’s fault.

Amazon may not love books, but they are forward-thinking and are willing to pay authors for their work.

What do you have to say, traditional publishing industry?

Seems like all you can do is point fingers when you’re the only one in the room who can do something.

Untitled design

All this paper is good for something. I’d rather write another book for my backlist than take the time to query agents who will reject me.

I may have vented some frustration with Amazon in the past, but the truth is, writers should go where the money is, and for now that’s KU for the page reads and a 70% royalty  for self-publishers (or an imprint if you can get it). With no one else willing to give authors competitive alternatives, I’ll take my chances.

And instead of writing 500 query letters, I’ll take that time to write another book.

It’s important to note that in some genres it makes more sense to query. I write Contemporary Romance. That’s one of the top genres that does well in the self-publishing space. YA fantasy, middle grade, and picture books do better when you can take the time to query. I’m not saying you can’t self-publish, but those kinds of books require a different kind of marketing, and you’ll need to do your research and make sure you understand how you’re going to reach your audience once your book is self-published. Always research the best way to publish your books.

There’s a lot of opinion on the state of publishing and whether or not querying is a viable option. Amazon is accused of not caring about books, and training readers to want free things. Traditional publishing is accused of not moving forward and staying in the past. It’s interesting to take a look at all angles and read different sides to different stories. For more reading look here:

You can read another opinion piece from the New Yorker, here.

This is a great read on both sides. PUBLISHING INDUSTRY NEWS
Amazon’s Influence on Authors & the Publishing Industry

Stay Away From Traditional Book Publishing by Dean Wesley Smith

Downtime. Not doing a damn thing.

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You know how it is. You have a long list of things you could be doing. As writer, publisher, and entrepreneur, that list is long. There’s always something, and writing new words is right on top.

What’s after writing?

  • Writing a blurb.
  • Looking at hot guys stock photos
  • Reading a non-fiction book
  • Listening to a podcast
  • Beta reading
  • Reading  a book in your genre
  • Creating an ad (after you’ve read the book about it, of course)
  • Blogging, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs

But sometimes you turn on your laptop, a cat crawls into your lap, and boom. You’re tired, and you’d rather watch the next episode of Outlander than see if your blurb is converting (if you don’t know what that means, you need to read Mastering Amazon Descriptions: An Author’s Guide: Copywriting for Authors by Brian D. Meeks. Another thing you can add to your list! Yay!)  I’m sure Diana Gabaldon thanks you. But I probably should point out that without her writing the words, there would be no show. Maybe Outlander was a bad example.

I’m in that predicament tonight. The things that I could be doing right now? Working on the new cover for All of Nothing. Working on the blurb. Writing more words for the third book in my Wedding Party series.

Instead I’m sitting with a fan blowing on me. I’m a little nauseated from sipping too much Prosecco on an empty stomach. I was grinding my teeth in my sleep last night so I have a toothache on the left side of my jaw, top and bottom, that feels a little more than mild, and all in all, I’m just tired.

And feeling like this is always a conundrum. Do you give in, or push through? Give in and practice a little , or do you, in fact, get some shit done?

I suppose it depends on where you are in your schedule. Don’t have one? Well, nothing gets done simply by dreaming, and if you give yourself a pass too many times, you’ll end up with a handful of days where nothing got accomplished. A schedule isn’t a bad thing.You need to be a self starter and self motivator if you want to keep getting your stuff done. It can keep you on track. A schedule or a plan can at least be a guide in that if you do start letting too many days go by, you can tap yourself on the back and ask yourself what the heck is going on.

Taking a break to breathe is advisable, but if you want books to publish, you have to write them, too.

I could put on some coffee and at least get one or two small things done. Work on my blurb. Look over what I have for my cover. I’d like to swap them out so the book is ready to go when I put all my books back into KU next month. The cover is going well, and I’ll update you on that probably Thursday. I’ll be swapping out the cover for IngramSpark, too, so that will be lovely, though I’m getting used to the IS user interface and dealing with the cover template isn’t so hard anymore.

I had a soft deadline of getting book three done by the end of the month. I’ll be close, but maybe not finished. But that’s okay. Without the deadline I probably wouldn’t have made as much progress as I did. I’m proud the book is almost done. It’s a good book with a strong plot and relateable characters. It seems crazy to say that I’ll have finished three books this year.

But I guess that’s the point of this blog post. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that had I given myself too much downtime.

For tonight I’ll try to calm my stomach down, make some coffee, and see if I can check one thing off the list before going to bed.

I’m going to a writer’s meeting tomorrow, so that should be interesting. I’m not a joiner, and while I know the value of networking, I can’t lie. More than a little bit of me wants to skip it.

When you decided to be a writer, did you know how many people would be involved?

I didn’t either.

I feel like I should offer you something since you made it this far and have given me 15 minutes of your time or so, so I’ll end my blog post with this.

I recently read Make Money on Medium: Build Your Audience and Grow Your Income with Medium.com. I’m always open to new things, but after reading the book I realized I don’t want to write for Medium–I like blogging for the audience I already have. But whether you’re a blogger or a Medium writer, Nicole gives some good tips for what to write, how to write, and headlines. I’ll share one little tip that she tells her readers about, and that is a blog title, or headline evaluator.

Headlines or titles are important in that you don’t want your readers guessing what your content is about. You could have a GREAT blog post, but no one will read it if you title it something weird. (That goes for book titles too, but that would be a different blog post.)

There are a few headline generators, and you can Google them.

Coschedule.com will analyze your title (if you give them a few pieces of info about yourself and your business) and tell you if it’s too weak. It didn’t like the title I came up with for this blog post:

blogtitle analyzer

Nicole suggests that you want your book to be at 80 or better. She even admits that she might spend more time thinking up a good headline or title than actually writing the post. That seems crazy, but on the other hand, no one is going to read what’s inside if the title isn’t appropriate, so she isn’t that far off the mark. Being she’s a HUGELY popular writer on Medium, I would take her word for it.

You can plug in titles forever, but just to see what I could do, I changed my title:

blogtitle analyzer2

That’s actually a vast improvement, but a lie. That’s not what this post is about. Mainly it’s about not feeling guilty if you don’t feel like doing anything, but also keeping those feelings under control so your to-do list doesn’t look like Mount Kilimanjaro by the end of the week/month/year. Everyone knows how fast time goes.

Anyway, if you’re interested in writing for Medium.com I suggest you take a look at Nicole’s book. She offers you some great tips on how to get started, how to follow and pick up followers, and how to write for a pub. If you’re on the fence about blogging, but feel you should be giving out content in some way to get your name out there, writing for Medium could be a good way to do that.

What am I going to do now? I still haven’t shaken off my blahs, but I did take some Aleve for my mouth and made a cup of coffee.  I could work on my blurb or watch another episode of Outlander.

I’ll let you guess which one.

Have a great week!

thank you for your patince

Changing your Point of View: How you write, and thoughts on 1st, 3rd, past and present tense

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change pov blog post

Change comes whether we want it to or not. Sometimes change happens so slowly you don’t know it’s happening. Sometimes you’re not paying attention and the old way you’ve taken for granted is suddenly gone.

This happened to me, though I think I was more in denial this was happening than embracing the change. Maybe I was hoping it would go away, or maybe I was hoping the old way would hang in there. The latter may still have a chance, but the former isn’t going to happen.

What am I talking about? The way fiction is being written. Not even by indies, as this change has been happening with the traditionally published books in the past couple of years as well.

To explain, let me go back.

Like all writers, I grew up reading. Nancy Drew, The Babysitters Club, Sweet Valley High. Slowly, I graduated to Sweet Dreams romances, VC Andrews and Harlequin Desires and Temptations.

And looking back, I realize there is one thing all those books have in common–they were written in third person past tense.

It stands to reason then, that when I began writing my own stories, I too, wrote in third person past since I grew up reading it. Never would I think this way would become outdated, but I’m afraid that it has.

Now books today are written in first person present, and that doesn’t seem like that’s going to change any time soon. Take a look at any new book, especially a romance in Kindle Unlimited, and you’ll see what I mean. I liken this to how Mike Campbell loses all is money in the The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway:

“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually and then suddenly.”

It seems as if first person snuck up on us, and then suddenly it was everywhere.

And as a writer who writes in third person past, this is troubling because this isn’t about catching a trend or even writing to market, it’s about adapting to change as not to be left behind.

It used to be first person, be it past or present, served one purpose–the sole reason why the writer chose to use first person when writing their novel: to tell the story of “I.”

change pov blog post2

Who was the “I?” A girl with magical powers? A young boy out to seek his fortune? The author chose that way as a device to tell that ONE person’s story through their eyes. Middle grade and YA were (are) written in that fashion so the young readers could more easily envision themselves in that role.

I can’t remember the first person book I ever read–and I must have read some; they weren’t non-existent as I was growing up, but they obviously didn’t make an impact on me. And when I was a young adult, and now a “real” adult myself, I don’t read much YA.

And maybe this is the point.

I’m outdated. At forty-four years old, I’m writing in a way that is being used less and less, except by the authors who have been writing for as long as I’ve been reading. Nora Roberts, Brenda Novak, Robin Carr.

When you read and enjoy first person books, that is what you’ll probably write. Books like the Hunger Games, Twilight, 50 Shades of Gray took the lead of a style of writing that is prominent now. You may be shaking your head, but think to when those books were written and how popular they were. The first book in the Hunger Games Trilogy was published in 2008. Twilight, 2005. Divergent, 2011.

I’m an old lady.

When thrillers and romances are now being written in first person (and present, too) where do you fit in if you like to write in 3rd person past tense, or even 3rd person omniscient?

I write contemporary romance, and when others who write in my genre use first person, it confuses me. There is no “I” in contemporary romance, there are two characters. His and hers. Or his and his. Or hers and hers. Depending on what you write. There is no single “I” on a journey to a happily ever after. Writing a two-sided romance using first person, to me, defeats the purpose of using first person.

Is this an old way of thinking?

Some of the greats still use 3rd person past, Nora Roberts holds true. So does Susan Mallery. Brenda Novak still does, and Robyn Carr as I mentioned above. The Harlequin lines, though they are going through some rearranging at the moment, still seem to publish 3rd person past romances, at least their little pocket romances like their Intrigue and Desire lines.

And to really confuse me, authors are starting to use a mix of points-of-view, and what’s even more mind-numbing is that it’s becoming popular, like The Mister by EL James. Maxim tells his story in first person present, but Alessia shares her story in third person present. I would love to ask Erica why she wrote it this way.

It seems like these days authors use POV as an artistic tool. Does it work, does it not? I have no idea. They say anything that takes your reader out of the story is bad. But what is bad is subjective.

Dark Places by Gillian Flynn tells two stories. One story is present day and written in first person past, the other story took place while the female main character was a child and it’s told in third person past. She obviously choose this as a stylistic choice. Does being with the “I” character makes us feel more intimate with her? I don’t feel it would have changed the story much had she written the present day timeline in third person past. But with the popularity of her books, no one seems to mind what tense she chooses.

Have I had any complaints when it comes to my third person books? No, not that I’m aware, but nor would I know how many sales I’m either gaining or losing because of my choice.

So what is a writer to do? Keep writing in a style you like and are good at? Practice a different POV? I’ve tried writing first person present, and I liked writing it as much as I like reading it, and that’s to say, none.

And I will always believe writing a romance in first person POV when the author intends to show both sides of a relationship doesn’t make sense, and you can pry my opinion out of my cold, bloody fist.

change pov blog post3

But it’s obvious that what is coming out by younger romance writers that my viewpoint is not shared, and it’s not shared by their readers, either.

We need to adapt with change, though. When will my dislike turn into simple stubbornness? And when will that stubbornness keep me from reading books I may otherwise have enjoyed? I can’t be an old curmudgeon waving my cane hollering “3rd person past” at every writer I meet.

Point of view can bring on choices that you need to make besides just how you want to write your book. If there’s an “anything goes” with what’s between the covers, our blurbs and ads need to reflect that. Blurbs have always been written in third person present. Some unspoken, unwritten rule has ordained this since the beginning of time, and it didn’t matter if your books were written in first, third, or alien.

Now though, if your book is written in first person, blurbs are changing to reflect that. The first book I grabbed off Amazon that is self-published and in KU happens to be written in first person past and the blurb is also written in first person. Maybe a coincidence, maybe not. Is this how blurbs need to be written now? When did the rules change, and where do you read them in the updated Author Handbook?

What about ads? Ad copy isn’t the same as writing your book, though blurbs and ad copy are cousins, I guess. Ad copy is supposed to be snappy, hook your reader into buying the book. If you sell a book with snappy first person ad copy, but your book is written in third person, will that go over well with your reader?

I have no idea. You’ll hear it in reviews though, guaranteed. Or at the very least, wasted ad money for clicks that don’t turn into sales.

Looking at “how it always used to be done” may not help in these quickly changing publishing times. For another look at how to write blurbs and in what POV look at this blog post by Writer Unboxed. The author of the article mulled it over a lot more eloquently than I did. Marketing Copy: The First- Versus Third-Person Debate

I’ll keep writing in 3rd person past. It’s how I write best.

Write how you write at your best because after all, it doesn’t matter if you write in first, third, or alien, it comes down to giving your readers a good story.

But I caution you using POV as a stylistic choice to cover up lazy, or poor, writing. If you’re going to experiment, make sure you have plenty of betas on hand to tell you if it’s working or not.

You can do whatever you want to do with your book, but you still want people to read it too. Even aliens.

change pov blog post4

That was some really bad Sunday night humor. And with that I am going to bed. I hope you all have a lovely week of writing ahead!

thank you for your patince

graphics made with font and photos from canva.com

The age-old question, ‘what do you want from your writing?’ isn’t the real question at all. The REAL question? What can your writing GIVE YOU?

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We’ve all been asked the $50,000 dollar question: Why do you write? Do you write for success? For the fame and fortune? Do you have a story that must come out no matter what? We all write for a reason, the reason that keeps us coming back to the laptop again and again.

But the fact is, after the writing is done, what can, what WILL, writing give us?

There are different kinds of writing, and each medium gives us different things:

  1. Blogging. Blogging gives us a place to vent, a place for our voice to be heard. Blogging lets us share information, be an authority. (That’s where the word AUTHOR comes from, don’tcha know?)  But blogging can only give you those things if you have an audience. Also known as, a reader who will read your blog post, maybe share it, maybe leave a comment. Your voice can only be heard if someone is listening. Will the blogger make a sound if no one is around to hear it? Yeah, and her voice sounds like this:
    wah wah wah
    You have to have good content, consistently, to find an audience who will enjoy your posts and keep coming back to you. And that’s difficult. I’ve blogged for the past few years, and finding consistent things I like to blog about and that I think others would enjoy hearing about, is downright hard. I’m not complaining, I love blogging. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. I put a lot of my heart, soul, and time into my website, and I blog to keep it current. That’s something I get out of blogging. Good SEO. Everyone once in a while someone will tell me they learned something on my blog. That’s great, too. But I understand when bloggers give up, because the time it takes, money (let’s get rid of that pesky .wordpress.com at the end of our domain addresses, okay?) and the pounding our heads into the walls to come up with ideas. Well. There’s not a lot of return on investment there, is there?
  2. Other social media. You’re writing when you post a picture on Instagram and tell your audience the story behind it. You’re writing when you update your Facebook Author page. You’re writing when you tweet. What kind of payback is there from spending time on social media? There is some. You find camaraderie, you find support. You can find people who will help you publish, both indie and traditionally. You network. You support the “big guys” by buying their books and promoting them. But besides being involved on social media for all those things, you hope one day you meet the right person who can introduce you to the next right person (hello agent!), you tweet something that goes viral, and that maybe, because you cultivated a social media following, you might sell some books. But realistically, the “might” is pretty big. Skyscraper big. Authors learn early on that joining social media and screaming
    BUY MY BOOK
    will annoy everyone very quickly, and eventually get you muted or blocked. Which, by the way, is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing. Just a little FYI in case you’re doing it wrong. Stop it!
  3. Writing books. If you ask any writer, they’ll tell you that they would still write even if no one were to ever read anything they’ve ever written ever again. And I believe that because there is something that keeps us writing. The innate human need to tell stories and to listen to stories. It’s how we learn, it’s how our cultures are passed down from generation to generation. Someone may not read our stories now, but maybe in 50 years? 60? You never know! Storytelling is in our blood. There is satisfaction in storytelling. There is happiness in typing THE END to a book or a short story or a novella. There is joy in it.
    cricket
    But anyone who has ever published a book to crickets will tell you that sometimes you better be happy with self-satisfaction because that’s all you’re going to get. I was reading my friend Dave’s blog post right before I wrote this, and he gave me the idea for this post. He went through a lot with his release. A lot of anxiety and lot of pushing through panic publishing his book. And I wonder, if you asked him, if he knew what the outcome would be, if he knew that after all he went through publishing his book, if he would do it again.
    Was the payoff big enough?
    What was the payoff? That’s different for different people. Maybe it’s simply holding it in your hand. Maybe it’s seeing it “out in the wild” when your friends and family buy it to show their support. Maybe it’s that first review. Maybe it’s that first review by someone you don’t know.

But this is what this whole post is about–this is what it took 791 words to say. Those small things, they better the hell get you through, because in this day of self-publishing, in this day when 50,000 new books are published on Amazon every month, THAT’S ALL YOU’RE GOING TO GET.

You might not believe me when I tell you this isn’t a bitter post. You probably won’t after all the whining I’ve done about sales these past few months, and the huffing and puffing I’ve done about Amazon and KU. Those days are gone because I’ve made some decisions that feel right, and come hell or high water, I’m going to stick with the choices I’ve made. (My publishing career isn’t a ball in a pinball machine–I need to stay steady to gain ANY traction.)

This isn’t a bitter post, but it is realistic. You’re not going to set the world on fire when you hit publish. Anywhere. Not on FB when you publish an updated author post, not in a Tweet, though you may get a few hundred likes, and good on you if you can. You’re not going to change the world with a blog post. Someone did that already, back in 2011.

This is a new age of publishing, and you HAVE TO find little things you love about it to keep going, or you might as well quit. You’re not going to strike it rich with a book, or two, or even six, as I can tell you. 50 might be the new 30, but it used to be you could make okay money if you had 6-10 books out, and you can’t do that anymore. Indies making any kind of money have 10+ books out. Sure there are outliers, like Jami Albright, but for us little people who don’t have the means to go to an RWA conference and rub elbows with big authors who will put us in their newsletter, success is going to come much slower. We’re talking years. And the slower you write, well . . . you don’t need me to do that math.

So the question of this blog post wasn’t what do you get out of writing? It was, what does writing and publishing give you? 

Besides bills from hiring editors and formatters and graphic designers to do your book covers, what DOES writing give you, and is it enough to keep you going until it finally gives you what you want?

And what is it you want?

Fame and fortune, of course. Fame and fortune.

thank you for your patince

Writing Burnout. Are you treating your characters like co-workers?

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is writing a job

I’m tired.

Not chronically tired like some folks I know are. Be that from having a new baby, taking care of someone who needs more help on a daily basis than normal, having a chronic illness and dealing with the pain. I mean, not like that kind of tired. That’s bone-crushing physical AND mental exhaustion.

Maybe I do feel more tired than someone who doesn’t deal with carpal tunnel on a daily basis. Yes, I had surgery on my left arm, but that didn’t take away 100% of the pain in that arm, and I do have some pain in my right arm, too. I don’t know if I’ll ever have surgery on my right arm . . . the pain was never as bad as my left, and surgery on my left arm/hand did bring my pain down from almost crying every day to a low level of discomfort that can come and go depending on how much typing I do that day. (Spoiler alert: that’s usually a lot whether I’m hurting or not.) So, to me, that was almost a 100% positive change. But I can still sleep funny and bring the pain in my back that’s connected to the nerves in my elbow roaring to life, and well, all I can do is hope I sleep better the next night.

I do realize how lucky I am because some of my friends deal with fibromyalgia, endometriosis, even cancer. Some people I know are just plain tired, and their doctors can’t find a reason for it. (And I won’t go into depression. I know that’s a different kind of struggle, and one, thankfully, I don’t have.)

But there’s a different kind of tired, that may or not be tied in with how my arms feel on a daily basis.

There’s a tired I feel from writing. I write a lot because I enjoy it. I really, really do. Anyone who is a writer who puts out consistent content enjoys it. We would have to, or we’d all be crazy in a matter of months.

I treat writing like my job, or I wouldn’t get anything done, no matter how much I enjoy it. I shoot for weekly word counts, I give myself soft deadlines I usually meet just because I like the characters I’m working with, and it doesn’t bother me to treat them like the co-workers they are.

But like any job, there comes a time when you get tired. There are one too many rude customers at the retail place where you work. If you work in a call center, maybe there is just one incident too many where someone tells you to “fuck off.” Sick of office politics, mind-numbing meetings that don’t go anywhere. Overbearing bosses who won’t leave you alone to do your job. And most of the time you can’t quit your job. It pays the electricity, pays for the food on the table, pays for the roof over your head. It pays for the laptop you use for your second job, the editing, the formatting, the cover design for the other job that you hope will maybe someday replace the first.

But in all honesty, is that second job any better?

Finding a publishing team, finding a street team, a review team, finding readers. Finding a typo in a manuscript you’ve read a gazillion times. Blah.

This isn’t a blog post turned pity-party.

But it is a blog post exploring how you can keep things fresh.

  1. Get some sleep. Let’s face it. I’m tired because a lot of the time I don’t sleep well. Our apartment doesn’t have central air, so it’s too hot, it’s too cold. It’s stuffy, and I can’t breathe. It’s always something. I have three cats, so they’re no help, either. This morning at 6:45am Pumpkin woke me up gacking up a hairball. Of course I had to get up and clean it, or the next time I got out of bed I knew I would step in it. Luckily I was able to fall back asleep (today was my day off my first job) but as anyone can attest, broken sleep doesn’t feel like any sleep. I need to go to bed earlier. That almost always helps. I just have to be a grownup and remember that just because I can stay up until midnight every night doesn’t mean I should.
    Case in point: Last night I stayed up to do this cover for Millie. I like doing covers, but probably I should have gone to bed. 🙂
    More than sisters. They're friends.
  2. Eat better. It’s easy to get caught up in the junk food thing us writers can have going on. A bag of chips while we type away? Sure. A fast food meal to give us more time to write when we get home from our first jobs? Yeah. And that goes for water, too. Put the wine and bourbon away and grab a big glass of water. The joints in your hands will thank you.
  3. Find your fun. Writing is work, no matter if you enjoy it. Designing book covers is fun, but you’re still using your creative side to make it look appealing. Blogging is fun too, but you’re still putting down ideas, and if you struggle with carpal tunnel, then it can become painful real quick. And pain can take an emotional toll. What else can you do for fun that doesn’t include writing and publishing in some capacity? Go to the pool with your kids? Go to a movie? I have movie night with my sister at least twice a month. Grab a bowl of ice cream and find the silliest thing on Netflix. Do this on a regular basis. Maybe not the ice cream part. Fruit. Fruit and Greek yogurt. And the movie. 🙂
  4. Take a break. Probably the main reason I don’t take a real break from writing is because I seriously might not ever pick it back up again. Not writing would create a hole in my life, that’s for sure. Before I wrote all the time, I ran. (I completed a half marathon in 2015.) So what would I do for that 10-15 hours a week I didn’t write? Maybe I would go back to school. Maybe I would dump my first job and get a different first job that would require more time and energy. Maybe I would stop writing, but still edit for others. I don’t know. I DO know that I don’t have to be so hardcore all the time. What if I wrote for 5 hours a week instead of 10 or 15? What if I put out one book a year instead of three? I promised myself after this quartet is published I will take a real break. A real fiction break, anyway. I have a non-fiction editing book that I want to try my hand at writing. If I can make a good go of it, it could turn into a good writing resource for other authors, and a different stream of income for me. Or maybe I’ll beta read for someone. Maybe I won’t do anything but binge Game of Thrones from beginning to end.
  5. Find your friends. Writers are notorious for being introverts. We like spending time alone. We hate the phone. But us writers are human, and we need the human contact. We need people, even if that’s in small doses. Don’t turn down the wedding you were invited to. Call up a friend and invite her to brunch. I just got invited to a writing group meeting at the end of the month. They are romance writers in my area. I would be silly to say no. So I didn’t. Some things are hard to do, and if you think it will take more energy than you are trying to save by forcing yourself to go, then don’t. Anxiety is a real thing. But you need people around you. You can die of loneliness.
  6. Improve other areas of your life. (Meaning, if you can, get rid of the aspects of your life that make you unhappy.) I got chubby after I quit running. There’s no denying health quotemy metabolism is so low its having tea in hell with the devil. I’d feel better if I lost some weight. That would probably help with my physical tiredness. I would probably sleep better. I felt great when I was running. I heard somewhere that humans, in this day and age, have no idea how GOOD the human body is designed to feel. America is rampant with overweight people, and unfortunately, that has become me, too. Could I put running/walking into my daily schedule? Sure. Would I write less, yeah. Well . . . anytime you feel better physically, you feel better emotionally, and you do better in all aspects of your life. So maybe, maybe, I wouldn’t write less. But even if I did, I would figure better physical health would be a good trade-off, and you would, too.

The fact is, writing can burn you out if you’re not careful. And I love writing too much to let myself burn out. I take writing seriously, maybe too seriously.Burn out

Even when I’m taking a break, I’m “working.” Listening to a podcast, reading a non-fiction book. Reading a writing magazine or a lit mag. It’s crazy how totally I have immersed myself in this writing business.

I need to lighten up, because I want to be in this for a long time.

How do you keep writing fun?

Joanna Penn has a great blog post on burnout, and is the author of the Healthy Writer.

To purchase Joanna’s book, look here.

My books are no longer wide. Please bear with me as I make changes to my publishing schedule and platforms. In the meantime, by books are available on Amazon (though not yet in KU as it take time for books to be unpublished various places) and you can give my Amazon profile a follow for updates on new releases. 🙂 Thank you!

My Midlife Crisis. I Mean, my Mid-Year Check In.

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It seems completely crazy to me that half the year has gone by. After a crappy winter, my first as a divorced lady, plus a surgery (old news) and dealing with a POS car on top of all that, my spring smoothed out, THANK GOD.

surgery photo

How I started 2019. This smile was before I started puking from anesthesia.

Blaze got better and is fitting into our new family dynamics. I post a lot of pictures of her and my other cats over on Instagram. If you want to follow me there, click here for my profile link.

My car, after $600.00 in repairs, is running all right, but the countdown is on to buy something better.

I published The Years Between Us in May, but that too, is old news. Though, really, it doesn’t feel like old news. It still feels like a brand new book. Not many people have read it, and it has 0 reviews on Amazon. I have it on BookSprout, and if you want to nab a copy for review through that service, click here.

I had a nice vacation last month to Georgia with my sister, and I met up with David Willis, a fellow writer I met on Twitter a couple years ago. I can’t even tell you how much I adore the ocean.

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Spring is about new beginnings. Summer about shaking off the winter, sleeping in, and picking up more hours at work. Things are going as well as anyone can say their life is going.

Planning my next six months won’t be much of an undertaking. Like Adam Croft said in a New Year’s interview with Joanna Penn, he doesn’t treat the new year any differently. He does what he needs to do to get the things he needs done to write and publish books. And I feel that way about the rest of 2019.

When you are running your own business, being a self-starter and a self-motivator is a must. No one can force you to do the work. All you can do is look in the mirror and ask yourself if you want to sell your books or not. If the answer is yes, well, you can’t sell what you don’t have.

I’ll be finishing my Wedding Party series in the next few months. I’m 18,000 words into book three. As I write, I’ve been exploring covers. Formatting will be a snap with Vellum, but to put links in the back of the books, I’ll have to publish all of them at once so the links will be available, then I’ll need to add the links to the back matter and swap out those files. It’s nothing less than what other successful indies do, but it still sounds like a pain in the ass.

Anyway, anyone keeping track of my progress knows I’m getting a little fed up with this lack-of-sales thing I’ve got going on. It’s not my way to whine–in fact I tend to avoid those who do on a consistent basis. I can’t handle how energy-sucking it can be. I need all the energy I have for myself.

In the next 12 months, you’ll be seeing a lot more progress reports from me. I’ll do this because:

  1. not all of us are making money at this writing thing, and it’s okay to talk about it.
  2. if I find something that works for me, I want to share it because it might work for you, too.
  3. I’m at a point where my backlist should be making me a little money. Focusing on writing and not marketing has been at fault, but this is why I’m experimenting now. I thought All of Nothing would be a game-changer for me, and it has been in some ways. It’s the most-read book I have. But that was luck or better timing as when I used a free day and ran a Freebooksy, All of Nothing was in KU.

Why in this business does it feel like all roads lead to Amazon_ HMMMM.

My personal life probably has a lot to do with how I look at sales. But I’m not different than any other writer using their royalties to buy a better place to live, buy a newer vehicle, or pay down credit card debt.

Anyway, I’m doing what I can and what I can afford to do.

In September, I will be a part of an author panel and luncheon at the Fargo Public Library. I’ll be able to sell my books there too. A lovely woman who connected with me via LinkedIn emailed me the opportunity, and I said yes. While it may not yield any results, it made me remember that local networking can be just as important as networking online.

Something like this makes me excited I’m wide–if, after the luncheon, the library wants to carry my ebooks in their lending catalog, my books are available in the library program through Draft2Digital.

I’ll continue to blog in lieu of a newsletter. I prefer to blog, and every time I publish a new post, I gain new followers, so thank you for reading!

This post needn’t be too long. I’m struggling to write my books and stay afloat like many others out there. Some may have it better than me, some may have it worse. But as I have said many times in the past, we can only work with what we’ve got. Keep your chin up and a smile on your face.

Why in this business does it feel like all roads lead to Amazon_ HMMMM. (1)

Care to share how your 2019 is going? Drop me a comment.

Share a little triumph that will carry you for the rest of the year. ❤

My books are wide! Find them at your favorite ebook retailer.

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!

all graphics made with Canva.com

Differences Between Your Kindle Books and Your Paperbacks, and What the Heck is Kindle Unlimited?

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There have been a few questions from people I’ve spoken with lately about the difference between ebooks and paperbacks with regards to Amazon and their Kindle Select Program.

Amazon is the number one ebook seller in the United States. Everybody who has published books will sell their book on Amazon, and they offer some benefits for authors who publish exclusively with them.

Let’s go back to basics first.

What is Kindle Direct Publishing?

KDP is the publishing arm of Amazon. This is confusing because Kindle Direct Publishing supports more than just the Kindle version of your book now. Since CreateSpace, the old platform for paperback creation, closed, KDP is where you publish both Kindle and paperback version of your book. Some refer to this part of KDP as KDP Print.

What is CreateSpace?

CreateSpace used to be the self-publishing arm of Amazon for paperback books. If an author used the free CreateSpace ISBN their book would be listed as published by CreateSpace in the product information of the book. Using CreateSpace is no longer an option.

createspace product info

What is Kindle Unlimited?

Kindle Unlimited is a reader subscription service Amazon offers readers. Readers pay $9.99 a month to read as many books as they like. They are able to borrow ten books at a time. Readers can use a Kindle e-reader like a PaperWhite, a tablet like a Kindle Fire, or the Kindle App on their smartphone or iPad. If you like reading on a device and read several books a month, this is a good deal. Independent and traditionally published books are available.

What is Kindle Select?

Kindle Select is a program Amazon offers authors if they want their books available in Kindle Unlimited.

Amazon will let readers know if a book is available in Kindle Unlimited. I suppose it’s not a surprise that the top ten books in Contemporary Romance are in KU. (But let’s not get me started on that again.)

top ten contemporary romances on amazon

When you enroll your book in Kindle Select, you are giving Amazon exclusivity of your titles that you enroll.

What does that mean?

It means your ebooks cannot be available anywhere else. Once your book is available through Kindle Unlimited, your ebook cannot be sold on other platforms like Apple Books, Kobo, or Nook. You cannot sell your ebooks on your website. You cannot blog huge portions of your book to build buzz. You cannot list your book on review services like Booksprout or Netgalley. You cannot give away your book on places like Bookfunnel as a reader magnet for a newsletter sign up.  You cannot give your book away on Instafreebie.

If you want to give away a large amount of copies or list your book on a review site, you need to do that before you enroll your book. So be sure you know what kind of marketing plan you want for your books and how you want to find reviews before you enroll.

But you can take your books out of Select, so don’t think you messed up on any promotional opportunities if you click enroll and want to change your mind. Select enrollment lasts in 90 day increments. Just remember to uncheck the enrollment box or KDP will automatically enroll you for another 90 day period when it runs out. If you really want out before your time is up, you can email them through your Author Central account, and they will take out your books. I asked them to do that for my trilogy, and they did the next day without any problems. I was polite, and so were they. Probably the reps answering your email don’t give a crap what you do–they just wanna go home like everyone else who’s at work.

There is some confusion now about your paperbacks because it used to be paperbacks were separated from your KDP account. Amazon doesn’t care what you do with your paperbacks. You can sell them at book conventions and farmers markets, sell signed copies from your website. You can publish them through IngramSpark to take advantage of expanded distribution. You don’t even have to offer a paperback. Amazon doesn’t care.

How do you get paid if your book is available in Kindle Unlimited?

Authors don’t get paid the same way as if someone buys a copy of your ebook. If your book is in KU, you get paid by the page read, and your page read royalties come out of the Global Fund. This is the banner at the bottom of the Kindle Select information page.

global fund banner

The page read rate can and will fluctuate, but the average is about .0045 cents per page. (If you ever want to know just do a Google search of Kindle Unlimited KENP rate plus the month and and year. For May of 2019 it’s .0046.) You need to do a little math if you want to know how much you make with page reads. You can see on your dashboard how many page reads you get per day/month/year.

For example, if you have 417 page reads like I did in this graph (someone was reading All of Nothing after I pulled it out of KU because they still had in their library) you multiply 417 by .0045 and you get 1.87.  So I made $1.87 for those page reads. page reads ku and koll

There’s a way to calculate how many actual book pages will equal KU page reads, but I can’t find it. Maybe someone reading this blog can post the formula in the comments. Because KU page reads aren’t the same as the actual book pages. There’s also ways to figure out how many page reads will equal one person reading your book all the way through, etc, etc, and if you want to know more and geek out on that data, you’ll have to do a little Googling to see what you can find. Because even thinking about it makes me wanna drink, and knowing how much I’m making is good enough for me.

If you write in a series and want to extrapolate read through and sales, there are ways to do this too, and Michael Cooper explains how to do it in Help! My Facebook Ads Suck!

It makes sense longer books do better (hence the popularity of bookstuffers)–the more pages read, the more you get paid.

But it’s also essential you write a good book–so readers read to the end and you are paid for the entire book. You are not going to make much in KU if your first couple of pages are boring. No matter how many people borrow your book, if they can’t get past the first couple pages, that means no page read royalties for you. That also means you want a good strong first book in a series, otherwise you’ll have no read-through and all the other books in that series will have been written for nothing.

Are there any perks for authors who enroll in KU?

There are perks, and I miss having my free days. I never did do a Kindle Countdown Deal, but those are two great ways to market your books when they are in KU. Every time I used a free day for one of my books, my KU reads always increased because of the exposure.

Anyway, that’s how Kindle Unlimited works for authors. If you read my post about Jami Albright, you can see there is potential to make a lot of money this way. It will always be up to you how you want to run your business. Many authors like Jami have no qualms about going all in with KU and reaping the rewards.  Here’s an article by Hugh Howey who did the same.

If you have a larger backlist, you can even have some books in KU and some out. I may put my Wedding Quartet into KU for the first three to six months to see how that works. I have heard of a few authors who will use KU as part of their launch strategy, and then when the page reads decrease pull their books out and offer them wide.

If you feel overwhelmed with the choices, it never hurts to just stay with Amazon. After all, it’s been proven time and again that you can make good money in KU, and I still struggle with going wide. (Which I have blathered on about enough.) Enroll in KU, enjoy the pages read. Get used to that platform before expanding your business.

As for paperbacks, I publish with KDP Print and let them fulfill to Amazon. Then I publish to IngramSpark and use their expanded distribution. I don’t mind warning you that messing with Ingram takes a little know-how, and you have to buy your own ISBN numbers to publish with them. If you don’t want to fork out for ISBN numbers (in the States) then going with KDP Print will be all that you will want to do anyway. There are days I wish I never would have started publishing with Ingram, and The Years Between Us is still not available there. Which is something I need to fix soon because I didn’t check the expanded distribution box when I published on KDP. You can read about my IngramSpark adventures here.

Indies have a lot of choices and sometimes it’s just nice to stick with one thing that you know so you won’t feel like your books are scattered all over the place like seeds on a dried out dandelion.

I hope this information was helpful to you! If you have any questions, KDP’s customer service is very nice and they are quick to help. You can also shoot me a question, either here in the comments, or my DMs are open on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

Until next time!

My books are wide! Look for them at your favorite digital retailer!

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!

 

Can Authors Write Characters They Dislike?

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As readers, we read characters we dislike all the time. That’s what villains are for, after all. They are characters we love to hate. They create horrible problems for the characters we love.

We read characters we can’t identify with and that makes us dislike them. Or they make stupid choices we don’t understand. Whatever the reason, as readers, reading about characters we dislike is common. It makes it hard, sometimes, to get into the story because characters we don’t like or can’t understand pull us out of the story and leave us frustrated.

Sometimes this is because they aren’t written well and the author gives them negative character traits in an attempt to make them well-rounded. Other times we can’t identify with characters because they are too young or too old. Not many adults who read Twilight liked Bella Swan. She was a whiny, indecisive 17 year old girl.

So, as a reader, it can happen where you stumble upon a character who is too air-headed, too boring, or just all around unlikable.

As a writer, can this happen to a character in your own story?

Can you write a protagonist you don't like blog post

Usually, we love our characters. It’s why writers write series, so they don’t have to say goodbye. Or we edit the same piece over and over again because we don’t know how to let go. It’s common for sequels to be written without being planned because a secondary character steals every scene and demands their own story to be told.

When I was writing book one of my series, Callie Carter started off as any of my female characters. She needed a change. Her backstory wasn’t as horrible as some other characters I’ve created, but she still was unhappy and she was using the two week vacation in Rocky Point to not only be a bridesmaid, but also to take a break from life and figure things out. She’s in-your-face and assertive. She goes after what she wants (unless it has to do with her job and her dad).

When she meets Mitch Sinclair, she knows she wants him. And when she sees how Mitch lives because of something that happened years ago, she promises fix it. Even if he doesn’t want her help–even if he doesn’t want to fix it.

She knows best.

Or she thinks she does.

Mitch falls for her quickly. He falls for her effervescence. He falls for her joy of life. And he falls for her because when she looks at him, she sees him, not the accident that scarred him. He’ll do anything for her.

She asks a lot of him because she wants to help him live a better life, and she pushes him out of his comfort zone.

I hated her for it.

She knew Mitch needed a change, and change can hurt. Bad. While trying to help him, defend him, as no one else had, she hurt him. And I couldn’t make her stop.

I cried for Mitch and what Callie was putting him through. But the story demanded it. Because while I hated Callie for hurting Mitch over and over, she was right, too. He couldn’t keep living that way. And slowly, he realized it, too.

But Mitch and his parents went through a lot to come to that point.

All while I was writing her and what she was doing, I hated her. I kept telling her to leave him alone, that if he was happy with the way things were, why was she picking on him? Making things worse for him?

Their story is done, and they both learned valuable lessons in life and love, but I still don’t like her very much. And I still don’t think she treated Mitch very well, even though he fell in love with her, and she was right about a lot of things in the end.

It made me wonder if other writers are sometimes in the same situation. Writing protagonists they dislike.

And it also made me wonder how that affected my writing. Will it show through that I hated how she treated him? After all, she loved Mitch. She wanted to help him. Everything she did was to help give him the life she thought he deserved to live.

Does her love for him show through? I hope so.

It was a different experience for me, to not be totally enamored by one of my characters. Usually, I love them all.

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As a reader, it also made me wonder about the female characters I’ve read and disliked. I don’t normally like characters who are pig-headed and stubborn. Or make wrongful judgments about people. That seems to be a common trope in romance: female characters jumping to wrongful conclusions about the heroes, and it sets off a chain reaction that doesn’t get resolved until the heroine is proven incorrect about the man she fell in love with despite her attitude. The whole premise of books like that wouldn’t even exist if the heroine hadn’t been so blind in the first place. Plots like that are frustrating.  I also don’t identify with characters who won’t listen to other people’s opinions because I’m open-minded.

Callie was stubborn. She thought she knew best. Even when everyone around her was telling her that she didn’t understand the situation.

Maybe my readers won’t feel the negative emotions I felt writing her. Maybe they’ll understand more where she’s coming from.

We all have good intentions and even the best of us have trouble with the executions of our actions that come from kindness.

“You were only trying to help.” We’ve all heard that a time or two and by the end of the book, Callie has, too.

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Callie is my first character I’ve written I don’t identify with. It’s not a bad thing. Maybe it means as a writer I’m moving out of my comfort zone and that can only help me stretch my wings. All of us writers put pieces of ourselves into our characters and with Callie’s stubbornness and shortsightedness, she’s nothing like me.

I would never ask someone to do things they didn’t want to do. She wasn’t manipulative, though, and she wasn’t using Mitch’s love for her to make him do things he didn’t want to do. She truly cared for him. But she could have gone about helping  him in a different way. But then the story would have been different, and Callie wouldn’t have learned the lessons she learned to help her stand up to her dad. In the end she was finally able living the life she wanted.

I’d like to think my story worked out exactly how it should have.

And I hope that does mean I’m growing as a writer. Callie was who the story needed her to be. I let it happen. I had faith in my writing ability. I had faith Callie would be the character she needed to be. Who Mitch needed her to be.

Had I tried to push her into a mold, maybe she would have read insincere, or maybe she would have read flatter because I would have diluted her spark.

Callie made me uncomfortable, but I hope readers can see the good she was trying to do–the good she did do.

I hope readers love Callie as much as Mitch does.

I’ll keep writing characters I may not like or agree with.

Because it’s not my story I’m writing.

It’s theirs, and I have to trust them to tell it.

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Tell me what you think! Have you written characters you haven’t necessarily identified with? How did it feel? How did you resist rewriting them to fit your preconceived mold?

Let me know!

My books are wide. Find them at your favorite retailer!

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!

graphics made with canva.com

My Wedding Quartet Update

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I haven’t been doing much with my series, so there’s not a lot to say about it (she says but after she’s finished typing she has a 1400 word blog post about it).  I have finished book two, which will now be book one. To stop having to give that convoluted explanation, I’ll just refer them by the order they will be published. I changed them because I realized the second book I wrote was stronger, and it would make for a better first book in the series. This will take a little rewriting, as I started the book thinking readers were already going in knowing who characters are, but that’s okay.

I finished the first read-through of book two, and after I finish the read-through of book one, I’ll print them both out and add to book two since I know more about what’s going on with the story.

What’s been dragging me down has been looking at stock photos for the covers. I briefly looked into hiring them out, and depending on how much hair I lose between now and when they are ready to publish, I still might. The problem is, and the problem most indies have, is figuring return on investment versus cost. I found a site that will do custom covers for 350 dollars a piece. Now, if I were only doing a standalone, that would be more than manageable. That also includes a full paperback wrap, so I wouldn’t have to worry about that, either. But being that I’ll have four, well, you can do that math. (In case you don’t want to, that’s $1400.) You can see how I would maybe balk at that. Now, I’m not saying I can do as well as that artist can, probably (most certainly) I can’t. But I’m poor, and I have no problem with saying so. I would have to work a lot of hours to cover that. And with the way my books are selling, I would never recoup that cost.

So, for the past few nights, instead of writing, I’ve been researching wedding covers, looking at stock photos, and slowly losing my mind.

To make matters worse is that yes, there is going to be a wedding in this story, but the bride and groom are not a featured couple in the any of the books, so does it make sense to put a bride and groom on any of the covers?

My books all end with some kind of a wedding proposal or a promise to love forever, so implying my couples will get married at some point isn’t a lie.

Another reason I have so much pause is something someone said in one of those FB book cover groups I keep talking about. Someone said that indies are held to a different standard than trad-pubbed authors are. And I guess they are right. Our covers better be pretty damned special to catch a reader’s eye because we can’t depend on our well-known names to make the sales for us.

nora roberts quartet

I think of Nora’s quartet when I’m looking at my own covers. If I thought I could get away with it, I would definitely do something similar. Look here for the article accompanying the image I borrowed.

If I go with this way of thinking, I most definitely need couples on my covers. Maybe not locked in a steamy embrace, because these books are the same as other books I’ve written. Not a lot of sex, but there is some.

What does that mean for me? Can I put bridesmaids and groomsmen on my covers? Singly? Because I’ve looked through a lot of photos and I can barely find one good couple that looks part of a wedding party, much less four.

Can I put a bride and groom on all my covers?

Items don’t seem to go over as well with indie authors, so choosing bridal bouquets or other wedding paraphernalia may not be enough to make a sale. (See the dreamy covers on Nora’s books above.)

If I take the wedding element away, that gives me more choices, but that still leaves me

Elegant couple posing together.

The plastic, vacant looks on their faces do not match how I feel my characters are portrayed in my books. (Photo purchased from depositphotos)

digging through photos of pretty girls with dorky-looking guys. I don’t know how that happens, but it’s weird. (Out of respect for the men, I won’t post an example here.)

Or I get too “plastic” and they look kind of fake. Definitely not the kind of book I’m writing.

I mean, you know the book covers this couple would end up on. Mega rich, lots of hot sex. And maybe one day I’ll write something like that, but I need down-to-earth couples, and sometimes that means the people look just a little too “real” for a book cover.

It’s a balancing act that makes me want to poke my eyes out.

And while it’s a necessary part of the creative process, to keeping trying, that is, it does make me feel like I’m wasting writing time. Anyone can tell you  that you don’t need book covers if there’s no books. But I’ve blogged about book covers before, and figuring out what looks good, and finding the right photos, takes a lot of time. Not only time, but practice. I have Canva open all the time, shoving photos into their templates, experimenting with font for the titles. I did find this beautiful photo and I thought right away she reminded me so much of Leah, the female main character of my second book. She looks so much like what I envisioned, she literally took my breath away. You might say that would be a sure sign to use her for the cover, because if she evoked that much feeling when I took a look at her, hopefully she would for other readers.

Wedding bouquet in girl's hands.

Leah! Isn’t she gorgeous? 

But, don’t forget she would only be one cover of four. And she is cover worthy, so it’s not that she wouldn’t be perfect. But is she perfect for a series, and more importantly, is she perfect for a contemporary romance cover? Unfortunately, she doesn’t pose with a man in the series of photos that were published on depositphotos with this one. But I have purchased her, (that’s why she doesn’t have a watermark) so I may decide to use her somehow.

Anyway, I have 6 pages of book 3 I have written out longhand that I’ll be transcribing after I finish out this blog post. I still hope to have all four books done by Halloween. Probably not fully edited, but close enough that I should still be able to start publishing them around Thanksgiving. I read Craig Martelle’s book on Rapid Releasing, and to be perfectly honest, what he wrote didn’t give me much hope for a good launch. I have no readers. No one waiting for these, so to tell you the God’s honest truth, it doesn’t matter when I publish. I do know that after they are done I’m going to take a short break because these are going to drive me nuts between now and the end of the year.

I’ll keep you updated on progress though, and next week I’ll share a snippet or two of my favorite scenes so far. I’m glad that Autumn and Cole are the last couple because I’m very much looking forward to getting their story out, and as of right now, it’s what’s keeping me going. I love all my characters, but the sheer scope of writing four books and producing them all at once is daunting and I’m overwhelmed at times. But because of consistency issues, I’m glad I’m taking things slow and writing them all first before I publish.

As for Autumn’s blog posts, I need to get on with typing those out and writing more. As the stories go on, and she interviews more people, her list grows longer, and I’m falling behind. Still not sure what I’ll do with that extra content. It’s looking like more and more they’ll end up on the website to maybe drive some more traffic here. Not sure.

If you’ve stuck with me, thanks for reading! I’ll be visiting Tybee Island as you’re reading this, on a vacation with my sister. After I take a week to breathe and see the ocean, I’ll come back with a clear head and hit the ground running on the second half of my series.

I hope you all are having a great summer!

My books are wide! Check them out at your favorite retailer!

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!