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.
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:
I have zero things to write about this week. All I’ve been focused on is getting words down for this trilogy, and as of right now I’m 62k into the second book. I am loving this couple though, and turning that standalone into more books was a good choice.
These are character-driven books, and every once in a while I get a touch of imposter syndrome. Are these books going to be boring? Is there enough going on? But I’ve come to realize that character-driven books are what I write. Probably the only book I’ve ever written where characters are actually moving around on the page is Wherever He Goes, but that’s a road trip novel. There’s not much of a road trip if they aren’t moving and things aren’t happening. I’ve described my books as “quiet”–characters exploring themselves and how they need to overcome their flaws to get what they want. There’s a fine line between a character-driven book that’s “quiet” and a book that drags. I don’t get a lot of feedback before I publish, but I’ve already had some volunteers for this trilogy. I’m going to need them, I think, if only to reassure myself that the books move forward and keep readers interested.
The biggest tip I have for anyone who wants to write a character-driven book, or think they are, is you can’t be repetitious. My books depend a great deal on dialogue, but that means when characters are speaking to each other, new information must be presented at all times or there must be some kind of internal revelation. If your characters are only rehashing what has been spoken of previously, you’re wasting your readers’ time. Always know what you want out of a scene, and if you have characters talking just for the hell of it, usually that’s a sign you don’t know what your characters need, what they want, or how they’ll go about getting it. With every conversation, information must be revealed for the first time and/or a personal discovery must be made because of that information. Most of the time, that’s not difficult, but sometimes, especially in real life, people need to hear something more than once for it to sink in, or they need to hear it from more than one person. That’s not a great thing in a novel and rehashing can slow your pace and bore your reader. Try to make each scene count.
Some people might be a little confused between what a plot-driven novel is and what a character-driven novel is. There are plenty of resources out there if you want to explore, but I like this slide by a presentation Melanie Harlow did a while back.
Surface problems are usually not that important in a character-driven romance novel. It’s the emotional wounds of the characters that keep them apart and are a bitch to overcome. The emotional wounds and the flaws they must overcome is what the 3rd act breakup is all about–if there is one. As you can see, the emotional wounds are what causes the true conflict in a romance novel, and if you don’t have those, everything that keeps your couple apart is superficial and readers won’t be invested in your couple staying together for their happily ever after.
Melanie spoke at the 20booksto50k conference last November, but her talk is incomplete and the audio for what is available is poor. But, I mention it because the slides are available, and they are a goldmine of information if you want to download them. https://drive.google.com/drive/folder… She’s also part of a steamy romance panel, which I haven’t watched yet (hello work/life balance) so I can’t comment on quality, but you can check it out here.
My Freebooksy for the first in my trilogy went really well. For the two days it was free, I gave away 3,797 copies. I think people are still confused how this can convert to royalties earned, and I’ve said in the past that a Freebooksy only works well if you’re giving away a first in series. Read-through is where the royalties come in. Also, if you’re in Kindle Select some readers will borrow your book instead of downloading it, and if they do that, you get paid for page reads. You have to weigh the pros on cons of paying to give your book away. It won’t give everyone the return on investment they’re looking for. In my case, between borrows and read-through, I earned back my fee ($120.00) in 4 days and so far have had a ROI of 131%. (ROI = Net income / Cost of investment x 100.) People don’t read right away and my book is sitting on 3,797 Kindles. I can only hope that as the weeks and months go by that people get to my book in their TBR piles and go on to read the other two books in the trilogy.
I admit I dropped the ball and didn’t have Amazon ads running during that time. That will probably turn into a mistake for me as I had nothing propping up that promotion. The only other thing I was doing was running an FB ad to Rescue Me, and I already said last week how that turned out. Right now I’m running an ad to Captivated by Her, but I’m watching it closely as the last time I tried, I didn’t get any sales for the clicks. I ended up pausing the ad. I have it on sale for .99 right now and I used a different graphic to go along with the ad. I’m hoping for a better outcome.
The next big push might be a Freebooksy for Captivated when my next standalone book comes out in May. Though I did want to try Fussy Librarian and Robin Reads as well. It’s hard to believe that I’ll have had 7 books come out in 11 months, but I know some authors can do that all day long for years. I think this pen name is coming along though, and I have no regrets pivoting.
Screenshot taken from Jane’s website.
The only thing I have left is what I’m loving right now. I’m excited I signed up for a TikTok class with Jane Friedman and Rebecca Regnier. It’s $25 and the slides (if there are any) and a replay is available if you can’t watch live. TikTok is probably going to be my next step in trying to get the word out there for my books, but I like to explore and learn before jumping in. If you want to sign up, you can do it here. https://www.janefriedman.com/tiktok-basics-for-writers-with-rebecca-regnier/
We all hear that we need to invest in our business. To different people that can mean different things. When it comes to being an author running a book business, there are a lot of different ways to shove resources at your books.
Money. When you’re an indie author, there are a lot of places your money can go. You have to decide where that money goes and prioritize that spending. ISBNs are not cheap in the US, book covers can be expensive, too. Subscription services like Office 365, Canva, WordPress, and Bookfunnel, just to name a few, eat up a lot of my business money. Then on top of that you have ads and promos, an email aggregator for your newsletter. The list is endless. But you have to put some money into your books or you’ll never get to a place where you can sell them.
Education. One of the things I didn’t realize when I started publishing was all that I was going to have to learn. Back in 2016 we didn’t have Vellum for formatting, and I didn’t start using Canva for book covers and graphics until about 2018 when my friend Aila turned me on to it. Like most software, I didn’t like it right away because I didn’t know how to use it. Now I love it, even though I still don’t know half of what it can do. The same goes for my Mailerlite account. I watched several YouTube videos to learn how to set up an automated welcome sequence, and I had a heck of a time figuring out landing pages and how to connect my Mailerlite account with my Bookfunnel account.
Some things you can find out on your own through free resources, and there are some things you might want to pay for. I always start with the free stuff first and move on to paid classes if I don’t learn what I need to know. There is always someone selling something, an Amazon Ads course or a book marketing course that promises you you’ll sell 1,000 copies of your next book. Around the holidays, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I have terrible FOMO because a lot of that stuff goes on sale. I’ve wasted money buying classes I shouldn’t have. I paid $49 for a ticket to Mini InkersCon hosted by Alessandra Torre that I never attended, and I paid that much for a virtual ticket to the 20booksto50k Vegas conference back in November. I didn’t attend live so that was a waste of money as later, they put a lot of the speakers on YouTube for free. I regret not trying to attend as I missed a wonderful talk by Melanie Harlow that would have been worth the entire price of the ticket. There are a lot of craft classes, book cover design, and editing courses. I have to admit, I’m kind of a class junkie (if you didn’t know that by now) and I have classes I bought through Mark Dawson’s SPF that I haven’t finished, and also classes I purchased through Jane Friedman I have saved on my computer. I have always loved school (I would love to try to get my MFA before I die) and I’m always $50 away from my next class. But I think the idea behind a class is you have to be open to learning what you don’t know. I’ll end this section with this Tweet from a few weeks ago. Learning is vital to your business and you’ll fall behind if you think you know everything there is to know.
Time. Time is precious, and you’ll waste a lot of it doing things that don’t help your book business grow. It’s up to you how you want to spend your time where you think it’s best for return on investment. You can say you’re “networking” hanging out on Twitter all day, but be honest. Are you networking or scrolling to waste time? Is there a better place to network? A Facebook group with authors in your genre, perhaps? If you’ve hit a hard spot in your WIP, it’s easy to find something else to do, but when time is a limited resource because we all have more on our plates than just our books, you’ll find you can be stuck in the same spot for a lot longer than you’d like. Marketing shouldn’t take up that much time–you can’t forget that without books (product) marketing doesn’t mean much. In Elana Johnson’s book about writing and marketing systems, she recommends keeping track of where you spend your time. You may realize that getting out of bed a half an hour earlier, timing yourself on Social Media, or skipping another episode of your favorite show can open up the writing time you need to move forward.
What else can you do with your time? 1. Classes, like I said above. It does take time to do watch the classes and probably the main reason I have so many unfinished. I’d rather write. 2. Read in your genre–with intent but also to fill your creative well. Reading in your genre is really important. Not only do you see what’s selling, but you’ll learn what reader expectations are and how your comp authors are delivering it. 3. Sleep. That sounds crazy, but you’re not going to get good words down when you’re tired. 4. Practice. If you’re taking a class about book covers, you need to practice those skills. I watched a lot of videos when it came to learning Vellum, and the first couple of books I formatted weren’t only to publish but to learn the software. Even if you take an ads course, you still have to put your knowledge into practice on the actual platform. These platforms don’t make it easy, either, when they’re constantly changing their dashboards. It still takes me a while to properly set up a Facebook ad, but without ads, no one will know about my books, so that’s a return on investment I can get behind.
My friend Cara said I could use her response to my tweet in my blog, and this is what she said when I asked what investing in your business means to you:
I see it as investing time, effort, research, and money. This month, I've invested more $$ and I'm seeing good results. It's given me a lot of confidence!
Effort is a big one, and something I didn’t consider. It takes a lot of effort and energy to keep going, especially when you’re not seeing the results you want. As I just started a new pen name last summer, I’m no stranger to the amount of effort and energy you need to start over. Unfortunately, it can take a while to see if those decisions will pay off.
Sometimes we have to experiment with what will work and what won’t and be willing to let go the parts that aren’t working and try something new. I let go of Twitter a long time ago, and I’m glad. Now when I tweet about my books and get zero response, I can feel good knowing I have other ways of finding readers.
I did a little experiment myself this month and put Rescue Me on sale for .99. I ran an FB ad to it, and while I’m two days short of the end of the month, I’ll tell you how it went. This is my FB ad:
This is a standalone without any read-through potential unless they go on to read my duet or my trilogy. A .99 book on Amazon will only earn you .34 per book, so after you pay for a click (my cost per click is .14 on this particular ad), the ROI may not be that high (in this case, .20 per sale). Kindle Unlimited is good though, and if I get page reads for the entire book, I earn approximately $1.32. As of Sunday morning, I spent $72.20 on that ad. I’ve been running it for the entire month of February. Between sales and pages read, I’ve made $97.99, ($24.98 sales/$73.01 pages read) for a return on investment of $25.79. Maybe you don’t think it’s that much. Maybe you think it’s not worth it for only 25 bucks, but that’s where you have to think about what you want for your business, how much you’re willing invest, and what kind of resources you’re investing (for example, time to learn the FB ads platform and money for the clicks). There’s more to a sale than the royalties you earn. You could get a review, you could find a new fan. You could get a new subscriber to your newsletter. If anything, you’re finding out what kinds of ads work and what kinds of ads don’t. I would have made 0 royalties if my ad didn’t work. So, was it worth it to me? Yeah. But I won’t leave Rescue Me on sale forever. Maybe I’ll try this experiment with the same type of ad for Captivated by Her. There’s read through potential for that book as it’s the first half of a duet.
I also paid for a Freekbooksy for the first in my Lost & Found Trilogy, but I’ll wait to update you on how that went. It’s only 4 days old and I’m $23.00 shy of earning my fee back. I can run down how my February did as a whole, but let me tell you–I forgot I was running Amazon Ads in Canada. Bad move. They really took off and unfortunately, they didn’t have the sales to go along with them. That was my mistake and I’ll have to eat the ad cost. There’s a lesson to learn every day.
Thanks to Cara Devlin who said I could add her response to my tweet in this blog post. Her covers are gorgeous and if you like historical romance, check out her books.
Happy Monday! It’s President’s Day in the United States, and hopefully you have the day off to sit and relax and enjoy a slow, easy Monday! If not, I hope the holiday slows your workload down and it’s not such a hectic day for you.
I don’t have a lot of news this week. I’ve had some personal stuff going on–I think a lot of you know I lost my cat three weeks ago to old age and colon issues. Then the week after that my car battery died and that cost me a lot of money I didn’t have on top of Harley’s vet bill. It was a blow to my wallet and I’ll need a long time to recover. But, as the saying goes, just keep on keeping on because it’s all you can do.
I”m 40k into the second book of my trilogy as of this writing, and I’m excited I turned what was supposed to be a standalone into more books. This might be the first time with any of my series where I actually like all the characters equally. Does this happen to you? Maybe that might be getting ahead of myself as I haven’t written the third book yet, but I’m actually eager to start their stories. Bits and pieces of who are they’re going to be are already flitting to the surface of my brain, and that is the best feeling in the world.
I added up all my book spending and subtracted that with the royalties I made in 2022, leaving me in the red by 268 dollars. I did my year-end summary in December, but didn’t do a full tally like I have to for my accountant. In my blog post I approximated that I broke even, and I really would have, but last year I had two new things I paid for: Bookfunnel and my Alli membership. Two very important things that will aid my writing business, but my royalties did not cover everything I spent on my books last year. On the bright side, I’ve already made 34% of what I made for the entire year last year, so I’m hoping that trend continues.
I’m very excited about my Freebooksy Promo coming up on Thursday. I have two free days scheduled Thursday, February 23rd and Friday, February 24th. I have my promo booked on Thursday and I add an extra free day because not everyone opens their emails on that day and I would hate for anyone to miss out. I’m giving away Give & Take, the first in the trilogy I published last month. This promo will be different than the ones in the past and I’m hoping this promo will bump up sales overall. Here’s why I think it’s different than the ones I’ve done for my 3rd person books:
All my books are billionaire (I have 6 under my pen name right now). Unlike my 3rd person books, my billionaire books are the same sub-genre–though I do have a lot of fun with tropes. Hopefully that will make it easier for readers to want to read more of my books after the promo if they like Give & Take and hopefully the rest of the trilogy. When I bought a promo for my small town holiday series, those were the only small town holiday books I had. We like to fool ourselves and think readers will read anything if they like us, but you have to have a very large audience for that to actually work. When you’re just starting out, genre-hopping is hard and you’ll lose readers if the rest of your books aren’t what they like.
They’re written in first person present. I haven’t done a survey for the past couple of years, mostly because I drank the Kool-Aid and gave in, so the number of books written in first vs. third on the Amazon bestseller lists didn’t mean that much to me. But when I was promoting my small town holiday series, they were written in third person past which, for romance, has fallen to the wayside when it comes to popularity. We can take a quick look at what’s selling right now–not to prove myself right, but out of sheer curiosity now that I brought it up. The top five Billionaire Romances are:
1. The Temporary Wife by Catharina Maura: First Person Present, KU 2. Final Offer by Lauren Asher: First Person Present, KU 3. Black Ties & White Lies by Kat Singleton: First Person Present, KU 4. The Auction by Maggie Cole, First Person Present, KU 5. The Vow by Maggie Cole, First Person Present, KU
I could do that with other subgenres or Contemporary Romance in general, but it’s part of market research and just with that quick of a glance, I think any billionaire books written in 3rd person might be a tough sell. I get where authors would say, your book is going to sound the same as everyone else’s, but readers like familiar, they like similar, and in my case, I said, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” If I don’t have to work so hard to find readers, sign me the hell up!
Because I’m more curious than a cat, I looked at the top five of Contemporary Romance on Amazon, and three are the same. The two changes are The Wrong Bride by Catharina Maura (First Person Present, KU) bumped The Auction, and a new title coming in at Number 2 is Beyond the Moonlit Sea by Julianne MacLean (First Person Past, KU). This is a very small sampling, of course, and when I was debating switching over from 3rd to 1st I spent hours pouring over the lists to see where exactly the shift was taking place, when it did, and I guess more importantly, why. Maybe I never found out, but it still interests me nonetheless.
They’re in KU. My books always have been, but doing a free promo will usually lead to page reads. When a KU subscriber sees that it’s in KU, they will more than likely borrow it rather than download the free book. The promo brought our book to their attention, and we get paid for the page reads. When I did my free promo for my series back in November, it earned me page reads for the entire series.
I said in previous blog posts that my promo earned out, and it did. I gave away three other books at the same time, bumping me over the fee cost. I counted them because without the promo, those books never would have gotten the attention they did.
Anyway, that was an “oh well” kind of promotion because I’m not writing under 3rd person anymore and I don’t have a newsletter signup for that name, either. It was just something fun I did, but I also regretted spending the money and trying to garner attention for books that don’t really need it. That will probably be my last promo for those books I’ll do for a while. I can’t split my focus and my marketing budget anymore.
I’m doing my own version of “promo stacking.” Promo stacking is when you pay for more than one promo and you spread out your advertising to other promotional services. While I’m paying for a Freebooksy, I’m also running Amazon ads and paying for a Facebook ad to Rescue Me, which has sold 55 books this month (at .99 that’s only 17.99) and has netted me $46.36 in page reads. With the promo, I hope even more people see the .99 cent sticker on Rescue Me and go on to buy that too, or borrow it in KU.
Depending on how this promo does, I probably will do something with Captivated by Her when my next standalone is set to release in May. I’ll use the bump the new release of Faking Forever will give me and hopefully get some sales and reviews for Captivated and Addicted. What little feedback I’ve heard about those books is favorable, so I just need to push those books out there. I didn’t put them on Booksprout first, so the reviews are lacking. I had an FB ad running to Captivated, but something was off. I was getting clicks, but no sales, so my ad wasn’t giving readers the right idea and they were bailing when they reached my Amazon product page. I’ll have to think about what I can do to fix that.
Anyway, if you want some quick tips on how to make promos work for you, here’s what I’ve tried and what others advise: 1. Promo a first in series. You’ll earn your royalties with read-through. 2. Make sure your series look like a series. Amazon does a good job of letting a reader know what the next in series is, but make it easy for your reader, too. Make your covers cohesive. 3. Keep in mind your price. As you can see from my small-town holiday series above, a few people actually bought the other books instead of reading them in KU. At $4.99 that’s 15 dollars!) Make sure your price is competitive and in line with what others are doing in your genre. Readers won’t overpay for your book. There is too many choices out there for them to do that. 4. Don’t forget a call to action in your back matter. Add a newsletter sign up link, or the link to another book you really want them to read. All my back matter now has my newsletter signup link that offers a free full-length novel. Always give your reader somewhere new to go if they like your stuff.
While it won’t be a full picture of what my promo did (I’m hoping for a long tail), I will write about my initial first couple of days for my blog next week. Wish me luck, and I hope you all have a wonderful week!
There are so many things that irritated me last week, and a lot of it boiled down to hating Amazon and its practices and the way they treat indies. I haven’t been immune to how frustrating it can be when I had my own go around with them over Large Print. I never did get it resolved and gave up. That’s the price of doing business with a large corporation who doesn’t have the time or the manpower to deal with everything on a case-by-case basis. You win some (being able to publish without an agent or the Big Five) and you lose some (having to deal with bots and issues lost in translation with employees who have English as a second language).
What is irritating to me is why indie authors think they are special enough not to have to deal with this. They act like Amazon is a big bully, pushing them around, but let’s remember that Amazon gave us the ability to self-publish and who knows how long that would have taken without them. For as many people who wish indies didn’t exist, it could have taken a long time.
I understand it’s scary when Amazon decides to take your books down because they found them on a pirate site, or they take your books down because they claim you don’t have proper licensing to use your stock photos on your covers. It’s frustrating when their return policy allows readers to return books, but the thing is, indie authors don’t want to behave like selling books is a business, and that’s exactly what it is. You are a business dealing with a business. That means doing what you need to do to keep your business running smoothly. Here are some tips to doing that:
Network. This might be surprising, but when adult authors who handle issues with professionalism have a situation with Amazon, they’ll not only post the problem, but how they resolved it. That’s important because maybe you haven’t had an issue with Amazon yet, but that doesn’t mean you won’t in the future. Knowing how another author handled the potentially same situation you may one day face is a great resource to getting your books back up with little hassle. The 20booksto50k group on FB is a wealth of information when it comes to this kind of thing.
Realize that indie authors can be doing it wrong and deserve Amazon’s slap on the wrist. There will always be an indie who doesn’t know they can’t use whatever they want on a cover. While it’s a pain in the butt to have to deal with something like that if it happens to you, all Amazon is insuring is that they aren’t helping you sell something illegal. You could be doing everything 100% correctly, but I’ll never blame Amazon for double-checking. It’s annoying when your boss is looking over your shoulder to see that you’re doing the work the way you’re supposed to, but for every 10 authors who follow the rules, there will be one who doesn’t know the rules or blatantly disregards them and will rip off a cover or use any picture they want from Pinterest.
Join an organization. Businesses have attorneys on retainer or have them as part of their staff. Businesses are also members of organizations in their field. It gives them credibility and resources to turn to if they need. Being an indie author isn’t any different. You are a business so you should invest in your books. Join Alli or the IBPA, or the RWA if you’re a romance author, or if you write Sci-Fi and Fantasy, join SFWA. All those organizations will give you to access to legal advice and have contacts at Amazon. They’ll reach out on your behalf and get your situation handled for you. A yearly membership isn’t that much–broken down it’s about 10 dollars a month) and it’s worth the peace of mind. Memberships can also include other benefits like IngramSpark uploads and revisions codes and discounts on editing and formatting. When I changed the insides for All of Nothing and Wherever He Goes, the revisions codes saved me almost half of what the membership cost. New uploads later this year will cover the rest of the fee. It doesn’t take long for the membership to pay for itself.
What really bothers me is the entitlement I see from indies. There was one woman who was accusing Amazon of ripping her off because they discounted her paperback book. Thank goodness people corrected her and said she still earns full royalties when they do that. I’m really just flummoxed by the attitudes lately, and I don’t know what’s causing it. Another author was in a rage because someone bought and returned her trilogy. Amazon has updated their returns policy and according to it, readers can’t return books that have been read or partially read up to a point. You’re a business–you should expect returns every now and then. (If you’re getting a lot then it’s a problem with your product, not someone’s return guidelines, and I don’t care who you publish with.) I think complaining about something like that is tacky. You don’t know what kind of financial situation your readers are in. Maybe she had an expense pop up and had no choice. It’s none of your business why they had to return, and griping about it on a public forum is trashy and tasteless. I hope her reader saw that tweet and never buys her books again. I could start a long list of people who behave badly and never buy their books. I don’t need to fuel such bitterness.
I think a lot of indies forget that Amazon has been the target of their share of indie scammers. Authors who used click farms to fuel KU borrows and reads, authors who would book stuff for the KU page reads, authors who would publish individual books wide and then put a boxed set in KU hoping to cash in, authors who would host giveaways like Chance Carter who tried to give away Tiffany jewelry . . . There was even a black market scam where authors sold their manuscripts so other authors could publish the same story under a different title, cover, and author name. It’s not like in all the years we’ve been able to publish we’ve been completely innocent. I would be shocked if Amazon didn’t learn from that.
I’ve been called naïve and privileged for sharing this simple solution: Don’t like Amazon? Don’t publish there. I was called privileged because Amazon is the biggest ebook retailer in the world, I think, but it most definitely is in the US and people say they can’t sell books without it. I don’t see why not. I’ve seen indies say their sales are bigger on Apple Books, Nook, and Google Play. It all depends on where you push your readers. At the very least, publish there and push your readers to Kobo. And if you’re not willing to do that, at LEAST shut up on a public forum about how you hate how Amazon treats indie authors. Not all of us have a big chip on our shoulder.
I understand publishing is hard, but there are ways you can make it easier on yourself. Join an organization who can go up to bat for you. Buy your images for your covers that will provide you with the licensing Amazon wants when they approach you. In the group I was scrolling, the author said Amazon didn’t accept the Shutterstock license. I was surprised, but it’s good to know. They accepted the DepositPhoto license when she changed her cover. I know Amazon will under no circumstances accept the licensing Canva gives you if you use photos under your Pro Plan. So far I haven’t heard an issue with fonts, but buy the ones you want to use. Creative Fabrica will give you the licensing agreement when you purchase fonts off that site.
And last, if not least, if you have an issue, approach it like an adult, not just assume Amazon is “out to get you.” They aren’t. Dealing with their red tape is the same as dealing with medical insurance, car insurance when you get into an accident, dealing with the IRS when you can’t afford to pay in. Dealing with Amazon is an adult thing you have to do because you’re an adult running an adult business.
The scammy stuff is really interesting, and I haven’t heard of what was going on years ago popping up again. Maybe being heavy-handed, Amazon took care of a lot of that and shady authors don’t want to risk it. I heard Chance Carter had surfaced under a different name and then once Amazon caught on, we never heard from him again. I think it’s funny we’re still friends on FB and I’m still following his Author Page that has a post-apocalyptic feel these days. He had such a great following and he had to ruin it. It’s amazing as it is mystifying.
If you want to read more about scammers, you can visit these links, and even my own old blog post about it:
I was scrolling through Instagram the other day, and I saw a fun “about the author” type graphic–and I thought right away, that’s cute and if I did that, I could post it to Twitter. I had to stop and think for a minute. Even after saying I’m dropping the platform, it’s a habit I can’t break, and I still scroll religiously every day. I had to stop and think about what posting something like that to Twitter would do for me, and the answer is nothing. The last tweet that had any substance about me (not a retweet or an article) was only viewed 93 times–and I have almost fifteen thousand followers.
It doesn’t matter the why–no one likes me, the algorithms, I posted at a bad time of day–if I’m going to post and no one sees it, there’s no point in wasting time there.
My Facebook author page has 154 likes and 164 followers, only a small percentage of my followers on Twitter, and I get way more interaction when I post than when I tweet on Twitter, yet, I rarely post on my author page. I had to think about that for a minute. Why am I neglecting my page when it takes just as much time to create content for Twitter as it does anywhere else?
I think some of it is fear–the people who like my author page, most of them I know in real life. I have co-workers who like my page, family members, people I went to school with, and you can pick any school. High school, Moorhead State University when I was there getting my English degree, Moorhead State Community and Technical College when I had the misfortune of thinking I wanted to go into HR. These people know me, on a personal level, on a level that my followers on Twitter do not.
But while I’m afraid of those connections, when it comes to selling books, those connections would probably earn me a sale faster than tweeting promotions on Twitter. They say you shouldn’t ask your friends and family to buy your books unless you write in a genre they read to keep your also-boughts on Amazon pure, and I believe that, but platforms also like engagement and social proof, and for every family member who likes my post, that’s more valuable than followers scrolling past a tweet. It will help me earn followers who aren’t my family and friends.
It sounds as if maybe I don’t want my books to be found, and that’s not true. I buy promos, I’m paying for two FB ads right now (one to my newsletter and one for my .99 cent sale for Rescue Me) so it’s not a discovery fear or impostor syndrome keeping me from posting in places where people might actually engage with me. I’m really not sure what it is, except, I’ve been on Twitter forever and it’s a knee-jerk reaction to post there.
I did a blog post a while back about how 20% of your work should fuel 80% of your success, and if you don’t want to work yourself to the bone, anyone, in any business, needs to learn to work smarter not harder. That means focusing your time where you’ll receive the most ROI, and for most authors, that’s usually writing the next book. If you have a limited supply of time, that doesn’t leave you much to post on social media. You want to make your posts count.
You can always cross-post, which a lot of authors do, and I still don’t really subscribe to that, though there is no harm in posting on Twitter if you’re not going to get any views anyway–as long as you can handle the crappy feeling you get when you don’t have any engagement with your posts. Then again, you have to figure out what you want and where you want to get it from. I don’t find my readers on Twitter–I never have and I never will–BUT it’s a great place for blog traffic. Which makes sense considering I’ve been nurturing my Twitter account for non-fiction subjects for a long time. Like any author who is caught in the #writingcommunity bubble, it’s difficult to break out and it takes constant reminders that it doesn’t matter if I don’t get engagement on Twitter. It’s the shares and likes on my FB ads that count because the social proof on those ads will end up selling books.
Anyway, so I was just using this blog post to kind of think things through, and maybe my rambling will help you decide where you want to spend your time online.
As for the graphic? I made it in Canva–their templates make posting things like this so cute and fun–and I’ll share on my FB author page and on Instagram.
Where are you posting your graphics? Let me know! Have a great weekend!
Last night I was playing around with the ChatGPT that everyone is talking about (https://chat.openai.com/auth/login). You have to create an account, but that’s not a big deal. I was curious about it, since I’ve seen references to it everywhere, and you probably have, too. No matter your thoughts on using AI generated artwork for book covers or books written exclusively from AI generated text, AI is here to stay, and in some ways, it can make your life a bit easier.
When I was playing with it, I was trying to brainstorm the next two books in my rockstar trilogy. Al, as I will call him now since AI in certain fonts looks like Al to me anyway, won’t talk about death, and that was a big problem. The whole trilogy centers around the tragic death of a bandmate, and brainstorming with someone who won’t/can’t/refuses to talk about death and dying ended our conversation before it even began. So that was one reason why chatting with Al was unhelpful. Another reason I found it hard to talk to him is while he must have all the information in the whole world at his fingertips, his responses were generic and filled with qualifications. Al isn’t allowed to have real thoughts and opinions, so if you ask him something like, “Do you think Martha is a pretty woman’s name?” he’ll say:
“As an AI language model, I don’t have personal opinions. However, the perception of names, including Martha, as pretty or not is subjective and can vary depending on cultural and individual preferences.”
What a wishy-washy response! I asked him to help me with names for my characters and asked him what secrets would tear up a couple. His answers were flat and unimaginative. I decided to flip from fiction to nonfiction, which is where people say it helps the most with blogging, copywriting, etc, and I asked Al, how do you market a book? He said:
“Marketing a book can be a complex and multi-faceted process, but there are several strategies that can be effective in promoting your book and reaching your target audience. Some of these strategies include:
Building an author platform: This can involve creating a website, social media presence, and email list to engage with fans and promote your book.
Networking with other authors and industry professionals: Attend book fairs, join writing organizations, and connect with others in the publishing industry to build relationships and gain exposure.
Utilizing book review sites and blogs: Reach out to book bloggers and review sites to request reviews of your book. Positive reviews can help increase visibility and credibility.
Hosting events and book signings: Consider hosting a launch party, book signing, or other event to generate buzz and connect with fans.
Offering special promotions and deals: Offer limited-time discounts or giveaways to incentivize people to purchase your book.
Leveraging traditional media: Consider reaching out to local newspapers, radio stations, or TV shows to secure media coverage and promote your book.
Paid advertising: Consider investing in paid advertising, such as online ads, Facebook ads, or Goodreads ads, to reach a larger audience and drive sales.
Marketing a book is a continuous process, and success will often require a combination of these strategies, as well as creativity and persistence. The key is to have a clear understanding of your target audience and what will resonate with them, and to continually test and refine your approach over time.”
That actually doesn’t sound too bad, and in reality, does offer some advice that you can follow, but marketing a book is pretty cut and dried and Al didn’t say anything I didn’t already know. I asked him how important a book cover is, and he said:
“Book covers play a crucial role in book marketing, as they are often the first thing a potential reader sees and can impact their decision to purchase the book. A well-designed book cover can convey the tone and theme of the book, grab the reader’s attention, and create a memorable visual representation of the book. However, a poorly designed cover may discourage readers from purchasing the book, even if its content is of high quality. It’s important for publishers and authors to invest in a well-designed book cover as it can have a significant impact on the book’s overall success.”
That’s not really a surprise either, and I guess where I’m going with this is, Al isn’t going to give you any out of the box answers to black and white questions. He lacks the creativity to do so. I asked him how to build a newsletter, and he said:
“Building a successful newsletter requires careful planning and a strong understanding of your target audience. Here are some steps to help you build a successful newsletter:
Define your goals: What do you want to achieve with your newsletter? Do you want to promote your business, share industry news, or build relationships with your subscribers?
Determine your target audience: Who do you want to reach with your newsletter? What are their interests and needs? This will help you tailor your content to them and ensure that your newsletter is relevant and engaging.
Choose a platform: There are many email marketing platforms available, such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or Aweber, that make it easy to create and manage a newsletter. Choose a platform that fits your needs and budget.
Create compelling content: The content of your newsletter is critical to its success. Make sure it’s relevant, valuable, and engaging to your target audience. Use a mix of text, images, and multimedia to keep things interesting.
Optimize for mobile: Many people read emails on their smartphones, so make sure your newsletter is optimized for mobile devices. Keep your layout simple, use large font sizes, and include clear call-to-actions.
Build your subscriber list: Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter by offering incentives, such as exclusive content or special offers. Make it easy for people to subscribe by including clear sign-up forms on your website and in your email signature.
Test and refine: Continuously test and refine your newsletter to ensure that it’s meeting your goals and resonating with your target audience. Pay attention to metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge its success.
Building a successful newsletter takes time and effort, but it can be a powerful way to build relationships with your audience and promote your business or brand. By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating a newsletter that resonates with your audience and achieves your goals.”
It was a fun experiment, but don’t be afraid I’m going to turn this blog into AI generated content. Al isn’t publishing, he isn’t writing newsletters, he’s not trying to sell books running FB and Amazon ads. One of the best ways to connect with your readers, be it a blog post, a tweet, or a whole damned book, is to offer experiences, feelings, and emotions. Al isn’t experiencing anything and can’t connect with anyone that way.
I could use Al for inspiration, maybe ask him to help me come up with lyrics for a couple of songs that are expected to go with a rockstar romance, but at this point, copyright and legalities of using AI generated content is fuzzy and I don’t want to land in hot water by using and selling something that isn’t technically “mine.” I would never feed Al my blurb and ask him to come up with ad copy or hooks. I prefer to keep my own IP to myself for now, even that means I look like an untrusting idiot.
Al might be great at coming up with a plot–a billionaire moves to his hometown after a personal tragedy and he falls in love with a florist, but because Al doesn’t have feelings, he’ll never be able to help with the story–the real reason why a couple can’t be together. That was what I was trying to get at last night, but he’ll never be able to give me that. I’ll have to figure out my own characters’ backstories and their emotional wounds keeping them from being together.
Can Al come in handy? Maybe if you’re pressed for time and just want to copy and paste content into a blog post. The samples above aren’t empty–they provide actionable steps that an author can follow to build a newsletter or market your book, but it’s the personal experiences of authors who share what works for them and what doesn’t that will build a real audience full of real humans looking to connect with who you are as a person and what you have to share that can help them with their own endeavors.
If you try it, let me know what you think! Thanks for reading today and have a great week!
Well, I finally finished my first rockstar romance–the book that turned into a trilogy. It topped out at 107,709 words, and I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s fine. That word count will change when I edit it, adding more foreshadowing to the next book (now that it is very loosely plotted out) and after some beta feedback, maybe there will be a scene or two that I can cut (though after reading that, a scene or two won’t help with the overall word count, haha).
It felt like it took me forever to write this book, when in reality, it wasn’t that long.
According to the file information, I created the file on November 10th, and I finished on January 28th. That’s 78 days, and 1,380 words per day. If you ever feel like a project of this scope is out of your reach, just remember, that’s fewer words per day than what’s required to win NaNoWriMo. I don’t write every day, and some days I’ll have a 0 word count and other days I’ll make up for it with a 5k day. You have to find a system that works for you, and if you have a problem with productivity, I recommend Elana Johnson’s book. It helps to know what kind of author you are as well, and she can help you figure it out.
I don’t have too much else to share. My third book in my trilogy should be live when you read this. The books on my VM Rheault Goodreads page are all messed up because subtitles on the ebooks don’t match the paperback and there are two entries for the same book. I asked in the librarians group to fix Rescue Me when that happened and the last time I checked, they hadn’t. When Safe & Sound is live and the ebook is posted over there, I’ll ask again to fix Rescue Me and the entire trilogy. I hate going over there, I hate inadvertently looking at my ratings. When you’re on your profile you practically have no choice, and I hate having to be there for anything at all.
Speaking of reviews, there was so much talk about them last week on Twitter and it drove me insane. One author complained about a 1 star review, and she received so much support. I don’t understand. I don’t understand complaining, and I don’t understand those people who say, “It’s says more about them than it says about your book.” Are you for real? I’m pissy enough right now to say, SOME BOOKS DESERVE ONE STAR REVIEWS! Not every book on the planet is going to be worth 5 stars, or even 4 stars, and her complaining got her called out on TikTok and grabbed her a couple more one stars on Goodreads. She said she wanted a supportive place to vent, but a public Twitter profile is not a supportive, or safe, place. There are no private places on the Internet. The only way you can be private on Twitter is if you lock your profile down, and if you’re on there to network and sell books you won’t cut off your reach that way. Blocking people won’t help–anyone can easily open an incognito window and search your name or create a fake account to stalk you with. There are crazies who screenshot everything because they have no life. She said she deleted that tweet, but I’m sure that tweet still lives on in many many computers and phones.
What bothers me the most though, and what authors can’t seem to understand, is that if you’re using Twitter as a promotional tool, you’re using it to find readers, and it’s no longer an author space for you but a reader space. You shouldn’t complain about reviews or sales because your READERS are seeing that. If you launch a book and you’re tweeting about it all day for weeks on end, but you only grabbed three or four sales out of all that promo, the last thing you should do is complain about it in the very space you were looking for readers. It’s disrespectful to the people who did buy your book. A reader space and an author space is NOT the same place, and I see this all the time. If I see you promo and then in the next breath complain you have no sales, that is a sure fire way for me not to want to buy any of your books. I’m on Twitter to network, share publishing news, and if I mention I published something, it’s to prove I walk my talk. I can’t tweet about writing, publishing, and marketing if I’m not doing those things. It’s silly, and I learned early on the very best thing I could do for my books was to separate what I do online into two areas: my nonfiction like this blog and Twitter, and my fiction like my newsletter and ads.
I’m only at 800 words right now, so let me tell you a little story–I have a friend who is a staunch MAGA supporter. Very vocal about it. (I’m not sorry to say I muted her.) Some people don’t like your political views thrown into their faces, and she kept saying she wasn’t going to hide who she was. Okay. You’re not hiding keeping something to yourself, but whatever. So she was supposed to be part of this anthology, and she was so vocal about her MAGA support that her editor had to cancel the anthology. No one wanted to work with her or the editor since the editor was affiliated with her. This caused her to apologize profusely, but the damage was already done. You don’t have to tell everybody everything about yourself, and you certainly don’t have to put every little thing online. Sometimes it pays off, like Chelsea Banning going viral, and sometimes it doesn’t. I guess only you can weigh the pros and cons of sharing something like that.
Surprisingly, that’s all I have to share. I hope you were able to accomplish a lot this first month of the new year!
While I was writing, as I am wont to do for 30 hours a week because I don’t have a life, I stumbled upon something that was a surprise I honestly didn’t see it coming. It’s not entirely unwelcome, but it will put a wrench in my plans for this year. If you follow the blog at all, you’ll know I’m almost done with a rockstar standalone. At 94k at the moment of this writing, I know exactly what I need to finish up–how many words I’ll need is another thing, but no more than 20k, for sure. It’s a long book about a depressed and washed up rockstar whose manager hires a life coach to get him back on track to record another album. This rockstar has bandmates, and they’ve been kind of hanging out, literally and figuratively, and I had no plans whatsoever to give them their own stories…until I wrote this line on Thursday evening….
Brock sighs, and I understand all that sigh encompasses. An end of an era, but the start of a life they’re unsure of. They don’t have Liv in their corner, a future with a woman they love. Divorced and single, they’ve been drifting since Derrick’s death, the band the only thing anchoring them to the ground. If Ghost Town disappears, they’ll have nothing.
Twisted Lies and Alibis by VM Rheault
That made me sad… I don’t want to leave Brock and Eddie with nothing, even if I don’t know who they are, even if I haven’t invested in them one little bit and in my head they are completely interchangeable.
And so began the idea to turn this standalone into a trilogy….but it will require some work. Here’s what I’ll have to do:
Turn the secondary characters into people and write them into the story. Like I just said, I didn’t consider them anything more than prop characters and they barely have families much less backstories and almost no page time besides brief scenes here and there. Readers will need to get invested in their lives and who they are as people or they won’t care there are books about them. That may require some rewriting on my part and giving them more page time. Usually when I write a series, I plan them out first allowing me to foreshadow what will happen in the other books. They both have children and ex-wives, and that’s about as far as I got. Not a good foundation for two more books.
Who would their love interests be? This is a tough one because I had to sort out who I’ve already mentioned and how I could turn them into romantic partners for my characters. This book is about Sheppard Carpenter who is having an issue moving forward when one of his bandmates dies in a freak accident on stage and it triggers his depression. The bandmate, Derrick, who passed away, left a wife behind, and depending on why they were married and for how long, I think that could work. I don’t know anything about Clarissa, either (even her name is a placeholder because I’m not sure if she’s going to keep it), except she was filing for divorce at the time of her husband’s untimely death, and that could work in my favor. Olivia, the life coach who is helping Sheppard, wrote a self-help book some time ago and has an agent she’s still friends with who could potentially be the other love interest. I made her old…in her sixties, but that’s an easy fix. But book one is set in California, and Agatha’s based in Minnesota. How would they meet, and what’s her story? The possibilities are there, and that’s what counts.
What are their backstories? A good romance needs two people who have a lot to overcome to be together. Since I’m working with a primarily clean slate besides their names and a mention or two of their families, the sky’s the limit….but I’ll need to sit and brainstorm because I need to think of the tropes and emotional wounds I haven’t used before. The tropes aren’t so bad–they’re easy to change to differentiate one book from another, but unique tragic backstories, or front stories for that matter, need a bit more creative juice and in the best case scenario, I’ll figure them out soon so I can plant seeds in this first book. The best series string readers along so they have no choice but to read the next book and the next book. If I can’t even imply what book two will be about, you can forget read-through.
How long will these books be? I was thinking the standalone would be 110k, but if I kept up that pace, we’re looking at another 220,000 words. Sheppard’s and Olivia’s character arcs are long….they need space because they are both grappling with so much and they have so much to overcome mental health-wise for them to be together. I might be too close to my story, but for now, all my scenes seem to be needed for their character development, so we’ll see. I’m still writing it and I haven’t reread from the beginning. I also already have a couple betas lined up so maybe they can help me cut it down a little bit. I’m not opposed to longer stories, but if I have two more books in the works at 110k a piece, I’m looking at a minimum of another 6 months of writing. But, if I do keep the books that long, at 330,000 words, it will be my second biggest project (my 6-book series is over half a million words long, and my 4-book small town winter series is 288,000 words).
Covers. I already had a tentative cover if this was going to be a standalone, and quite honestly, I’m getting tired of doing my own. Doing standalones is a lot easier than coming up with a concept I can handle with my limited skills and finding stock images that I haven’t used before but accurately portray how old my male characters usually are is getting harder and harder. You can tease me all you want, but I’m not cutting their heads in half, no matter how much easier that would make my life. I’m also up against Amazon’s advertising guidelines, and I’m not popular enough to sell books by my name alone. I said a long time I don’t care if they reject my ads, but it’s a lie. Amazon ads are a big part of my marketing, and if I can’t advertise a trilogy, that’s page reads down the drain. So knowing I would have to do three covers instead of one is a small deterrent, but nothing that would keep me from the project.
CoversUpdate: As I wrote this blogpost on Thursday, I did some cover experimenting on Friday, flipping through stock photos for hours and hours. Literally, hours and hours. But, I think it might have paid off as I came up with a tentative concept for the trilogy. I was so pleased I found the cover models, I have already purchased them (do you know how difficult it is to find men that look like old rockstars???), and since I always let you in on my creative process, I’ll show you what I came up with. For some reason I don’t feel the doubt (and still feel, to be honest) that I did with the trilogy that’s releasing right now, but I still can’t say for sure if these will end up being the final thing. They kind of appear washed out and I may need to change the background, but I used screenshots and they’re grainy, so we’ll see what working with proper photos will do. It’s funny, while doing research for rockstar romances, that there isn’t one definite kind of cover. Of course, there are shirtless men galore, but I can’t go that way, and besides maybe a stage/audience in the background, there are no similar styles. A lot of times, like mine, the model isn’t even holding a guitar. That can be good for a designer in terms of flexibility, but bad for creating something that will for sure work to bring in sales. Anyway, I’ve never been one for a cover reveal, so here they are with tentative titles–those definitely are subject to change:
All in all, it sounds like I’m going to do it, especially since I have covers now, and it would be a nice addition to my backlist. It puts a glitch into my publishing schedule though, as I was going to put out two more standalones after my trilogy releases before I start publishing my 6-book series. I’m only pushing back my series because I really really really wanted some kind of audience already in place when I release these books. I honestly think they are going to either make or break my career (think Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series)… and I wanted to give them the best possible chance. I can only do that if I have some branding and a backlist in place already. I’m growing my newsletter, and I’ll be looking at promo opportunities through Bookfunnel as soon as THIS trilogy releases in full. The second book is out today, and I have had some good feedback on the first book. Releasing another trilogy before the series goes live would be great, but I need time to write. I have a standalone (billionaire’s fake fiancé trope) already queued up for April, and if I waited until July or even August, that gives me 7 months to finish this trilogy before I start needing something to release. That’s kind of pushing it, but as I have been dragging my feet with this book anyway, it would give me a deadline to work toward. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have strung out the Lost & Found Trilogy a little more, releasing two weeks apart instead of just one to buy me a more time, but that’s okay. That just means less time on Twitter, which is no big loss. I’ll miss touching base with some of my friends, but all the negativity is getting me down again. When authors have to drag other authors down so they feel good about themselves, that’s when I have to cut out. If you think you can write better, then go do that, publish, and market your bestseller. It’s obvious people like that think they have one, so prove it. Shut your mouth and go do that. Jealousy looks terrible and I hope one day their bitterness bites them in the butt.
If you want to read more about turning a standalone into a series, here are a couple of articles that helped me:
Believe it or not, I don’t have much to say this week. If things went correctly with KDP, the first in my trilogy should be live today. Over the weekend I set up some Amazon ads for the preorder hoping that the ads would have a little time to click in. Being I’m writing this post on Saturday afternoon, the ads are still in review, but I’m hoping they are moderated and approved with little fuss. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be–the men are clad in a suits from head to toe, after all. [Insert rolling eyes here]
If you remember from a previous blog post, I put all three up on Booksprout for reviews, and one kind reviewer read all of them and pointed out a couple of typos. Two real typos and a stylistic choice among three books is amazing, I think, and I was grateful she took the time to let me know. The typos appeared in books two and three, so I was able to find and correct them and upload new files before the preorders went live. I was happy.
I’m reluctant to schedule any promos yet because I want them all to release before I do. I haven’t had any unfortunate encounters with Amazon besides them blocking one of my Large Print books that I eventually gave up on, but I have heard of preorders being canceled for no reason and other glitches, so I’ll wait. I don’t know how busy the promo sites are in February, but hopefully I can get something lined up before the first in my trilogy drops off its 30 day cliff. I also want to set up a promo for Captivated at the same time using a different site and maybe the two promos will feed each other and I can get a nice lift on this pen name.
Otherwise, I spent a couple days beta reading for a friend and that put me behind a tiny bit, but I haven’t needed a reason to set my WIP aside. I’ve been dragging my heels from the start, and I have no idea why. At 80k I’m almost done, maybe 20-30k more, but I just need to sit with a notebook and write down every single scene that’s left so I don’t have plotting excuses. I had set the end of January as my original done-by date, so I guess we’ll be going with that despite my good intentions to finish faster.
Last week was pretty quiet, and surprisingly I don’t have any news or Twitter gripes. Like I said, my Booksprout reviews have started coming in, and sometimes I get a little annoyed when someone who says they aren’t the target audience reads it and doesn’t like it. I kind of feel that if you’re not the audience, don’t bother because you already know you won’t like it, but she complimented me anyway saying the concept was too good for her to pass up. (I’m hoping this means the blurb is good!) She gave me 2 stars because she didn’t like Jack, but what are you gonna do? She didn’t say my writing was bad or that I needed an editor, so I’ll take the good for what it is and move on. If you want to read it, she’s already posted it on the product page of Give & Take.In all honesty, I don’t mind. A book with all five-star reviews seems shady anyway. In private feedback I thanked her for her time and if she reads the other two books to let me know what she thought of the trilogy as a whole. We’ll see as she didn’t respond, but maybe my graciousness will lead her to read more of my books in the future. I will gladly take an honest and well-thought out review over a five-star lie. Though I will always love Jack no matter what anyone says. He’s just a little misguided.
I suppose you can have a heart attack now because that’s all I have for this week. Cross your fingers for me that my trilogy launch goes well, and that I make more progress on Twisted Lies and Alibis. We have two weeks left in the first months of 2023. Make them count!
Vania Margene Rheault 