Negativity in the Writing Community

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social media doesn't create negativity, it uncovers it. Jay Baer posted on a desk with partial view of laptop, notebook, and pen

I am really tired. Not only because of what’s been going on in writing circles, but because my cat won’t let me sleep, and I’ve been approved for surgery at the end of March, which is good news because I need to keep trying to find some relief from what’s going on with me, yet it will cause a lot more work for the next little while. I was really hoping to launch the first book in my duet in April…we’ll see how that goes.

But what I’ve been seeing in the writing community makes me tired, too. Namely, tweets like this: (And no, I don’t feel bad for showcasing them here. If you’re putting something out on social media, expect for it to be shared. Period.)

https://twitter.com/OmayraVelez6/status/1493326845688918032
My books ARE edited. By me.

I wrote my own blog post about that a long time ago, once upon a time believing that indies who didn’t care about what they published brought us all down. But the fact is, it’s not true, and it will never be true. Because I’ve realized this: Instead of looking at Amazon as a retailer, look at Amazon as a distribution center. You still have to create and store a good product, you still have to drive traffic to your book’s product page, you still have to keep the promise you made to your reader and satisfy your customer with the content. All that is on you.

So, why do indies take quality, or lack thereof, so hard? So personally?

I would guess it’s fear. Fear that they are going to put so much money, time, and effort into a book that will sell a handful on launch day and then sink in the charts. There is nothing more disheartening. Nothing. While a book that (and this is subjective, anyway) isn’t written as well, will sell like gangbusters for months, maybe years after its release. This happens. Of course it happens. Why do we still talk about Fifty Shades even though that book is 10 years old? Or Twilight? People hated Twilight so much that they ran Stephenie Meyer from social media. Writing and being on social media in a writing community capacity wasn’t on my radar back then, but I saw in real-time what the writing community is capable of doing when they bullied a poor agent after she tweeted her preferred book lengths guideline. It was atrocious, to say the least. Fifty Shades of Grey was fine; it still is fine. Ask Erika how her sales are of the books written in Christian’s POV. She’s not crying in her tea. So is the Twilight saga–it’s fine. Midnight Sun has sold over a million copies. The authors who are bitter may never find that level of success, but that isn’t something that you should shove onto other authors in your community. Your, ummm, peers?

Will poorly written books sell? Of course they will, and this fact is what drives splinters under people’s fingernails.

Now, I can get crabby at authors the same as everyone else. When I hear the, “I’m an indie author and I can do what what” mantra, and then in the same breath, “Why aren’t I selling any books?” Yes, I get crabby at those people. Very rarely can you have it both ways.

I just don’t understand why anyone needs to put that kind of negativity out there in public. There are bad indie books. Books full of telling, head-hopping, plot holes, poorly edited because let’s face it, editing is expensive, but no one is forcing anyone to read those books. Like Nicole says further in that tweet thread, maybe those authors shouldn’t expect to sell books. Maybe they shouldn’t, but it’s none of my business. I learned a long time ago not to buy a book because it has a nice cover on it–anyone can make one in Canva. I have to read the blurb, make sure it’s properly formatted, and I have to read all of the look inside Amazon makes available before I buy a book. And listen, if you buy a book and you don’t like it after the first couple of chapters, return it. Why keep it? You wouldn’t keep any other product that’s broken after you bring it home from the store. Maybe that advice won’t go over well, but I view books as products, and I don’t keep things that are broken. I’m too poor for that. Yes, I’ve had my books returned. No, it didn’t hurt my feelings. I simply didn’t care.

This topic is near and dear to my heart, because when authors like these decide to spew censure all over Twitter, I am one of those authors they hit. I have never, ever, been afraid to tell you that I do most of the work on my books alone before I publish. All alone. And the fact is, I’m not in the minority here. When everything, and I mean, EVERY SINGLE THING in this industry is pay to play, and you are broke, what in the heck can you do? You can still be a real author and not pay for a developmental edit, a copy edit, and a proofer, and a beta reader after the fact. That’s ridiculous and will cost you thousands of dollars. Do beginning authors need more help than an author who has written twenty books? Maybe. Probably. But I also know authors who have an extensive back list and their books are boring and/or have other technical issues, either because they haven’t gotten the feedback they needed earlier in their career, or they think they are good writers and aren’t open to feedback.

No one can predict what will hit and what won’t. What book will fill a need at the right time, what will hit with a trope or a feeling or a theme. That’s why there are sleeper hits. Any book at any time can explode. Do you have a better chance if that book is properly edited, has an exciting look inside, with a great (and legal) cover and fantastic story? Sure, but it’s not like authors intentionally publish books without those things. We all launch to the best of our ability, and my best won’t be the same as someone else’s best. There are are people who will always be better or worse than you. I have a degree in English with a concentration in creative writing. Someone else could have an MFA. Someone else could have flunked high school English. Those things are not indicative of success. And to be honest, it’s none of my business what degrees you have or not. Maybe you have 100,000 newsletter subscribers like Lucy Score, or maybe you have a little money and can run some Amazon ads and buy a newsletter promo and hope Amazon’s algos help you out. Maybe your book gets picked up by popular TikTokers. Colleen Hoover’s books are having a moment because of TikTok.

Generally speaking, there is more wit than talent in the world. Society swarms with witty people who lack talent. -- Antoine Rivarol printed on desk with partial view of laptop, notebook, and pen

The point is, tweets like the ones up above aren’t necessary. If you’ve been burned by an author, indie or otherwise, tuck their name in the back of your mind, don’t buy from them again, and move on. While I was reading Billionaire when I decided to pivot, I read a lot of books. Some were really really good, and some were not that great. And I understand the frustration. A lot of those not-so-great books? They were outselling the books I enjoyed. By a lot. A lot has to do with who the author publishes with. Some are full-fledged indie authors, some were published by Montlake–an Amazon imprint. But that just makes it even clearer that there is so much that goes into a bestseller that trying to hit it is futile.

So stop ragging on other authors. Do your best, and hopefully one day it will pay off.

The end.

Knowing when to pivot. (What does that mean?)

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a picture of zoe york's three books about writing and marketing romance. look here to buy: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082CZDK75
To check out the series, look here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B082CZDK75

I just finished Zoe York’s Publishing How To series, and I really enjoyed the books, her thoughts and experiences on publishing romance, goal setting for your author career, and so much more. She’s been writing and publishing for years now, is a full-time author, and has made a bestselling list or two.

What I’m about to say doesn’t have anything to do with these books–I’ll circle around to them–but lately I’ve realized that when it comes to writing, publishing, and marketing, you can consume all the marketing advice in the whole world, but you won’t get anywhere unless you have a good product, and more importantly, a good product people want to buy. That’s part of the reason why I haven’t purchased Mark Dawson’s Ads for Authors course (comes in at close to 1,000 dollars, and SPF offers it twice a year). If you don’t have the books to back up your ads, your ads aren’t going to do anything.

When I take a look at my publishing history, I was writing good books. I received the odd 1-2 stars most authors do, but on the whole, I’m writing good books. That’s important to me because I do most of the editing and production alone. But something was still off because over the past few years, I didn’t find any traction. One mistake was my newsletter, or lack of one, I should say, and the other was my lack of direction with the books themselves. (I also didn’t understand author brand, but that’s an old discussion we can have on another day.)

It was just this morning when a woman in a writing FB group was talking about this very thing. She was sub-genre hopping and couldn’t figure out why she wasn’t getting any traction. Maybe she’ll believe me, maybe she won’t, but I told her I had the same problems with my own books and decided to niche down.

desk with laptop, plant, and coffee. be stubborn about your goals but flexible about your methods.

My issue with pivoting is that it took me a long time to realize I had to do it. Some writers who struggle may never understand that it’s not their marketing chops, or their covers, or their blurbs, but simply what they are writing in the first place. Depending on how fast you can write, that can take years. Years that can feel wasted because if you had been writing the right thing in the first place, you wouldn’t still be at ground zero wondering where it all went wrong. But that’s like a chicken and egg scenario–how do you know what’s right or wrong until you put it out there? And what are the metrics you’ve decided to pin that on? Sales? Reviews? I’m nowhere near making a full-time author’s salary–I checked my dashboard yesterday and made 2 cents. (That tells me someone borrowed the book in KU and opened it to make sure it borrowed properly, then went off to do something else. Or they read the first page, didn’t like it, and returned it. If I think to check back, I’ll see if that person read it or not, but that micro-level of caring is not in me and never will be.) Admittedly, those books are old now, and even dropping 10 cents a click in ad spend to those books is probably a waste of money because as we’ve determined, Amazon loves consistency and relevancy, and I won’t be writing any more of those books for the foreseeable future.

So what will make you decide that it’s time to pivot?

At the beginning of the post, I brought up Zoe’s book because in it she says knowing when to pivot and niche down is a personal choice, and it is. You have to look back at your books, where you are, and decide if it’s enough for you. I see indies making money. I want that, too. It’s not a driving force, but financial security is important to me, and who doesn’t want to get paid for doing what they love?

When we talk about pivoting, what does that even mean? It means taking a look at what you’ve been writing, looking at that lack of success those books are bringing in, and deciding to try something new. It can be as simple as what I did–turning from writing “Contemporary Romance” to Billionaire, or doing a full 360 and changing from Christian Romance to Horror. But then that begs the question too–will the pivot be in the right direction? I have no idea. I can’t even say if these new books will resonate with readers until I put them out. I THINK I’ve taken a step in the right direction: billionaire, first person POV. According to Alex Newton of K-Lytics, Billionaires are like vampires and will never die. So, that’s a good thing. But there are a lot of other things that can turn against me: writing style, the tropes I chose to write about, the issues (backstories) I’ve given my characters and decided to tackle in my writing. Changing from Contemporary Romance to Billionaire might not be the magic bullet I hope it is, and right now, I don’t have a plan C. I’m not even sure how long I’m going to give this pivot a go before I decide this writing business isn’t meant to be. I have enough books saved up to publish 4 a year for the next 3 years, so at least until then (because why not publish them since they’re written), but I’ve been skating financially since my divorce, piecemealing paying my bills with scraps of income from various places while giving my writing career a chance to do something, and I can’t do that indefinitely. As Kristine Kathryn Rusch says, there are easier ways to make money. Less stressful too, I bet.

desk with laptop plant and coffee a pivot is a change in strategy without a change in vision. eric ries

So, if you’ve been banging your head against your laptop trying to figure out why you’re just not seeing the success you want, maybe it’s time to pivot. What is selling right now that’s close to what you’re already writing so you don’t go out of your mind? I’m not saying be a slave to the market, or to trend, though I’ve seen Alex Newton’s indie reports, and trends don’t change nearly as quickly as we like to say they do. I’m saying find something different to write that’s hotter, more niche than what you’ve been writing and see if that works.

All those who wander are not lost, but sometimes you think you know where you’re going and end up not knowing where in the hell you are. That was me before looking at my backlist and choosing to write Billionaire. All of Nothing has made more than all my other books combined, so I feel this pivot was a good choice. Now all I have to do is publish, wait and see.

Fingers crossed.

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!

Thursday Thoughts and Author Update

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I haven’t give you an author update for a while, but mainly I’ve been listening to my series and slowly getting that ready for my 2023 release. I just started book 3, and I’ve been tweaking, checking consistency with the other books, making sure there aren’t any discrepancies with what the characters say and the information they find out from book to book. You might wonder how I can do this, and let’s just say, I have 75% of my 480,000 words memorized. Haha. I’m kind of kidding, but kind of not and it definitely helps that I’ve already read through this series about five times and let months go by between reads (I wrote these in 2020). Also, listening to these books is a different way of consuming them, and I’m finding things I wouldn’t catch by reading only.

I am very satisfied with how these are coming along, and despite a mini-breakdown I had a few weeks ago about finding beta readers and proofers, I feel good about them all as a whole. I’ve come to the painful realization that I won’t have any betas or proofers, mostly because now isn’t the time to test proofers and betas. I should have set up a system and formed my “team” long before this, and it’s just too big of a project to be trying people out now to see if they are a good fit. While it’s always is a good idea to have more than one set of eyes on your books–especially for newbie authors–sometimes that just isn’t possible for one reason or another and while no one likes to admit it, there are indies out there who publish with the barest of editing and do just fine. In a perfect world, I would love to have some feedback on the overall story and to make sure all the details are consistent, but with my English degree and my firm grasp of grammar and punctuation, I’m not worried about the technical side of things, at least. I’ve been sifting through stock photos too and marking the ones I like but I won’t be able to do the covers until closer to the end of the year when I can get a better look at what will be trending. Who knows what will be hot for Billionaire covers a year from now? There’s no use getting set on a couple or anything else if I’m going to have to redo them later. Cover-to-market is really important, especially in romance, and getting impatient will just create more work for myself.

I’ve already had to redo my covers for my duet, as black and white covers with a pop of color for the title are slowly starting to slip away. I revamped the covers for my Cedar Hill duet, making them color instead of black and white. Excuse the rough shape they’re in. They aren’t set in stone, and I haven’t purchased the stock photos yet. Tell me which ones you like the best:

male model captivate by her book cover black and white electric blue font for title
male model captivated by her cover color gold color font for title

male model addicted to her book cover black and white pink font for title
male model addicted to her book cover in color gray color font for title

Anyway, so I won’t be doing the covers for the series, but I can do everything else, and I’m hoping I’m finished with them by the summer as I still think I want to write a Christmas novel for release at the beginning of November. Listening to these isn’t taking as long as I anticipated it would, so I should have plenty of time to write it while doing everything else to get my duet ready for release thing spring and my series ready for next year.

This is a topic that would probably better fit a Monday post, but I just want to complain a little bit about it here. The other day, an agent on Twitter tweeted this advice:

Twitter tweet snapshot: It breaks my heart when I get a great pitch for a book somewhere between 50 and 70k. It's almost always a no. There are exceptions, of course, but in general, adult fiction is between 80k and 120k. 60k is just too short to fit comfortably on the shelf. 12:03AM 2/6/22 Twitter Web App 81 Retweets 264 Quote Tweets 714 likes

Writer Twitter blew up. This agent was attacked on so many levels, and so many people who had to weigh in on this agent’s advice and opinion. She eventually locked her account down and I wasn’t privy to most of the horrid aftermath. I’m appalled at the way the writing community treated her, and I feel terrible she was subjected to such aggressive behavior for simply offering a guideline to help querying writers.

No one wants to hear there are rules, and there’s not a day goes by on Twitter when I don’t see “I’m an indie so I don’t have to follow the rules,” or “Rules are made to be broken.” There are rules, and break them at your own detriment. If you want to query, follow the agent’s guidelines. That includes the genre they rep and the length of the book they prefer. If you want to indie publish, go for it, but there are industry standards. You need to format your book correctly, and include all the correct parts. You can’t use any photo you want for the cover. You can’t use song lyrics in your book unless you write to that artist’s record label and ask permission and probably pay a fee. (If you want more legal advice, Helen Sedwick’s book, Self-Publisher’s Legal Handbook, Second Edition: Updated Guide to Protecting Your Rights and Wallet is invaluable.) There are a gazillion “rules” we must follow every time we publish a book. To say there are no rules is destructive. Not following the rules can prevent you from finding readers at best and can land you legal hot water at the worst. I don’t understand why writers and authors continue to beat a dead horse, but there are rules.

Here is a tweet threads to scroll through if you want. I thought I saved more, but I can’t find the other one where I stole the screenshot of the tweet to begin with. The agent’s tweet and thread is gone–it disappeared for me when she locked her account down, but there’s plenty of fodder if you want to scroll through on your lunch break.

If you want to read another agent’s thread about word count and guidelines, here’s Laura Zatz’s thread:

When it comes to word count, I have found that reaching a higher count can be difficult for newbie writers because 1) they don’t understand how to twist a subplot into the main plot, 2) don’t develop their characters well enough to explore full character arcs 3) don’t know how to write engaging conflict and/or 4) they tell, not show, which always takes fewer words–showing takes a lot more room on the page. Also, some, but not all, indies have gotten into the habit of writing shorter because it helps them publish faster keeping them on top of Amazon’s algorithms.

If you’re a romance author, and like writing novellas, look at Carina Press–the digital arm of Harlequin. They take agent-free submissions, and they publish novellas that are 35k words and up.

Anyway, I’m going back to listening to my book–which is 91k, by the way. Every book in this series is between 85-93k, but they are as long as they need to be for that section of the story.

Be kind to each other, y’all. How you present yourself online will stick with you, and may come back to bite you in ways you never would have dreamed possible.

Until next time!

Five reasons why taking advice from writers about what readers like is a (really) bad idea.

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Writing, marketing, and publishing advice is plentiful online. There’s excellent advice that can take your business to the next level, good advice, mediocre advice, very very bad advice, and some advice that is straight up, literally, illegal.

But when it comes to writers giving other writers advice about what readers want, I have found that, depending on where you get it, a lot of that advice isn’t to be trusted. Here are some reasons why it’s probably not a good idea to apply advice from other writers when you’re trying to write, publish, and market to readers–especially to readers who don’t write.

Writers don’t read like readers do. This is a big one. I hate seeing writing advice online. I hate it. I try to avoid it on this blog unless a pet peeve like my “got” issue (and not Game of Thrones) crawls too deeply under my skin and I have no choice but to speak up. Writers don’t read like readers do. How may times have you heard an author say, “I couldn’t get into the book. I was too busy dissecting/editing/proofing it to enjoy it.” A mom hiding from her toddler in the tub with her Kindle and a glass of wine isn’t going to critique your book. She wants a good story, characters to fall in love with, maybe some sexytimes, and if you give her that, she’s not going to care about small issues like whether or not you used the Oxford comma. She actually probably won’t even care how many times you use the word, “got” if the story is engaging and she cares about the fate of your characters. Give your readers a good story, and forget about the writing advice you see online. Keep changes between you, your beta readers and your editor.

A related thing I dislike is hearing writers say, “I read everything, and I write for readers who read everything, too.” The fact is, there are very few people who will read “everything” and writing and marketing to people who read “everything” is like throwing a handful of gravel into the wind. The pebbles scatter, and the force behind your throw is wasted, but throw ONE rock as hard as you can and watch it fly, right? You can’t write for everyone, you want to write for readers of a particular sub-genre. It will make it much easier to find readers because you already know what they like. Whale readers devour everything they can get their hands on in the sub-genre they prefer to read. They don’t stray much outside of their lanes, which is why writers are also counseled to stay in one lane–at least for a while.

Other writers may not have the same audience goals as you. We all want to find readers, but that doesn’t mean we have the same goals. I want to make a living with my writing. That may not be someone else’s goal. Maybe they want to sell only a handful of copies to say they are a published author. If we don’t have the same goals, we aren’t going to run our business the same way, or even think of our books as a business at all. That means anything from being a multi-genre author instead of niching down, not putting their books in KU when yours would do well there, or writing whatever they want when you would prefer to follow what’s selling in the market.

This goes hand-in-hand with writers who will give you plain old harmful advice. The other day on Twitter there was a writer who asked if she should separate her different genres with a different pen name. I can’t tell you how many authors told her not to bother and my jaw dropped. I wanted to explode, but I kept scrolling. Unless your genres are closely related, (billionaire romance/mafia, paranormal romance/speculative women’s fiction with romantic elements, mystery/thriller/domestic thrillers) you’ll do better if you separate your genres with pen names. It will make marketing easier, your also-boughts on Amazon won’t get messed up, and you can cultivate two sets of readers. It’s work though, and that’s why the thought of pen names turns off a lot of writers. Readers will appreciate the separation. Even if you don’t keep your identities a secret, they’ll appreciate knowing which name you write under that they like best. Writers say they want to take credit for all their hard work. You can still take credit–inside on the copyright page. So many people told me that I didn’t need to separate my 3rd person contemporary romances from my 1st person billionaire books. I wanted to because they have different tones, though the subject matter (my characters’ personal problems) is largely the same. I felt validated when Zoe York mentioned in a Clubhouse room that she separates her 3rd person from her 1st person. It just made sense to me all around, though readers probably can switch from reading 3rd to 1st easier than I can writing it.

Writers don’t read enough to know what’s going on in their genres and the industry as a whole. For every rule there is an exception, and there are probably a lot of writers who read regularly. I’m not one of them, and I should be. I should be gobbling up every billionaire romance out there. I did read some, when I decided to make my switch, but I didn’t, and still don’t, read enough. I’m willing to bet that if writers read more in their genre, they wouldn’t be giving the advice they do. They would know what readers want, what they look for, what they’re willing to pay for. They would know the book cover trends, what kind of blurbs capture a reader’s attention. Advice steeped in ignorance is not advice you want to take. I have bemoaned on this blog so many times about how a lot of indies don’t understand the industry, and if you don’t understand the industry, you don’t know what’s selling, or why it is. That’s important.

“I don’t read newsletters, so that’s why I’m not offering one.” This is, by far, the craziest thing I have ever heard. You are a writer. We’ve already ascertained you more than likely don’t read enough, so saying you’re not subscribed to any newsletters isn’t surprising, but it’s not a reason why you shouldn’t offer one to your readers. Readers are not like us. You need a way to communicate with them. I haven’t offered a newsletter in the five years I published under Vania Rheault, and it’s my biggest mistake. If you don’t offer a newsletter, your readers have no way of staying in touch with you. I gobble up non-fiction content and I’m subscribed to many newsletters from big indie names like Dave Chesson, Derek Murphy, David Gaughran, Jane Friedman, Ricardo Fayet from Reedsy. I also get newsletters from Kobo Writing life, Reedsy, BookBub and more. Their information about publishing is valuable, and I subscribe, and, more importantly read, to stay in the know. Your readers, if they enjoy your books, will want to sign up for your newsletter to stay up to date on what you’re doing. This does mean that if you offer a newsletter, you have to send one out on occasion. Content wasn’t the issue with me. I’ve managed to regularly blog for 6 years and rarely do I run out of something to say. I didn’t offer a newsletter because I’m lazy. I didn’t want to learn how to use MailerLite. I didn’t want to take the time to figure out how to create a landing page, how to set up an autoresponder, the technical issues of signing up for a professional email, blah blah blah. But, I finally did it. Now I’m five years behind. Don’t offer a newsletter because you haven’t subscribed to any. You’re not a reader. You’re a writer.

Stubborn indie writers are set in their ways and won’t change even if that behavior hinders finding readers. The two most stubborn groups of people in the world are runners who are injured and who should take a break from running to rest and heal…and indie writers. Taking advice from a writer who isn’t open to new ideas and bristles at constructive criticism is a terrible idea. Feedback and kind criticism are a necessity to grow in craft and in your business. I wish I could count how many times I see an agent say, NO PROLOGUES and a writer say, “I’m gonna write all the prologues” then cry when they can’t find an agent. Are you going to listen to someone who is intent to do it their own way damned the consequences, or are you going to listen to someone who knows what’s going on in the industry and is flexible enough to pivot and or try new things? (By the way, agents know the editors {who are the people who actually buy the books} who know readers and what they like. Just a thought.) As far as readers go, what’s expected in your genre? Fantasy uses prologues. Mystery/thrillers do too, often in the POV of the villain. If you want to write a prologue and your genre supports it (meaning your readers are used to them) write a prologue. If a prologue won’t enhance your story, maybe you don’t need it. I like epilogues. I like writing them, I like reading them, and they are often found in romance novels to tie up loose ends. I’m not doing anything out of the ordinary writing an epilogue. Sometimes a story needs it, sometimes it doesn’t, but prologues and epilogues are not a hill you need to die on. What is best for YOU and your genre? Romances don’t do well with prologues. Readers want to get to the meat of the story as quickly as possible. Introduce your heroine and hero ASAP. Writers have made too much of an issue about something that should be considered on a book by book, and genre by genre, basis.

Writers do their best to sabotage their own businesses–sometimes not thinking about their books as businesses at all is the first mistake they make. Everything you do should be geared toward finding and keeping readers. Writing what you want is only good advice if you know the genre you want to write in, the reader expectations of that genre, and if you enjoy writing that genre and those tropes readers expect. Many people have asked me if I feel boxed in writing billionaire romance, but I don’t. The same tropes (and yes, I structure my novels around tropes) apply to people who have money as to the characters who are broke. They handle problems differently, sure, but that’s fun, too. Make what you love to write meet in the middle with what readers want to read. You can’t listen to a writer who says a book cover doesn’t matter or tells you readers don’t read blurbs. Over on Twitter, I’ve heard it all, and it’s concerning because the writing community has thousands of members, and some of the information passed through those hashtags is harmful at best and toxic at worst. Think like a reader from start to finish and you’ll never go wrong with writing, publishing and marketing of your books.

Fighting Analysis Paralysis: What you can do when you feel overwhelmed.

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The end of the first month of the new year is upon us, and in Minnesota, that means waiting for February and March to go away so we can start enjoying some milder temperatures. I don’t mind these months so much, especially working from home now, and since I replaced my little Neon two years ago, the winters and the snow aren’t that stressful.

But we can also feel time slipping away, and New Year’s resolutions, for some, are a faint memory. Sometimes we can let these go, but sometimes the passing months just means more time we don’t have to get what we wanted to get done.

I’m starting a new pen name this year, and with it comes pressure to put everything I’ve learned in the past five years toward good, marketable books, while building a readership that will keep coming back for as long as I want to publish. That’s a weighty burden I’ve placed on myself, and to say I struggle would be an understatement. It would be nice if I could find a happy medium between building a readership without losing the joy of writing. I get bogged down with the writing, the editing, the covers, promotions, the newsletter, and sometimes it just makes me want to close out of everything and turn on a movie. Of course, watching Endgame over and over again won’t get me what I want either, but mentally running through everything I can do and should do is stressful all on its own.

How can you combat analysis paralysis in the coming months? Here’s what I plan to do:

Make a list. This can be a huge list of everything you want to accomplish this year, or what you want to get done in a monthly or weekly timeline. A huge master list of what you want to get done in the remaining eleven months of the year might be more stressful than helpful, but giving yourself an overall view of the things you want to accomplish can actually be motivating.

taken from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244301

Then chunk it down even further. I know what I want to get done in the next 11 months: release my duet, release a standalone. Write a Christmas novel for this year’s release if I have time and can think of a good story. Edit my 6-book series, format them, and do their covers. Get a proofer to proof the proofs. Get them set up to release in 2023. All of that sounds exhausting, and perhaps, when I’m having a bad day, impossible. Yesterday I was off because I wasn’t feeling well and I was tired, and thinking about tackling my series brought me to tears. That was analysis paralysis at its finest, with some Imposter Syndrome thrown in for good measure. (Is my series good? Is it worth the time to package and publish?) What can I do to make all that easier to swallow? Take it slow. My duet is with a beta. There’s nothing I can with it until he’s done. I can’t format it because there could be changes I need to make and it would be easier to do that in the Word document. I can’t do the covers (not the full one, anyway) because I don’t have the formatted interior files. I have the blurbs written. All I can do is be patient and work on something else, so I’m tackling the first book in my series. The Christmas novel will be a bonus if I have time to write it, and if I don’t, I’m not going to worry about it. Christmas comes every year, and I can write one for 2023.

Don’t worry about what other people are doing. The first the year is terrible with authors tweeting and posting about their New Year goals. Some of the number of books authors say they are going to release is staggering, and you have to keep in mind that you can only do what your life allows you to do. The authors putting up the big numbers do this for a living. They write eight hours a day, or close to it, anyway. They have a system and have managed their obligations so they can write a book in two weeks. If that isn’t you, you can’t worry about it. Analyzing what other authors are doing is a sure way of making yourself feel terrible. Even my schedule might make you wonder how in the world I have time for it all. All I’ve done is write for the past two years, and that was a mistake on its own, but it’s helpful I have books completed–the hard part is already done. Now it’s making time for the busywork and pushing them out there. I’m only releasing three books this year which is a low number by romance genre standards, but I don’t want to be known for putting out ten books a year. You teach your readers what to expect from you, and three books a year is a good number. Not the best, as four books a year keeps you relevant in Amazon’s algorithms, but three books a year is doable for me, and if I can do four, that year will be a bonus. Even if could write full time, I would never be capable of releasing a book a month, and it’s not something I ever want to do.

Control your FOMO. My fear of missing out is over the moon, but if you can’t control the fear of all the things you might be missing out on, you’ll never get anything done. There will always be a marketing webinar to watch, a group to join, a Clubhouse room to listen to, a new podcast episode to consume, and if you can’t focus on what needs to be done when it needs to be done, you won’t get anything accomplished. For the meantime, I’ve stopped listening to marketing podcasts, and the only thing I do regularly now is listen to my Level Up Romance Marketing Monday hour on Clubhouse. That is also a networking opportunity for me as well as listening to some great information, and I don’t work Mondays, so it fits into my schedule. Because here’s the thing: If you don’t have good books to publish, nothing else matters. I know what I need to do in terms of marketing: make sure my covers are to market, make sure my blurbs are good, make sure the stories are what people want to read. If you don’t have those things figured out, no amount of marketing is going to help you sell books anyway. I know now to run Amazon ads without losing money. I have a newsletter signup opportunity ready for my back matter along with a reader magnet. I have all the bits and pieces ready to go, and the only thing I have left now is to see if my stories resonate with readers. So think of what you need to do with where you are at the time. Are you working on your first book? Craft and feedback might be more important to you than learning how to run Amazon ads. Can you not afford a book cover? Learning how to your own might be what you need to focus on right now. Narrow your focus on what you need for the place in your writing career you are at, and a weight will drop off your shoulders. I promise.

taken from: https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244301

I had a crappy day yesterday and was doubting my abilities to put out good books. I’m still feeling a lot alone in this endeavor–so many of my friends have dropped out of the writing community since I met them five years ago, or we’ve drifted apart for other reasons. I was feeling overwhelmed with all I wanted to get done this year, and when you feel like you don’t have help, community, or support, a long list can seem quite daunting. A list can put things in perspective, and while I might feel alone, I’m not. I have a great community on Twitter, and I’m doing my best to cultivate relationships with my romance authors on Facebook. Everyone feels inadequate somehow, like they aren’t enough to make it in this business, but you’re not alone in thinking this. Lack of sales can do it, burnout can do it, too. We’re all struggling, but I hope knowing that you’re not alone can jolt you out of your own analysis paralysis and you have a productive 2022.

Until next time!

Starting out with BookFunnel, and yeah, as always, Happy Monday!

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Good morning! I don’t have any new goals except that I would like to finish listening to the second book in my Cedar Hill duet so I can format them and order the proofs from KDP. I’m going to take a break before proofing those and I probably will write the billionaire-wants-a-baby trope novel that’s been in my head for a little bit. I wasn’t going to, but I need something to do with my time. It was going to be a standalone, but my FMC has single friends, and I realized it would be a good start to a 5 book series, or so, though the rest of them will have to be put on the back burner for the time being. I’m still looking at an April release for book one of the duet, and I’m gathering information on launch plans and forming a tentative schedule for the first month of its release. Maybe I’ll blog about launch plan ideas for next week and give you some of the resources I’ve been checking out and my thoughts on them.

Today and I wanted to talk about BookFunnel. BookFunnel has been around for a long time as a book distributor and also a newsletter builder. I’ve heard a lot about BookFunnel in recent months, especially at the beginning of this year as we all look toward our new goals for the year and how we can better run our businesses. It’s not a secret that I’ve been talking about my newsletter on the blog, all the steps I’ve had to take to set up a newsletter through MailerLite, and my back and forth and back and forth with whether to offer a reader magnet or not. I did, in fact, decide to offer a newsletter magnet–one of my shorter (78k) standalones I was going to publish this year. Instead, I uploaded it to BookFunnel, and in my welcome email, I give readers the link they need to go to BookFunnel and download it.

When I was looking into setting up my account, I wanted to research how to do things on there before diving in. That’s just my way. Before I even opened Vellum (a formatting software) I watched hours of how-to videos so everything would look familiar. I hate stumbling around, not knowing what I’m doing. I watched this how-to video on Mark Dawson’s SPF channel on YouTube:

That was very helpful, and it talks you through initial set up. While I believe, like Elana Johnson, to begin as you wish to continue, I just signed up for the $20/year plan.

You can look here for what the plans offer. Ultimately, I’d like to go with the mid-list author plan as the $20.00 plan doesn’t collect email addresses if you send traffic directly to the download page. It creates an additional step for your reader as you have to send them to your newsletter sign up page and ask them to sign up before they have access to download your book. You can say it will weed out the freebie seekers, as if they do go through all the steps to sign up for your newsletter to have access to your free book, chances are they really like what you’re writing and will remain a lifelong fan. On the other hand, you want to make things as simple as possible, and well, extra clicks will always turn some people off.

I just pay so much for other writerly things right now that another $100.00/year on a pen name that I’m not sure will take off just seems a bit much. (My Office 365 subscription, Canva Pro, and my WordPress subscription come to mind off the top of my head.) I’m going to release a duet and a standalone this year (and possibly a Christmas novel in November/December if I can find some Christmas spirit) to get my feet wet, and I think that will be a good enough gauge to see if my books are going to resonate with readers. I can upgrade at any time. Probably the most inconvenient thing about choosing the cheaper plan is that you can’t run a Facebook ad to your reader magnet. A lot of authors I know will run FB ads to their BookFunnel download page and let BookFunnel collect the reader’s email address for the newsletter signup before they can download the free content. BookDoggy will also promote your BookFunnel download link. Paying for newsletter signups is a bit controversial, but I’ve heard good things about running Facebook ads to your BookFunnel link to grow your mailing list. I just want to test out my books first to see if there’s even an audience there before spending more money. I’ll have my newsletter sign up in the backs of my books, the cover of the reader magnet, and the blurb to entice readers to sign up.

The downloading page is beautiful. Here’s the page to my reader magnet:

The landing page displays the entire blurb, but this is what it looks like before you scroll down. I’m not going to share the link with you, but I do offer a short story, and I’ll share that link with you now.

I had an idea for what to do with a short story that I wrote a couple of years ago. It doesn’t have a happy ending, doesn’t fit in with the brand I’m trying to create for myself, and I had no idea what to do with it. It sat in a notebook for a long time, and when I was writing the second book of my duet, I had an idea of what to use it for. In my second book, Talia, my FMC, gives her email address to Beau, the MMC. I don’t know about you, but when I was a kid and there was a phone number in the book I was reading, I dialed it. If only to hear the “That number is not in service, please check the number and dial again” recording. I’ve always been curious, always wanting to know what, where, when and why (and the name of the dog), and I’m still like that. It drives my kids and sister crazy. Anyway, when Talia gives her email address to Beau, I thought, what if someone emailed that address and what if Talia responded? It’s a fun Easter egg probably no one will ever figure out, but if you email her address, you’ll receive an autoresponder message that thanks the reader for emailing, apologizes that she can’t get back to you personally, but as a thank you for emailing, please download a short story she had to write for English class (she’s in college in the book). I created an email address for her– taliajeanscott(at)gmail(dot)com –and set up a vacation autoresponder with the BookFunnel link inside it. Was it a lot of work probably for nothing, yes. But I don’t think I would have bothered to do it if I hadn’t had the short story already written.

If you want to test out BookFunnel as a reader to see what your readers will get if you use it, you can download Talia’s short story as a demo. Be careful if you read it–it’s 5 chili peppers on the heat scale–which is another reason I felt I didn’t have anything to do with it. I write open-door sex scenes, but nothing like that short story that borders on erotica, I think. Anyway, here’s the link, and a picture of the landing page if you don’t care about downloading it: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/xwng7qjy2w

Yes, I had to format the short story with Vellum (another writerly purchase, but has earned back what I paid and much more), add the copyright page and author’s note in the back, and I created the book cover with Canva using a Deposit Photo stock photo. It probably was a whole lot of work for little gain, but it was something fun, so whatever. I’m not the first author to provide Easter eggs in their books, and these days, we’re all looking for a bit of an edge over the competition. Feel free to steal this from me, and if you do, I hope it works for you!

There are a lot of benefits to using BookFunnel, and I barely touched on any of them, mostly because I haven’t had the chance to try out everything they offer. I’ve heard a lot about how you should have your own newsletter built up before attempting to join any promos for building your list, and I”m not interested in using BF for that… yet. I would like to grow my list organically first, from the sign up link in the back of my books, though I know that could double or triple the time it will take for me to grow my list. But, that’s getting ahead of myself considering I don’t have even one person signed up for my newsletter yet. Hopefully that will change in April when I release my first book.

If you want to hear Damon Courtney talk about BookFunnel at the 20booksto50k Vegas conference last November, you can watch it here.

There’s not a whole lot going on for me besides just keeping on keeping on. I’m trying my best to remain optimistic, but with my impending release, that’s getting easier. I haven’t published for so long, it’s giving me something to look forward to. I didn’t remember how much work it is. No wonder I’ve spent the past two years burying my head in the sand and just writing.

I think that’s all I got for today. I hope you have a lovely week ahead!

Until next time!

Author Musings: Personal Update and Amazon’s Also-Boughts

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Happy Thursday! Thursday’s aren’t so great for me because they’re actually my Mondays, and work has been super busy lately. But I have been able to get a lot of editing done on my days off and I might be able to publish a little sooner than the April release date I was aiming for. Anyway, so I missed my blog post for Monday–I was just so into editing last week I completely spaced on it. Not much is going on right now in the indie publishing world anyway, so probably a lot of my blog posts for the next little while will just be my writing updates as I finally publish after two years of not.

But I was perusing Twitter like I’m wont to do, and there have been many authors lamenting over their lack of sales, especially as the new year has rolled around, and lots of celebrating when they manage to cajole one of their followers into a purchase. I just want to caution anyone who begs for a sale by saying this: a sale isn’t just a sale.

When you’re an indie author going through a dry spell, you might not think that’s true. You celebrate every sale, and to an extent, you should. But on the other hand, if the readers who buy your book don’t regularly read in that genre (i. e. they bought your book as a favor or to do something nice or to “support” you) their sale isn’t helping you.

Amazon’s algorithms are stronger than we want to believe, and it’s IMPERATIVE that when you publish a book, Amazon knows exactly what genre it is and exactly who will read it. I’m sure you’ve all gotten those emails of recommended books. I’ve seen tweets from amused (and bemused) authors wondering why Amazon would email them about their own book. It’s really because you’re been looking at your own product page without using an incognito window and now Amazon thinks that’s the kind of book you’re interested in. This happens when you look up any of your friends’ books, too. I get emails for all kinds of books I would never actually buy–because I’m clicking on links from Twitter, looking at books mostly to see why the author is complaining they aren’t selling.

While this can be amusing, maybe even frustrating, it’s actually a demonstration of how you can use Amazon’s recommendation emails to your advantage. You want Amazon to email potential readers about your book, right? You do want Amazon to list and feature your book at the bottom of another author’s product page and encourage them to buy it because it’s similar to the book they’re already looking at?

This isn’t successfully done if you don’t train Amazon to understand who your book is for. When you receive an email about a book that doesn’t interest you, you simply delete. But what if Amazon emails you books you might actually like? You at least click over to the product page. I’ve purchased several non-fiction books this way because I’ve taught Amazon to know I love publishing industry books through my order history.

For example, I was looking at an author’s product page whom I know from Twitter, and the authors in the CUSTOMERS ALSO BOUGHT ITEMS BY section were all authors I recognized from Twitter. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Twitter authors were obviously supporting each other, but they all wrote in different genres. It’s obvious this author wasn’t finding readers in his genre. His friends were supporting him, and while that’s great, you can’t make a living like that, either.

So what can you do? In this case, a sale isn’t just a sale. A sale to the wrong reader can muddy your book’s sales history on Amazon and either Amazon will send emails to the wrong readers, or worse yet, not bother to promote you at all.

Amazon algorithms can help you sell books, but you have to help it help you.

How?

  1. Make sure your book’s categories are correct. You can add more than the two KDP allows you to choose when you publish if you email support
  2. Make sure your meta data is correct when you publish (the 7 spaces for keywords you fill in when you publish)
  3. Don’t promote to your #writingcommunity friends
  4. Run ads and target your category/comparison authors/comparison titles
  5. Use newsletter promos (choosing the right category) to attract new readers. David Gaughran has a great list here.

The more in alignment your book is to your genre, comp authors, and comp titles, the better chance you have of Amazon helping you sell your book.

If you want more information about also-boughts, David Gaughran has an in-depth blog post and you can read it here.

If you want to learn more about the Amazon algorithms, Reedsy has a great course they will email you for free. It will explain what the algorithm is and how you can make it work for you. You can sign up here.

I love keeping an eye on what’s going on in the industry, and I think another trend that’s coming is longer books. My first person books are naturally longer than my 3rd person, and when I made the switch, I was surprised I could consistently hit a 80-85k+ word count when before I was happy with 70-75k. But lately I’ve been seeing billionaire/bad boy/mafia romances coming in at 100k+ word counts. Are romance books getting longer? And if so, why? A lot of romance authors are in KU, and many romance authors also write in series which can up the word count because they are setting up the next book.

Will this affect my writing? Probably not. 85k is a sweet spot for me and unless I work harder at creating subplots, I think that word count works for the way I write my stories. It is interesting though, how it seems romances are getting longer and could be evidence that readers would prefer longer books over books half that size or even novellas. Longer books also give writers room to build that slow burn, and explore deeper and richer character arcs. I’ve read several books that are huge with including family and friends. When your characters explore relationships outside of their romance plot, that can also deepen your character arcs and add words. Ultimately, you do have to do what’s right for your book and the story you need to tell. But I’ve always been big with meeting reader expectations, and if a reader is expecting a 350 page book, and you give them half that, you could find yourself with unhappy reviews.

I think this kind of goes along with the pricing increase I’ve been seeing as well. A longer book does mean a higher paperback price due to printing and paper shortages, and indies are pricing their ebooks at 3.99, 4.99, 5.99, and even 6.99. If you’re going to price that high, you definitely want to give your readers what they are paying for. I, too, will probably raise my prices this year, though my marketing strategy isn’t focused on ebook sales (my books will be in KU) or paperback. I’ll leave my paperback prices as low as I possibly can make them and still earn a dollar a book. I love reading paperbacks, but unfortunately, I can’t afford 15.99 per paperback, even if I understand why authors need to price them that high.

If you want to check out the word counts of your favorite books, or keep an eye on what other authors in your genre are doing, you can use Word Counters, and you can find it here.

I’m going back and forth with writing a Christmas novel for this year, and it’s hard for me to get into the Christmas spirit three weeks after the fact. I can not offer one, and publish three books this year, or I can write it later this year. The problem with writing it later is that I’m going to spend the rest of 2022 getting my six book series ready to publish in 2023. I probably will need all year because these books still need a bit of an edit, formatting, covers, and a beta reader/proofer if I can find one who is willing to do it cheaply and be time efficient. (A big ask, I know.) I don’t want to stop my editing and production momentum to take a break writing something for Christmas. So either I do it after my duet is done and before I start editing my series, or I skip it all together. I have another standalone hanging around I could prepare and publish, but I don’t know how well a non-holiday book would do with a December release.

Anyway, that’s about all I have for an update. Monday, and I will get to a blog post, will be about BookFunnel, my reader magnet, and my experience with setting up my account.

Have a great weekend!

Tentative launch plan for my duet: thinking aloud and plans for the next three months

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It’s a nice thought!

Happy first Monday of 2022! I hope the start of the new year has gone well for all of you!

Two days ago I was thinking about writing another book. It would be a reader magnet for my newsletter, but in the end, I talked myself out of it. I’ve been saying for a while now that I want to start launching some of my books, and I can’t do that if I’m writing. In 2022 I’ve decided to play to my strengths, or at the very least, try to co-exist with them and I can’t write one book while writing or editing another. It will be easier for me to accept it and postpone something new because I’d never get any of my older books off the ground. So I gave myself a pat on the back, even though this book is all plotted out and I even played with covers. I’ll write it after my duet is set and ready to go, and not a minute before.

So, now that that crisis has been averted, I can start to drill down on what I need to get done for these two books. I’m still going to try to launch in April. Being that I still have to listen to both books to make sure I don’t have any typos and I still proofread the paperback proofs no matter what, a mid-April release day for the first book should be doable.

So here’s what I’m thinking:

  1. This week I’m going to look at comparison authors and titles for ad keywords. I already have been doing this a little when I was doing cover research. Billionaire is all over the place now with everything from models in color, to black and white, to objects. I can’t get a bead on anything that’s trending definitely, except it seems a single male still graces more covers than a couple. I have a small list of the big-named authors that dominate the top 100 on Amazon, but I’m also going to dig deeper and make a list of mid-list authors that I may not have heard of that are still doing well. Publisher Rocket is great for finding out info on the “competition” and that software will let me know if it’s worth my time to add them to my comp author list.
  2. This week I’m also going to write my blurbs and try for feedback in the romance groups I’m most active in. I read T. Taylor’s 7 FIGURE FICTION: How to Use Universal Fantasy to SELL Your Books to ANYONE and pulling out the universal fantasies from my books and building blurbs around them makes a lot of sense. You can grab the book, and also join the Facebook group here. Asking for feedback has always been iffy for me a) because I’m not always as active as I should be and you should never ask for a favor unless you’ve already give one and b) a lot of what I’ve been told just hasn’t been helpful. I wrote a blog post about asking for blurb feedback and you can read it here.
  3. I’ve said for months I’m going to create a list of newsletter promos that don’t require a minimum number of reviews. I’ve been sitting on this for months because I haven’t needed it, but it will be a great resources for people, so what I need to do is settle in with a snack, put on some music, and just get it done. I have list after list of promo sites, I just need to go onto each website and break them down. Starting up a new pen name without any reader group/newsletter/ARC giveaways pretty much guarantees me to releasing with 0 reviews. But even though I didn’t get the best results with Booksprout, I wasn’t writing to market as well as I could have been, so giving that site a try with my new books might be something I’ll consider. I have come to realize that if you use Booksprout correctly and publish frequently, it’s a place on its own where you can build a community of readers who will snap up every book you put up for reviews. Changing my mindset may be helpful considering it will take a while to build my own reader group, and nurturing a community on Booksprout may be faster, at least for this year’s releases. If you want to read about my Booksprout experience, you can look here. If you’re curious about the review site, you can look here.

So that’s what I have going on this week–mostly a lot of busy work while I give the books time to rest. During the last two passes I made some changes to the breadcrumbs I had to leave for the characters to solve the mystery part of the plot, and I want to give myself space so the next time I read them through I can see if the changes make sense.

In the meantime, I can nail down the covers I’ve been playing with. Because of the feedback, I switched out both of the models and changed up the background, so it was helpful. The covers for these two books hold a lot of weight because not only are they setting the tone for what’s inside, but they’re also setting the tone for my entire catalogue of books going forward and my author brand. There was no point in niching down if my branding isn’t consistent. That’s another reason why making a list of comp authors by hand instead of letting Publisher Rocket pull a list for me is really important. I need to make sure I’m aligning myself with the correct authors. Here’s what I have so far:

Part of the problem with asking for feedback is that people will throw out solutions like you know how to do those things. When you have limited capabilities like I do, it can be tough to follow everyone’s advice. I asked for feedback for the guy on Addicted‘s cover because I’m not 100% I like the shadow on his forehead, but when everyone told me how to “fix” it, I had no clue, so watch out for that. I can’t use photo manipulation software in a way a lot of authors and graphic designers can, I can usually only look for a different stock photo or try my best with what I know in GIMP. Chances are I’m making a big deal over nothing because both models have shadows. It’s probably more important that they look cohesive and that they belong together as a set.

Finally? A reader magnet? I’ve only been talking about it for months….

Talking with my significant other, he gave me the idea to go ahead and use My Biggest Mistake as a reader magnet. It’s a 74k standalone, and with the way I have my publishing schedule set up, I won’t be publishing it for a while. It’s already edited, formatted and has a cover. What this means is I would have to figure out BookFunnel in a hurry. I have the barebones of my newsletter signup worked out, though I do have a MailerLite course by Holly Darling that purchased on Black Friday for my birthday that I haven’t started yet, either. I have a landing page set up with the welcome email. I think all I would need to do is create an account with BookFunnel and download the book files and add the BookFunnel link to my welcome email for the download. I probably do have time to do all that, but it’s my nature to watch tutorials and see how others do it before trying to do anything myself. Considering that it’s my shortest standalone and that I don’t have plans to publish it anytime soon, I think it makes sense to use it as a reader magnet for the next little while. It doesn’t change too much for me, just adds more to my to-do list that needs to be completed by April because I’ll need to have it all in place for the duet’s back matter.

It really is no wonder why indies have it so tough these days. So much jumping through hoops to play the game.

My inspiration quote for you for 2022 🙂

The last thing I’ll need to do is get all my files ready and submit a preorder for book two so I have have the link available to put in the back matter of book one. It’s not that I like preorders or think they’re beneficial, especially since my audience will be in KU and they don’t preorder books, but in this case, I need them up so I can claim my Amazon Author page and my Goodreads profile. It’s been so long since I’ve done either of those that it’s going to take me a couple days to figure it out again. I can also start running low cost-per-click ads to the preorder and test my keywords to see if I get any impressions and clicks. I’m going to release at full price, though I’m not sure what that will be. Prices are rising, and $2.99 books are considered on the lower-end of pricing. I may bump up to $3.99, maybe even $4.99 since I’m not targeting people who will buy my books, though if they wanted to, I wouldn’t argue. No, my target audience is the whale readers who devour books in KU. I’ll have to up my prices on paperbacks, too, because the of the paper shortages. It’s really too bad because I’ve always tried to keep my paperback books affordable, but IngramSpark is raising the cost of their fees. Between that and the cost of paper, it’s expensive to publish through IS these days. I know one thing, if you put your price on your back cover, IngramSpark makes you match the price in your account, so if you don’t want to keep tweaking your cover, don’t put the price on the back. I’m not even sure if I’m going to publish with Ingram with this new pen name. I probably will, but I just don’t know if the effort is worth it.

So, I have a lot to keep me busy, and of course I’ll keep you guys updated! I’ll have a lot of new experiences to write about in the coming weeks. I hope you all had a fantastic start to the new year!

Until next time!

2022 Goals, Plans, Process, and Learning about Yourself.

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When we start a new year, we always have a ton of plans. In the past two years, a lot of those plans have been derailed by COVID, but we’ve (hopefully) made the best of it.

I’ve been struggling lately to figure out how I want my publishing schedule to go moving forward. I’ve read a lot about consistency, not only what (sub)genre you write in, or how long your books are, but also when you release them. I’ve seen firsthand with this blog how posting consistently can build a readership, and I don’t think it’s any different for books. So, I’ve been trying to figure out what will work for me and create a schedule that I can maintain going forward for years to come.

The problem is, you need to know a lot about yourself before you can plan out something like that. Here’s what I’ve learned by taking a look at how I’ve worked and how I’ve spent my time in the last two years, which, to be fair, isn’t as accurate as it could have been because of the pandemic, and I know others are in the same situation. Still, I’ve been working from home for the past year, and my health issue aside, things have calmed into a lifestyle that will be constant for the foreseeable future. This is a list of discoveries I’ve put together that will hopefully help me develop good work habits that I can keep going.

  1. I have to shower and do my hair and makeup for the day–even if I’m not going anywhere. When I started working from home, it took me a week or two to realize that I can’t get anything done in my pajamas or skip taking a shower. To feel professional, I need to look somewhat professional. My kids make fun of me and my sister teases me, but I just feel better. I don’t have a desk and do a lot of my writing on my bed (space and privacy are hard to come by in our tiny little apartment) but I’m more productive and not prone to take a nap, either, which can be a time suck because when I nap, I nap. I’ve stopped trying to figure this out and I just go with it. The first thing I do after I take my daughter to school is shower, and I always get ready for work as if I’m going into the office, even though I’m just logging into my computer in the bedroom.
  2. I don’t like writing fiction in the morning. Not because I can’t function before noon, but because I find my creative spark in the evenings. I’ve learned, over time, that if I didn’t have to get up in the mornings for anything, I’d probably write from about 8pm until 2am, and sleep in the next morning. Because I can’t do that, I have to work around it. I usually write in the afternoons from noon to 3pm, and this is when I get a lot of my writing done on my days off. I also write as soon as dinner is over (in the winter, this works especially well as it’s already dark by 5pm–I love to write in the dark!) until I have to go to bed around 10pm. Knowing this is helpful because I can use the mornings after I get my daughter to school and shower to blog, create ads, and submit my books for promos. I can do administration stuff before noon and turn on my creative brain for the rest of the day.
  3. I can write a 85k book in about six to eight weeks. That’s not bad (some authors are a lot faster), but I’ve never timed how long it takes me to do the rest. And by “the rest” I mean edit it, get the feedback from betas I need to feel good about the story, format it, create the cover, and load everything (ebook, paperback, large print) into KDP. In the years I’ve been publishing, I have come to the frustrating realization that editing will always take longer than I think it will, and creating the cover always takes a long time because I need to research what’s trending in the market, find the stock photos I would need, and experiment with fonts, placement, etc. I don’t want to hire out, and I will avoid it for as long as possible. So, I can write a book in six weeks, but the editing and the rest of the production can also take another six weeks. This is something I definitely need to know so I never miss a deadline, self-imposed or otherwise, or a preorder date.
  4. I have no problem getting things done, but giving myself daily to-do list is always going to be a waste of time. I’m good with things I need to get done on a macro-level. “Finish writing the book this month” is a good example of how I can put something huge on my to-do list and get it done, but breaking things down into micro-level daily tasks will never work. This is why I’ve never been able to work with planners. This was actually a huge revelation for me. Like today, I didn’t plan on doing a blog post. I was going to write on my book all day, but this idea popped into my head, and I decided to write the core of it down for Monday. I think I can work around this mental block, and I’m going to plan weekly and monthly goals. I’ll plan out what I want to do for the week, say write 20,000 words on my WIP, do a blog post, and search for stock photo models, and then, instead of trying to force myself into a daily schedule, write down at night before I go to bed what I’ve managed to accomplish. Hopefully, if I plan Monday to Monday, by Sunday night I’ll have everything crossed off my list and I can start a new list for the following week.
  5. I will always write before anything else. This is a such a big pro that I hate to turn it into a con. I mean, if you don’t have books, you can’t do the rest, so I’ve always given myself a pass when it comes to getting other things done. I don’t like writing blurbs. I like creating covers, but I don’t like having to put together the full wrap for a paperback, or creating a separate full wrap for IngramSpark, or loading to either KDP or IngramSpark. Vellum makes formatting easy, but it’s still not writing and passing it off to a formatter would only cause more work because I need to be able access to my files to change back matter when necessary. On the other hand, if you’re not willing to suck it up and do the parts you don’t like, no one will ever be able to read your books because they’ll be held captive on your computer. What this means going forward is I’m going to have to start rewarding myself for the non-writing tasks that get done when a book is in production and after it’s published. I don’t take time to celebrate, and because I love the writing part of it so much, I don’t take much of a break between projects, either.
  6. My tunnel vision will always make things harder. I work on one book and one book only. I know how much faster my schedule could go if I could edit one book in the early afternoon and write on a different WIP in the evening. Tunnel vision is another area where it’s too good of a pro to be considered a con. I never EVER get distracted by shiny object syndrome. Yes, I can get antsy toward the end of writing a book, look forward to new characters and a new plot, especially if I’m writing a series, but I have never abandoned a WIP to write something new. I will finish a book and edit it and only then move on to the next set of characters. Unfortunately, like I said, this can slow me down, and I’ll have to make peace with that.

It’s all fine and good to have goals, but if you don’t understand your own processes and personal limitations, it will be difficult for you to reach those goals. You might have noticed I don’t have many external obstacles. My children are older (my son is 22 and still lives with me and does the bulk of the chores around the apartment, and my daughter is 16 and self-sufficient) so they don’t take up much time. I’m divorced. I work from home now which has eliminated driving time to and from work. I don’t have much stress. I like my job, and I don’t have many commitments besides movie night with my sister on Tuesdays. If you have little kids or you have a demanding day job, you’ll have to adjust your goals accordingly. I don’t watch much TV. If you’re juggling three or four different shows, you’ll have to work around that lost writing time. Looking at your daily schedule, your weekly schedule, and your monthly schedule can give you an idea of where your time goes and how you can create attainable goals for yourself.

I did buy a planner for myself, and what prompted me to take a look at what I have going on internally that could interfere with a writing/producing/publishing schedule is Elana Johnson’s book, Writing and Marketing Systems.

I had to buy the planner, it was just too cute not to. While I’ve tried to use planners before, I’ve never succeeded, but hopefully using it in a different way will help.

It’s frustrating to work so hard and not feel like you’re going anywhere. I want to climb out of my rut and start making some things happen. What are you going to do for 2022 to dig yourself out of your own rut? Let me know!

Until next time!