Remove What Doesn’t Serve You (or something like that)

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,698 words
9 minutes read time

beige background text says. letting go and finding your joy

I’ve heard this phrase a lot, and it makes sense. Remove the things in your life that aren’t a help to you, that drain you, that serve no purpose. I agree with it to an extent. I’ve never had a problem throwing stuff away, so much so that sometimes I’ve regretted it, not holding on to it long enough to find out if I’ll have a need for it later. Then I do need it and I regret throwing it away. I guess that’s where the meme about old cords comes in, saving a VCR cord from the eighties, just in case you might need it for something twenty years later.

But I also find the phrase somewhat selfish and self-serving, and it puts a bad taste in my mouth. Not everything is meant to serve you. Not every relationship you have will cater to you and your “needs.” What if, hear me out, you are put in the place you’re in to help someone else?

Before you Marie-Kondo your life, maybe think for a minute about just what you’re trying to accomplish.

I’m famous (no, not really) for keeping people in my life who don’t belong there. I’ve had friends in the past who have made our friendship all about them. Everything was about her life, her writing, her plans. Even if I was able to mention something, she wouldn’t acknowledge it, and I came away from every conversation I had with her drained. I’ve had other friends who have treated me badly, and I hung in there, hoping things would get better. I’ve thought a lot about why I let this happen, up until the point I just explode and say, “Forget it,” and I think it’s from getting bullied in school. I would latch on to people who were just a little bit nice to me, and this went on until I graduated high school. The need for friends, the need to create a connection with someone, is human nature, and once you meet someone with whom you think a sincere friendship can be made, it’s difficult to admit that they aren’t such good friends at all. As the years pass and I realize what’s important, I would rather be alone than have a “frenemy,” and I’ve learned to stop talking to people who take advantage of me and my kindness. I think anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows about my fiancé and how I let him lie to me for years before I finally cut him off. Maybe it wasn’t years, or maybe it was and I just didn’t realize it until they were too blatant to ignore. You really don’t know when people turn if you trust them and they’re good at hiding it. What stretched on for over five years could have ended in two or three and saved me a lot of pain.

I’m always willing to give people a second chance because we all make mistakes, but it’s in cases where having a relationship with that person isn’t a positive experience or makes your life worse than assumably it already is that you have to reassess why you’re keeping them around. I think there’s value in giving people the benefit of the doubt, not cutting people off without some kind of explanation. There was an article I read on Buzzfeed about a woman who ghosted her best friend of twenty years because she turned too needy, then regretted it after she found out her friend passed away. Rather than having an honest conversation with her friend, she just cut her friend off, blocked her, and well, when you look at a situation like that, who’s the bad friend? The person who thinks you can help and has the courage to ask, or you blocking that person because you thought she was using you? Remove what isn’t serving you. Yeah, she did. She cut her friend off, but she found out later that it didn’t come without consequences.

I understand the concept, I really do, but I’ve been unfriend and unfollowed after I’ve purchased other authors’ books to support them. Maybe I never said anything, maybe I thought being acquaintances on a platform like Twitter was enough, but it’s definitely not enough for some people, who, I don’t know, expect you to comment on everything they post. You know, that says more about them than it says about me who was quietly supporting them and didn’t think I needed to shout it around (because honestly, I think that just makes you look like you’re looking for praise and I don’t need to be patted on the back for supporting someone).

This isn’t just all about people, though I think that can have the most damning effect. I’ve seen a lot of people who regret deleting their TikTok and CapCut apps off their phones because they thought TikTok wouldn’t be around anymore (and all the apps ByteDance created). Turns out that TikTok barely went away and now those apps can’t be re-downloaded. I didn’t get rid of mine, relatively certain that TikTok was here to stay, though I don’t post on TikTok much at all and the only thing I use CapCut for is to add captions to videos I rarely make. But I don’t impulsively do stuff like that and whether or not the apps are eligible for updates, I’m rather proud of myself for my restraint.

Whenever you think about that phrase, I think it’s important to understand just what you’re relating it to. Overall I think that phrase is selfish, and maybe in these times we have to be. No one will take care of you but you. The US government is in shambles, and he’s only been our president for a month. Everyone has kind of a “fend for themselves” attitude, which I guess makes this saying a perfect slogan for the next four years. But I also think that we can combat what’s ahead by being kind, not doing something just for what you can get out of it. Not everything or every person on this earth was put here to serve you, but finding the balance between keeping things that aren’t working and keeping things that are is crucial.

I turned off my FB ads, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Ironically, my sales haven’t fallen, and now those royalties are mine, free and clear. I may not make the 5k I made last year, but I won’t be spending 5k either. So, in that instance, yes, removing something that was not serving me was the way to go and I feel lighter, mentally, than I have in a long time. I also removed the idea that I deserved (maybe deserved is too harsh a word, but not sure how else to phrase it) readers and royalties for all the work I put into my writing and publishing, and that’s not the case at all. Going back to basics and writing because I love it has also done wonders for my mental health and like I told a friend, I feel like I did five years ago, creating content for the joy of it, and for no other reason.

So, after all that, I would caution you. Think before you jettison someone out of your life–not everyone is there to kiss your feet. Sometimes you are in their lives, and they are making the same choice about you. Are you being a good friend? Are you upholding your part of the friendship, because relationships go both ways. If you treat people like trash, expect to be removed. No one has time, energy, or heart for that. Think before you turn off your ads or delete that social media profile. Think before you unfollow or block someone. You never know who is silently supporting you and you could be snubbing them without realizing it. If being in a group on Facebook isn’t beneficial, leave. I’m in 89 groups, and not all of them give me something. I could probably remove myself from half those and be just fine. But being in them doesn’t hurt me either, since I’m not on Facebook all that much anyway. Pick and chose where you want to give your time. Maybe you could leave some and that would open up space to join others that would serve you better.

There is a ton of products and services out there for indie authors and my FOMO goes crazy when I think of all the classes there are to buy, podcasts and webinars there are to listen to. Every time K-Lytics sends me a new report, I think I need to buy it. I can’t afford to buy every report they send out, nor do I need to because not all of them are about romance. I don’t even need the ones that are about romance because I think I keep a pretty good eye on industry information in other ways. Remove the noise that gives you a headache, but think about what’s beneficial first. That may mean trying an episode of a podcast you’ve had your eye, uh, ear, on and finding out you don’t mesh with the hosts. Maybe that means actually sitting down with the craft book you’ve been wanting to read, and finding out that it does have some valuable information in it.

There are are less callous ways to figuring out what you want than what this saying implies. Gently sweep what’s not working for you out the door, but realize what might not work for you is something that makes someone get out of bed.

Go easy and be gentle. Extricate yourself if you must, but do it with intent and if you’re doing it to person, use sensitivity, compassion, and empathy. And remember, you may be what people are removing from their own lives, so accept their decision with grace and honesty, and like with the coworker who ghosted me, it may be the best thing that ever happened to you. And I didn’t have to do a thing.

Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,028 words
11 minutes read time

If you’re just finding the blog and/or missed the first five trends I wrote about that are in Written Word Media’s blog post, you can find that post here: Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One. And if you want to read Written Word Media’s blog post yourself, you can find it here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/the-top-10-publishing-trends-for-2025/

Let’s jump right in to the trends.

Trend number six: Trad and Indie Converge in Due Course
We already see this happening in different ways, so I would imagine this will keep going. Publishers snapping up indies who are doing well to exploit the audiences they’ve already built, trad authors publishing titles on the side themselves, the Big Five using print on demand technology. Publishing is getting mixed up more than it ever has been, and that won’t stop as authors and publishers alike look for the best ways to find an audience, save money on printing and distribution, and keep as many royalties as they can.

I think what this means for indies is that as long as you put out a good book that has a good cover and has been edited, it’s not going to matter if you published the book yourself. The stigma that used to come from self-publishing is gone. Trad authors who publish on the side to either add extra books to their publishing schedule or publish books that their agent didn’t sell, or whatever the reason is, they have a loyal audience who buys all their books and it doesn’t matter if it was trad-pubbed or not. Indies don’t have that convenience of an already-made audience, so that’s one thing we have to take upon ourselves, but everything else is pretty much the same, especially when we read every day about a traditionally published book that needs more editing. If you want to read about traditional publishers using print-on-demand equipment, Jane Friedman wrote a blog post about it and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/dont-demonize-print-on-demand/

Trend number seven: AI Tools Become More Mainstream
I think anyone who really believes this isn’t tapped into the way a lot of authors feel. I get that being on Threads and seeing the hate AI evokes isn’t an accurate sampling of authors everywhere, but just knowing that there is a portion of authors out there who won’t use AI no matter what makes this prediction shaky at best.

As I discussed in my blog post about KC Crowne, I do understand that Al can be used for different things. WWM’s article also talked about non-fiction uses, such as “social media posting, to advertising, email, sales fulfillment, or tax management” and I think if authors start embracing Al in bigger numbers, that will be all they’ll use it for, because, here’s the thing. Writers actually like to write. We want to plot our stories, we want to come up with backstories, we want to delve into our characters’ feelings and emotions so we can evoke those feelings and emotions in our readers. If we turn to Al for any part of that creative process, why are we writing then? Like with KC wanting to relate to her readers, how can she do that when she won’t take the time to get to know her own characters and write her own work?

People who predict the controversy of using AI will go away don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what a lot of authors feel. We also want people to get paid for their work, which is why I would never ask Al to create a picture for me. Almost every single thing you want can be found on a stock photo site, and if you can’t find it there, hire an artist, and maybe she’ll be able to pay her internet bill with the fee you’re paying her.

Readers may not care if you use AI to write, or to make your books’ covers, or to make Facebook ads as long as their enjoyment of a book they read isn’t impacted. Which means that whether you use AI or not, your main goal when writing and packaging your book should be to deliver a good product that will keep readers coming back for more.

Trend number eight: AI Unlocks Licensing and IP Innovation
I think this trend will only work for the authors who can pay to do it correctly. A long time ago on Twitter I saw someone who said she was using AI to translate her English language books to German and then she was publishing them. She wasn’t using a German-speaking real live human to double-check Al’s work, and I think that is a big mistake. Al doesn’t understand nuance and context, and there’s a reason why the phrase “lost in translation” exists. But, paying a proofreader, any kind, costs money, and using AI is supposed to help us get around that, right? So yeah, she might have had more IP in her hands, but God only knows what she was selling her German readers. Maybe it isn’t that bad, but who’s going to know unless she starts getting bad reviews? By then, it’s too late.

AI narration is getting better and better every day, but I haven’t heard anything recently about the quality of KDP’s audiobook program. It made waves when it first came out, many authors cursing it to the depths of hell, others embracing it as an affordable way to finally have their books in audio format. When I found out that duo narration, preferred when writing dual POVs, wasn’t available, I lost interest in it anyway. I’ve always figured audiobooks will be out of my reach as I can’t afford production, and I kind of left it there. Considering a determined reader can figure out how to have a book read to them on their device, it may not matter much. If AI narration is getting better, so is text-to-voice and the experience for a reader that’s not too picky will be just fine.

I think the bottom line on AI and IP is that yeah, Al can help you put together translations and audio books and art for special editions, but it’s up to you to make sure the quality is there (no one wants to see a model who has six fingers on each hand and has three legs). Al can make mistakes, (just look at Grammarly and how often they recommend commas you don’t need) and going without a human to check and make sure what he’s doing is okay is a risk I wouldn’t want to take with my audience. Listen, I’ve edited for authors who have trusted Grammarly, and it’s harder to edit a manuscript like that than if they would have just handed me a rough draft. Grammarly and other editing software is not perfect so always use with caution.

You might end up with a lot of IP if you use AI to get ahead, but if it’s trash, it’s not worth much.

Trend number nine: Audiobook Accessibility Expands in 2025
We already talked about this a bit, but it will be up to authors who want to use AI narration and readers who want to listen to it. When it comes to AI, it isn’t just about availability and quality, it’s also about what you feel is best for you, your book business, and audience. Not everyone wants to support AI. Maybe we want to support true voice actors who depend on their jobs to make a living. Maybe readers would also like to support humans. Once you put out enough audio books, you’ll find an audience who will support either (or maybe even both). Maybe you’ll find a system where you hire narrators for full-length books but use AI for novellas, or maybe you write only shorts and AI is good enough for your needs. As access expands, it doesn’t mean authors will use it. And if authors us it, it doesn’t mean readers want to listen to it. So while this trend is true, it will expand, because why wouldn’t it, authors can choose not to create with it and readers can choose not to consume it.

Trend number ten: POD Goes Mainstream
We talked a little bit about this already, and it didn’t even occur to me that I’ve purchased a book from a trad author and her paperback book came printed by KDP (there was the time, date, and location stamp in the back). I was wondering what the heck and if she’d been dropped by her publisher and had gotten her rights back. It makes sense for publishers to use POD as it takes up less space than keeping stock and they don’t have to worry about titles going out of print. But as Drew Broussard in Jane’s blog post I linked to above says, there’s just a little lesser quality with a POD print than a book that came from a print run. You’re not going to get the embossed letters or fancy textures, you even run the risk of getting the wrong book between the covers, so I’m guessing that publishers will decide which title will get the POD treatment based on how big the audience still is and how old the book is.

This also could be why it takes so dang long to get author copies. Obviously the more authors who depend on POD the busier the equipment is, and that means planning ahead months if you need to order author copies. Especially since the more authors who use the equipment the more taxed they are and you don’t know if your books will come in good condition and you need to put in a replacement order.

Everyone says don’t write to trends, write the book you want to write because trends change too quickly to keep up. That’s not true, and Billionaire romance is proof of that. Everyone said that was a trend, that “mommy porn” was a passing phase, but it’s going on fifteen years since EL James published her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and Billionaire romance is still one of the top selling romance subgenres, though lately Mafia is giving it a run for its money. Trends take a long time to actually lose favor with readers, even if it feels like it happens overnight. These trends WWM talked about won’t fade because that’s just the direction publishing is going right now. AI won’t go away because too many people find value in using it, even if practices like using it to write or narrate books some find too abhorrent to do.

2025 will be like all the others, authors writing good books and trying to get them seen to build an audience of their 1000 true fans. Sometimes I think the publishing industry is glutted with too many books, but then I remember that readers can read a book a day and demand probably matches supply, even if we look at the thousands of books published every month and it doesn’t feel like it. Personally, I don’t think ramping your publishing schedule will help any. If someone doesn’t know you’ve written a book, they wont know you’ve written two. Being that the top marketing advice right now is to write the next book, advice I have passed along and believe in, I think we should still be writing with intent, trying to level up our craft each time we write, always trying to write a book better than our last.

The fact is, it’s difficult finding an audience, but the trick now is to not give up. Do what you have to do to stay interested and engaged and not lose heart. I’ve started to enjoy working on LOSS AND DAMAGES again, and I get excited talking about the next book I’m going to write. I like thinking about the future and the books I want to write, having material planned for well into 2027. I don’t know what life has in store for me, but I’m pretty sure writing is more than a passing trend.

Take care of yourselves this year, and in the meantime, I’ll you next week!

Five Reasons Why You Should Proof your Proofs!

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,080 words
6 minutes read time

picture of four book covers. they have the not for resale stripe in the middle. a rocky point wedding series — I still love the way those covers turned out!

Back in the day, I used to be excited to order my proof from KDP. It was fun to see my book look like a book, and I’d take pictures of it, proud I was a published author. That was when we published through CreateSpace and they didn’t have that ugly stripe in the middle. When Amazon merged CreateSpace and the ebook part of KDP, I didn’t mind. I liked having my book versions together on one dashboard, and when they added the NOT FOR RESALE stripe, I was okay with it. A lot of physical ARCs have some kind of warning that it’s not the finished product, and these are no different.

But, there is also other value in ordering a proof (if you can) and as the years went on, I started going over my proofs. Now I’m always shocked to learn not everyone proofs their proofs, and they are missing out on a great opportunity.

A last editing sweep, of course.
Editors and other authors say to change your font in your Word document to make typos stand out or use the read aloud feature (listening to the voice read a word that’s not spelled correctly is funny), and those are both great ways to find typos that would normally slip by. But, also reading your proof is a good way to see run-on sentences, punctuation errors like broken ellipses, spelling mistakes, and more. One of the things I have noticed is that reading your proof can actually help you see where scenes could be plumped up or if it drags. Reading your book, flipping the pages, and seeing the words on a printed page allows you to feel how your book moves, and when I was proofing my King’s Crossing series, I made a lot of scene changes right at the last minute. There’s something real about holding your book in your hands and reading it, and if you don’t proof your proof, you’re missing out on that experience.

Check your formatting.
Sometimes things look okay on your screen but not in print. When I was proofing books 4-6 of my King’s Crossing novels, there are a lot of journal entries. Max left Gage his journal that described a lot of what happened in books 1-3 and played a huge part in Gage figuring out Zarah’s past. But I wanted to format those journal entries in a way that didn’t distract the reader from the story. I finally ended up just using italics, though I tried other things like setting them in in a block quotation or an alignment block. Then, once I decided on how I wanted them formatted, I had to go through all the books and make sure I changed them all and didn’t miss any for consistency. Sometimes you’ll end up with just a word or two on a separate page that you need to fix, sometimes the pictures in your back matter need to be adjusted. You won’t know those things if you don’t proof your proof.

Check the cover.
Print on demand isn’t always accurate, and KDP is notorious for printing dark. Sometimes you might decide to go with a matte cover instead of glossy. You are never going to get the colors you see on the screen, so it’s best to order a poof copy and make sure the colors are how you want them, that your spine looks good, and the back over looks professional. A lot of times I don’t get the gradients lined up to the spine just right and I have to move it over. You won’t be able to tell that looking at a PDF of your cover. One of the last-second catches I saw when I was proofing my Rocky Point Wedding series was that I still had A Rocky Point Wedding Book One on book four. KDP might have caught it when I published, but it was better that I saw it and fixed it myself.

Look for lines and scenes that you can use in graphics and reels.
This will probably be one of the last times you read your book, and you can use this read-through to highlight hooky lines, dialogue, and scenes you can use in social media graphics and TikTok videos. One of the most time-consuming things is to page through your book, looking for lines you can use, and if you do this during your last edit, you’re saving yourself time in the long run. I wish I would have thought of this a long time ago, but social media isn’t my strong suit. You can be sure that I’ll be doing it from now on.

Peace of mind.
I see so many people who want their books in bookstores and libraries, yet they never order a proof to see exactly what their readers are getting when they pay 10-20 dollars to buy a paperback. I want to see exactly what my readers are going to get. I want the cover to look good, I want my formatting to look like a traditionally published book. I want to be able to catch all the typos I can (humanly) catch. I know that cost can be a barrier for some, the cost of the book and shipping might be too much after spending on editing and cover design, but as long as you are able, I would always recommend proofing your proof.

You probably don’t want to know how many proofs I ordered of my King’s Crossing series. That series is over four years in the making, and I changed the covers, too. I spent a lot on books I ended up throwing away, not needing them after fixing what I needed to fix. I throw away a lot of proofs, actually, because I don’t need them anymore. I only have room for so many, and prefer to keep a few author copies on hand instead. If you have the space, you might keep them for nostalgic purposes, but I don’t have much room, and I don’t see the sense in keeping them. The finished product is enough for me.

Ordering a proof is exciting, but it’s also a chance for one last read, no matter how sick you are of the story by now. Enjoy the last time you’ll read it, and quietly say goodbye to characters that you worked so hard on.

Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,449 words
13 minutes read time

illustrated picture of brunette woman holding cell phone with a stack of books behind her

The first month of the year is almost over, but I’ve been promising this blog post for a while now, and I think Written Word Media’s 2025 predictions are still worth exploring. I need to break this post into two parts, five trends in each, or this blog post will get so long no one will want to read it, and honestly, I don’t have time to do all ten at once (still gotta get some editing in today). I linked to the article if you want to read the original first or as you go along. Some of them you might have seen before, here on this blog, or theirs. Sometimes it feel like publishing, especially indie publishing, can move quite fast, but in reality, publishing, both trad and indie, moves at a snail’s pace, and turning in any other direction than the one in which you are going is slower than the Titanic trying to avoid that iceberg.

Let’s begin:

Trend number one: Authors Focus on Building Loyal Audiences
I feel like this might be a given, and no offense to WWM or the author of the article, but I don’t see the point of adding it. Authors have always been focused on building a loyal audience, finding their true 1,000 fans. I’m not sure why it was included, except maybe to accentuate the fact that building a loyal audience is hard work. First you have to actually find your readers, then offer them enough books to either look forward to everything you write, or self-select out of your books because they don’t like your style or voice or whatever reason they have. How you go about doing this will be different for everyone, not to mention if you can only write and publish one book a year, it will take a long time. The authors who are making a living wage and who do have their 1,000+ fans have managed to accomplish this, so we know it can be done. But given the number of books out there, finding, and keeping, your readers is just a given of being an author. Write your books because without them, you won’t need an audience.

Tread number two: Authors Invest in Email Marketing
It’s always been known that if you’re an author, you should be building a newsletter, and if you’re not, that’s a personal choice that may come back and bite you in the butt. After the TikTok fiasco, I saw a lot of authors on Threads saying they might start one or start a blog so they have something that’s not social media. It’s probably the smart thing to do, since we saw a lot of desperation when TikTok almost went away, and even some now, because if you deleted TikTok off your phone or other device, you can’t get it back. The app store doesn’t allow you to download it anymore (and if you do still have it, there won’t be any new updates).

About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps in the United States
TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps are no longer available in the United States, and visitors to the United States might have limited access to features.
Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.

That’s not say you can’t use TikTok in your browser, but who knows what kind of reach it has. We’ll talk more about Meta in the next trend, but if you don’t like good old Zuck (for political reasons or other), you might not want to be dependent on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, either. They say you can’t be everywhere at once, but maybe be on a place that you control first and foremost, and then use social media as a backup or Plan B. Evergreen content can be used over and over again, and all content can be repurposed. A blog post on your author site can be chopped into chunks to use on your FB author page or IG. I think the main thing here though, is to train your readers to look for you on your website. If you have an active FB page, make sure they know you have a website too. Turn your website and your newsletter into your primary source of news for your reader. Billionaires don’t care about you–we see this over and over again. Stop thinking they do and take care of yourself. Jane Friedman has a get-started-guide to newsletters, and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/email-newsletters-for-authors/

Trend number three: Meta Continues to Dominate
Unfortunately, because he owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, there’s not a lot of places for authors to go if you want to avoid Mark Zuckerberg. Personally, I think he’s an idiot for licking Trump’s feet. Be that as it may, he owns a lot of social media now, and if you have a large following on your Facebook author page or your Instagram page, you probably don’t want to leave. I think if anyone was still hanging around Twitter, they left after Musk’s Nazi salute. Finding anywhere else to go is difficult, Bluesky’s founder Jack Dorsey (that is such a good name though) not without his share of problematic activity. I don’t use social media a lot, though I’ve been posting more this month because I joined a challenge. Once the challenge is over at the end of the month, I’ll probably just go back to not posting at all. Being accountable to someone helps, but I should be feeling accountable to my readers and so far, that has only extended to my blog and my books. If I say I’m going to have a book out at a certain time, I do and that’s about as far as my accountability goes.

As far as ads, Facebook ads probably are the best ad platform an author is going to get, Instagram, Bookbub, and Amazon coming in close second, third, and fourth, though hard to tell which order. They all have their attributes and setbacks, and though I’ve struggled in the past, I would lean toward Facebook ads if I ever wanted to run more ads in the future.

I think the thing to remember about any social media, not just what Zuckerberg owns, is that if you’re trying to reach readers, that’s different than being part of the writing community. Approach each platform with the goal you have in mind. If you want to post graphics and reels all day that feature your books, Instagram seems to be the place for that. If you want to connect with other authors, Threads and Bluesky seem like the better choice. Facebook acts as a one-stop-shop, and you can join author groups for publishing and marketing information and networking with other authors to join newsletter swaps and author-driven promos, start an Author page for your readers, and run ads. Each platform does have different purposes, and while above I suggested you reuse content, not all content will be fit for all platforms. For an example, I’ve been posting a lot on my FB author page, but that’s kind of an anything goes platform, whereas, if you’re trying to create an aesthetically pleasing grid on Instagram, everything has to be in line with your theme which means you’ll be planning your posts. Choose your goal and have your plan. I post on FB and Instagram to promote my books to my readers, joined FB groups for publishing industry news and networking, and I joined Threads (though I said I wasn’t going to) to get book news and just post random crap that’s not fit for anywhere else. (How many people care I had to buy a new coffeemaker?)

It seems like Meta will be around for a bit, but always have a backup plan. When Meta servers go down, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads go down at the same time. That’s a lot of social media blackout. Know why you’re posting and what you want to get out of your social media use. If something isn’t working, move on. Algorithms are heartless animals, don’t let them beat you down.

Trend number four: Direct Sales Continue to Grow
I think this is really true. Authors are seeing the benefit of cutting out the middleman and earning more for themselves. But, on the flip side, if you don’t have the technical savvy (or patience) to pull it off, don’t have the space to store physical books, don’t have the spoons to think about any of it much less the ability to get to the post office two or three times a week, I wouldn’t worry about it. For as many authors who do sell direct, there are just as many or more who do not. Because my ebooks are in KU, I couldn’t sell those directly, but I could sell my paperbacks if I wanted. I don’t have the space to store stock, and though I know a couple people who could probably help me get some kind of system set up on my website, it just sounds like too much work.

Honestly, anything more than what I’m doing sounds like too much work. Direct sales doesn’t necessarily mean setting up Stripe on your website and shipping physical books out of your home. It could mean setting up a Patreon and asking readers to pay for exclusive content. It could mean setting up a paid newsletter. Anything where you are engaging with readers directly, where they pay you (minus the fees of whatever platform or system you’re using) directly for content they want. If I ever had a book take off, maybe I would create a special edition to sell directly to readers somehow, but all that seems so up in the air and you have to consider ROI. Are you getting enough from the time and stress it takes to put all that together? I sound like I’m against direct sales, but I’m not. If you have the energy, resources, and your books are available to be sold elsewhere other than Amazon, then you should do it. What I’m trying to do is tell authors who don’t want to or can’t do this right now, or ever, that it’s okay. Not everyone does it or wants to do it. With my luck, I would put paperbacks on my website and sales would explode. I don’t have a team to handle that. Amazon is okay for what I want it to do. They take care of taxes, distribution, and shipping, and royalties land in my account.

I don’t know what’s in store when it comes to a trend like this. More authors doing it? Maybe, as Amazon’s reputation gets worse and worse and Draft2Digital and IngramSpark get increasingly harder to work with. Indies go indie to be in control, after all, and there’s no greater control than selling your own books.

Trend number five: Authors Experiment with Pricing
I think all authors experiment to some extent, though from the small sampling I’ve seen on Threads, authors could be a bit more flexible. Amazon doesn’t make this easy, only giving us 35% if our prices are 1.99 and below, and we’re reluctant to price at .99 only to receive 34 cents per sale. This is where having a series can come in handy, putting your first book for .99 (or free if you’re wide) as a loss leader and recouping that loss when a reader reads all the books in the series. There are a lot of arguments as to what book blasts like SYKD do for anyone, though no one can truly know since evidence for or against is so elusive.

When I price my books, I think of two things: I’m in KU so price doesn’t mean that much, but I also want to be price-friendly for readers who do not have KU and have to pay out of pocket. Right now my six-book series is priced like this: Book One, .99; Book Two, 1.99; Book Three, 2.99; Books 4-6, 4.99 (USD). That’s still over twenty dollars if someone wants to read all six. That sounds crazy to me considering they could pay for a month of Kindle Unlimited for 11.99 USD plus tax. They could read mine and as many other books as they could for the month. I understand not every country has access to Kindle Unlimited but my audience is 75% US, so I always keep that in mind when I make decisions for my book business.

I gave away almost 15,000 books in 2024, and I see the benefit in giving away a first in series or even just a standalone to let readers get a free taste of what you offer, but as the article states, we have to price in a way that we still make money. That’s been something I haven’t quite figured out, and we all have to find that delicate balance among ad spend, giving away our books, and pricing low to keep readers happy but also to reach whatever monetary goals we have. I’ve decided making money isn’t going to be my focus in 2025, stopping all my ads and just letting the chips fall where they may. I’m focusing on enjoying the writing process and not thinking so much of how many books I’ll publish every year.

The more books you have, the more choices you have. You don’t have to think so much of price if you have only one book out or if your series isn’t complete. Look at the bigger picture when pricing your books, not just what you’ll get when one person buys one book. (I also touched on this in a different blog post and you can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2024/07/29/every-time-someone-reads-your-book/) Pricing your books is a sales and marketing strategy, so try to know what kind of outcome you want when figuring out what to price your books. You can’t measure return on investment if you don’t know what kind of return you want. Sometimes it’s not all about sales, it’s about exposure or read-through.

Experiment and see what works for you. The first three books in my series won’t be low forever, but I can’t guarantee when I’ll get around to changing them to 4.99 like the rest. It is smart though, to mix it up every now and then, even if it’s just so you have something to write about in your newsletter.

That’s about all I have for the first five of Written Word Media’s 2025 trends. I’ll do the other five next week. Here are some quick links if you’re looking for resources about what we talked about. I hope 2025 is treating you well. I can’t believe how fast time is flying by.

Until next time!

Links:

Bookbub also did a predictions list that focus more on AI: https://insights.bookbub.com/publishing-leaders-share-predictions-2025/

Jane Friedman and newsletters for authors: https://janefriedman.com/email-newsletters-for-authors/

How to do a Kindle Countdown Sale: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/kindle-countdown-deals-explained/

TikTok Uncertainty Prompts the Book Business to Envision an Even Better Future: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/96889-tiktok-uncertainty-prompts-the-book-business-to-envision-an-even-better-future.html (You might hit a paywall if you’ve read all your allotted free articles)

KC Crowne and the Case of the AI Prompt

Posted on January 20, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,796 words
10 minutes read time

I guess everyone is talking about KC Crowne’s AI faux pas now, and with AI being a hot button in author circles anyway, we might be talking about this for a long time.

Last week, a romance author published a book in their mafia romance series and I assume went about their business. It wasn’t long after an AI prompt was caught in the beginning of the book, signaling to everyone that they were using AI to help them write their books.

Screenshot of Kindle Screen. Black background. White text. Yellow highlights. Text reads:

Thought for 13 seconds
Certainly! Here's an enhanced version of your pas-sage, making Elena more relatable and injecting additional humor while providing a brief, sexy description of Grigori. Changes are highlighted in bold for clarity
Relief washes over me the instant I see Grigori standing in the open doorway. I don't think I've ever felt such intense joy upon seeing that cold, unreadable face.
Even amidst the chaos, Grigori radiates an undeniable magnetism-his tall, athletic build and smoldering brown eyes effortlessly draw attention. His dark hair is perfectly tousled, and his strong jawline adds to his commanding presence. — I first heard about it here: https://www.threads.net/@bookish_meltdowns/post/DE20DvBSYqb

I’m not going to rake them over the coals for using AI. The fact is a lot of authors do and will continue to do so. Using AI is a choice, and it’s one authors make every day. I don’t use Al to help me write my books, but I do use him to help me with ad copy and just the other day I fed him my blurb to help me think of mini-tropes for an arrow graphic. I bounce blog ideas off him, for this blog and for my author newsletter, though mostly for that one I ask him for blog title ideas to help with my open rate. In my mind, he just takes the place of a friend who doesn’t have time to brainstorm. Not everyone is hanging around their phones and sometimes you can’t wait for feedback. My so-so attitude would probably get me canceled by authors who are so whole-heartedly against AI that they won’t even talk about it. I think there’s a time and a place for Al (for any man, really, haha), and for every author that’s going to be different. Some authors use him as an editor because they can’t afford a human, some, like KC, use him to plump up scenes (though I doubt a machine can create relatable characters. That seems redundant when even the author couldn’t make her characters as three dimensional as she wanted.). Some authors are like me and use him to think of ad copy and whatever else, leaving the actual writing of the books in their own hands. Like a stalker, Al isn’t going away. Resistance is futile.

What I wanted to talk about is a couple of things that have come up since readers found that AI prompt. One of the most frequent I’ve seen is, Why didn’t an editor catch it? I don’t know this author, don’t know what their editing process is like. They could have a million beta readers, editors, whatever, but I think what everyone wanted to do was accuse them of not using an editor at all. I doubt that a bestselling author like KC Crowne forgoes an editor, and the simplest explanation I can come up with is they were responding to feedback (a flat scene from the looks of it) and asked Al to help plump up that scene. Not every author asks their editors to look over changes, hoping that they aren’t editing in typos as they fix other things. They probably got Al’s help, copy and pasted, and away they went. They might have been in a hurry if they were working against a preorder deadline, and we all know mistakes can be made when you’re rushed. I’m not excusing them at all, I’ve published books with typos (that publishing anticipation never goes away and being in a hurry to upload your files to KDP can position you to make a lot of mistakes), but I can understand it happening. So that’s why I think that AI prompt was missed. That author was the last to look at it before they uploaded the files.

Another thing that was called into question was the number of positive reviews that book had that didn’t mention the AI prompt. A lot of those reviews came from Booksprout, and because I use that site to get reviews, I feel compelled to defend those reviewers. Booksprout reviewers want to help you, and for the most part, they will leave four and five star reviews. If they have an issue with a book, they tell you in private feedback. I’ve put a lot of books up for review, and the only review that was “critical” that I’ve gotten was for Give & Take, the first book in my Lost & Found trilogy. She admitted she wasn’t the target audience and she said the same in private feedback. She also mentioned she didn’t think Jack had enough emotional growth. I thanked her for her time and explained that his character arc was still developed in the next two books if she wanted to read them. She never responded and I didn’t push the issue.

I don’t know if KC’s reviewers on Booksprout caught the prompt. I don’t know if they told the author. I don’t know if they told the author and they didn’t read their feedback. I don’t always read or respond to my feedback. A lot of it is them catching typos, and if they reach out, I’ll thank them for telling me and that’s it. It’s kind of a hands-off site. Authors stay on our side and readers stay on their side. Except for a couple of readers who have reached out in other ways, I don’t communicate with my reviewers and most of the time it seems like they want it that way.

So when we ask why their Booksprout reviewers didn’t catch it, we don’t know they didn’t. The author, or her PA, could have not looked at the site after she uploaded her book on there, or maybe she was locked into preorder edits and couldn’t fix it right when it was discovered. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though maybe. I don’t know the publishing timeline. God knows how many readers it went out to if she had it on preorder and she had to wait to fix the mistake. Because we don’t know the whole story, I wouldn’t judge the reviewers on Booksprout, and I will continue to use that site for reviews with Loss and Damages. Like with any kind of social media or anything that has a measurable ROI, you get out of it what you put into it, and over the years I have met some lovely readers who pick up all my books.

I doubt this will be the last time we’ll see something like this happen. Authors are using AI and like someone said on Threads, we will read books that have been edited, co-written, or written by AI and edited by the author afterward, without knowing. It’s interesting because I was reading Written Word Media’s 2025 trends, and their first trend was that readers will be building loyal audiences and their seventh trend was that AI will become more mainstream. I’m going to talk more about all the trends next week (that was supposed to be my blog post for today) but I think authors who want to build loyal audiences and who use AI are going to have to work harder and smarter to connect with people. KC Crowne alienated a lot of ~~people~~ authors. Whether there will consequences remains to be seen. The one big difference between an author like me getting blog ideas and an author like KC who uses it to plump up scenes and make characters more relatable is that I don’t ask Al to feel. He’s a machine and regurgitates what he learned from other people and scrapes the web for information that’s already out there. He’s not going to be able to write about a man’s fear a woman doesn’t love him anymore, or a woman’s happiness when the man she loves asks her to marry him.

If anyone judges KC for anything at all, it should be for the fact that if they’re having trouble writing relatable characters, that’s a craft issue and nothing they should be looking to take shortcuts on. I only mentioned this because she posted an apology on Facebook:

Screenshot of Facebook message

PA Amanda
Hello everyone. This is KC Crowne using my PA's fb. Firstly, I want to say to that I understand your frustrations. To think that an author that you have enjoyed reading has Al generated books is understandably a cause for concern. I can assure everyone that all my books are written by me. I've been writing my books before Al came about. I've recently started the practice of using Al to make very minor edits. To be honest, I'm still learning about how to best use Al to make my reader's experience better but I can assure you that keeping my original voice strong is of utmost importance. I hope you can understand that enhancing the reader's experience is my ultimate goal. The last thing I would want is for my books to not be competitive in the market. Finally, I take full responsibility for the error in the file.

I don’t know how they think asking Al to help them will result in enhancing a reader’s experience. Only an author can do that, digging into backstory, emotional wounds, and stakes. They have to get to know their characters, what motivates them, what they love and what they hate. I don’t know if they’re spending time with their characters, letting their stories marinate. They say the best writing happens in the shower and while you’re washing dishes and this is absolutely true. If they’re writing quickly, perhaps slowing down and sitting with their characters would help. That author makes thousands a month on their books, and I can’t imagine the pressure that would create. The need to keep that going because they probably have people on their team they pay along with their own living expenses, but like I said in a previous blog post, turning to AI is not the answer. At least, not an answer to that particular question.

Another author’s thread I happened to see said using AI is lazy and authors shouldn’t do it. I was a little offended, as lazy is the last thing I am. It also insults authors who use a program like ProWritingAid when they can’t afford an editor. Is it lazy to ask Al for newsletter subject lines? Is it lazy to ask him for help naming a character? There is a line between not doing the work at all and working smarter. 75% of the time I use Al as a search engine, and he’s very quick at scraping the web for what I want to know. Is it lazy of me not to do a real Google search and comb through articles? I write all my own books. I do my own covers in Canva using stock from DepositPhotos. I know they have started adding pictures done with AI, and when I’m doing a search, I filter them out.

Whether an author wants to use AI or not isn’t for me to judge, but if they’re using AI for character development and making a scene richer, then maybe they need to step back and figure out why they’re writing, or still writing, in the first place. A machine can’t relate to people.

KC Crowne is lucky this TikTok BS came along. It will help bury their mistake and in a couple of months when they rebrand and rerelease that book (I would assume that’s what they’re going to do–why waste a good book?) everyone will have forgotten what happened until the next author who gets caught using AI comes along.

So, the outcome of this mystery? Slow down, enjoy the process, and read your proof!

Al might not be human, but you are, and we all make mistakes.

Until next time!

Thursday Thoughts: Social Media

Posted on January 16, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,396 words
7 minutes read time

So, a couple things caught my eye this morning while I was having coffee trying to wake up. Thursdays are my Mondays and I don’t always handle the mornings as gracefully as I should. Becca Syme says maybe not opening social media (or checking your sales dashboard) the minute you open your eyes could help, but for now this is my way of easing into my day.

The first thing I saw this morning was this lovely Thread by Holly June Smith (typed out in Alt text):

I really love this and what I needed to hear because underneath all the blog posts I write about doing better, complaining about low views when I do actually post, and just overall wondering if social media really moves the needle at all, is the fact I have a really difficult time posting. Even on my personal Facebook profile, I rarely post anything. I don’t care much about “checking in” when I go somewhere or telling people about my day. I don’t take pictures of my breakfast, and if I take a picture of a boozy drink like the one I ordered last night when I went out with my sister…

Southtown Pourhouse, Fargo, ND

…I usually forget to post it and delete it off my phone later. I learned years ago on Twitter that followers don’t add up to a whole lot.

Then right after I saw Holly June’s perfect thread I read someone’s bragging about her social media growth. It made me feel crappy for about two minutes because while she can brag about how quickly her account grew, I have a lot of things I’m proud of that (in my opinion) are more important than that.

If you ever feel down because your social media growth isn’t what you want it to be, remember what’s important. Here’s a list and you are welcome to print it out and tape it somewhere to remind yourself that there are more important things than follower count.

Write your books!
Remember why you got into this game to begin with. Everyone is talking about what will happen when TikTok gets banned, and when you have 40k followers and use that platform to sell books, yeah, it’s going to be a devastating development. I’m still pretty optimistic that TikTok won’t go away anytime soon (I’ll believe it when I see it), but social media platforms and the billionaires who own them are fickle beasts and one way to control that is to keep your eyes on your own paper and write your books. Your books will always be there no matter what kind of social media disappears and what takes its place. I’d rather say I wrote three books this year than say I gained 50 followers or whatever. Remember what’s important. Besides, even if you do have a ton of followers, they can’t buy what’s not there.

Make real connections.
Personally, the only reason I know of to have social media is to make personal, genuine connections. Obviously, 100% of my online friends I’ve met through social media. Though, some have reached out to me through this blog and we stay in touch through email or the messages part of a platform like Instagram. Network with others in your genre, build bridges with those you can help and who can help you. That’s what social media is really for. (I’ve said for years if you’re not connecting with other authors and using it to find out important book news, you’re using Facebook wrong.) I’ve been friends with a handful of people for several years that I met on Twitter and I wouldn’t have met them if I hadn’t be a part of that platform.

Be helpful.
It’s going to sound dumb, but helping my friends and other authors is probably the most important part of this whole thing. I learned how to do book covers, I have Vellum and learned how to use it. Now I help other authors who can’t afford to hire out those services. I edit for people when I can. I beta read. I like helping people and between that and writing my books, publishing them and hearing feedback from readers that they loved the story, those are the two most important reasons why I keep writing and publishing. It’s why I keep coming back to this blog every Monday. Just the other day I got a message on Instagram from someone who thanked me for writing the Canva tutorial on how to make a full paperback wrap. I’d rather have someone reach out and thank me for giving her the tools she needed to publish her book than a million followers.

Build a community on property you own.
I can’t stress this enough. Like the future of TikTok and what Musk did with Twitter, you never know the outcome of some of these platforms. Some seem to be around to stay, but for every platform that hangs on, there are more that don’t like MySpace and Google +. As an author, even if you don’t want to hear it, build your reading community on land you own and that way it doesn’t matter what social media does or doesn’t do. Create a website, blog on it if you want so you can build SEO. Start a newsletter. Collect those email addresses and back them up often so no matter what happens to your aggregator, your readers are yours to keep. Sometimes we put our energy into the wrong place. I’m not saying building a following anywhere, like TT or your Facebook author page, is a bad move, but also have a plan B, because just like we say about Bezos, they don’t care about you. The last thing Mark Zuckerberg cares about is your book business. You have to take it upon yourself to find a way to stay in touch with your readers that doesn’t depend on anyone else. If you have an FB page, frequently remind them to sign up for your blog or newsletter or as an alternative, tell them to follow your author page on Amazon. Amazon may not be around forever either, but if they don’t want to give you their email address, I think a follow over there is the next best thing. Now that Zuck owns Instagram, Threads, and Facebook, when their servers go down, ALL that goes down. Having a way to reach your readers that doesn’t depend on someone else is a must. It really is.

You can get down looking at other authors’ follower counts, but behind the scenes, those followers might not be doing anything for them anyway. I know my followers on Twitter didn’t, but I also made friends and that’s what really counts. Post if you want, find joy in sharing your work with others. I’m not saying having a social media account and trying to gain followers isn’t valid, it can be in this world of being online, but it’s definitely not the end all be all of your publishing journey. I have to remind myself of that when I see others’ social media accounts exploding and mine is a stagnant mess. But I’ve accomplished a lot in the past year. I’ve finished a 6-book series and started publishing those books. I’m editing a standalone that sounds so good, and the cover I’m tweaking is a perfect match. I’ve picked up a reading and formatting project I’m going to start working on soon.

I’m on social media. I like talking to other authors, talking shop, supporting them in bite-sized Threads pieces. I’m trying to like posting on my FB author page, even if my reach is bad and my engagement isn’t any better. But with anything, what you put into it is what you’ll get out of it, so I’ll keep posting my favorite lines out of my books, talking about my books, and my life as an author. If those posts find fans, they do, and if not, that’s okay. I’ll keep editing Loss and Damages, and it will be a solid addition to the backlist I’ve written over the years.

And unless I’m starving, my breakfast won’t have anything to do with it.

Come back on Monday. I’ll have my usual post and I’ll be talking about the 2025 Written Word Media publishing predictions. Have a good weekend!

Where are you going to put that link?

Posted on January 13, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

pink background illustrated picture of different generic platform profiles

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

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

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

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

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

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

Newsletter link

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Amazon Buy-Links/Books2Read, etc.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fantasy: https://stuffwithfantasy.com/authorhelp

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

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

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

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

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

Closed Door Non-Explicit Romance:

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

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

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

Thanks for reading this far and have a great week!

black and white picture of woman sitting in front of wildflowers

Vania (VM) Rheault is a contemporary romance author who has written over twenty titles.

When she’s not writing, you can find her working her day job, sleeping, or enjoying Minnesota’s four seasons with a cup of coffee in hand.

My First Author Update of 2025

Posted on January 6, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

Last year went out with a bang, and this year has come in with a whimper. I mean, the whimper isn’t because I’m in pain, it’s just how I’m going to live my year. I finished reading a book I started last fall, right before I decided to edit my Rocky Point Wedding Series, and started another, reading for pleasure. This weekend I’ll begin edits on Loss and Damages, but I took New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day “off” and did some housekeeping instead.

KDP approved my new files for the ebooks and paperbacks of my series without giving me any hassle about keywords or licensing rights (or something else I wasn’t prepared to tackle). I was pleasantly surprised and relieved. Not so pleasantly surprised and relieved when I did the same for IngramSpark and ended up paying $200. Fifty dollars a book ($25 dollars per file) wasn’t something I could afford, but the changes were too drastic not to do it. It was something I had taken upon myself and paid the price. The books are better for it, and I’ll find the invoice somewhere and give it to my accountant, uh, next year as I did that on the first of January. This year’s taxes (2025) will look a lot different as I doubt there will be many royalties to declare and a lot less ad spend to claim.

I turned off all my ads after earning $1.76 in royalties on Saturday. I had two Facebook ads that had two dollars a day ad spend, and some Amazon ads that were going at .50/click. I can’t keep my ads on if my royalties aren’t at least breaking even, so I just put up my white flag completely and shut them all down, even my rockstars on Facebook I said I would never stop. I suspect it won’t take long for my books to sink, but like I keep saying, that’s okay. I used to think that breaking even was okay, or even a good thing, but all that takes energy and I don’t want to have to think about click spend or conversion anymore. I might still boost a post now and then. Facebook ad gurus say not to do that, but with the way the algorithms are, boosting a post once in a while is practically the only way to get views. Since I have my ad information all set up in Facebook anyway, boosting a post won’t be difficult. I am trying to get more followers on my author page, though I’m not sure to what end. It’s a nice thought that followers turn into readers who will buy, but I lost that dream when I was on Twitter and my 14k followers did nothing for me. But, like I told a friend in an email, without ads running, I need to do something or no one will know I’m still breathing.

Last year my books were in two promos in December. I paid for a Fussy Librarian and gave away 3,491 copies of A Heartache for Christmas, and in a Stuff Your Ereader promo, I gave away 3,130 copies of Twisted Alibis. I was disappointed because in previous SYKD events I’ve given away a lot more than that, and Twisted Alibis and my Ghost Town Trilogy as whole have done well. Not sure if my hook wasn’t hooky enough or what, but I don’t know if I’m going to participate next year. I was surprised my Fussy Librarian did so well (Al says they have 352,127 free promo contemporary romance subscribers which was more than I thought) but I gave away a Christmas novel in December, so that was probably just timing. I said in a previous blog post that I was going to do four of those kinds of promos this year, but I don’t know. I’m tired of pushing my books, tired of hoping for a result that probably isn’t going to happen. Giving away books has an ROI that can’t truly be measured, and I think I’ve given away enough books for the foreseeable future. I did an author unwrapped on Threads and looked up the free books I gave away last year. I gave away almost 15,000 books in 2024. I don’t mind giving away books, I really, really don’t, but at some point you have to decide how beneficial it is and I’m going to wait and see what kind of page reads and read-through those promos will produce, if any, in the next few months.

I did some website cleanup and moved my books off this website to my author site. I don’t blog to sell books anyway, and all my 3rd person stuff is old and not worth mentioning. I updated some bits and pieces on my author website and I’ll be fine leaving the sites separated. Blogging over there is going okay–I got a couple more downloads of My Biggest Mistake when I sent out a Happy New Year post. Checked my subscriber stats and I’m still losing people, but that’s okay. I don’t know how to cull my list on WordPress so them opting out is the only way to get people who don’t want to be there off my list.

I’m going into this year gentler, trying not to care as much, enjoying the writing and books in general. Tired of trying to make money and there are a lot of posts on Facebook and Threads right now from authors who have been at this for just as long or longer than I have making pennies a day. I’m not alone but knowing that doesn’t make me feel better. I’ve just come to terms with it, and honestly, it’s fine. I’ll accept the yearly loss on my subscriptions like Canva, Office 365, and WordPress because at this point not paying for that stuff is stepping away farther than I want to and I wouldn’t be able to help the authors I’m currently helping. My Alliance of Independent Authors membership is a must because you never know when I’ll need their support if Amazon does something to my account. Once all the books in my King’s Crossing series are done releasing, I can downgrade my Booksprout plan to only one book a campaign instead of unlimited, and I’m only paying $20 a year to Bookfunnel so they can distribute my reader magnet and my Addicted to Her easter egg. The money I have in my savings account needs to stay there, and I don’t have the energy to make sure my royalties are matching my ad spend, so it’s best just to turn them off and let my sales do what they will. The $200 I paid to IngramSpark hit me hard and will be my last big spend. I shot my shot and missed. Now I don’t have any money to play with. I knew it was going to happen, and I’m prepared. It is what it is and all that.

I’m still going to write and publish, like I said, so this blog will always be here. Besides, for some reason, I have 400 downloads in my DepositPhotos account I thought I needed, and I still have about 70 ISBN numbers to use out of that pack of 100 I bought a few years ago. I’ve learned to bootstrap book production–editing, covers, formatting–so maybe I’ll learn to bootstrap some marketing, though the only bootstrapping I know of is social media, and I’ve never been great at that. I did ask Al for some social media prompts geared specifically toward billionaire romance indie authors, and he did a good job. He gave me 31 prompts for the month of January that could actually work without much tweaking. Though, he’s not too helpful when it comes to videos (I’d never ask him to make them for me), if that’s what’s really moving the needle. At this point, my social media accounts are the only place I can talk about my books now, besides my newsletter, and I should talk about them somewhere. Especially since I still have three more books of my King’s Crossing series yet to release. Still working on keeping my books in my mind even after they’ve been published.

That’s about all I have this week. Thanks to my friend Melody for giving me a heads up about the Bookfunnel YouTube channel/podcast. Lately, while I’m cooking dinner, I’ve been listening to their episode on having a publishing plan. Because, you know, what else am I going to listen to when I’ve been saying for the past few weeks I’m going to go easy on my writing and publishing? [Insert rolling eyes here.] Whatever. It’s a great talk, and maybe it will fire you up for the next 51 weeks. If you want to listen to it, or check out their channel, look here:

That’s about all I got. I hope the new year treats you well!

Until next time!

Vania (VM) Rheault is a contemporary romance author who has written over twenty titles.

When she’s not writing, you can find her working her day job, sleeping, or enjoying Minnesota’s four seasons with a cup of coffee in hand.

Happy New Year! (Making every minute count)

Posted on January 1, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

I could have saved this for Monday, but I figured the thoughts running through my mind while I made pancakes for the kids this morning were an apt New Year topic.

You know lately I’ve been going through some old 3rd person books. I revamped a four-book series and it took me four months. Two rounds of editing, waiting for proofs, and redoing their covers. The proofs will come today and the last step is just pushing Publish on Amazon and swapping out files on IngramSpark. Then I can put that series away, and maybe even start promoting them a little bit because I won’t be wincing, wondering what people are reading.

Yesterday, I looked for the Vellum files of my erotica novellas and couldn’t find them. I remembered that they were lost in a Mac update and if I wanted to have them, I’d have to open the PDF in Word, re-import that .docx file into Vellum and reformat them. It’s not so bad, I grouped them into threes and so that’s what I did. I started that process, anyway. Got the front and back matter fixed again, though all that could be updated, and edited the first novella which is 25,000 words. I finished last night and moved on to the next, but then I got to thinking, “Why am I doing this?” I had a legitimate reason for doing my Rocky Point series. People were finding them without me promoting them, and since I hadn’t looked at them in four years (Amazon says publication dates were in January of 2020) I knew they could use a polish.

The only trouble with this way of thinking is, all my old books could use a polish. Scratch that. Every singe book I have ever published could use a polish, because that’s the way an author’s life works. We grow, we change, maybe our styles mature, and I doubt there’s one author out there who could go back to a book they’ve previously published and not find one thing they would want change.

So, this really just begs the question, How should we spend our time? Do I need be using my time going back to books so old that of course there’s going to be tons wrong with them, despite the fact these were edited by someone other than me, and I can tell they were. I haven’t found any typos so far except a sentence didn’t have a period and at one point a character had a tank top on and it changed to a t-shirt. What would I gain re-editing six erotica novellas? What would I gain re-editing the first trilogy I ever wrote and published. Would it help me get ahead? And should I always think about getting ahead?

A new year always calls for dissecting how you’re going to spend the next twelve months. They feel shiny and new, the world is your oyster, and everyone wants to start off with a bang. Hit the ground running. I’ve never treated a new year as anything special because I had goals and a plan and didn’t need the extra oomph a new year provides. January first is the same as July first and October first. I always had the drive to get things done, no matter what was going on in my life at the time.

So I stopped editing the second novella in my erotica series and closed out the Vellum file. The files that are published are okay, and I don’t know if Amazon has hidden them in their erotica dungeon or not. I don’t even know if I labeled them erotica when I published them, and since then, even if I had, Amazon didn’t get weird about explicit material until recently and they could still show up if someone looked. Not that anyone is going to. The couples on the covers are in bed, and Amazon won’t let me run ads to them. I could on Facebook, but the only way I would do that is if I re-edited them, and so we’re running around in circles, but after everything I just typed, I think we can discern it’s not worth it.

Books are going to have typos, even heavily edited books have typos and inconsistency issues because humans human, and there’s nothing you can do about it. I guess when I start thinking of my imperfect backlist, that’s when imposter syndrome takes over, but when that happens, I know I haven’t been reading enough. I’ve read many imperfect books since I started my indie career, books that have sold thousands of copies (you can tell just by the number of reviews they have), and I’ve said readers just don’t care as long as you give them a good story. I truly believe this, I just have to start applying that to my own books.

What does this mean for 2025? I need to stop going back. Editing my Rocky Point series was fun and I liked revisiting those characters . . . but I lost four months. In those four months I could have finished editing Loss and Damages, the next book I’m going to publish in September, and either made a good start writing my next standalone (I might have even finished. I can write 80k words in three months), or began editing the first two books I have written in the next series I want to publish. Only I can answer if those four months were worth it, but since I’ve seen the end result and I’m proud of what that series is, I guess it’s safe to say it was. But going back any further won’t do me much good, and if I ever do finish reformatting and re-editing those erotica books, and even my Tower City Trilogy, that kind of thing will have to be a side project because this is the honest to goodness truth: it won’t matter to my ~~career~~ hobby if I do those things or not. It would be for my own personal satisfaction only. Those books were published to the best of my ability at the time, just like Captivated by Her and Addicted to Her, the first books I published when I switched to first person present. Getting better is indicative of growth, and we all do that. Or should, anyway. Your first book should sound different than your tenth. We all grow and change, we work with different editors who use different skills and give us different perspectives, we work with different betas who give us different opinions. We read different books and learn different techniques. We listen to craft podcasts and marketing podcasts and learn to keep plot points opened-ended until the last book to promote read-through and learn to write bonus content that only newsletter subscribers have access to. There are lots we do to level up our craft, and that will show in every new book we write. Going back will always be futile because older books will always be lacking. It’s just the way it is.

But, you know, I’ve struggled to find purpose in this writing and publishing endeavor, struggled to find a reason to keep going. I spent more on ads in 2024 than I have, ever, and knowing that has kind of left me feeling deflated. I love finding new readers, and I know you have to spend money to make money, but it’s draining to run ads, spending a dollar only to make a dollar. Creating them, keeping an eye on them, watching them appear to spend more money than they earn–I say appear because most times they don’t (if they are wasting money you have to look at what you’re doing and the product you’re trying to sell, but that’s a lesson for another day). Facebook and Amazon bill you at different times than your royalties are paid out, so you have to be patient when comparing ad spend vs. royalties earned. The marketing part is a letdown, but I need it or my sales dashboard would be empty which I know would hurt me more than breaking even. I’m treading water, but like I said in my 2024 recap, I’m not unhappy. I just have to keep reminding myself of that.

Recently I looked at my follower count for my pen name (VM Rheault) and I was surprised to find I have 325 followers. That’s 325 reasons to keep going. I have 734 newsletter subscribers and have a 34% open rate most days I send one out. That’s 250 reasons to keep going. I have readers who care, and I value every one.

Today I’m setting aside my third person stuff and opening my Loss and Damages file. I love these characters, love the cover I already made. I’ll be happy to get this book on preorder. What I’ll do after that, I’m not sure. After so much editing, I’m a little intimidated to open a new Word file and start a book from nothing. I’ll need to sit with those characters a bit, work out the plot and get comfortable with who they are and what they’re going to go through. I’ve been thinking about them a lot in the past few months and scary or not, I’ll be happy (and relieved) to write their story. I already have the cover for that book done as well, so maybe working on something completely new is what I need perk myself up after a year of editing. But, unlike the title of this blog post, I don’t think every second needs to be accounted for. You don’t have to spend every single second trying to get ahead. That’s only a recipe for burnout and takes the joy away from whatever activity you’re doing. In my last post, I said my publishing is more of a hobby than career, and at this point, it is. I only make what I put into it, and it’s dejecting to think if I didn’t spend any money, I would make the same amount . . . zero. But, it’s freeing too, and I have tweaked my ads already in preparation for the coming year, but I’ll explain more about that in my post on Monday.

Tiffany Yates Martin came out with a new book not long ago called The Intuitive Author: How to Grow & Sustain a Happier Writing Career, and I plan to pick it up as a New Year’s gift to myself. I think it might help me gain perspective when it comes to how long I’ve been doing this and how to work through my accomplishments or lack thereof thus far. I love her other book on editing, so I know I’ll like this book too. If you want to check it out, look here: https://www.amazon.com/Intuitive-Author-Sustain-Happier-Writing/dp/1950830098

Thats all I have today. May the New Year bring you productivity and prosperity in whatever way that means to you. Subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already, and let’s trudge through 2025 together.

Until next time!

My 2024 Year-End Recap

Posted on December 30, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

gold and silver ornaments on black background text says 2024 year in review

Everyone is saying that 2024 was a hard year, but looking back, I honestly got a lot of stuff done. It didn’t feel like it because all I did was edit, but those edits were on a series that is my best work. I’ve said I may never match that quality of writing (plotting, I mean) again, and I don’t know if I want to try. Four years of blood, sweat, and tears went into over half a million words and they may always be my biggest, most impressive accomplishment. Then I had a couple other wins, like going to the Mayo Clinic and seeing a doctor who actually knew what was wrong with me. Between a diagnoses I never thought I’d get and finishing my King’s Crossing Series, 2024 was actually a pretty stellar year. Not that editing all those words over and over again and going through treatment and knowing I’ll always have maintenance until I die was smooth sailing, but compared to the previous years, things were pretty okay. I have my 2023 year end blog post up, so let’s compare.

Books/Novels/WIPs

Number of books written: 0
This is the first year in many, many years I didn’t write a book. I’m not sad about it because I got so much other stuff done, and I know for sure I’ll write one next year, if not three if things work out how I want them to.

Number of books edited: 10
Obviously, this is where I spent all my time. Right after I published A Heartache for Christmas in November 2023, I jumped into editing my King’s Crossing Series. I think I did three editing sweeps before I thought they were ready and the first one, Cruel Fate, was published in October of this year. The others were either published or I put them on preorder and they’ll release up through April of 2025. Once those were up and I could work on something else, I decided to re-edit my Rocky Point Wedding series and I finished the last book of four over the weekend. I edited those in Vellum, ordered the proofs, then edited the proofs to look for typos. All that takes such a long time, and after ten books, my brain is sufficiently fried.

Number of books published: 3
I published three of the six in my King’s Crossing series. In 2025 I’ll have four, just because the rest of the series will release and I already have a standalone almost ready to go that will release on September 15th, 2025. (Don’t ask me how many books I’ll have ready to publish in 2026. I’m not quite that far ahead, but it would be really nice if I had another series done.)

Royalties for the year: Ugh.
I’m actually kind of over shouting out how much I made because I always break even or I’m in the hole, so it really doesn’t matter how much I end up with at the end of the year. It wasn’t that much more than last year if you want to take a look. I would imagine my spend is the same too. I spent $776.43 on Amazon ads this year, something I again intended not to do, but my FOMO gets so out of control. I make ads then just cannot force myself to turn them off. I spent less than I did last year, by about 100 dollars, so that’s something, I guess. But I’m afraid that if I shut them off, and/or keep them off, I won’t sell any books at all. The struggle I constantly contend with is this: I spend XXX.XX money on ads and if I only make enough to cover the cost, is it worth it? It is in the long run because even if I’m breaking completely even or bleeding some red, I’m finding readers when, if I didn’t spend a dime, no one would find me. I just wish I could find that magical way of leveling up. I know you have to spend money to make money, but there has to be a way to get ahead. I spent $3,842.58 on Facebook ads, which means after all my subscription costs, I’m in the hole about $500 dollars. I say every year I’m going to have to do better keeping an eye on my ads, and even if it means my sales go down to zero, I may have to suck it up and turn them off or drop my spend down to a dollar or two a day which is pretty much the same thing.

Fun fact. This is the list of my books in order of popularity. These are my first person books–my third person titles are at the end of the list and not worth mentioning. It’s not a surprise my rockstars are at the top. They’ve sold well since I published them last year. What I really like to see is that my Lost and Found Trilogy and my Cedar Hill Duet have read through. It would be a shame if a Book One was on the list but then the other books were at the bottom or fell off completely. That means your first book isn’t good, and there’s no point in writing a long series if readers won’t go on to read the other books.

Twisted Alibis
Twisted Lies
Twisted Lullabies
Give & Take: A Steamy Baby for the Billionaire Contemporary Romance
Faking Forever : A Steamy Fake Fiancé Billionaire Standalone Romance
Rescue Me: A Steamy, One Night Stand Billionaire Standalone Romance
Lost & Found: A Steamy Friends to Lovers Billionaire Romance
A Heartache for Christmas
Safe & Sound: A Steamy Second Chance Billionaire Romance
Captivated by Her: A Steamy Billionaire Romantic Suspense Novel
Cruel Fate
Cruel Hearts
Addicted to Her: A Steamy Billionaire Romantic Suspense Novel
Cruel Dreams

Website/Blog Stats

My Canva tutorial is still my most popular blog post. It was viewed 5,399 times this year, and overall 8,100 times. I’m super glad I’m helping people.

screenshot of all time stats

text says updated! creating a full wrap paperback book.... views 8.1k likes 7 comments 25

I posted 55 times in a total of 94.4k words.

text says:

2024 year in review

Posts 55 words 94.4k likes 246 comments 99

In my last year-end update I said I had turned this blog into more of a personal journal, and it felt like that this year, too. I’m hoping next year I can change that a bit, as I’d like to start walking and listening to more podcasts. I used to listen to podcasts all the time and I guess with feeling bad, I just didn’t want to deal with it. I’m going to try to open myself up more, and maybe that can reflect in the things I write about. Especially since I’ve said I’m going to take it easy in 2025 and not treat writing and publishing as this desperate thing I have to do no matter what.

I only gained 22 subscribers this year, but that’s okay. I get around 50 hits a day on various blog topics, mostly my Canva tutorial, though I didn’t start this blog to gain followers. I really just wanted to blog about writing and publishing and I was happy if I could help someone along the way. I’ll always blog, seems I always have something to say, so we’ll see what 2025 brings.

I almost forgot to mention that I made a list this year, and it was the first time I’d ever done that. I had a spike in traffic for a bit and that was fun, but it died, more than likely because there is so much content out there about indie publishing, writing, and books in general. You can find the list here, and I would bookmark it too-there’s a lot of informative blogs you might enjoy reading: https://books.feedspot.com/contemporary_book_blogs/. Thanks to Anuj Agarwal for choosing mine.

Health Update

I think we all know what I’ve been up to with that, and there’s no need to regurgitate all the details here. My last resort doctor at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, knew what was wrong with me, and now I’m dealing with my lichen sclerosis, endometriosis, and side effects of the hysterectomy I had in 2022. That’s about as far as I want to go into it, and I recently updated my mental health blog if you want to read it:
chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com

What’s next for 2025?

What’s next for next year? Lots of things but this year I’m not taking things so seriously. I’m going to edit the next book I’m going to publish, write another standalone, and then when those two things are done, look over the last two remaining books I wrote during my COVID frenzy and finish that series. Those are my immediate plans. I have a loose publishing plan I’m going to try to stick to, but I want to read more books, listen to podcasts to try to stay up to date on the publishing industry, and when the colder part of winter is over, I’m going to spend more time outside. I’m not going to spend every waking second I’m not working writing, and I’m going to cut down on my ad spend. Not really because I want to, but my finances will need tightening up due to a few things going on that I can’t do anything about.

I think the biggest change is realizing that I’m chasing after a brass ring I’ll never capture. Many many many romance authors make a living wage, but I have finally realized I’m not going to be one of them. This isn’t a defeatist attitude, more realistic on my part. I’ll never write a book that will blow #Booktok away or enthrall an influencer so much they spill it all over the internet. My books are quiet, my heroes are kind, and I really think to make an impression on readers right now, the darker (~~violent~~) the better. That’s not me. I’ll keep writing the books I love, and if I find a few readers who love them too, that will be my success story. You can’t be in it for money and I never have been, but we can’t fool ourselves, either. When you publish a book where readers have to pay to read you, royalties are indicative of sales and no royalties means no one is reading. It can be disheartening to the point of just giving up. I’m not giving up, but I do know when to quit hoping for something I’m never going to have.

I used to share this quote by Arnold Schwarzenegger: I will always stay hungry, never satisfied with current accomplishments.

text on brown background says: i will always stay hungry never satisfied with current accomplishments — https://quotefancy.com/quote/1405103/Arnold-Schwarzenegger-I-will-always-stay-hungry-never-satisfied-with-current

I guess in my own way I am sharing it just by posting it, but I don’t agree with it anymore, and it’s not how I’m going to live in 2025. It’s like being at a buffet but it doesn’t have your favorite food, so you make do with second best. You’re not content, but you’re not unhappy, and that’s how I feel. I’m not content, but I’m not unhappy. The only thing that could make me content is actually making some money off all my hard work so that maybe my finances wouldn’t be so stressful. I’ve said before that even just an extra 10k a year (that I didn’t have to pay for with ads) would go a long way. I’m never going to have that, so instead of living on hope like I have in the past, I’ll set it aside. It’s better, honestly, for my mental health anyway. Who wants to type their fingers bloody for nothing? I never did, don’t get me wrong. I wrote for a myriad of reasons, joy being a big part of it yes, but I had a lot of hope when I started my pen name. I had a lot of hope I could turn my writing into a business. Now it will just remain a hobby and I’ll do other things when I’m not working my day job. I’ll still be around helping other authors format and do covers when they can’t afford to hire out, and I’ll still blog, and write and publish, but my mindset has softened and I’m going to have a “What will be will be” attitude going into the new year.

I’ll still write and publish. Like I said, I’m not unhappy. I just wish things would have turned out differently.

Good luck to you in the new year!

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