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Mid-Year Author Check-in

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black background with grey swirls. text reads mid-year author check-in. selfie of author in black and white. she's a caucasian female who has long brown hair.
I haven’t shown you my face in a bit. I took this selfie a couple weeks ago while I was outside on my lunch break.

The summer is cruising along, and here in Minnesota, it hasn’t been that great. We’ve had some warmer days, but a lot of rain and humidity, too. A lot of the state has seen some tornadoes which is rare, but unless we get a very early winter, we still have quite a few weeks of warmer weather, so I’ll take what I can get.

Since it’s the middle of July, and the middle of the year, I thought I’d do a mid-year check-in. It’s nice for you guys to hear what I’m working on, and it’s a doubly nice reminder that even though I feel like I’m not getting anything done, I’ve actually accomplished quite a bit. Let’s jump in.

Books published:
Three, and there’s one on the way. This number is kind of a cheat, because I released three books in my King’s Crossing series earlier in the year but those were already written. Still, I published Shattered Fate, Shattered Hearts, and Shattered Dreams, and I plan to release Loss and Damages in September. That should go smoothly unless Amazon does something drastic like close my account, but so far the only thing they’ve done is ask for copyright information for a couple of my books’ covers and they’ve always accepted screenshots of my DepositPhoto account and the licensing information they provide. Loss and Damages is already loaded into Bookfunnel and Booksprout. The files are uploaded into KDP, but I won’t do anything with them until my ARC campaigns close. I don’t like having my book on preorder if my book is available elsewhere. There’s no rush anyway, and being patient and taking my time usually pays off. So, I will have four this year, but only two next year. Maybe three. I don’t know yet. It depends on how fast I can write and how much I care.

Books written:
So far I’ve written one. I wrote Wicked Games earlier this year, but that feels so long ago now that sometimes I forget I wrote it. I don’t know when I’ll publish it. I was going to release it in January of 2026, but then I decided to write my hockey romance and that turned into a duet, so, it really depends on how fast I can write Frozen Assets and Cold Mercy and how long of a wait I want between books. It’s mostly edited, all I need to do is listen to it and proof the proof. The cover is done, but I don’t have a blurb for it yet. So, it will sit until I’m ready to publish. I hope to write Frozen Assets this year–I’m researching like crazy and have a lot of it plotted out. If I can write that and some of Cold Mercy this year, I’ll be happy.

Royalties so far:
This year I’ve made a little over 800 dollars. But taking into consideration all that I’ve spent, I’ve mostly broke even. Since January I’ve had to renew subscriptions like Bookfunnel, Booksprout, WordPress and Canva. I’ve also bought promos like Fussy Librarian and BargainBooksy from Written Word Media. Add in some Amazon ads I started up again because I hate seeing an empty dashboard, and, well, it’s really easy to make all those royalties disappear. I mean, it’s fine. I made my peace with that at the beginning of the year, and I’m content to write the books I want to write, pay for what I need to pay for, and simply call it good.

How my King’s Crossing serial is doing:
I released the last book in April of this year and have tried unsuccessfully to market them. My Amazon ads are actually doing well, my cost per click hanging in there around .40 and my impressions are through the roof–which is a good thing. As of right now, I attribute 95% of my sales to those ads. While I did do a Fussy Librarian back in March and a BargainBooksy in June, those two promos didn’t do as well as I’d hoped. I’ll never be one to ask for my money back because I truly believe that if a promo doesn’t produce results it’s my fault, and I’ll have to be more careful with the hook in the future.

So, after saying that, I’ll let you know my numbers:
Cruel Fate: 72 sales, 55 books read in KU (page read equivalent)
Cruel Hearts: 26 sales, 47 books read in KU
Cruel Dreams: 14 sales, 40 books read in KU
Shattered Fate: 9 sales, 32 books read in KU
Shattered Hearts: 10 sales, 24 books read in KU
Shattered Dreams: 12 sales, 19 books read in KU

I won’t analyze these numbers, though that might be a good blog post for later (because I’m wondering how advantageous it is to write in longer series anymore). For now I’ll just say that Kindle Unlimited subscribers are my readers and I may need to look into how I can market to them specifically. Between Amazon ads and the promos, I’m not making any money, but that’s okay. Every time someone reads to the end an angel gets their wings, and I’m more than happy with that.

Blog stats:
My blog is still doing well, my Canva tutorial and my blog post about KC Crowne doing the heavy lifting. I can’t share overall numbers with you because a bot in Germany got a hold of my blog a while back and skewed my numbers. Not by a lot, but enough that my stats aren’t accurate. For now, my Canva tutorial has been viewed 3,284 times this year and people read about KC Crowne 1,994 times. I get a few new subscribers here and there, but for anyone who needs the reminder that building any kind of traction anywhere takes time, I’ve been blogging for over eight years and haven’t reached a thousand subscribers yet. That kind of fact could send me low if I let it, but honestly, I still blog just for myself and if I happen to help anyone along the way, that’s just an added bonus.

screenshot of WordPress's stats dashboard: 2025 in review View all annual insights Updates every 30 minutes Posts 33 Words 52.6K Likes 147 Comments 53

I’ve already blogged 33 times and have written a novel’s worth of words: 52,630. Every once in a while I don’t know what I should write about, but I got great feedback when I talked about a week of indie industry news, and I should try to do that more often. I’ll keep on keeping on, if only because it keeps my head in the game and makes me feel like a “real” author.

Health Update:
I haven’t given you one of these in a long time, mostly because talking about something incessantly can be boring and I feel I used up my allotted time. Since my last appointment at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota in August of 2024, I’ve made more changes to my lifestyle. I stopped taking the birth control she prescribed me because the side effects outweighed the benefit, then in May of this year, my sister, daughter and I went out of town. Long story short, I felt better than I thought I would and as an experiment, stopped drinking our tap water here at home. I looked up our city’s water treatment results and needless to say, Moorhead, Minnesota’s water is gross. So, I’ve been drinking bottled water for the past two months and it has made a big difference in how I feel.

I’m not nauseated so much anymore and I’m starting to feel more like myself. My anxiety is gone, but I still worry a little about being “trapped” like at the dentist’s office or getting my hair cut, though as I feel better and better I hope that fades too. I’m always going to have the skin issues “down there” and be on steroid cream for the rest of my life to control it. I’ll always have nerve damage and scar tissue from the hysterectomy I didn’t really need, but all in all I’m doing a lot better than I was. There’s a lot of bitterness, you know? The dryer sheets causing this to begin with, the doctors who didn’t know what they were doing or straight-up lied to me. I lot of what I’m going through now could have been prevented if my gyno had known what was wrong with me and the rest of it was just me being driven to desperation and making bad choices. I may still write about it some day, if only to give women a chance to diagnose themselves or at the very least, find empathy and sympathy for their own undiagnosed issues. Women’s healthcare in the United States is fucked and I will, in some way, pay for that for the rest of my life. Despite that, I’m hopeful as time goes by I can feel even better drinking bottled water and taking magnesium for nerve and bone health. Tenacity got me to where I am and I’ll never stop working to feel better.

A new addition to our family:
Last month we adopted Pim! One of my son’s friends moved out of state and couldn’t bring her along, so we went through the steps with our property management (we live in an apartment) to adopt her. She’s a three-year-old black tuxedo and she’s very cuddly and playful. She’s especially needy in the morning after being left alone all night. It took a bit to figure out what food she prefers (Sheba cuts) and she has a habit of jumping on you and draping herself over your shoulder. Her favorite thing is being walked around the apartment like a baby. She’ll tuck her head next to my neck and I’ll just pace the apartment back and forth while I scratch her. It brings back a lot of memories of walking my kids around when they were infants.

black and white cat laying under a piece of perforated brown packing paper. a cream and pink mouse is laying in front of her

Luckily she’s healthy because after the time Blaze and her health issues gave us, there’s no way I would have been able to tolerate having a sick cat around, especially not after dealing with my own issues for the past five years. It would have been way too stressful. So, I’m glad it worked out as Drake’s friend didn’t have a plan B and the shelters here are full. I’m looking forward to many happy years with her.

What’s next for the second half of the year?
Right now I’m re-editing Rescue Me. I’m about halfway through and would like to finish up in the next couple of weeks. I played the fun game of “what are they reading?!” when I saw someone had bought it a couple weeks ago, so I decided since I haven’t read it since I published it (back in 2022) that it was time to look at it again with fresh eyes. I’m glad I did because either my writing style has changed or I just got better, but I’m fixing a lot of things and found a small timeline issue I was able to clear up. I also updated back matter, so it was a good decision all around.

Finishing up will take a me a bit of time as it’s slow going to make sure I’m not editing in typos, but after I’m done with it, I’d like to start writing Frozen Assets. I wanted to start it last month but with the amount of research I’ve been doing and then deciding to re-edit Rescue Me, I just didn’t get there. (Plus, after getting Loss and Damages ready to go, I needed a break.) I don’t think it matters too much. If I stay true to a writing schedule, I should be able to publish in September 2026, a year after Loss and Damages comes out. I don’t think a year wait for two books is too terrible. I also have Wicked Games in reserve that I can always put out if needed, but for now, I’m going to focus on writing once Rescue Me is updated and go from there. I’m looking forward to digging into the world of professional hockey and I want to enjoy myself without worrying about speed.

Writing Wrap-Up
I think that’s about all I have for this recap. At the end of December, I’ll write a full recap of the year. Hopefully I have some good news to share.

All in all 2025 so far has been good. I owe some of it just to relaxing and letting things go. Trying to turn my books into a business didn’t work, so I had to adjust my definition of success. Right now I’m finding readers and breaking even (if not a little in the red) and that makes me happy and helps me stay motivated to keep writing. That’s all we can ask for in the publishing landscape these days. I know authors are plowing on with less.

I will leave you with this meme I saw on Facebook. Now that Pim’s here I can enjoy cat stuff again. It was sad to see it before, but I’ve been a cat mom (now grandma) for most of my life. It’s nice to be one again. Enjoy your week, everyone!

Facebook meme. sung to the tune of "shout" by tears to fears the text says cat cat little potat he wants to know where the treats are at come on he's meowing at you come on
found on this FB page: https://www.facebook.com/CatsLoveCatnip

Monday Update: What a Mess

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cleaning supplies. black spray bottle and plain bottle. two white tubes of paper towels with a sprig of baby's breath (god knows why) Text says, monday author update. what a mess

There are so many things that are baffling me right now, and I just don’t know where to start or if I should even write about any of it. Let me start with what I’ve been doing and then I’ll see if I’m brave enough to write anything else or if I’ll just call it good.

First, my fifth book in my King’s Crossing series launched on the 3rd. I made a handful of pennies because there were a few people who preordered it, then I made another handful because I had a couple people read it in KU. Honestly, this is not what I was hoping for launching this series, but I’m barely doing anything to promote it, so I guess the blame falls on me. On March 5th I paid for a Fussy Librarian bargain ebook promo, and I sold 15 copies on the day and two more the next and then sales sank to nothing, which is to be expected. Here’s what the promo looked like if you’re interested:

screenshot of fussy librarian cruel fate promo entry. picture is of cruel fate's cover and the blurb that says: Six months ago, my parents were killed in a plane crash. They left behind me, my sister, and a billion-dollar company that’s my responsibility now. The only things that have gotten me through are Zarah and my best friend, Ashton Black. Until I meet Stella. Ash hates Stella as much as I love her, and as I try to uncover the reason why my parents’ plane crashed, I struggle to keep both of them in my life. When she disappears, Ash says, “I told you so,” and all I have left is our friendship built on years of family loyalty, tears, and blood. Cruel Fate is book one in the King's Crossing six-book serial and ends with a cliffhanger.

I paid 26.00 USD, so the results were fine for how much it cost. Plus there is always read-through potential to the other five books, so we’ll see what happens. Generally speaking it could have been better, but I’m glad I remembered at the end of the blurb to mention that it was a first in series and that the book ends in a cliffhanger. Not everyone likes those, so it’s good to keep that out in the open and may account for why I didn’t sell that many. I should have also put in there the series was complete as many readers won’t start a series unless they’re all available and I’ll remember that for future promos.

I started some very low cost-per-click Amazon ads again and unpaused some of the ones I turned off months ago. Those never got the traction back they had when I turned them off, and the new ones aren’t doing much because the bid is too low for Amazon to show them. Don’t know why I’m bothering if I’m going to half-ass it like that, but sometimes I think doing a very little is better than doing completely nothing, though it’s probably not true. I don’t have anything else planned besides releasing the last book in my series in April, then all I have left this year is the launch of my next book in September. (I’ve been telling people it will be live September 15th and plan to stick to that.) But that’s too far ahead to think about because I’m not rushing through summer. I hope it’s hotter than hell so I can lie on my balcony and bake. Your girl is tired and needs a break.

My Rocky Point Series giveaway went okay. I mailed out copies to the one winner who emailed me back. I should have probably chosen someone else as a second winner, but if I would have done that, the actual second winner would have emailed me (that’s how my luck goes) and I would have needed to purchase more copies which would have taken a while. So I have a paperback set the second winner didn’t claim and I’ll figure out what to do with those later. I didn’t expect huge results and mostly it gave me things to write about on my FB author page and my newsletter.

Speaking of my FB author page, since I’ve been boosting posts, I’ve gotten a deluge of followers who just want to make me book trailers and others who didn’t look like they would care about a billionaire romance author. So, I took a couple of hours and culled my followers from 270 to 210. I know it’s better to have quality instead of quantity, but it really gave me the feeling (again) that my FB author page isn’t worth the energy and I haven’t posted since I did that. It’s something I can’t get rid of because over the years I’ve shared that link in various places and I hate beyond reason broken links. I may post on it every couple of days, just so it looks somewhat active, but it’s one of those things where I can’t measure ROI, I can only measure how I feel. I really don’t know what to do with myself in that regard because the motivation to post on social media just is not there, and I’m not really sure what would inspire me to post more. Sales, probably. Not engagement. Everyone yells about how much they want engagement, but if you’ve known me for a while, you know how special you are if you DM me and I answer you back. So, I’ll figure something out. The only good part about posting at all is that Canva makes it so easy, and I have to pay for that until I die because I have a lot of assets trapped there and I’ll never stop doing my own book covers.

Right now I’m about 60% done with WICKED GAMES but at 58k words I’ve lost motivation to work on it. I’ll finish it, no doubt about that because I still love Seth and Avery and want them to have their HEA, but I’m not running a sprint or a marathon and I work on it when I feel like working on it. It’s part of the “new me” I have going on for 2025, but I also think some of it has to do with hormones and the lackluster feeling I have sometimes of just being old and still alive. I mean, it’s not serious, I don’t have depression. I used to have depression, before my son was born, so I definitely know how that feels. This is more of a “meh” feeling, and it will pass. Spring is actually kind of gloomy here right now, the snow melting uncovering all the dog poop people didn’t pick up and the air stinks like dead things. Once it gets warmer and the sun shines more consistently and starts drying things out, that will perk me up.

My despondency is actually opening me up to reading a few books, but it’s a sad thing because these authors are on social media asking readers to share and I just can’t. I want to refer people to good books, and one book I read has so many commas they could have prevented the Titanic from sinking and the other has an info dump at the beginning that’s so boring that I cut out after 5%. Luckily one I had picked up during a free promo and the other I borrowed in KU and returned it, but still. While we’re complaining about the Amazon boycott and how people feel trampled because of what’s going on in the state of the world, I think it’s important to remember that as authors who might have people listening to our opinion, we shouldn’t waste our readers’ time and money. I want to recommend books that blew me away, that made me feel something other than annoyance. So, while I’m feeling listless, I’ll be going through my TBR which is a nice change from feeling like if I’m not writing to publish I’m not moving forward.

This Amazon boycott everyone (on Threads) is talking about is a real downer, and it’s interesting how all that blows up only to eventually disappear and never to be spoken of again. A friend told me that she hasn’t seen any of it on Twitter, and I have no idea if it’s made its way to BlueSky or not as I don’t scroll there. But personally, I think it’s all just talk because even if there are a few who actually do cancel their KU subscriptions or whatever, it’s not going to make a dent in the number of readers who use Amazon to buy and read their books. It’s frustrating to have to read that when I’m on social media. If your book sales are low or non-existent, again, it’s something you need to take responsibility for. I mean, I get it. There are ebbs and flows to publishing and any author who has been publishing for a while can tell you that. The political and economic climate also is not helping, but something isolated like this isn’t going to cause the collapse of sales for hundreds or thousands of authors. My sales stopped the second I stopped running ads. My experience might not mean anything to you, but to me it means that I actually do control my sales (not to be confused with royalties). No one can buy your book if they don’t know it exists, and I think it’s easy to forget that. If you truly are concerned about something like this and its effect on your sales, take a look at what the big-time authors who write in your genre are saying. If they are taking a hit and can trace it back to something like this, then maybe it’s time to be concerned. But if they’re carrying on as business as usual, then what you are experiencing probably isn’t caused by whatever people are talking about that day. We have to keep things in perspective. As I say, there’s a big world out there and it’s always a good idea when you get to caught up in the day’s/week’s/month’s drama to step out of that bubble and touch some grass. (Just avoid the dog poop. Gross!)

I think that’s all I have for this week. Thanks again to Brandi Easterling Collins for the interview she so graciously said she’d do that I posted last week. If you missed it, you can read it here.

No clue what I’ll write about next Monday, but I’ll be here with a smile on my face!

Have a great week!

Where are you going to put that link?

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pink background illustrated picture of different generic platform profiles

I’ve been talking to my friend Melody a bit about marketing. I love talking marketing and publishing, can’t get enough talking shop even if I have been feeling down the past few weeks just because of how things are going and where things are headed. But unfortunately, being a writer is in my blood and it’s something I’m never going to be able to stop. Adjusting expectations, yeah, and maybe I’m too tired to manifest anything except my next snack as 2024 was a good but a tiring year, and well, stopping my ads brought on a new question.

If you need to promote something, where in the heck are you going to put it?

Many of you know I have a free novel on my website. Right now I don’t have email collection turned on in Bookfunnel, which means anyone can download it without giving me anything in return. You might think that’s silly and a waste of what a reader magnet is supposed to be for, and you’re probably right. In my defense, at the end of the book I ask them to sign up for my blog if they haven’t, and direct them to my Cedar Hill Duet if they liked My Biggest Mistake.

a screenshot of a kindle the text says:Thank you for signing up for my blog! (If you came to read this without signing up and would love to be on my email list, you can at vmrheault.com/subscribe.) Did you fall in love with Brady and Allegra? My Cedar Hill duet featuring Rick and Devyn and Beau and Talia is now available! If you love steamy billionaire romantic suspense, check it out now on Kindle, Kindle Unlimited, and paperback! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1PV65WD


So I’m not being completely obtuse. The thing is, where do you put that Bookfunnel link to lure in new readers and cajole them to give you their email address? Right now I remind people it’s there when I blog/send a newsletter on my author site, and so far that’s been okay because my posts show up on the WordPress reader (and I have them post to my FB author page and my LinkedIn account). Since I moved my blog over from MailerLite, and I don’t remember when I did that, maybe last summer, I get a few views there every time I blog. That’s the only place right now people see my reader magnet, unless they get to that part in the back matter of my books.

This isn’t just about reader magnet links, it’s about any link. An Amazon buy-link, a books2read link. A blog link, if you’re hoping to get more traffic. We say social media, and that’s a quick and easy answer, but also, it’s a stupid answer because not everyone is going to have a following for that to do any good.

Where are some alternate places to put your links? Here are some ideas.

Newsletter link

Author Bios on Social Media
*Goodreads
*Facebook Author Page
*Instagram
*BookBub
*Amazon Author Page
These are great places to add your newsletter link. I have my website link up in case I ever need to change my Bookfunnel landing page, then I’m not scrambling to change links everywhere. Amazon won’t let you put links in your bio anymore, but you can get around that by typing it out with spaces like vmrheault . com / subscribe. Skip the www or the http:// because their bots will flag that as unacceptable language. If a reader wants to sign up badly enough, they’ll type it in correctly into their browser.

Email Signature
I don’t have an email signature, mostly because I use my personal email for everything, and I don’t now how beneficial it is to have a business signature at the end of personal communication. Though, I’ve been publishing for eight years now, so anyone I happen to email wouldn’t be taken by surprise. What’s really cool is that Canva has a lot of email signature templates to choose from, if you’re not shy about adding your picture and all your info. Not sure if I want to go all out like that, especially since I never had a logo designed for my business, but something would be better than nothing, considering that a lot of time I don’t even add my name to the bottom of my emails. I’m not trying to be rude, it’s just more disinterest than anything. I’ve said what I need to say and I’m done. Here’s what I made in Canva. The only thing I don’t like is the links aren’t clickable, but this looks nice.

The back matter in all your books.
This is kind of a no-brainer, but it’s worth reminding people. It might be difficult (or impossible) to edit your back matter to include a newsletter link if you haven’t already. Not everyone has access to their files, and it’s why I say to learn to do things for yourself as much as possible. Back matter is a good way to get sign ups, those readers who loved your book so much they want to hear more. Even if you don’t have an incentive like a reader magnet, a bonus epilogue, or whatever the case may be, it won’t take up that much space so you might as well add it. I would direct people to your website though, rather than putting up a landing page address. If you ever have to change your landing page, that’s a lot of work, whereas your website will always be there.

Print Materials
I don’t mess with paper often, the most effort I make these days is creating pretty chapter headers for paperback books I don’t sell. The last batch of business cards I made are old, had old information on them, and I threw them out. But, that’s not to say that print material is a waste of time or money. You can make bookmarks or postcards using VistaPrint and leave them at places like your library (or put them into your books if you leave them in Little Free Libraries), at coffee shops, the coffee kiosk while you’re waiting to get your oil changed, or anywhere you happen to be that might have interested readers. Is it spammy to leave your crap lovely marketing material around like that? I don’t know. Some places, like coffee shops, grocery stores, or the library, have a community bulletin board and it might make you feel better to pin up a postcard or three instead of leaving them around like cigarette butts. At any rate, you can create a QR code (Dave Chesson has a free generator and it looks like VistaPrint might have a built-in one as well) that will direct readers to your website where you can invite them to sign up for your newsletter. I think in this instance, having something free to give away would definitely help.

Newsletter promotion services (if you have a reader magnet to give away)
I don’t know how effective they are, and by that, I mean, I don’t know how eager readers are to give you their email address and download a book from Bookfunnel, but you can use some book promotion sites like Fussy Librarian and BookDoggy. You just pay for a free book promo like you normally would but instead of giving them an Amazon link use your Bookfunnel link. This is only effective if you turn on your email collection, of course, unless you really are giving away a book with no strings, but considering I complain talk about ROI all the time, giving away a book without asking for something in return seems counterproductive to building your reader audience.

Other options that require a reader magnet.
Not everyone has a reader magnet, which is why this is last, but if you don’t have something, I would advise it and possibly make writing one a goal for this year. Very few people will give you their email address for nothing. If you do have a reader magnet, or a cookie, as Tammi Lebrecque calls it, there are other places to put your link but they take a little hustle or some cash. You can join Bookfunnel and pay for the option to put your reader magnet in group promos, the same with StoryOrigin. You can also make friends with authors in your genre and do newsletter swaps. A lot of times newsletters swaps mean swapping free books and putting them in each other’s newsletters, but if you’re just starting out and have a delicious cookie, other authors may let you put your link in their newsletters. Everyone is looking for content so don’t be afraid to offer yours.

Those are a few good places to put your newsletter link, at least, that don’t require a lot of networking and/or money. Let’s talk about other links, like that all important buy-link. I’m going to assume that you’re doing a free sale because we might as well just face the fact that readers are looking for free books and it’s a lot harder to find places to post a link to a full-price or even .99 cent book. I mean, we can talk about this another day, but I don’t think it’s crazy to say that readers who buy full-priced books are already familiar with you and what you write and know they’re going to like what they pay for.

Amazon Buy-Links/Books2Read, etc.

Your Website/Newsletter/Blog
This probably doesn’t need to be said, but make sure you tell your already existing readers about a sale or new release, even if you only have five people on your list. Sometimes we get so caught up in finding new readers that we forget to give love to the readers we already have. My list is small and my open rater is smaller, but I still get interaction when I announce something like ARCs, a new release, or a sale.

Facebook Promo/Reader Groups
Admittedly, posting to these kinds of groups is like tossing a piece of carrot into a stew full of potatoes and hoping someone who likes carrots will find it. They aren’t the best way to find readers, especially if they aren’t broken up into genres. If you can do a search and find promo groups in your genre, that’s better than posting to a site that will take any kind of book, like this one https://www.facebook.com/groups/221523797876806, still, if you just like posting your link to wherever, it never hurts to try. There are some groups that will let you self-rec but it’s hard to find them because moderators have to work hard at keeping the groups from becoming too spammy. So make sure you know the rules and guidelines of any group or your post will be removed or not even approved and you could be removed from the group, too.

Reddit
I didn’t know this was a thing, but I asked Al for advice on where to post my free book link, and he said Reddit (r/FreeEBOOKS). I had never heard of it before, but then, I’m not on Reddit all that much to begin with. I thought, what the hell, and gave it a try and posted the Bookfunnel link to my reader magnet. I gave away 36 copies in a week and had over 7k views of my post.

post insights. 7.1k total views 73% upvote rate 0 comments 1 total share

This subreddit (is that what it’s called?) is pretty active and my book didn’t stay on top very long. I would guess you’d need to repost it every once in a while to continually get new eyes on your book. I didn’t list this idea up top with the newsletter stuff because I posted my Bookfunnel link without the email collection turned on. I don’t know how well a true reader magnet would do on there, more than likely it would make people angry because a book link asking for an email isn’t truly free. So, if you’re okay turning it off or have a true free book to give away–I saw some Amazon links and books2read links–I would consider using this subreddit. I had never posted there before and I don’t know if my results are considered good, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Author-Driven Promos
I guess we’re kind of talking about free places, though promos sites like Fussy Librarian and BookDoggy cost a little less than some. But, if you’re looking for a free promo that has the same outcome as a Freebooksy, then look to author-driven promos. These can be hard to find since a lot of times they’re mentioned in Facebook groups of your genre and if you’re not a member, you can miss out. If you ever say FB isn’t good for anything, networking in these groups is definitely beneficial. Zoe York has been doing her SYKD for years, and I only found out about it in 2022 because I was networking with other indie authors and not necessarily romance indie authors. I’m trying to do better, because now that I’m not running ads, connecting with these kinds of resources will be one of few ways to get my name out there. This is a list of the author-driven promos I have so far. They take a lot of work to put together, so authors may be not be clamoring to do their own, but I’m always keeping my ear to the ground to add more to the list.

Fantasy: https://stuffwithfantasy.com/authorhelp

Romance all genres: https://www.romancebooklovers.com/authors

Romance all genres: https://www.romancebookworms.com/for-authors

Witchy books: https://www.facebook.com/groups/witchybookwormsauthors

Alpha Cinnamon Roll Book Boyfriends: https://alphacinnamonroll.com/for-authors/

Dark Fantasy, Romance, Horror: https://www.darkmodesyk.com/sign-ups

Closed Door Non-Explicit Romance:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/cleanromancecollab/

Paid Free Promos
If you do have some money to toss around, you can always buy a promo to feature your free book. I can probably afford to do this more often if I’m not going to run ads, but I might just depend on author-driven promos and social media for now, if I even feel like giving away a book, which, in a different blog post, said I might not do this year. I’m tired of throwing away spending money and need to stop boosting my posts. Boosting every single post on FB or IG will cost just as much as keeping my ads running and it’s a habit I better break now. There are a lot of promo sites, too many to list here, so I’ll give you the link to David Gaughran’s list instead. https://davidgaughran.com/best-promo-sites-books/

Hopefully, I gave you few ideas. Some I tried like posting my book on Reddit. I need to start looking outside the box because for a long time I just said, “Run some ads” but that’s not working for me anymore, if it ever was, and even if my experience was beneficial to the readers of this blog, so will trying new ways of doing things. Besides Reddit, I might make some new business cards. Postcards are larger and sound fun, especially since I don’t focus on paper and market to KU readers so making bookmarks wouldn’t make much sense to my brand. I’ve been flirting with the idea of putting together book boxes when all my King’s Crossing books are out but I just ordered two sets of my Rocky Point Series to hold a giveaway for my newsletter subscribers. That might not go anywhere and I’ll have to get rid of them in a different way, but I might be tapped on on author copies for a bit (even at wholesale they’re expensive and you have to pay for shipping). I haven’t been able to schedule the last two books anyway, since KDP only lets you schedule out so far, but I doubt I’ll be coming into any money anytime soon, so waiting won’t do me much good. Right now I’m just settling into my ads being off, not working so hard on my standalone, and enjoying having free time. I’ll get more into that next week, or maybe after since the 2025 trends are coming out and like I suspected, nothing much is going to change.

Thanks for reading this far and have a great week!

black and white picture of woman sitting in front of wildflowers Vania (VM) Rheault is a contemporary romance author who has written over twenty titles. When she’s not writing, you can find her working her day job, sleeping, or enjoying Minnesota’s four seasons with a cup of coffee in hand.

Happy New Year 2024!

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I am taking today off from posting, but I hope you all have a wonderful year ahead!

If you missed my year-end 2023 recap, you can find it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2023/12/25/my-year-end-recap-and-whats-ahead-in-2024/

I’ll be back next week with a regular post. Until then, thank you to my audience and my readers who support me every week. You keep me coming back. I appreciate you!

A short Monday author update!

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Words: 418
Time to read: 2 minutes

I have a post I kind of worked on, but yesterday was a good writing day for me and I forgot to finish it and post it. I also wasn’t feeling good for a lot of last week. I feel like I have a urinary tract infection but the clinic said while my results were abnormal, they don’t indicate I have a UTI and didn’t prescribe me antibiotics. So, it’s been a long weekend for me health-wise and I have a message in to my doctor asking him what he wants me to do. I’m tired of dealing with my body.

Anyway, I wrote slightly over 6k words yesterday, and I’m up to 38 thousand words in total for the last book in my trilogy. I’m thinking that this book will be in the high 90s too, and I’ve got something in the works to keep my middle from sagging. I have an idea that would make sense, especially if I go back to book 2 and include some more foreshadowing. That’s one of the great things about keeping books until your series is done. If you need to change something, you can! So i’m happy with that, and looking forward to my next writing session.

Today I’m celebrating Easter and won’t be online much at all. Tomorrow I should be able to plan my next few scenes and how I want to get from where I am to the event that will save my middle. I should also be able to write most of Wednesday.

I don’t have much else to report. I read an interesting article on Jane Friedman’s blog about upmarket fiction and what it is by literary agent Carly Watters. It might be useful to those who are querying. Have a look at it here: https://www.janefriedman.com/what-is-upmarket-fiction/

taken from the article

I’m sorry this came out late. I had a weird week, but hopefully after the Easter holiday things will go back to normal. It’s finally warming up here, but we have a ton of snow that needs to melt. I still need to listen to a surprise episode of the Six Figure Author podcast that Lindsay, Jo, and Andrea recorded a few weeks ago. I’ve been so busy hammering out this trilogy for an August release I haven’t made the time, but now that the weather is warmer, I need to get outside and breathe. If you’ve been keeping up with them, you can listen to it here:

Have a great week, everyone!

Adding discussion questions to your novel, yes or no?

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Words: 823
Time to read: 4 minutes

Adding discussion questions to the backs of books seems like a very traditionally-published thing to do. When I first started publishing in 2016 I never thought about it, mainly because up until that point, I don’t know if I read books that had discussion questions in the back. If I did, I skipped them entirely because after the last sentence, I set the book aside. It was only after I became an indie author and started devouring every book I read cover to cover (what people sneak into their copyright pages can be really hilarious) did I realize just how much I was missing not reading past The End.

Always Read the Acknowledgments Page by Grace Bialecki via Jane Friedman’s blog.

Why would an indie add discussion questions to the backs of their books? I asked that question on Twitter and I received varying responses. One said because she thought her book didn’t warrant them, another said if was an indie book, they would obviously be written by the author which seemed strange. (As opposed to them written by an editor, I guess.) One said he didn’t want to think too much about his own book to come up with the questions.

Those are valid reasons, I suppose, but I think any book has the content required to warrant discussion questions. Every character makes choices, and every one of those choices can be dissected and measured. That’s what I like about adding discussion questions to some of my books. I like puzzling out why a character did what he did and if there was a better way for the outcome he wanted. As an author who is “supposedly” in control, that’s not always the case. I’m not one of those authors who spends years editing her book because she thinks of something better. I write the damned book, and it’s done. What’s there is what will stay there and my stubbornness actually gives me room to explore why I wrote what I did. Characters’ choices aren’t always going to be ours–a nasty character doesn’t make us nasty because we created them.

I like the idea of discussion questions in the back of romance books. Considering what kind of a reputation romance books have, even if a reader glances briefly at the questions, it maybe give them the idea to explore the deeper meaning underneath the kisses. Of course, there may not be any deeper meaning, and that’s okay too. I think every character is flawed and will make poor choices at some point, and reaching to understand the answers to those questions help us grow as readers and our ability to understand other people.

I had a difficult time thinking of questions for the back of Rescue Me. I added them because Sam made a choice or two that may not have sat well with a reader. Lily understood the choices he made, and if there was anything to forgive, she did so with an open heart. Was she right to forgive him? We can’t control how other people behave, we can only control our reactions to what they do.

I admit that discussion questions probably work better with standalone novels, and I’ll add discussion questions to my next standalone coming out in May. That book also deals with some sensitive topics and behavior from both my male and female characters.

Characters are flawed, they’re human, and they’re not always going to do what we expect in the heat of the moment. It’s what they learn from their choices, if anything, that matter in the end.

Is it vain to add questions to the back of self-published novel? Not any more vain than thinking your own work is worthy of being published at all. When indies publish with no greenlight from a gatekeeper, you have to have faith in your work. Why not have faith that a reader will want to explore your book with questions you thought were a good complement?

You never know–maybe your book will fall into the hands of a book club and they’ll appreciate the built-in discussion help.

If you don’t like the idea of coming up with your own discussion questions, perhaps ask a fellow author to give you a few interview questions about your book. You can answer them and then offering extra content won’t feel like such a one-way street. There are always ways to reach your readers, and the more involved they are with you, your characters, and your books, the sooner they will turn into true fans.

Here are a few more resources on adding discussion questions to your own novel:

Creating Discussion Questions Using Your Book’s Themes by by Sara Letourneau via DIY MFA

How to Write Great Discussion Questions by Janet Kobobel Grant via Books & Such Literary Management

And a list of books that have discussion questions in the back: https://app.thestorygraph.com/reading_challenge_prompts/6e172dac-df93-425b-ae9e-702ebe940358

Thanks for reading and have a great week!

Marketing ideas for your books

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We tend to confuse marketing and advertising when it comes to our books. Advertising is what you do when you’ve already written it and published it and you’re only looking for readers. That’s running ads, buying a promo, tweeting about it, or posting in FB groups. That’s not really marketing. That’s shoving your book under someone’s nose and hoping they like it enough to buy it.

Marketing encompasses a lot more than that, and it starts with your product, a fact many indie authors don’t like because they prefer writing the book of their heart and hoping someone likes it enough to read it. That’s fine; whatever floats your boat. And honestly, it’s what you should do when you first start out. But writing the book of your heart, or the books of your heart, won’t get you very far unless you can meet in the middle between what you want to write and what readers are looking for. As I’ve said in the past, authors who can meet in the middle find their longevity in this business. Or rather than compromising on every book, write something you love, then something you know will sell, and go back and forth. I was reading Bryan Cohen’s new Amazon Ads book Self-Publishing with Amazon Ads: The Author’s Guide to Lower Costs, Higher Royalties, and Greater Peace of Mind and in it he quoted John Cusack, who said something like, “I do one project for them and one project for me.” I can’t find attribution for that quote, but for the sake of this blog post, let’s go with it. That’s not what this blog post is about, as it is your choice what you want to write, but as Seth Godin said, and I quoted him not long ago, “Find products for your customer instead of trying to find customers for your product.”

(And if you’re interested, a really great talk by Kyla Stone is available here. She talks about writing to market, but she couldn’t get to where she is today if she wasn’t writing what she loved to write.)

I’ve spent six years publishing and learning from my mistakes. Here are some tips I picked up from other authors and what you can implement with your next books.

Make sure your series looks like a series.
If you look at any big indie’s backlist all their series look like they belong together. It doesn’t matter if they’re all standalones and readers don’t have to read them in order. If they fit together, create their covers so they look like they do. Not only does a reader glancing at your Amazon page know they belong in a series, they just look nicer when they’re all branded in the same way. That means a matching background, maybe, cover models who have the same vibe. Create a series logo and add that to the cover as another way to identify one series from the next. If you do your own covers but publish as you write, create all your covers at once. That way you’re not stuck with one cover that’s already out in the world you can’t duplicate. That shoves you into a corner you don’t want to be in. Book covers are more important than we want to believe, but trust me. Look at any of your comparison authors’ backlists and see for yourself how they brand their series. Also make sure if you’re going to run ads that they meet Amazon’s policies. I had to tweak my small town contemporary series because Amazon kept blocking my ads. I had to zoom in on their faces and it ruined the entire look. I’m much more careful now.

These are books under this name. It’s easy to see the trilogy belongs together, the three standalones and then the small town series. Amazon didn’t like they were in bed. Too bad. They did.

Write in a series, but also don’t tie things up –until the very last one.
Elana Johnson calls these loops. You can end each book with an HEA, but with the overall plot, don’t wrap things up! This encourages the reader to read through your entire series to see how things finally end. With my small town series, everyone is in town for a wedding, and there are wedding activities throughout. The last book ends with the couple’s ceremony. What’s fun, the couple getting married isn’t even one of the couples featured in the books. They are background characters that help with the subplot of each book. That’s it. That might be a flimsy piece of tape holding the books together, but it was a fun way for me to end the series–with the reason why everyone was together in the first place. When Elana talks about loops, she doesn’t mean ending books on a cliffhanger, though it is well within your right and another marketing strategy you can incorporate into your writing. Elana has a wonderful series for indie authors, and you can look at the books here. I’ve read them all, and this isn’t an affiliate link.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07TWGGLCS

Use your back matter.
When you write in a series, and the books are available, your Kindle can help you out by prompting you to read the next one. That can be a boost, but also, you want to take matters into your own hands and add the link to the next book in the back matter of the one before it. If you don’t write in a series, add a different book. If a reader loves your book, they’ll want to read more from you, and you might as well make it easy for them. Too many calls to action may confuse a reader, so you don’t want pages and pages of back matter asking a reader to buy a million books, sign up for your newsletter, and follow you on Twitter and Facebook. Choose the one most important to you, add it immediately after the last word of your book while they are still experiencing that reader’s high, and ask them to buy your next book or sign up for your newsletter. I have also heard that graphics work wonders and adding the cover along with the link is a great way to prompt readers to buy.

Introduce your next book with a scene at the end of the previous book.
This is one I learned from the writers in my romance group on Facebook. Say your novel is about Travis and Amy, but the next book is going to be about Rafe and Emily. End Travis and Amy’s book with a short chapter/scene in Rafe’s POV to get them excited for the next book. I haven’t started doing this, but the writers in my group give it 10/10 stars, would recommend as a great way to get readers buying the next book. Also, if you’re writing romance, readers gravitate toward those hunky men, so if you can, write from his POV. I’m definitely doing this with the trilogy I’m publishing in January, and with the six books that are with my proofer now, the third book ends with an HEA for that couple, but I added a chapter from the heroine’s POV for the next three books. I suppose I could have done it from his POV, but hers felt more natural, and I hope it will be enough to get the readers invested in her story and how the series plays out. You can do this with any genre you write in–if he’s a detective, maybe he stumbles onto a new case, or maybe something serious happens in his personal life. Whatever the case may be, add something that will entice readers to click on the link you’re putting in the back.

Bonus scenes for newsletter subscribers only.
I haven’t started this up yet because 1) you have to write the bonus content 2) I don’t know my newsletter aggregator well enough to make something like this happen, and 3) with my newsletter signup link already in the back, I’m giving away a full-length novel. If you don’t have a reader magnet, writing a bonus scene that is only available if readers sign up for your newsletter is a great way to add to your list and hopefully, the more engaged your list is, the more readers you have.

Looking at your entire backlist as a whole–or what you’ll be writing in the future.
If you think of marketing as an umbrella for your entire career, then think of advertising on a book by book basis. Marketing involves all your books, who you are as an author, and what your message is. That’s why so many authors want a logo–but attach feelings, emotions, and what you’re giving your reader in your books to that logo so they think of those things when they see it. It’s why soda commercials are always happy. They want you to equate having a good time with drinking their product. What do you want your readers to get out of your books? If you’re a romance author, an HEA, for sure, but what else? Is your brand a damaged hero? Found family? If you write women’s fiction, do you want your readers to expect a woman on a journey, or maybe sisters repairing their relationship? Best friends who have grown apart only to be reunited for some reason? Of course, that sounds like all your books will be about the same thing, but that’s not really the case. What is your theme, what is your message you want your reader to get from your books?

Publish consistently.
Training your readers to expect a book at certain time will help you build buzz as your readers will get used to your schedule. Figure out a comfortable schedule and try to maintain it. Once every 3 months seems like a good practice if you can keep up with that as you’ll never fall off Amazon’s 90 cliff. Also, if you’re writing a series, keep in mind readers don’t like to wait and you’ll have your work cut out for you if you can only release one book a year. You might just have to be resigned to the fact you won’t get the number of readers you want until all the books are released.

It’s a bit older now, but Jamie Albright spoke at the 20books convention a few years ago. She shared some good tips if you can only write and release one book a year.

Tweeting incessantly about your books isn’t marketing. Doing research on your next book before you write it, figuring out your comp authors and comp titles, doing cover research, and writing a good blurb is marketing. Running ads and buying promos to that book once you’ve written it is advertising.

It took me a really long time to figure this out–ten failed books because I genre hopped and was only writing what came to me. I didn’t publish on a schedule, didn’t have a plan. I’m still not publishing on a schedule, though I am going to try to aim for one book a quarter after my COVID stockpile is out into the world.

I’m getting a hang of this marketing thing, but it’s nothing you can achieve over night. I spent five years making mistakes. I’ll spend the next five fixing them.

Thanks for reading!

If you want resources on planning your career, Zoe York has a wonderful series of books that talk about that. You can get them here. https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082CZDK75

Sara Rosette also has a wonderful book on how to write series, and you can find it here. https://www.amazon.com/How-Write-Structure-Troubleshooting-Marketing/dp/1950054322/

Being an indie author means using what works for you, no matter the source.

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I had an interesting conversation with a friend the other day. Not really a conversation I guess, because it’s long been established that we don’t see eye to eye on writing, publishing, and marketing, and that’s okay. Just looking at her back list and mine makes it clear we have different paths and different goals. She’s 100% indie, does her own thing when it comes to books, genres, writing craft, as well as covers and where she publishes her books. She’s happy, (I’m assuming she is as she has never told me otherwise) and wants to stay on that path.

I learned over the five years I’ve been writing and publishing romance is just because I want to do it the way I want to do it, it may not align with my business goals and what I want for my books. That’s an important distinction. Just because it’s the way I want to do it, it may not be the best way to make the dreams I have to come true. So, I’ve learned to niche down to a sub-genre and study what’s on the covers of the books doing well in that sub-genre. I create my covers not only with what I like (and what my skills will allow), but I also have to take into consideration what is selling, and what will meet Amazon’s guidelines when it comes to ads. Just because you’re indie doesn’t mean your books can’t look and read as professionally as they should, and this made me think: we can publish indie books while borrowing from the best of indie and trad worlds.

What do I mean?

Covers: Think like a trad author.
As an indie you can put whatever you want on your cover, but the fact is, after you publish, you aren’t competing with only indie authors. In fact, the line between indie and trad grows blurrier every day. Readers don’t care who publishes your book as long as they get a good read for a fair price. You’re in complete control of your cover, but once you start tweeting your book to generate interest, or you run any kind of ad, you’re going to compete against a lot of other authors. Authors who are traditionally published by the Big Four, authors who are published by a small press, authors who can afford to spend $500 dollars on a cover, authors who know a photo manipulation software backward and forward, and authors who put their cover together in the middle of the night high on caffeine using Microsoft Paint. This is an area where we can learn from traditional publishing. Create your cover to fit in with other books in your genre. People do judge books by their covers and who knows how many readers pass you by if your cover isn’t up to standards. Unfortunately, you may never know.

Blurbs: Think like an indie.
Up until recently, and I mean, like the past couple of years (which is recent when you’re talking about publishing) blurbs (plot teasers on the product page, not one-sentence praise from your peers) were written in third person present tense. It was just the way things were done, and there are still indie authors who write their blurbs this way, despite that their book is written in first person/present/past. It took me a long time to wrap my mind around a romance that was written in first person, and it took me actually writing a romance in first person dual POV for me to fall in love with it (no pun intended). While this was going on, the savvy authors started writing their blurbs in first person, using the voice of their characters. If you look back, the authors who started that and bucked the system were GENIUS. Blurbs have always been, and always will be, a marketing tool. Because it’s a trad thing to write your blurb in 3rd person present, there have been some people who are reluctant to move away from that (and I blogged about that too.) Personally, I think blurbs written in first person makes sense (and only applies to authors who write in first) and you can have a lot of fun writing your blurb that way. This is time for a good reminder that you should always research what other authors are doing in your genre and what reader expectations are. Writing your blurb in third could lose you readers, or make readers unhappy when they read a 3rd person blurb and expected a book written in 3rd person as well. There are some readers who detest first person books and go out of their way to avoid them. If you like to troll Twitter (and I mean scroll, not be a jerk) you can read some more thoughts on 3rd person vs. 1st person blurbs using these Twitter search results:
https://twitter.com/search?q=1st%20person%20blurbs&src=typed_query

Release schedules: Think like an indie.
Being an indie when it comes to how often you can publish and when can help you build an audience quickly. Trad authors are stuck to once a year, maybe twice if they’re with a small press with a flexible schedule. It seems Amazon imprints like Thomas and Mercer or Montlake allow their authors to publish a little faster, but all in all, authors who can release a book quarterly (3-4 a year) have a better chance at building an audience so why not use that to your advantage? It hurts to save up books, but if you’re a slow writer, why not? Write, edit, and package three, then write more as you release. this can start a publishing schedule that you can maintain and after a while, your growing audience will know when to look for a new release. In the time a trad author publishes three, an indie could publish nine to twelve, and that just means more money in your pocket.

Series: Think like an indie and trad author.
Indies are getting better at this, but I’ve seen some books in a series that don’t look like they’re a series because their covers don’t look the same and don’t have a similar vibe. Trad has always been great with series branding, using the same fonts, backgrounds, and characters. For instance, the first book in the Flowers in the Attic series was published way back in 1979.

photo taken from https://thebookmelon.weebly.com/blog/flowers-in-the-attic

Series branding is important, but these days in the era of fickle attention spans, a trad house may pull the plug before a series is complete because it’s not selling. Sometimes an author gets a chance to wrap up, but sometimes not. Readers get angry, but like my friend Dea pointed out on Twitter the other day, it’s not up to an author if they have a book deal whether or not to continue a series [unfortunately since I wrote this post, Dea left Twitter and the link no longer works]:

https://twitter.com/deapoirierbooks/status/1546628952915050500?s=20&t=S8ZbjjEuTyUE0o-WPxUivg

This is where being an indie can make all the difference. IF YOU’RE AN INDIE AND YOU’RE WRITING A SERIES, FINISH IT, OR AT LEAST WRAP IT UP! Readers don’t like being left hanging, and when you’re publishing your own books, there’s no reason not to finish. The release consistency subject above also comes into play here. If you’re going to make use of a cliffhanger, you better have the next book ready to go (hopefully on very short preorder), or you’ll get bad reviews like this one:

Use your freedom to your advantage and keep your readers informed. I was tweeting with this author, trying to figure out the best way to let her readers know so this didn’t happen again. Is posting a publishing schedule in the first book’s blurb the way to go? Perhaps this would be a good reason to use A+ content? I’m publishing a six-book series next year, and yes, I do use cliffhangers. But unlike the author above, they are all written and I will be releasing all six in one year. When I read the Crossfire series by Sylvia Day, she did give the characters a happily for now ending just for the fact she’s a trad author, knew her readers would have to wait a year between books, and wanted to give her readers a bit of closure until the next book came out. When you’re indie and you need time, maybe that is the better way to go. Personally, I’m not sure what the answer is, but I will never not have all my books written in a series before I publish. Just for the fact avoiding small plot-holes and consistency issues will always be reason enough for me to wait to publish while I write.

The overall look of your book: think like a trad author.

A lot of authors don’t know this, but there is a set of guidelines you can (should) follow when you publish. The Independent Book Publisher’s Association lists them on their website and covers everything from what you should have in your copyright page to reminding you that your interior should be full-justified. It’s amazing that you can be a life-long reader, but when it comes to assembling your own book, how a book should look flies right out of your head. I’ve seen books that are left-justified only, no page numbers, spaces between paragraphs (this is okay for non-fiction, but I’m referring to fiction books), double spaced, no front matter except a title page, nothing in the back, not even an About the Author page. There’s no reason you can’t put out a professional product. To find the list of guidelines, look here:
https://www.ibpa online.org/page/standardschecklist

While I understand the disgust thinking about traditional publishing can evoke in an indie, there are lessons trad can teach us. Your book should look professionally put together, even if you’ve done it all yourself. When you’re asking a reader to pay for your product, it’s up to you to make sure they are paying for quality. It doesn’t matter how you reach that standard, it’s only important that you do. If that means hiring out every step of the way, then that’s what it means. Some may only need an editor, some can edit their own work and do just fine. Some indies are a one-stop shop and do every single thing for themselves, or use $50 dollar premades to cover their books that go on to make thousands of dollars. As indies, we have so much flexibility, but don’t use that as an excuse to do what you want. Once you put your book out into the world, you want readers and you want readers who will recommend your book to others. You want people to take photos of your books in their gardens, next to their cats, at the beach, and they won’t do that if your book has a crappy cover on it.

You CAN have your cake and eat it too. Just maybe scrape a little frosting off it first.

Until next time!

Lack of Productivity. What’s causing it, and how to fix it.

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I’ve seen the topic of productivity a lot lately, maybe because we’re still in what’s considered the beginning of the new year and we’re all scrambling to keep up with New Year’s resolutions and tackle the goals we’ve set for ourselves. I haven’t specifically written about productivity, though I did write a blog post about writer’s block, which is akin to the weird uncle of the family when we talk about writing productivity.

I guess by now it’s a running joke that the hardest thing a writer can do is sit down and write. Butt in chair. Carving out that time. But I have never, in these six years I’ve been a part of the industry, understood this. I get writing is hard, and I’ve come to learn this about myself while writing and/or editing–If I hit a rough patch in dialogue, or say I’m echoing a word in a sentence and I want to rewrite the sentence to take out one of the words and I’m at a loss as to how to do it, instead of pushing through, I’ll flip over to Twitter. That’s avoidance. For now, I let myself do it because so far it hasn’t hampered my output. Normally, after I scroll for a second and see the same old drivel, I’ll flip back to my manuscript and keep going, but it can interrupt my flow.

I’ve seen a lot of tweets about productivity or lack thereof, and, unfortunately, if you’re writing to publish, and more importantly, if you’re writing to publish to build an author career, you kinda need it.

Taken from: https://www.pitchtravelwrite.com/increase-productivity.html

One of the hardest lessons you’ll ever learn in this industry is you don’t have nothing if you don’t have a book, and over time, you need several if you want to find any traction. If you’re writing a series, you have way more marketing power behind you if your series is done. You can’t accomplish that if you’re not writing.

What are some causes of lack of productivity? Here’s a short, though not comprehensive list, of what I’ve seen out in the writing community:

You’d rather do something else. This actually tells me a lot about how you feel about writing and publishing, and if you truly would rather watch TV, read a book, go for a drive, or make dinner, then honestly think about stepping back. Of course, it would help to know the reasons why you’d rather do something else. Maybe you’re not seeing the results you want, or you’ve lost interest. You started writing as a hobby and you’d rather pick up a different hobby like crocheting or knitting, or get back into exercise. If you’d choose to go to the dentist over sitting down and writing the next chapter, give yourself permission to stop writing. No one is forcing you, and if you hate what you’re writing, chances are, your readers will be able to feel that when they read your book. Move on. It’s okay.

You don’t like what you’re writing. Starting a new project is okay as long as you can finish something. If you lose interest in your WIP at the halfway point every time, something else is going on with more than just productivity. Maybe it’s a craft issue because you get bogged down in the saggy middle. Maybe finding an alpha reader who will read as you write, or a critique partner can help you stay motivated and give you tips and ideas on how to finish. The problem with learning craft is that you have to write to learn it. This is the same for characters, too. If you hate your characters, you have to figure out why. Is she a whiny snot? Doesn’t act her age? Is he an alphahole without any redeeming qualities? Are they not doing anything interesting? Find some feedback from somewhere, or refresh your creative well and read for a while. Start a new project, sure, but if you’re going to add to the 20+ WIPs you already have on your computer, you need to do some digging and figure out what the problem is and how you can fix it.

You have no idea what to do with it once you’re done. I’m reading Zoe York’s Romance Your Goals, and in it, of course she talks a lot about setting goals–setting realistic goals, and goals you have to work to reach. I have a lot of thoughts about goals, productivity, and strategies and tactics that will help you achieve those goals. If you have 10 finished books on your computer, they won’t do anything if you don’t know what you need to do with them. More than covering them with a good cover, writing a good blurb, and putting it up on Amazon. I mean, do you have a newsletter? Do you know an ads platform well enough you won’t lose money? Do you have a launch plan for what you’re going to do when your book is done? If you don’t, that could be causing you some productivity issues. If you have no idea what you’re going to do with it once your book is finished, there’s no real reason to finish it then, is there? That way of thinking was pretty much me for the past two years, but instead of lack of productivity, I think I had too much. That is a problem in itself because now I have lots of books and still no real actionable plan to maximize those books and pay myself for all the time it took me to write them.

Maybe you have an idea, but it’s too overwhelming to think about. We talk a lot about a five year plan, and sometimes it’s difficult to figure out what we’re eating for dinner in five hours, never mind where we want our careers to be in five years. If that look into the future terrifies you, ask yourself why. Writing and publishing is a long game, but if that look into the future bogs you down, shorten the timeframe. Maybe look to the next two years, plan out the books you want to write, be it three a year, two a year, whatever you can handle, and let yourself get excited about what’s coming in the immediate future.

You’re burnt out. I think I’ve mentioned this a lot on here, when I heard Jo Lallo say on the Six Figure Authors podcast that there is no faster way to get burnt out than when you work hard for little to no pay off. I’ve you’ve been working for a months, maybe years, and your career is in the same place as it was before, that can affect your productivity. You might wonder why you’re still trying to make a go of it, and you’re thinking about giving up. This conversation goes back to goals–what you want out of your writing and more importantly, how you’re going to get it.

You don’t have any writing friends to cheer you on or commiserate your failures. You’ve probably heard me mention this a time or two. A lot of my friends I made when I first joined the writing community are gone. They dropped off because they don’t write anymore, or we don’t talk for some reason or other. I was friends with a woman for a long time until I realized our friendship was all about her, and her writing, and her roadblocks, and whenever I would say something positive about me, or my books, she blatantly ignored it. I faded off from that friendship and a couple others. While I don’t recommend staying in a friendship (or any type of relationship!) that takes more than it gives, replace those friends with other people or you’ll look up from your laptop one day and see that you are alone. It’s tough to write and be proud of your successes if there is no one to share them with. Take that opportunity to reach out to other authors in your genre and make connections and friends there. Those relationships will be more meaningful because they’ll understand the ups and downs of writing and publishing in that genre. There are so many sprinting groups and people who are willing to be accountability partners. You’ll be surprised at how much better you feel if you have people to reach out to when you want to share your goals and small successes.

At the core of productivity is passion. You have to have passion for what you do, and joy and the love of writing will keep you coming back to your laptop and your characters. Sometimes other things will get in the way, but ultimately, if writing matters to you, you’ll find a way to keep going.

Good luck!

Happy weekend and an apology.

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It was brought to my attention that I insulted a fellow romance author, something I would never, ever do intentionally! I’d like to give TL Swan an apology for mentioning a review for one of her books in my plagiarism post from a few days ago. In the review, a reader speculated that TL Swan used a ghostwriter, and I want to apologize to TL for including that reference in my post. In a private message, she assured me she does not use ghostwriters. While I didn’t accuse her of using one, I should never have included the review in my post, and I apologize to her for that.

I suppose I have been a little free on this blog, maybe a little too transparent with my thoughts. As public figures, we must always watch what we put out into the world. I know a friend of mine was complaining not long ago because he likes to post his political affiliations and opinions. A lot of people don’t agree with him, and on a public forum, it’s easy to feel the mob mentality aimed at you. Cancel culture is real, and we think that expressing our opinion won’t bother anyone–until you tick off too many people and they turn on you at the same time. Cyberbullying is a real thing. Mental health is a real thing. People use the internet, hiding behind an avatar or whatever, to say what they want to say without regard to people’s feelings and the consequences that can be involved.

I’m not a reporter; I’m not seeking the truth. I like to express my opinions on here, on my personal blog, about what’s happening in the indie community. My blog is my outlet when I need a break from writing fiction.

When you see something online that you don’t agree with, you can just keep scrolling. There is no need to comment, no need to call out that person. And if you feel like you just can’t keep your opinion to yourself, you can be respectful about it. You don’t have to be a bully. I’m not online to make enemies. I’m not out to destroy reputations, and believe me, I don’t have the clout to do that anyway. I’m here writing my books hoping to one day make a living, just like everyone else. And I blog about current indie publishing events, like thousands of other indies online.

At any rate, if you see my blog posts decrease, just know that I’m still here, wondering where to go next. My place in the romance community is important to me, my place in the indie community is important to me. I don’t want to lose either of those things, and I’ll adjust my actions accordingly.

Until next time!