Three Things I’ve Stopped Doing (and Three Things I Always Will)

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2,645 words
14 minutes read time

brown scale on brown background. low part says, three things I stopped doing (ampersand) and high part says, three things I always will black text

Things change in indie publishing. Some quickly, like Amazon guidelines, and some take years to shift, like marketing trends. I’ve been in this game for a bit now, longer than a lot of people I met when I first started out, but shorter than some of the tried and trues I knew who were doing this for years already when I first created my Twitter account.

I have found the longer you stay in the game, the more data you’re going to collect (if you’re smart and keep track). What works, what doesn’t. What did but doesn’t anymore. There are some basic things that will always have merit like publishing consistently, having a website, and, in most cases, not genre-hopping if you want to build an audience. But there are some things that just don’t work anymore, like just simply publishing and watching the royalties roll in as they did during the Kindle goldrush days.

So, I thought I’d share the three things I’ll always do and three things I stopped doing. As the years go by and I hang in there, this list might change, but these are the conclusions I’ve drawn so far since I published my first book in 2016.

Three things I’ll always do in my publishing business:

Finish a duet/trilogy/series before release. I’ve blogged about this a few times, as for most authors this is a Catch-22. Some readers now won’t read until a series is done and they can binge, but an author is reluctant to write more unless they see interest in the first book. What will always convince to me to finish is the fact that if your series is never done, it will never get the readers it could if it was finished. Books don’t expire. In the digital landscape they can sit on a virtual bookshelf for decades. Indies make money on older titles all the time, but you are ensuring that you won’t if you don’t finish. My reasons go beyond the money, even beyond author courtesy and reader habits. I finish out of a sense of integrity for myself and my work. I mean, I don’t publish as I go because I have anxiety over consistency issues that I couldn’t fix if my books were already out in the world. I’m not that good of a writer, so I need to be able to go back and double-check until I’m satisfied. But I also just couldn’t walk away from a world and characters I created. I loved them or wouldn’t have created them in the first place. I’ll always stay true to that creative spark and finish what I start.

Marketing in a way that’s sustainable to me without feeling guilty. That means letting go of the idea I need to be on social media. I don’t like thinking of a hook or a theme and making a graphic and posting. I don’t want to make videos for TikTok even if I have gotten better at it and it doesn’t take me that long. I still post every once in a while so if a reader stumbles upon my FB author page or my IG profile I look like I’m still alive, but otherwise, the constant advice that I need to be posting all the time I will happily ignore. The fact is, a lot of authors don’t have the money or don’t want to spend the money on marketing. I understand that, but paying for ads and for newsletters like Freebooksy and Fussy Librarian is my way of reaching readers without worrying about algorithms or coming up with content and the best way to present it. If I run an FB ad, that’s my limit, since you do need a hook and a graphic that will make people click.

I understand that in a perfect world, an author will use both paid and free tools to market effectively. But when mental health comes in, not to mention time and finances, each author has to make the best choices for them. Even if that’s not posting on socials, not paying for marketing tools, and only joining in a free, author-driven book blast once a year. You have to take a look at what results those methods are bringing in and if you’re okay with that. After a lot of soul-searching, I am okay with breaking even or losing money. I didn’t start publishing to become rich and famous, and that’s okay because I never will be. (I still play the PowerBall sometimes though.)

I will always buy my own ISBNs. This is kind of a cheat, because I already made this decision, and four years ago I bought a pack of 100–after I had already bought a pack of ten and went through them. It cost as much as my rent (at the time–my rent has gone up considerably since then) and I was sweating bullets, but I charged it and paid it off after a few months. I have been called privileged for being able to do that, and you might think I’m privileged to be able to afford ads and paid promos, too. I don’t feel privileged, living paycheck to paycheck, depending on the rent money my kids give me every month, and I still have to charge bigger purchases, like the new mattress I had to buy a few months ago for my back pain. I have a small budget for ads and don’t pay myself a wage out of my royalties. Every penny I make on book sales gets put back into my business hobby. I think that’s another reason authors are hesitant to pay for things like ISBNs and ads. They don’t always make their money back because they don’t write to market or their covers are bad, but I have never seen any industry besides indie publishing where people think they can start a business and not spend any money.

Not everyone will agree that buying ISBNs is a valid expense, and that’s okay. Amazon may not be around forever and neither may IngramSpark, though chances are good they’ll still be here in my lifetime at least. But, I wanted to protect my work under numbers that I paid for and now I’m the publisher on record for my titles. That means a lot to me. I protect both my ebooks and my paperbacks, even when the general consensus is you don’t need an ISBN for your ebooks. I still have quite a few numbers left, even using two a title, and well, I don’t think I’ll need to buy anymore. Obviously, buying ISBNs is a personal business decision but I have never regretted mine.

Bonus Entry:

I will always be a member of ALLi. This is something that I thought of last minute, but I’ll always be a member of the Alliance of Independent Authors. As someone running a business, I think it’s important to be part of an organization that will have your back. I mostly joined so I would have help if Amazon ever closed my account. There are a lot of other benefits too, like discount codes on formatting and publishing services, and I save a little every now and then if I have to update a file at IngramSpark. While it seems like a waste of money on the outside, paying for something that you don’t use (like an old gym membership that’s on autopay) it will be there whenever I need it and in these days of scammers and thieves, having some who’s in your corner is worth more than what they charge for a yearly membership.

Three things I have stopped doing since I started publishing:

Building and sending out a newsletter. Last year when MailerLite screwed me over when I was trying to make my newsletter compliant, I said “fuck it” and shut my newsletter down. I didn’t want to search for another newsletter aggregator and I exported my listed and imported it into my author website. I decide I would turn my newsletter into a public blog, and so far, things have been going okay.

There are a lot of disadvantages to this, to be sure. I can’t offer “bonus content” because what I post goes to everyone. Segregation of an email list isn’t possible on WordPress, nor is culling my subscribers. They have to opt out or my list is stuck with them. I can still force people to give me their emails if they want my reader magnet, but I would have to pay for that privilege on Bookfunnel and that’s not where I want to put my money right now.

So, as far as newsletters go, my blog is still sent out in email form but posted on my site and it will show up in the WordPress reader. People might think I’m crazy for giving away a book without strings, but what’s a book? I can always write another one. Kind of like when your hair stylist does a crappy job. Your hair will grow back. Eventually. Books are a dime a dozen and My Biggest Mistake has served me well. I’ve given away over a thousand copies, and because the back matter in all my books advertises this free book on my website, I’m afraid I’ve trapped myself into giving it away forever. My only ask is you subscribe to my blog, but that rarely happens. Still, I prefer the laid-back approach I’ve adopted since I’ve been working on not taking my books so seriously. I’ve given myself permission to relax, especially in the evenings after a full day. I’ve started watching Lucifer, because, you know. Tom Ellis.

This is one of those things that may change, but I’m not sure what would prompt me to move my list again. I like what I’m doing, and because I’m comfortable with WordPress, maintaining it isn’t a nightmare. In fact, I just refreshed the header, colors, and font on my author page. I hadn’t since I set it up and it looks nice. If you want to take a look around, you can find it here: vmrheault.com.

I’m getting rid of the hard back matter sell. A long time ago in a romance marketing room on Clubhouse, I heard the advice to do the “hard sell” right after the last paragraph of your book. There were all these little caveats, like you couldn’t even use a spacer or a hard enter because that would “force” the content on to the next “page” on an ereader. It was advised to put your call to action (CTA) practically right after the last period, and I did start doing that along with many many many authors. When I look back at my older books now, I hate it. I hate it, hate it, hate it, and I’ve been going through and getting rid of it. Why? Because after I have just read an amazing book, I want to sit with the happy ending, I want to sit with the characters who touched my heart. I don’t want to be yelled at to join a mailing list or to buy another book. So, while I was re-editing Rescue Me, I got rid the immediate CTA to go to my website. (I’ve always pointed people to my website and not a landing page, and that saved me a ton of headache when I stopped using MailerLite.) I didn’t get rid of it completely, but it’s on its own page now. Ebooks are flowable and don’t have pages, but I think a reader has to “flip” to see what else is in the back of the book after the content ends. I’m doing Faking Forever now, and along with updating my list of books, I’m also getting rid of the hard sell. I didn’t it do it on my new releases and that is a trend I’ll stick with. If readers loved your books they will find a way to stay in touch. Like moving my newsletter to my blog and cutting back on the number of books I’m publishing every year, I’m just going to ease up and stop trying so hard. Because you know what? It didn’t do that much anyway.

I’m not adding subtitles on my ebooks. That was another really popular thing to do, and I even wrote a blog post about it. I guess this goes along with the hard sell, and I’m not going to add subtitles to my ebooks anymore. I’m going to start letting my cover, title, and blurb speak for itself, and make sure my categories and keywords I choose when publishing do the heavy lifting. Adding a subtitle to your books was a very trendy thing to do to drive discoverability, and you may think that with market saturation that not doing it anymore might be going backward. But, Amazon doesn’t like it, either, and honestly, now I think shoving mini-tropes into a subtitle just looks desperate and ridiculous. So, as I update my books, along with taking out the hard CTA at the end, I’m going to be taking off the subtitles. It will make my buy-pages look cleaner. Am I telling you not to do it? No. Unless you really do want to be careful around Amazon, then maybe I would rethink that, but if you like to take chances and want to pack your subtitle full of mini-tropes, then you should still do what you want to do. This is the new and improved relaxed version, remember?

Bonus Entry:

I won’t ever use an illustrated cover. Obviously I was thinking about my hockey novels and the kind of covers I wanted to put on them. I don’t fault anyone for using an illustrated cover but I have just come to realize those are not for me. I understand the reasons why authors turn to them. There’s more of a selection when scrolling through vector art than there is real stock models and if you’re one to go with the trends, you don’t want to feel left out and think you could be leaving readers on the table. But at this point, illustrated covers would be at odds with the brand I’ve built for myself over the years, and if I can find what I need and there are still real people on the kinds of books I’m writing, then I don’t see any reason to change. I also have never, and probably will never, write a story light-hearted enough where an illustrated cover would fit, so instead of moaning about that, I’ll lean into my strengths and keep putting hot, sexy men on my covers.

When it comes to indie publishing, or just publishing in general, the ability to pivot and be flexible is probably one of the biggest assets you can have. Things change at a snail’s pace until all of a sudden everyone is talking about it and doing it a different way. What’s especially interesting is when things used to be the standard (like subtitles on ebooks) and that changes to something that no one does anymore.

I have extreme FOMO, I really do, but this year I have managed to brush a lot of that aside, for the most part because I think I know everything there is to know and there isn’t going to be a magic piece of advice that will push me to the next level. And that’s okay. Accepting that is actually freeing. I can do what I want, write what I want, and be happy with it. After the few years I’ve had, that is a really great place to be.

Next week I’ll give you a rundown on what I’ve been doing. July is almost gone, y’all. I hope you’re making the best of what’s left of summer.

See you next week!

Romanticizing Cheating (In Fiction)

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One of the most talked about things that happened last week was when the CEO of Astronomer, Andy Byron, attended a Coldplay concert with his mistress and HR chief, Kristin Cabot, and got caught on camera.

photo taken from: https://people.com/astronomer-ceo-andy-byron-resigns-following-viral-coldplay-kiss-cam-drama-11775506

Of course, the first thing I thought was, “What’s Astronomer?”

The second thing I thought was, “That’s too bad. They looked cute together.”

The third thing I thought was (as someone who has an HR degree), “Is she going to have to fire herself for fraternizing?”

The fourth thing I thought was, “How can we learn from this from a craft perspective?”

Going all the way back to the beginning of time, we’ve been taught to view cheating as this horrible, vile thing that we should never do, and the responses online validate that belief over and over again. Andy, and Kristin too, were called some pretty nasty names, and the general consensus was that they deserved each other.

As someone who was married for about fifteen years (what is time 😵‍💫) and has since divorced, I never thought it was as clear cut as that. Marriages, relationships, fall apart all the time, and for the most part, it’s not anyone’s business why. We don’t know what’s going on in Andy’s home life that warranted him stepping outside his marriage–he and his wife could have simply grown apart. We tend to need to place blame, automatically calling him a bastard for hurting his wife and her a bitch for dating a married man.

Where does this thinking come from, in a society that celebrates couples staying together for fifty plus years, even though, at the end, they can’t stand to be in the same room together and have slept in different beds for the past thirty. There’s failure in divorce, failure in not “sticking it out.” No matter how miserable you are. Being unhappy is the American Way.

I bring up divorce because everyone thinks that’s the solution. Don’t cheat, have the integrity to get divorced first before you start seeing someone else. And I think, up to a point, that’s true. But divorce can be messy, it can be expensive, not only paying for attorneys but for what happens afterward (I have seen on more than one occasion couples who have gotten divorced but still live together because they can’t afford to move out), and if you have little kids, complicated.

It probably sounds like I’m defending Andy, just another rich white guy fucking around and not liking the finding out part. That might be what he is, and maybe I’ll get backlash for being, if not understanding, a bit sympathetic, at least. But I’m thinking of cheating in terms of, well, how romantic it is, not the kind of people they look like because they did it in the first place.

There’s a reason why forbidden love is a trope, after all.

And done right, readers love it.

In a private group I’m a member of on Facebook, an author polled her readers, asking them what tropes they liked best. I won’t share the group, but she said we could share the results–you have to give her your email address to download the pdf–and you can find it here through Bookfunnel: https://BookHip.com/QDMZAFS (this is not an affiliate link)

Anyway, I was a little surprised by the results. She gave her readers these tropes to choose from:
Billionaire, Alpha, Age-Gap
Cowboy, Small Town, Medical Second Chance, Love Triangle, Cheating
Enemies to Lovers, Arranged Marriage, Secret Baby
Holiday, Workplace, Fake Relationship
Secret Identity, Motorcycle Club, Rejected Mate
Ugly Duckling, Celebrity
Friends To Lovers, Grumpy/Sunshine, Second Chance

I think she got most of them, maybe she forgot Mafia, or even true forbidden romance that can fit into any subgenre. Anyway, want to guess which trope came in first?

Second chance.

But the second was cheating.

That kind of took me aback not only because Andy and Kirstin were the top news story on social media when I downloaded Maya’s reader poll results, but because I have written the cheating trope and was warned there are two different kinds and I would be in big trouble if I chose the wrong one.

One kind is where the characters are married and they cheat with other people to find an HEA outside their marriages. Readers don’t want their main characters to be with other people. So when you write a romance where your characters are already married when they meet and start their relationship, you’re going to have some unhappy readers.

The other form of cheating is when you have characters who were involved with people who were already married and something happens. Characters die or they leave the people who were taken and go on to relationships with characters who are available. They’re still cheaters, but it’s softer somehow, more acceptable.

My rockstar trilogy is full of cheaters. Well, kind of. In Twisted Alibis, Sheppard falls in love with Olivia, who he thinks is engaged. It turns out her fiancé had committed suicide and she still wore her ring out of guilt and lost dreams. He struggled with that, and it affects how he deals with his depression. In Twisted Lullabies, Eddie cheats with Clarissa, who happened to be married to one of their bandmates. Her husband’s murdered, but that doesn’t make it easy for Clarissa and Eddie to be together. Eddie finally confesses to Sheppard, and their conversation is one of my favorite scenes:

“When Olivia and I met, I thought she was engaged. She wore an engagement ring, and I took that at face value as I’m sure many would. I tried to fight how I started feeling about her because I knew it was wrong, but the way she would listen when I talked, the way it seemed she always knew what I needed, how she would wrap herself around me as if she were trying to absorb all my pain . . .” He sighs. “After you and Brock were here and we talked about Derrick . . . I needed her as badly as I have ever needed anything in my life, and I went out to the beach and kissed her. I didn’t care she was engaged, in fact, I blamed him for letting her be here at all. I didn’t care. All I knew was I couldn’t live without her. That’s when she told me. That’s when the paparazzi took that picture of us in the water.”

Olivia sniffles and wipes a tear off her cheek.

Shep stares at the photo, lost in thought. “It scared me, that my feelings were so strong I would try to steal another man’s woman, and I grappled with that for a long time. What kind of person that made me, what kind of person Olivia would have been had she been willing to cheat on him with me. When love is dirty, but you crave it, need it to survive. I suspected Melody was seeing someone, but it wasn’t that she was. It was that she felt she had to hide it. Honesty is important, and she should have told me she was in love with Dalt and divorced me properly. I don’t know what Derrick would have done if you’d told him the truth. It sounds like he didn’t want her. Maybe he would have just let you have her.”

The only way Clarissa was able to escape her marriage was the way things went down, but I say, “Sharyn wouldn’t have let him let her go. She wanted to turn his reputation in the press around, and she did. He went from a rich, rockstar playboy to husband of the year practically overnight. The tabloids loved pictures of them, and I bet Sharyn leaked those herself. I begged Clarissa to leave him, but she stayed because she has integrity. She stayed because she knew she’d made a mistake and thought she should pay for it. She stayed long after Derrick died because—”

“Because she knew Mason’s yours and she wanted to be a family.”

In Twisted Lies, Agatha had been seeing a married man and confessed to Brock, thinking that he wouldn’t be able to see past her mistake. His conversation with Eddie is another scene I loved to write. (Trilogy link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CDQJ28SB)

We look down on cheating in real life, calling people nasty names for disrespecting their spouses, but using cheating as a plot point can bring a lot of complicated emotions and feelings to your story because cheating doesn’t always come from a place of selfishness. People can’t control who they fall in love with, but how they handle that can be classy or trashy.

Astronomer issued a statement, and I wonder after this if Andy and Kristin will stop seeing each other. I guess it depends on if he wants to save his marriage (if his wife will even let him try), or if he doesn’t, if he and Kristin can get past the shame of not only being found out but how they reacted to it.

Astronomer is committed to the values and culture that have guided us since our founding. Our leaders are expected to set the standard in both conduct and accountability. The Board of Directors has initiated a formal investigation into this matter and we will have additional details to share very shortly. Alyssa Stoddard was not at the event and no other employees were in the video. Andy Byron has not put out any statement, reports saying otherwise are all incorrect.
https://www.mensjournal.com/news/astronomer-breaks-silence-on-ceo-andy-byron-coldplaygate

What’s funny is I think he wanted to be–found out, that is. You can’t go to a public event like that without knowing you’re taking a risk. Even if the camera hadn’t caught them hugging, they could have ran into any number of people who knew them and thought it was suspicious they were together past working hours.

So, where does this all go? Cheating in real life is icky, but cheating in fiction (like the TV drama Scandal) is so yummy we can’t get enough? Is there hypocrisy there? I think a lot of it, if not most, is that when people do it in real life, like Andy and Kristin, we don’t have any context, and when we see it in movies, TV shows, and read it in books, we get all their heartbreaking reasons why.

That’s addicting, and maybe we don’t want to admit it, but . . . relatable.

Humans are messy, and if you write them right, so are characters. To have a full character arc, they need to make mistakes, learn from those mistakes, and come out better people in the end.

Maybe Andy’s full character arc includes resigning from his position and “finding himself” in whatever way that makes sense to him. My characters had a lot of regret too and moved on the best they could.

He might not have chosen to have his affair blasted all over the internet, but I have to admit, sympathetic to his and Kristin’s plight or not, it would be perfect for the beginning of a funny RomCom.

And you can be sure, the next time they meet up, it will be in a private hotel room with room service.

I actually just bought a romance novel that centers around cheating. I grabbed it when I went through my BookBub email newsletter. The cover drew me in and the blurb made me click. If you’re interested, you can find it here:

https://www.amazon.com/Taking-Chances-Cosette-Hale-ebook/dp/B01M146WPF

One lie. One affair. One chance to take her life back.

Audrey Hale has it all—a devoted husband, a dream vacation to the Virgin Islands just days away, and a secret she can’t wait to share.

One moment, she’s holding four positive pregnancy tests. The next, she’s cradling a broken dream—and a gnawing suspicion that her husband’s late nights have more to do with sex than sales.

The worst part? Her best friend—the glamorous, magnetic Natalie— might be in on it.

When one heartbreak leads to another, Audrey is left raw, vulnerable… and searching for truth in a world that’s quickly unraveling.

And the only person who seems to be there for her is Natalie’s husband—Harvey.

He’s off-limits.
He’s furious.
He might be the only one who sees what’s really going on.

As secrets are uncovered and stolen glances become charged, the line between comfort and temptation starts to blur.

Because betrayal cuts deep—but desire cuts deeper.

Mid-Year Author Check-in

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Evolution of the Romance Genre

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beige background. a flower in its growing cycle dirt, sprout, stem, bloom. red flowers, green stem, white pot. text says, The Evolution of the Romance Genre

I’ve wanted to be a writer since I was a kid.

That’s probably not a surprise to anyone who is also a writer, and many of us can say we’ve been writing stories since we learned how to hold a crayon. When I was in high school, I devoured Harlequin Temptations and Desires, finding them at garage sales, the library, and shoplifting them from Pamida. I got caught and my dad made me talk to the manager about how stealing was bad, but I was a kid who loved to read and was a kleptomaniac at heart and well, it didn’t stop me. That’s neither here nor there, but one night, I remember holding a book and thinking, I want to be in charge of it all. The cover, the blurb. All of it. What I didn’t realize back then is I was describing what would eventually become indie publishing. So, yeah. I am in charge of all of it. Down to where the numbers appear on the page.

That was thirty-five years ago or so, and I didn’t understand tropes. I chose books based off the blurb, if I thought I would enjoy the story. In fact, I don’t think I really understood tropes at all until I was assigned the difficult task of marketing my own books. It was through listening to romance marketing talks, webinars, and podcasts where I learned tropes are what sell your books. That was also a difficult realization for me because, like most writers, I just wrote what I wanted to write. My first trilogy was written without tropes in mind–I just made up a group of friends who lived in a fake town, gave them some trouble, and forced them to fall in love while navigating those troubles.

I don’t remember the precise “Ah-ha” moment I had regarding tropes, but I must have had it at some point because my next three standalones were all trope-specific–enemies to lovers, age-gap, and close proximity. Then I veered off again with my Rocky Point series and just wrote whatever I wanted, and if a trope was baked in, like second chance, yay for me.

So you can imagine my confusion when, after seven years of publishing, I realized, yet again, romance was becoming even further divided than just tropes and that I would never be a successful indie author writing “contemporary romance” because romance didn’t work like that anymore.

Indies were changing the game.

There’s an interesting interview that Nora Roberts did not long ago with the Associated Press, and she was talking about her career in romance. She’s written over 250 books and has seen firsthand how the romance genre has evolved, going so far to even say, “My roots are in romance and I have a lot of respect. But I don’t write romance anymore. I do write relationships.”

AP: Speaking of the sex, that’s a good transition to romance as a genre. It has evolved a lot in the last couple of years. Where do you see yourself in the pantheon of that genre?

Roberts: I don’t at all. My roots are in romance and I have a lot of respect. But I don’t write romance anymore. I do write relationships.

I’ve been writing for a really long time now, and the romance genre evolves and it changes. And it did when I was working in it, and it just got to a point where I didn’t want to go where it was evolving. I wanted to go in a different direction. So my roots and foundation are there, and gratitude. But that’s not what I’m doing now.

That’s a great way to look at it . . . if you’re Nora Roberts and not a nameless, faceless author trying to find readers in market so saturated it’s tempting to close your laptop and never look back. She has her audience and has built it over years of publishing. So where does that leave the rest of us?

There are indie publishing “rules” and one of the biggest rules of them all is to never genre-hop. There’s some logic in that–it’s hard enough to market your books when you’re writing in just one genre, never mind trying to reach readers in two or three. But when you decide to write romance, that rule is split down even further. Choose a subgenre, and there are plenty:

screenshot of KDP's romance subcategories and subgenres subcategories include historical romance, holidays, LGBTQ+, paranormal and romantic suspense subgenres include: Action & Adventure Adaptations Alpha Male Amish Billionaires & Millionaires Black & African American Clean & WholesomeLater in Life Love Triangle Mafia Romance Medical History Multicultural and Interracial New Adult and College Romance Police Polymory Rockstar Romance Romantasy Romantic Comedy Science Fiction Small Town Romance Sports Time Trave Western and Frontier Workplace Romance Collections & Anthologies Contemporary
Enemies to Lovers Erotica Firefighters General Gothic Hispanic & Latino Indigenous

This is the screenshot of romance subgenres you can choose when you publish on KDP. They have narrowed them down so much you can pick something like Love Triangle or Workplace Romance. Ten years ago we didn’t have those choices, and it makes me wonder if they’re helping or hurting.

How niching down into a subgenre can help:

You have a built-in audience. You know before you write you’re going to have readers who want to read your books.
You can build your brand easier. Instead of saying you’re a “multi-genre author” and trying to turn your brand into something for everyone (which never works well and is expensive to market, too) you can say “Mafia romance author” and those readers will know they can plow through your entire backlist and be happy.
It’s easier to market. Just being able to choose your subgenre category and using the appropriate keywords will help immensely when it comes to creating ads. You can also partner with other authors who write that subgenre and share audiences.
Better discoverability. It’s a lot easier for a reader to recommend a hot new Small Town romance series than a general romance.

Cons to only writing one thing:

You might get bored. So far, I haven’t felt too burnt out writing Billionaire Romance, but what saved me was playing with tropes and adding in a dash of Romantic Suspense. Still, there’s not a lot of wiggle room when you choose something like Motorcycle Club. There’s a solid set of exceptions you have to meet to keep readers of that subgenre happy and not a lot of leeway to mix things up.
Your loyal readers won’t follow you. I’m fully aware that readers who liked my Billionaire stuff might not have read my Rockstar trilogy, and the readers who stumbled upon my Rockstars may not have wanted to read anything else in my backlist.
Your chosen niche might get saturated. Hockey is hot right now, and those who got in on the ground floor might be annoyed that suddenly the market is flooded. A while back Reverse Harem, or Why Choose as we have to call it now, went through the same popularity contest. You may have to pivot when that happens, and it might be too much work to start over.
Branding fatigue. All my covers look the same, though I actually don’t mind because with my limited skill set when it comes to graphic design and software, it’s easy for me to meet genre expectations but still keep my books and series separate and distinguishable from one another. But, I’m also trapped now because I put single men on the covers of my books and after sixteen books, a couple all of a sudden would look very out of place. Also, unless you can afford to be flexible, eventually you might use up all the hot men that are available on a stock site like DepositPhotos, trapping you even more.

So, what does all this even mean? Subgenres aren’t going to go away, in fact, chances are good KDP will add even more as time goes on, but I know from just my limited experience that niching down does help whether we want to admit it or not. It helps marketing and branding, for sure, and in turn it doesn’t take so much work to find readers. Anyone who looks at my Amazon author page knows exactly what they’re going to get, even if I do happen to throw in a rockstar or hockey player.

That doesn’t mean I’m always going to want to write billionaires, if even, you know, I’ve downgraded my billionaire status to simply, “Men with money.”

And what does that mean for romance? Readers aren’t picking romances off the Pamida shelves and deciding on which ones to stuff into their purses. They search online marketplaces like Amazon and Kobo by the tropes or subgenres they like, hope the cover catches their eye, then skim the blurb, looking to see if the description lives up to the cover. Subgenres have changed the way readers find books and I don’t know what we can do to combat that.

Writing what you want when you want in a time where indies niche down and produce six books a year is a tough act to follow and not everyone wants to. Some are steadfast in the idea that they’ll do their own thing, and it’s an idea that I keep circling around now that I’ve tried the other way and failed. I mean, to be clear, pivoting and writing Billionaire romance did boost my visibility and sales. Yes, it really did, but it wasn’t a magic bullet to a large readership, either, and in my case, I’m exploring other options to keep my joy.

I don’t know what the answer is. Maybe there is no answer because there’s not really a question. I just find it interesting how indies have shaped romance, even to the point where Nora Roberts has said, “Good luck.”

I can tell you what I’m going to do. I’m going to keep writing the books I want. I like writing “Men with money” or I wouldn’t keep doing it, but I can play with tropes and different subgenres like Romantic Suspense. I can explore themes of mental health, friendships, and found family. Because the market is going to keep evolving and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

I’m going to write relationships, and if you want to grab one off a pirate site, go for it. But be careful. Pamida’s manager wasn’t very nice.

Pity Isn’t a Good Marketing Plan

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box of tissues, with one coming out of the top. pink background. text says pity isn't a good marketing plan

It’s valid to talk about our struggles as authors. It’s something I do almost every Monday. We like to know that we’re not alone, that we can relate to people and what they’re going through with writing, marketing, and publishing.

But sometimes it gets out of hand. In the past week or so, there’s been a big TikTok account that has taken the concept of sharing our struggles just a little too far, and what started out as “I really need some support” has turned into a huge marketing strategy constructed pretty much on just . . . pity. I don’t want to go into all that, the article I linked to actually does a really good job, and honestly, I’m not interested enough in that person to do a deep dive to write my own post about it.

Actually, I see a rendition of it on social media all time. Little posts like, “I haven’t sold a book this week/month/year,” or “My husband just got laid off, any sales will help!” or, “I just had a death in the family. I’ll donate proceeds to their funeral if you buy my book,” or “I can’t afford my cat’s vet bills, please, any reads in KU will help a lot.” I sympathize with each and every one of those people. I really, really do. I’ve had financial trouble. I lost three cats in five years, and let me tell you, the vet costs were astronomical. I’m not a stranger to needing money, but what I didn’t do was ask my readers to help me by buying my books. Why? Because:

One: Book royalties don’t work like that. Amazon doesn’t pay us for today’s sales for three months, so even if I managed to guilt-trip a few people into buying my books, it wouldn’t help. Three months is a long time to wait when you need the money now.

Two: My financial situation isn’t my readers’ business nor is it their responsibility. Asking them to buy my book so I can have some cash to pay bills or whatever else grossly oversteps the author/reader relationship.

Three: It erodes reader trust. After a while, they won’t want to see your social media posts because they’ll be afraid you’re going to ask them to do something they can’t do. Not all readers have a ton of disposable income, and if you have a short backlist, maybe they already supported you and will feel bad now if they’ve already bought your book and don’t want to buy it again.

Four: It takes attention away from your books. As an author trying to create a professional reputation and a credible and enjoyable backlist, that diverted attention could cost you. Not only for just that day, or that week, or that month you’re begging for help, but . . . forever. Followers can mute you without unfollowing, so you may never know the true damage you cause. Out of sight is out of mind, and in this time of content saturation and short attention spans, it doesn’t take much for a reader to forget she ever read anything you wrote.

The only time you should be asking readers if they’d like to read your books is when you know that what you’re offering them is something you think they would enjoy, either because you know they’ve read similar books to yours or they asked for a recommendation and you have something they’re looking for. That’s it.

But, I can hear a lot of you saying, I share my bleak numbers and empty sales dashboards to have support and so others don’t feel alone. That’s understandable and you’re not alone thinking that, but unfortunately, the reader/author line blurs more every day. I know this and take the risk keeping this blog up. Maybe a reader would find my indie talk not to their liking and skip out, either from this blog or my books too, and that’s okay. It’s unrealistic to think that we can keep our roles completely separate, so let’s just say begging for sales in most ways is unappealing wherever you happen to be hanging out online.

Besides, and I wrote a whole blog post about this before: transparency means diddle squat if you’re not prepared to have a conversation about why your sales are in the toilet and how to fix it. Saying you had zero sales so far for the month of June means little. That’s pity marketing if I ever heard it. You can frame it any way you want: “Just letting people know how tough it is out there. No sales this month.” “Being transparent today. No sales for this month. Keep on keeping on.” “No KU page reads this month and we only have a couple days left. Fingers crossed next month is better.” Those all sound familiar because we hear them all the time, but what I really want to ask is, What are you doing marketing-wise to combat this? Are you only posting on Facebook? Only Threads? Pinterest? How’s your cover, how’s your blurb? Is your book first in a series that won’t be done until 2030?

If you’re not ready for the hard conversations, then you have no business sharing. Some people will ask, out of a want to help you, and mostly I hear, I don’t have money for ads, or ads didn’t work for me. There are a lot of reasons why ads don’t work, the top one being your book isn’t advertising-ready. The cover is off, the blurb is confusing. You didn’t choose the right keywords or categories and the ad platform is confused and doesn’t know who your readers are. Those things are fixable. The money thing, not so much, but indie publishing is the only business venture I know of where people think they can start a business with no start-up cash. It’s completely unrealistic to think you can publish a book and have it be successful completely for free. People get really mad at me when I say stuff like that and call me privileged, but it’s true. Even a simple artist who wants to sell paintings on Etsy needs money to buy canvas and paint. It’s really crazy and probably why Kickstarter has had another surge in popularity recently. Authors need money to produce books. It’s always been that way.

So, the biggest takeaway from this post today is, should you be sharing that online? Do you really want your readers to see it? Do you really want your peers to be feeling sorry for you? I have a lot of sympathy for my “co-workers” such as they are, but whenever I take a look at their books, I can usually find a hundred ways to fix what they’re complaining about. New cover, new blurb. Get that series done. Fix your formatting, your title is confusing. Your ads won’t waste money if you’re selling a book people want to read. You may need to experiment a bit with your audience–Facebook wants to shove your ad in front of everyone which we all know rarely works–but even though I’ve complained about my own ads, I’ve never lost money. Simply broken even which I don’t consider a failure, I was just having mental health issues and decided to step back from the grind.

Anyway, so 2025 is half over. We’ve got six more months to get stuff done. Can you go through your backlist and make a list of things to fix?
*Cover–just because you like it doesn’t mean it’s working
*Blurb–too confusing or too vague because you don’t want to give away spoilers may turn readers off
*Look Inside: the first 10% is important. If nothing is happening or you start off your book with an info dump, you won’t hook readers.
*Make sure your categories and keywords are solid
*Price competitively

Then you can:
*Do a couple of free days and join an author-driven promo
*Learn Amazon ads
*Buy a promo from Written Word Media or places like Fussy Librarian and Robin Reads

Let’s stop the pity marketing and take matters into our own hands. We have the power to fix things and acting like you don’t just makes you look bad.

One more thing before I head off to get my errands done for the day: Angela James is offering a deep POV workshop on July 8th for $30.00. Improving craft is another way to increase sales. No one wants to read a book that sounds like crap and is full of telling. Angela’s a fabulous editor who used to work for Harlequin’s Carina Press. Take a look at her workshop, and if you haven’t invested in your author business so far this year, this money will be well spent. This is not an affiliate link: https://angelajames.co/deep-pov-workshop/

Have a good week everyone, and if you live in an area that’s been hit by storms, stay safe!

Splitting Your Author Life in Two: Readers vs. Writers

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white background. black piece of torn paper. text says in black and white, splitting your author platform.

One of the biggest mistakes authors can make is trying to talk to everyone from the same place. Back when I first started publishing and writing my blog, I did this, and it actually took me years to figure out that not all readers are created equal. If you don’t know what I mean, let me explain.

It may not feel like it, but once you publish, your author life is suddenly split in two. You have your author pals who support you, maybe read your books (and that’s a big maybe), promote you on their socials that may or may not have readers in the audience, and after a while can even turn into accountability partners, alpha and beta readers, and friends. Then you have your readers, your actual readers who, if they are on social media at all, aren’t part of the . They use socials for other things like connecting with family and reading articles about gardening, cooking, movies, and politics. Maybe they like their favorite authors’ Facebook author pages because that’s where they hear about new releases, giveaways, book boxes, and in-person events.

I came this realization a while back, and when I started my pen name, decided I needed to have a hub just for readers. To be honest, I didn’t want readers reading my nonfiction stuff anyway. I use this blog as a way to help others in their publishing journeys, let other indies know what worked for me in terms of marketing (promos and ads), and just talk about what crazy BS is going on in the publishing industry. That information isn’t for readers, and it shouldn’t be. They don’t need to know how many books I’ve sold, what Amazon pays in terms of KENP, or that I make my covers in Canva and format my own books.

But, I understand this decision isn’t for everyone. I pay for two websites, and some authors don’t even like paying for one. I enjoy blogging for other indies and connecting to the industry makes me feel “professional” so I eat the cost of the WordPress plan and domain name. But, if that’s not for you, don’t feel bad. Not every indie author wants to share their journey, stay up-to-date on what’s going on in the publishing world (both trad and indie) to have something of substance to write about, or pass on what they’ve learned because writing tutorials can take a lot of time. There are weeks when I’m at a loss as to what to say too, and I either just default to an author update or scroll Threads looking for dirt a topic. I feel fortunate when I can share a podcast I enjoyed and/or learned from or I’m able to find a subject like this one that might resonate with someone and help them move in a better direction. You don’t have to lock yourself into writing every week like I have, but if the views and visits are what get you out of bed, consistency will always make that happen faster. I owe a lot of my SEO to my tutorials, particularly my Canva post on how to make a paperback cover. I’ve tried to keep this blog relevant and helpful, but if you already have limited time to write, nurturing a blog that won’t sell books won’t sound appealing.

That said, if you really want to make a go of this publishing stuff, you should have an author website, a place to point readers in the backs of your books. This is where you’ll have your backlist of books and where readers can find them, a newsletter signup, your reader magnet, trigger warnings, direct sales, and any in-person events. If you check out other author websites, you’ll find that they don’t blog about process or complain about Amazon payouts or how they package author copies for shipping. Author websites cater to readers and what they want, not other authors who like to hear about behind the scenes news.

The problem with only writing to only readers is that if you don’t have a lot going on, there’s not a lot to say and that can make you feel disconnected. I write my newsletter on my author blog once a month, and I usually have something to share. A sale, a new release. Maybe highlighting an older book in my backlist that hasn’t gotten a lot of love. Creating content can be challenging if you’re a one-book-a-year author, and it might be tempting to write about what you’re working on, but unfortunately, readers don’t care until you can give them something to buy and read. When that happens, when you aren’t constantly updating, it may feel like people are forgetting about you, but you know, as I’ve said in the past, they will. You can be afraid of something that will happen, but there’s no point to that. There is so much content out there it’s inevitable, but it’s better to jog their memory after a few months of silence than waste their time blogging about something that doesn’t concern them.

If that describes you, if you feel like if you’re not reaching out then you’re invisible, then yeah, you might want to blog for indies who are interested in your process, would like to know how well your promos did, and/or how you make your covers. It gives you a reason to communicate and not feel so alone, and you’re writing to the people who actually care what you’re working on. Sales won’t come of it, which is why in the end I moved my books off this website and put them on my author website, but the more you segment your efforts, the more effective each one becomes and you won’t feel like you’re shouting at people who aren’t listening. Reaching out doesn’t even require a blog. You can create an indie Facebook group or Discord channel. A place where other writers and authors can get together but where you also know the score: your peers won’t buy your books. You can let go of that expectation and just be happy you’re in a group of people who are going through what you are and know how it feels to have zero sales on your dashboard.

So you might ask how is my author platform split in two?

Here’s what I do, and I made a graphic in Canva so you can save it or print it out if you want a quick reference.

png image: SPLITTING YOUR AUTHOR PLATFORM* Nonfiction/Authors/Writers Fiction/Readers Website: Blog Indie news, writing process and progress, marketing tips and progress, tutorials Website: Blog/Newsletter New releases, cover reveals, sales, promos (mine and events like Stuff Your Ereader Day), ARC opportunities Facebook Personal Profile Author groups like Vellum, Optimizing Amazon Ads, Romance Support League, Grow Your Publishing/TikTok Instagram I don't post nonfiction content on my Instagram account. Threads I use Threads to stay up to date on industry news. I follow people like Jane Friedman and Kathleen Schmidt. Sometimes I'll post a blog like my Canva tutorial if I think it will be helpful Facebook Author Page Cover reveals, sales, promos like Stuff Your Kindle Day, book memes, snippet graphics. sharing what I'm reading, holiday mentions; running Meta ads Instagram Mostly graphics with snippets. Cover reveals. Some reels but haven't bothered to repurpose what I've used on TikTok in the past Threads I don't promote my work there. I know from others complaining about how useless it is not to bother. *The point is, wherever you choose to spend your time, decide if you want to attract readers or authors. They are not the same.

There are a lot of places to hang out that I haven’t listed. I just can’t be everywhere and don’t want to be. Lemon8 is popular, so is Pinterest, and let’s not mention TikTok because I really don’t want to use my time making videos, but the fact is, if you’re a slow writer and you want to talk to only readers, you’re not going to have a lot to say. You can share book memes and pet photos, where you went to dinner on your anniversary, but you’re going to lose readers to other authors who publish faster. The industry in some ways is very slow, such as trends are very very slow to change, but when they do, it feels like it happened over night. Trad authors can seem like they get away with a book a year, but behind the scenes, they’re worried about getting a new book deal, if their publisher will pay for marketing, how their launch is going to go since they haven’t had a new book out in however long. Indies face the same trouble, trying to find traction while others are zooming ahead because they have more time/motivation/whatever than they do.

Figuring out where and what to post is a mental health issue, it really is. I’ve gone through my own struggles, beating myself up for not wanting to post on my Facebook author page, not making videos for TikTok when everyone says that’s where you belong if you’re an author. I boosted a post on my Instagram account and got a few new followers, but they aren’t going to do me any good if I don’t post. And you know, I’m pretty prolific, so it’s not that I don’t have content, it’s just that I don’t care. I let Amazon ads, promo newsletters like BargainBooksy, FreeBooksy, and Fussy Librarian, and author-driven book blasts like Zoe York’s ZoeBub pickup most of my sales weight, which I can do because my series and trilogies have solid read-through. Maybe I have to pay for it, but I’m reaching readers, not shouting at other authors then getting mad when my books aren’t selling.

Splitting up your author platform can take a lot of the stress off your shoulders. You know who you’re talking to and what they want to hear. Shouting to everyone will never work and you’ll only get frustrated. It’s difficult to break out of the bubble, but the longer you do it the more natural it will feel and the feedback will become more positive because you’re staying in your chosen lane and once you draw the lines, you’ll actually have more time to write because that urgency to post and reach anyone you can will be gone.

Again, I know this advice isn’t for everyone, but if even reading this makes you step back and look at how you’re posting on social media, you may make some small changes that could turn into big results. Let me know what you think!

I better get off here and finish proofing my proof of Loss and Damages. I’m almost done then I can put the changes in and order another proof. I’m really excited to jump into more hockey research. I’ve put that aside to get Loss and Damages ready for ARCs next month, but I’m eager to start again. Take care everyone, and have a great week ahead!

Monday’s Author Update: Progress and Plateaus

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I kind of copped out on you all last week, not really posting anything because I had nothing to say. Unfortunately, this week I’m in the same predicament. As Avery McKay says in my novel, Wicked Games, “I love writing. I can scribble all day. But that doesn’t mean it’s worth printing.” And that’s kind of where I’m at at the moment. I have plenty to say, but I don’t think it’s worth your time.

I scroll social media and there are so many voices out there. Screaming, and not even into the void, because I hear them, loud and clear. It has always mystified me how people can post on a social media platform, four, five, six even more times a day, assuming, hoping, maybe praying that what they are saying has some kind of worth to somebody . . . anybody. Most of the time, I don’t think it does, and a lot of what I see is just annoying, like a mosquito buzzing around my head that I can’t kill because I don’t kill things.

I was thinking about that this morning, too, that there are so many books out there, and so many opinions about them, and at some point, you have to think that none of it matters at all. That maybe, instead of posting every five seconds, it could be better for your mental health and everyone else’s if you only say something when you have something meaningful to say. There was something I read on Threads that said, “I’m not actually surprised when some authors don’t say anything about injustices in the world because they barely have anything to say in their books. Why start now” and it actually made me mad. Just because I don’t post incessantly on social media doesn’t mean I don’t care about what’s happening in the world or that my books don’t have substance. That maybe I’m doing things in my real life that make a difference that don’t need to be blasted all over the internet.

Is it a crime to be a private person now?

It perhaps isn’t a crime, but in the age of digital when you aren’t shoving yourself out there every five seconds, your chance of discoverability goes down. But I don’t want to be known for telling my followers I vacuumed the living room, or I finally got around to cleaning my bathroom, or that I have a dentist appointment that I finally kept after a year of canceling because I was fed up with doctor appointments and I just needed a break (actually, that’s what I’ll be doing Thursday afternoon. Pray for me.).

And the woman who got ran off the internet for musing about plotting a book where the hero and heroine meet at an ICE protest has probably never regretted anything more in her life. Some thoughts should just be kept inside your head. In fact, probably most thoughts you should just keep to yourself.

Then we have platforms where pictures and videos need to accompany what you want to say and honestly, it’s really no wonder people don’t have attention spans. Even I’ve had that problem lately, watching an episode of The Outsider, then stopping after ten minutes to scroll Threads only to find there’s nothing there, then going back to my show, but then stopping again and scrolling DepositPhotos for an alternate guy for my hockey book’s cover. Then I feel stupid for not being able to finish my show and go back and force myself to watch until the end. In my case, I want to be working on my books but I also know I’m burnt out and need the break–hence watching a show in the evenings to chill out. It’s not that I didn’t like it, I’ve watched it before and knew that I did, but that feeling of not getting anything done, especially when I do have things waiting for me, wouldn’t leave me alone. Which, I can just blame on social media anyway. People are always posting what they’re doing or what they wish they were doing or what they’ve done, and you feel left out if you can’t join in.

Anyway, I am getting some stuff done. I finished that read-through of Wicked Games, and now I’m definitely going to put it away for few months. Right now I’m 33% of the way through proofing my proof of Loss and Damages and it’s been worth it as I’m finding a few typos, a scene break that didn’t need to be there and a couple of slow spots where deleting a sentence or two keeps things on track. I’m second guessing myself a lot, putting in a change and then adding a question mark as an indication that I might not really want to change it after all. A lot of the time I don’t, thinking that it’s not going to be the end of the world either way and how I wrote it was probably how I wanted it.

After I put the changes into Vellum I can order another proof, and I’m deciding between two chapter backgrounds. Let me know which one you like:

two screenshots of the first page of Loss and Damages one. One has light swirls from the top of the page that fades and the other has a light floral design that also fades down the page. Text reads: Dominic The sidewalk is packed with protesters as the car pulls up to the curb in front of Milano Management and Development. I chuckle as the chants penetrate the town car. “Don’t let them win! It’s a sin! Don’t let them win! It’s a sin!” They tote signs, waving them high in the air, exclaiming the Milanos are murderers, poor people are people too, and #poorpeoplematter.
My driver meets my eyes in the rearview mirror. “Sir?”
“It’s fine, Duncan.” I tilt my head toward the two burly bodyguards striding through the crowd. One opens the door for me, and I climb out, clutching my briefcase. The chanting’s louder without the barrier, and it turns into a full-on explosion when they see me exit the car. 
“Asshole!” “Greedy son of a bitch!” “Motherfucker!”
I’ve heard it all before and the insults ping off me like arrows against a suit of body armor. My security helps me fight through the crowd, but they can’t stop a thin, blonde woman from getting close enough to spit on me. Wiping my cheek, I meet her tired blue eyes, frustration and stress digging lines into her skin.
I turn away.


The first one is what I have now because it complements the chapter style I chose, but then I got to thinking about the flowers because she’s an artist who paints china. The model I chose for Dominic on the cover is standing in front of a black brick wall which is a nod to him being a land developer, so I could have “him” on the outside and “her” on the inside. I’ll order another proof and see which one I like better in print. That will just be for the paperbacks. The Kindle version will just be the chapter style. I don’t care about finding a heading image like I have previously. I don’t know what I would put there anyway and don’t feel like scrolling through stock photos.

I decided I’d make ARCs available July 15th. Let the excitement of the holiday fade and that will give reviewers two months to read for a September 15th release.

I have realized that if I wanted to write my hockey romance this summer that I might actually need to start writing it as summer will be a third over soon. Though, I didn’t realize how far into the summer the hockey season goes, as the Florida Panthers and the Edmonton Oilers are still battling it out for the Stanley Cup and it’s mid June. So, maybe a hockey romance could be released all year without sales dipping too low during launch. Maybe I’ll publish Wicked Games first after all, but honestly, at this point, I’m just going to do what feels right. I don’t mind having books sit on my computer. I’ve never felt the need to publish something the second I got it done. Well, that’s not true, I used to feel that way when I first started publishing, but after a while, maybe the novelty doesn’t wear off, but you get more strategic and if a release doesn’t feel right, I have no problem waiting. My King’s Crossing serial can pick up a lot of slack and do some heavy lifting for the next year if it had to come to that.

I have another promo for the first book, Cruel Fate, lined up through BargainBooksy for the 20th. I changed up the copy from what I used in my Fussy Librarian so I’m hoping that I get a few more sales out of it. I think it’s important that you tell readers the series is complete (if it is) as that encourages them to buy because they know they can binge. The first three books are still on sale, and I have no interest in changing the prices, though most of my “sales” right now are from KU.

That’s about all I have this week. I read an interesting Substack article by Jan Harayda about Taylor Jenkins Reid’s publishing deal. It’s more talk on why “subpar” books sell, and what that means for the authors who get those kinds of deals, for other authors who get left behind, and the readers who are offered those books. I read Daisy Jones and The Six, and I thought it was good. I know the difference between commercial and literary fiction, and I can chose my books accordingly. There’s no harm in writing fluff, but that doesn’t mean people will always think you deserve to get paid for it. You can read that article here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-165915819

See you next week!

Didn’t Know What to Write About This Week

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I tried four different times and started four different blog posts and nothing sounded right.

I came up with something Saturday night that was actually pretty unhinged and not like me at all. My gut told me not to publish it, and at the last minute, listened to my intuition (writing this on Sunday night at 9pm). Don’t need you all to think I’m losing my mind.

For now, if you’re publishing this summer and need some help, I have a few tutorials that will point you in the right direction:

I recently updated (like a couple days ago) how you can make a full paperback book wrap in Canva:
https://vaniamargene.com/2022/06/13/updated-creating-a-full-wrap-paperback-book-cover-using-canva-plus-more-screenshots/

Once you have that, you can make an ebook cover, and you can read how I do it here:
https://vaniamargene.com/2024/09/09/how-to-turn-your-books-cover-full-wrap-pdf-into-an-ebook-cover/

If you’re planning on publishing on IngramSpark, I talk you through it here:
https://vaniamargene.com/2024/03/18/an-ingramspark-tutorial/

That’s all I got, but it feels safer than what I was going to publish. I’ve felt good, just maybe trying to find some balance with living life now that I’m feeling better and where writing fits into all that with how the publishing industry is. I certainly don’t want to say anything I’ll regret.

Anyway, have a good week, and hopefully I can come up with something better next time.

Monday Author Update: Vellum, Bots, and a New Hockey Romance

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spring desk flatlay. tulips, coffee, glasses, pen. keyboard text says: Monday Author Update: Vellum, Bots, and a New Hockey Romance

Happy June!

Things are going pretty good here . . . I got the proof back for Loss and Damages, but I’m not going to dive into proofing it yet. Just a quick flip through made me realize I forgot to add the page that asks readers to sign up for my blog on my other website and reminds them I have a free book there. I’ll get that put in and I’m sure there will be more after I sit down to read it.

I’m not going to stress over typos anymore considering there’s backlash now if your book is too perfect. Apparently a typo-free book is a sign you’ve used AI to write, which is ridiculous, but so is the accusation by a clueless reader that if you’ve formatted using Vellum software that you’ve written your book with ChatGPT.

Screenshot of review: Frankie * The entire thing is Al trash Reviewed in the United States on July 11, 2024 Verified Purchase Was very excited to read this book. Sapphic Fantasy is far and few in between. The book arrived and I realized there was some weirdness going on with the art on the cover. Try to look for an illustrator credit only to find out the entire production is made with Vellum Al.... cool. I love when a piece of media is entirely stolen and then has the audacity to say that no form of the media may be reproduced. When the entire thing is a stolen reproduction of other people's talent and hard
https://www.threads.com/@the.book.lush/post/DJigP-YslFl

Of course, that reader didn’t know what Vellum even is (and it’s not her job to, but still, maybe she shouldn’t have been voicing her thoughts on something she didn’t understand), and the creators of Vellum have changed the language of the indication that it was used in the book’s formatting. It used to say created with Vellum on the copyright page if you checked the box, and I always did to give Brad Andalman and Brad West credit for creating the software in the first place. But if that’s the way readers are going to be, I’ll uncheck the box and give them credit on the copyright instead. It’s a shame really, because these AI witch hunts are doing more harm than good, but props to Brad and Brad for fixing the terminology after these accusations spread over the web. (Not that I’ll apply it anytime soon . . . I’m about five updates behind because it already does what I want it to do.)

screenshot of Vellum software formatting of the copyright page of my book, Twisted Lies, the third book in my rockstar trilogy.

It seems every day there’s a new accusation and it’s getting to be so it’s really tiring to be online. I get why there’s pissy conflict about it, indies saying “Why should an AI book sell better and make more money than my book that I worked so hard on all by myself” and it’s valid . . . up to a point. People have said that about books that aren’t well-written as well, the same attitude being, “Why would a book that sounds like crap do better than mine?” and it’s a really toxic place for your mindset to be. Not only because competition is the thief of joy, but because quality is subjective, and not everyone reads at the same level. Calling someone stupid for liking a book you don’t feel is worthy of the time or sales is a choice. And maybe that’s not a thought spoken a loud, but it’s there whenever the topic comes up. (How could a reader like that?) There’s room for all books and all reading levels. Is this me defending AI? Not really. Mostly it’s me thinking authors can do what they want. I’m not getting involved like some busybody who can’t mind her own business. I have my own life to live and my own projects to work on. And honestly, all the BS people are posting just makes them look like jealous idiots.

Anyway, so I’ll get to Loss and Damages when I feel like it. Right now, for some reason, I was compelled to reread my rockstars (perhaps to remind myself that book two actually did have a plot), putting in some slight editing changes as I went along and fixing a few typos and stuff I didn’t see because I didn’t have great glasses back then–and I wrote those when I wasn’t feeling good so I was distracted by that. Things like commas that are supposed to be periods, or I found a place where I used a single quote mark to start a sentence but didn’t close it. Nothing major and not many, but since I was reading for fun, I thought I might as well not waste it and if I saw something that needed fixing, I did. I can upload the new files to KDP, but I don’t know if I’ll bother with IngramSpark. I haven’t sold a book through there in years, and it would cost $75 dollars for three books if I can’t find a promo code somewhere. But I don’t like the idea of my books being different on different platforms, so I’ll probably just swallow the cost and tell myself to stop reading my books over, even if I enjoy it, because at some point it’s going to cost me money.

What I really wanted to talk about was my new summer project! You’ve heard me talk about my plans for the next little while–getting Wicked Games ready to go and getting back to work on a series that I started writing during COVID that’s 1/3 completed–but I was inspired by Alex Newton’s new K-Lytics report. If you’re interested, you can find it here and purchase the report for $47 USD. This is not an affiliate link: https://k-lytics.com/sports-romance/.

It really got me thinking about jumping on the hockey trend, though I don’t think it can be called a trend anymore. Hockey romance has been around for a long time and like Billionaires that started as a fluke when Fifty Shades of Grey came out almost fifteen years ago, it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. So there is definitely no rush to get it written and published, and well, putting out a hockey romance during hockey season would be good timing anyway.

I wouldn’t bother if I didn’t have plot, and I have no idea where it came from (no, Al didn’t give it to me). All I knew when I started thinking about it was that I had to make my MMC rich to tie him into the Billionaire brand I’ve got going for myself. My rockstars still did well even if they weren’t billionaires, but they’re rich, of course, which fits into that wealthy lifestyle my characters live. Hockey players can be millionaires too, if they’re valuable, skilled, and sign the right contracts with the right teams. They play hard and . . . play hard. But this isn’t going to be some fluffy hockey romcom. No, this book is going to be gritty and dirty because hockey’s a sport that’s rife with sexual assault and domestic violence, among other things. I like to mix up tropes, bend genre expectations, like my FMC not getting pregnant in Give &Take, my a-baby-for-the-billionaire novel, the first book in my Lost & Found trilogy, or my rockstars who never get up on stage to do a concert. I’m going to flip it. My MMC hasn’t put a skate on a rink in twenty years and when he gets pulled back into that world unwillingly, he is a very pissed off man. So yeah, I’m really looking forward to writing this standalone and I’ve already been doing some research, diving into watching documentaries like Faceoff: Inside the NHL on Amazon Prime. Here’s the hook I posted on my FB author page:

puck and hockey stick on ice. the text reads, I didn't want the hockey team my grandfather left me...and I certainly didn't want the woman who came with it.

I’ll need a lot of research because I know next to nothing about hockey and it’s going to turn into that kind of a joke where I have to watch six hours of documentary just to write one believable paragraph. But I’m wondering if this isn’t the kind of passion project I needed to boost some writerly morale, though my King’s Crossing serial suddenly selling is doing that too. With a passion project I’m excited to write and my King’s Crossing serial doing well, I’m actually in a good headspace about my writing right now. I’ve let go of the hopefulness, which I think did me a world of good. All I have going on for promo is some Amazon ads that aren’t bankrupting me. So, I can say (again) that not all my royalties are mine, but anyone who thinks books sell themselves needs to take a Business 101 class because that rarely happens. I knew it too, setting up some ads when I said I wouldn’t bother anymore. If you want numbers, I made $142.00 in May and spent $95 on Amazon ads. Since the beginning of the year, I’ve had some subscriptions renew, like Canva and my Office 365, so if I did all my numbers from January until now, I’m probably still in the red, but I’m not trying as hard as I did last year and the mental freedom is what counts.

To keep up with that mental freedom, I have to really try hard not to think about my publishing schedule. I have Loss and Damages set to be published on September 15th with ARCs going out in July. I’ve had that date set for many months, and there’s no reason to change it. I also have said I would publish Wicked Games in January of 2026, but I would absolutely love it if I could swap that out with Frozen Assets. If I can’t, for whatever reason, I can’t, but if that works out, it wouldn’t mess me up too much as I could schedule Wicked Games for Fall of 2026. I’d still have two books out next year while I finish up my series for 2027. I just hate thinking like that now because for one, I don’t have a business anymore, and that is such a business way to think. For two, it really makes my books sound like widgets on a conveyor belt, and I don’t want to think like that. I never really did, think of my books as products, that is, only when my books were published and I had to figure out a way to sell them, but trying to plan a publishing schedule makes me feel like that and I just want to focus on the writing and not what I have to do when they’re done. I mean, to be honest, I don’t have a business. I have a hobby, one I take very seriously, but it’s a hobby nonetheless. I tried to turn it into a business, but all I did was burn myself out.

There are some things I might never change in my process, like coming up with the cover concept as quickly as I can so I have time to look for stock (it’s easier to find a guy who fits when you have the background you like and the title font in place) or change my mind and start from scratch. So, with that being said, I think I might have my cover done. This will be my first “abs” cover because while I stayed away from skin so I could do Amazon ads, there are just some things that are nonnegotiable and abs on a hockey cover is one of them. I didn’t want an illustrated cover, just because there is so much crap said about Icebreaker, how cute the cover is, but then inside it’s all sex, and I don’t want to mislead anyone. I didn’t want an object cover either because I don’t feel like learning how to make one and I’m not in the mood to hire out. So, he’ll have abs, his head won’t be cut off, and even if he’s hockey, he’s going to blend in with the rest of my backlist.

That’s about all I have. A German bot jacked up my views last week, which made me kind of mad. Messed up my stats for the week. I’m not 100% it was from a bot, but it was just looking at my home page, not a specific post that could have been shared. So, I’ll go with the bot theory and I enabled two-step verification and changed the password to my website. I had a chat with a WordPress happiness engineer who said my website looked fine, and the views died down after a couple of days.

screenshot of stats for may 26 to june 1. highest views were on May 27th at almost 900. Total views for the week were 1.4k

My KC Crowne blogpost has still been getting hits, don’t know how that makes me look when I didn’t bulldoze over her. Someone on YouTube mentioned my post, or just referenced it, I’m not sure, and you can watch it here if you want:

I actually don’t like consuming content about myself, which makes it easy not to read reviews about my books. So if you watch, only tell me if she has nice things to say. Otherwise, I’m good with not knowing. Not everyone likes it when you’re Switzerland, but I just have a lot of sympathy for authors who get caught up in the grind. It’s really a mental health issue, turning to Al to ramp up your productivity because you’re scared of being left behind. That kind of panic hustle is real, and it will only get worse. Since KC Crowne, a couple more authors have been caught with prompts in their books, which is too bad. I really can’t emphasize enough to read your proofs when you order them to check the cover. Even if you don’t ask Al for help, you never know what kind of formatting errors you’ll find, pacing problems that could be corrected since you’re now reading a “book” as a “reader” and typos that you missed on screen. It’s also just a really good time to pull quotes for social media. Yeah, just please read your proofs. Mark them up. Then, if you don’t want to keep them, create a giveaway for your readers who are interested in your creative process.

I guess that’s it. I always go into writing these like I’ll just be quick, then you need half your day to read. Sorry about that!

I hope you have a good week ahead, and I will chat with you next week!

Thursday Thoughts: What is your book’s value?

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When we think about our books, we think about value. What is the value to our readers? We want to give them a good book at a competitive price. That’s pretty much a no-brainer when we publish. Readers want and need that value because if they feel like authors have wasted their time and/or money, they won’t be a repeat customer. And that’s how most authors make their money–readers reading their back list and anything new they publish.

But we also think about value for ourselves. We’re told not to give away our books or price them low because we’re cheating ourselves and not doing our books and all the work we put into them justice. We can argue about it all day long, the benefit of having a loss leader, using free books to find new-to-you readers. We give away ARCs hoping for reviews, we hope that an inexpensive book will fuel word-of-mouth. And what that conversation comes down to is, how much do you value your book, and what does value mean to you?

At some point in your career, you may find you value readers and feedback more than you value the royalties that come with sales. The market is so saturated that maybe being seen and being read will feel like a victory even if you’re not making money. I’m not really talking about exposure, though that could be part of it. We work for free, like doing a guest blog post or donating a novella to an anthology, hoping to get our name out there. Exposure can be valuable, if the right people read it, as they could offer you opportunities you wouldn’t have had otherwise. But if you’re donating to a publisher or company who can afford to pay you and simply doesn’t or doesn’t want to, maybe you feel like your contribution isn’t that valuable after all. After all, there’s hardly a scarcity of writers out there. We’re easily replaceable, and I’m not just talking about AI, either.

They say that people value things they pay for and that’s true, but they also avoid things if they have doubts what they’re buying is worth the money. (A good cover, blurb, and look inside is imperative.)

I was just thinking about this when I saw a post from an author who said someone told her to never put her books on sale, but she ignored that advice and has built a successful author business around a book she priced at .99. She found more value in putting her book on sale than she would have keeping her book at full price.

So when you think about your books and author business, think more of just how much work you put into your book. You might price high, but are you finding value if no one wants to pay it? Or do you think that one sale at 9.99 is better than 10 sales at .99? I know you’re not guaranteed to sell books at any price, but I think you do stand a better chance of selling books at a “reasonable” price, and that means whatever price you would be comfortable buying someone else’s book.

You might feel a sense of validation over that one sale, but how far will that carry you? How far will that carry your author business?

We say that success means different things to different people, and I think that’s true for value as well. A common cliché is you get what you pay for, and maybe that saying is what fuels authors to price high or never put their book on sale. Except, in these days of no gatekeepers, paying more doesn’t mean, as a customer, you’re going to get more.

Anyway, that was on my mind. I hope you all have a great day and weekend ahead!

Chat with you Monday!