Monday Author Update

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I haven’t done one of these for a while, but there’s nothing to update you on, either. I finished book three of my Rocky Point series, and since I dated the most recent edits, I was dismayed to find that it will have taken me four months (or more as I’m not done with book four yet) to get through these. Not that I should be bothered, these books are a strong series and a solid part of my 3rd person backlist, but I had planned to use this time to get ahead. It doesn’t matter. The longer I’m writing and publishing, the less I think there are repercussions to having long wait times between books. You’ll need to push your back list and communicate with your readers through your newsletter and/or social media, but we think too much about readers forgetting about us, and that’s really not the case.

We can burn ourselves out thinking about FOMO and drive ourselves mad thinking that readers will move on to other favorite authors. It’s true, some readers may be one and done, but any author has to face that possibility, not just slow writers. There are millions of readers out there and when you do get around to releasing that next book, you’ll find new readers and the readers who have enjoyed your books before will come back.

I’m not even looking at a long gap between releases, I don’t think, despite the four months I used to polish my old series. I have no idea how long it will take me to get Loss and Damages edited and packaged (I have the cover done, so we’re just talking writing the blurb and shoving my Word document through Vellum), but if I can do that by the end of March for a September release, I’m not going to need something new until January of 2026 . . . if I keep Amazon’s cliffs in mind, and at this point, I don’t know if I care. It seems silly to freak out over something that really doesn’t warrant it, but man, it’s difficult to let go of the RIGHT NOW mentality so many authors face every day.

Anyway, so how do I plan to to keep my readers interested in me and my books while they have to wait? What can you do if you have long gaps between releases? Here are a few things I plan to do next year.

Keep going with my newsletter. I’m a proud cheerleader of newsletters, but if I have to push myself to write them at times. I almost didn’t even send one out when my third book in my King’s Crossing series released, but people wanted to know as I had the highest open rate since I started my newsletter back in, I have no idea now, 2022 maybe. I was shocked and really pleased, so you might think no one wants to hear from you but just the fact they signed up says they do.

Do better with social media. I know (I use the word loosely because we don’t talk anymore) someone who would constantly take down her social media profiles. She’d have them up for a bit, post, gain a following, then take them down. I still check in with what she does (stalking sounds so nasty, doesn’t it? LOL) only because she does social media so well. She’s got almost as many followers on her new FB page as I do after having my author page up for six years. It’s not that I don’t have things to talk about. I have plenty of books and stuff going on in my life that having a blank author page really isn’t necessary and makes me look lazy and like I don’t care. I care, but I have a terrible time showing it.

Put my book(s) on sale. This is something else that I have a problem with. I don’t remember to use my free days very often, and I can’t remember the last time I even tried to do a Kindle Countdown Deal. Sales are also a good way to keep in touch with your readers so you have something to tell them, and obviously, sales are a great way to find new readers. A while back I heard Zoe York say you should plan a promo every quarter, so four times year. I’d like to do that, especially since I have more than enough product to rotate and there are newsletter promo sites like E-Reader News Today and Robin Reads that I haven’t tried yet.

Keep doing ARCs. There’s been some talk on Threads about authors not doing ARCs anymore, due to lots of reasons like piracy and reviewers not pulling through. If just for the sake of something to talk about, I will keep doing ARCs of my books, and you can probably look forward to ARCs of Loss and Damages sometime in June or July. I’d like to have all my ARC links taken down by the time I put my book on preorder, even if it is just a short one. Admittedly, this option is only good if you write ahead. Some people put their ARCs up just weeks after the book is complete, but Loss and Damages will be finished months before I need reviews. I even hope that by the time I put ARCs up, I’ll have the next standalone I want to write done and edited and almost ready to go.

The main thing is to communicate with your readers, and I’m terrible at it. I love talking writing and publishing with other authors, but I need to get used to talking about my books in a different way. I have dreams of being an obscure bestseller, but that’s an oxymoron at best. Even if I have never heard of a romance author who is making a living wage, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a huge fanbase she talks to on a regular basis. I need to start putting myself out there, and that’s really difficult for me. Not like, personally. I can talk about my health issues all day long (and have) or marketing or publishing, but talking about my books, hyping them up, is odd somehow. I’m proud of my books and I think I’m a good writer, even if I have to go back occasionally and do the extra editing sweep from time to time. I don’t know. Being proud of myself and my accomplishments is just different, but in 2025 I’m going to try to be better.

I’m not going to stress about my publishing schedule next year. I need to control my FOMO and just write and publish at my own pace and not think I’m going to fade off into the void if I don’t have books ready all the way until 2027. It’s ridiculous the pressure we put on ourselves, and no one is keeping score except us.

Write for the love of it, and publish because you want to share your stories. I’m excited for the books I’m going to be editing and writing next year. I want to change my perspective and talk about my books in a way that readers will want to read them.

Next week is my usual year-end summary, and after that we’ll see what the new year brings. I’m sure there will be the usual publishing predictions and I haven’t weighed in on them for a while. Mostly because it seems all the predictions are the same year after year (publishing moves slowly after all), but I haven’t really paid attention either, because of how I’ve felt, so this will just be another change in a long line of things.

I hope you have a happy week if you celebrate!

Until next time!

My 2025 Word of the Year

Posted on December 16, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Pantone, a company that “provides a universal language of color for many industries” announced it’s color for 2025 . . . Mocha Mousse. Apparently, it’s the first time in 25 years that they chose a shade of brown.

taken from https://news.artnet.com/art-world/pantone-2025-color-of-the-year-mocha-mousse-2582184

It’s a thing, I suppose, to choose a theme, a color, a resolution, (I almost typed revolution, and maybe with the current political environment in the States, it’s that, too) to express what we plan to do, to describe the vibe we want to put forth into the coming year.

For years I never bothered because I knew every year was going to be the same as before. It’s really depressing and soul-sucking to have a health issue that doesn’t seem treatable, much less curable, and I treated each year as the same. This post isn’t about what I’ve suffered with (I’ve made you suffer with me on this blog, and I know we are both tired of that) but I can’t deny that now that I know what’s wrong and that there aren’t more serious matters to contend with (no colon or ovarian cancer, yay!) I can’t help but think of the next year in a different light.

A romance author I know went though breast cancer treatment this year, and she said she wouldn’t be able to approach writing her books in the same way. That made a lot of sense because when you go through trauma like that and can come out the other side, maybe not whole, but in pieces that can be glued together, you can’t help but be a different person.

You all know I’ve been at this for a long time, (no, this isn’t a woe-as-me post . . . I’ve had almost a million page reads in KU this year alone, so I definitely know that I’m luckier than a lot of authors) and if you do something long enough, maybe you don’t lose your joy, but you know. It stops being exciting, it stops being . . . I don’t want to say fun because I still do, have fun writing, that is. But no matter how much you enjoy something, if you feel you have to do it, it becomes monotonous, even if only slightly.

So my word of 2025 isn’t a word, but a phrase. “Be still and know.”

What’s funny is my sister, daughter, and I were shopping downtown Fargo, ND, and there are all these trendy little shops. We went into one and this saying was on journals and mugs and pens and paperweights. I liked it, the peace of it, and I asked my sister where it came from. She looked it up on her phone, and it’s actually a Bible verse: “Be still, and know that I am God” Psalm 46 verse 10.

I’m not religious. My parents sent me to a private Baptist school from Kindergarten through fourth grade, then they sent me to public school in fifth on, though I did attend Sunday church services until I moved to go to college. That kind of ruined organized religion for me because even though I was young, I saw how hypocritical people were. There may be exceptions, but I grew up learning religious people aren’t nice. And I do see that, as an adult, people using their religion to feel better than other people, or as an excuse to do nasty things that Jesus definitely wouldn’t have done while He was here.

For a while, that tainted the saying for me, but like any religious person, I can twist it to what I want it to mean for myself. Just kidding, kind of. I still like the peace of it, the quietness of the meaning.

The last few years I’ve done nothing but move forward, and I have accomplished a lot in that time. I still would like to do a few things in 2025, and I let you know what those were in a previous blog post. But I’m going to look at things differently, slow down, enjoy the silence, and work on my books in a way that I want and find that joy again.

I want to finally stand still and appreciate how far I’ve come and all that I’ve accomplished. I want to rest and breathe and do other things that aren’t book-related. Moving forward is great when you have goals and plans and somewhere to go, but maybe I’m done moving forward. Maybe I’ve reached my destination, and you know, that wouldn’t be a bad thing. I actually rather like the thought of it. We liken being authors and publishing to running marathons but even runners finish their races, and if they truly can’t, they get picked up wherever they happen to be on the course. I don’t need a ride, but maybe I finished, and now I can eat my banana and power bar, drink my bottle of water, take a hot shower, and do something else. A runner never stops running (okay, I did but I still go for walks), and I won’t stop writing, but maybe I don’t need to train to run any more races. Writing can go back to being fun, and now that I’m feeling better, I’m interested to see how that incorporates into the next projects I’m going to work on.

I suggest if you want to move forward, have goals to work toward. Know what your finish line is. After all, what is the saying? A goal without a plan is only a wish.

But wishes are nice too. Especially if they come in the form of chocolate cake that has mocha mousse frosting on top.

Your Best Marketing Strategy–TL;DR (Write more books!)

Posted on December 9, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

TEAL GREEN BACKGROUND STACK OF OLD BOOKS. TEXT SAYS. TL;DR: WRITE MORE BOOKS

We talk about marketing a lot, such as buying promos, setting up a newsletter, networking with authors in your genre to do newsletter swaps, learning an ad platform. Depending on the status of your mental health and how thin your wallet is, you should probably be doing all those things. As Meta buys everything and then enforces guidelines, (no more steamy snippets on Instagram, y’all) it’s getting more and more difficult to use free resources.

Social media could be useful, or has been, but as these company shy away from content they consider porn, or pörn, you run the risk of getting your account suspended, shadow-banned, or simply the algorithms just won’t show your stuff to anyone. TikTok is the worst in its guidelines they arbitrarily enforce, and I can’t remember the last time I even bothered to post a video. With the announcement of the new Instagram guidelines pertaining to sexual content, lots of romance authors are scrambling. Social media isn’t dependable, and hopping from platform to platform won’t do anything, and here’s why. Author problems are not reader problems. Instagram’s policies really don’t affect readers. We get caught up in the author world and forget that readers aren’t always where we are. Yeah, you might be posting hoping to catch the eye of a bookstagrammer, and if that’s part of your marketing strategy, then you’ll be dealing with the change, but for the most part, you can find readers other places.

The one best marketing thing you can do though–we hear it a lot and also ignore it–is to write the next book. There are caveats to that, and I think that’s why it gets pushed aside. If no one is reading what you’ve got, then why keep going, right? I agree to a point, and that’s when you have to make a decision. Learn how to market in other ways or accept that no one is going to read you. BUT, here’s the thing we don’t talk about. If a reader finds you an likes you, having a backlist is the best way to keep them with you.

Here are the reasons why I think it’s always important to be working on your next book despite what’s happening on social media… and your sales dashboard.

Publishing regularly keeps you relevant. There’s not a lot we can agree on when it comes to Amazon besides how frustrating it is to work with them, and this: Amazon gives you a 30-, 60-, and 90-day new release cliff. This is where they push your book, giving you a little bump that you’re supposed to run with. Once the first 90 days pass, you’re on your own, and authors frequently find out that being on your own is not a good thing. Ask any author who is pleasantly surprised by their positive ranking only to watch their rank sink. It’s why indies try to publish four times a year–they don’t want to fall off the cliff. You may not be able to publish four times a year, not unless you save up and slowly release, but the more you publish the more relevant you are to Amazon and to readers who will know you’re in it for the long haul.

You get better with every book. Writers need to write to get better. Each new book gives you the opportunity to try new things and level up your craft. Like I mentioned before in previous blogs, I plotted out A Heartache for Christmas years ago, but I couldn’t write it because I wasn’t good enough to execute the plot twist. After I wrote ten other books, I tackled the plot and the mystery with ease. Maybe the mystery isn’t a shocker, but it was more than what I was able to do when I was plotting the book in the first place.

Another great reason along these lines is you get faster with every book. All these social media posts that say books that are written in two months (or whatever) are trash are written by people who are jealous an author doesn’t need long to write something good. The more you write the faster you get and the less you need to spend on editing. You can’t get good at anything unless you practice.

More promotional opportunities. Events like Stuff Your Ereader Day and newsletter swaps are becoming more prevalent as social media becomes more unstable and more undependable. It really helps when you have more product to be able to rotate in these promos. Even when I buy a Freebooksy, I don’t always promote the same book, and you can find different readers by advertising different books because they’ll be written around different tropes/plots/characters. On the same token, you’ll have more books to put on sale. Even if you’re in KU, being able to put your books on sale is a great way to find new readers. Right now I have three of my King’s Crossing series on sale: Book one is .99, the second is 1.99, and the third is 2.99 to encourage readers to buy and try. I’ve sold 24 of book one since its release, and I don’t think I would have sold them unless they were on sale. Book one could potentially lead a reader to buy the other five, so never discount the power of putting a book on sale. Elana Johnson is a master of putting her books on sale. She talks about rapid releasing and book prices in her talk at the 20booksto50k conference a couple years ago. It can be intimidating to listen to her, but she’s motivating too. You can listen to her here:

You’ll have more to offer your readers. Readers want more from you, and while that can be scary, it can be motivating, too. You’ll have more to talk about in your newsletter (and on social media) more excerpts to share, more covers to reveal. If readers know you’re going to stick around, it makes it more likely they’ll stick around to see what you’ll be up to next.

You may motivate someone else. I’ve heard from a few people they have admired how many books I’ve been able to write in such a short amount of time. I was writing to hide how I felt, sure, but I also could have used my health as an excuse to wallow (no judgment to those who have health issues and can’t write as much as they’d like. I was fortunate. I was able to write, so I did). The fact is, I enjoy writing and it’s never a hardship to give up a few hours every day to get some words in. I hope that as a whole, my career has motivated a few people. I’ve gotten compliments on this blog, too, how I manage to stay consistent and try to help people with the topics I write about. I’ve said I really only can do that by being active in the writing community, trying new things (like my Goodreads giveaway), and be willing to spend a little money (like on ads) so I can write about my experiences. Writing and publishing your own books is difficult, and to keep doing it year after year is admirable. Willing to write about your failures is also admirable and can be a learning experience so others don’t have to go through it.

Keep a book on reserve. One thing you could do with an “extra” book is keep one on your computer and publish it at a time when things are rough and you can’t get the words down. Most authors I know wouldn’t do this because they write slowly and every book they finish they want to publish and put out into the world. But I do know one or two people who hang on to books for this very reason. They don’t know if they’re going to get sick, they don’t know if having a baby will slow them down. Life is full of uncertainties, and if you’re making any kind of money you can’t lose, having a book on reserve could be the difference between keeping your royalties up, or losing what momentum you’ve managed to create for yourself.

Use a book as a reader magnet. I’ve given away My Biggest Mistake over a thousand times since I put it up for free as a newsletter freebie in January of 2022. The downloads have slowed down a bit because I used to run an ad to my Bookfunnel link, but I don’t do that anymore. It got to be too expensive, and now I just give it away for free, casual like, and hope people will sign up for my blog instead. MailerLite did me dirty, and that’s okay. I like blogging and I’m still reaching readers, and I don’t mind giving away a taste of what readers will get if they buy one of my books.

If you’re going to be in this for a while, there’s no downside to writing the next book. It’s kind of like that running saying that I used to hear all the time back when I was running: You regret 100% of the runs you never take. Maybe it would help if you had a plan for the book before you start or while you’re writing it. Like, this will be my reader magnet, because I want to spend the second half the new year nurturing my list, or, this will be on standby because last year I was sick a lot and having something already written would easy some of the pressure. (Kinda like making saving your sick time for when you really are sick.) Maybe just working toward finishing a series is enough motivation to keep you going. At any rate, marketing can be time-consuming, creating graphics and looking for snippets, but none of that really means anything at the end of the day. A healthy backlist will look more impressive, and the more product you have the more product you can sell.

What are you goals for 2025? How many books do you want to write? How many do you know your capable of doing? I wish you the best of luck when writing!

Author Goals 2025

Posted on December 2, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Everyone is doing these and I thought I might as well. You can either look eagerly into the future or think it’s just going to be another year of writing to no one. I don’t really think that, I do have readers, but I know there are more than a few who do think it because marketing is hard and it’s harder still when you don’t have any money to buy ads or promos.

My goals for 2025 are pretty simple. I don’t have any. Of course, I have a list of things I want to get done, but when I think about goals and what I’ve seen from other authors, they aren’t the same. I don’t have a goal to make 10k with my writing or get an orange tag. I don’t have a goal to sell 100 copies of a book or even 50 copies and I’ll you why. Because I don’t have a plan to achieve those goals, and I don’t have a plan because if I knew what would work I’d be doing it. Goals are only as good as the motions you can put into place to achieve them, which is why the only things on my goals list are what I can control.

So, let’s begin:

Finish proofing the proofs of my Rocky Point series, upload, and publish new files to KDP and IngramSpark. I’m not going to get done this year. I wanted to, so I could start 2025 with a clean slate, but I won’t. Book one is a word salad of filler words and echoing that for some reason I didn’t fix the first time around (paper always reads different so it could just be I’m seeing them for the first time) and it’s going to take me probably until the end of the year just to finish book one. Even if I could finish book one before then, I have three more to go. I committed to editing these, so I’m going to finish it out to the best of my ability.

Finish editing Loss and Damages, a first person present Billionaire standalone that I started back in May of 2021. It’s finished and has already had one read-through and I added quite a few notes of what I need to fix. I want to finish those edits and get the preorder up, I don’t know when. I have no deadline, just do it as soon as possible after my Rocky Point series is squared away. My last book in my King’s Crossing series releases in the middle of April, and to give myself time to write, I decided on a September 15th, 2025 release date for Loss and Damages. Then, if I keep with the four-five month time between, I’ll have plenty of time to write more books, with an estimated release day sometime in January of 2026.

When Loss and Damages is completed and scheduled, the next book I want to write and edit will be completely from scratch and is a standalone Billionaire romantic suspense. I have it mostly plotted out in my mind (and to no one’s surprise, the cover is already done), and I’d like to write it before I forget what it’s about. Also, if I can make good use of my time and schedule it for the January 2026 release date, that will give me extra time to work on what I want to write next.

I doubt I’ll be able to get this done in 2025, but I want to finish a series I started back in 2021. I have two books written of a six books series, but after working on King’s Crossing (a six-book serial) and my Rocky Point series (four books that are connected but can be read as standalones), I don’t want to dive into another huge project. So what I need to do is rewrite parts of book one and cut out two of the characters or make it clear somehow they would be not be getting their own stories, so I only have two books to edit and two books to write. The combined writing, editing, and packaging of four books will take me a very long time, and I really don’t think I can edit a book, write a book, plus complete that series all in one year. I’ll need to figure out how much time I want to have between my January 2026 release and the series. I could maybe do six months and aim to have the series completed in enough time to put them on preorder in July of 2026, but I’m not going to think that far ahead.

I’m feeling better physically and in turn, mentally, so I’ve said I’m going to approach 2025 a little differently. I am, already veering away from series for a minute and I’m going to concentrate on editing Loss and Damages and writing Wicked Games. I need the break working on standalones will give me, and even though I could give myself a deadline, I actually haven’t sat down and written a book since August 2023 when I wrote A Heartbreak for Christmas and packaged that for its November release. All this time I’ve been editing, so it might be a bit intimidating to open a new Word document and try to pull words out of my head. Editing is a different beast, after all, and I’d like to have fun rather than just think of Wicked Games as another book I need to write and sell.

I’ve really grown as an author editing so many words this year, and the mistakes and filler words and general clutter I was using that I didn’t see are pretty blatant to me now. Loss and Damages and Wicked Games are probably going to sound better than any of the books I’ve written so far. Well, besides my King’s Crossing stuff because I went over those with a fine-tooth comb, and if some filler words managed to squeak by me, then they have earned the right to stay.

As far as other goals, my King’s Crossing series is done. The third book will release on December 9th, the fourth in January, the fifth in March, and the sixth in April. They are all loaded up and on preorder. No files need to be changed out, the covers are locked in. That series is gone in my mind, which is probably why I have such a hard time marketing. Once a book is up, it’s out, and I’m moving on to other things. I don’t have goals for sales or page reads, in fact, my expectations are quite low and will be until the last book is released. As a serial, a reader won’t know the whole story until the last book is released and since I have that information written in the blurb, readers might not even want to start the series until they are all available. I’ve kept my expectations realistic, running ads to create buzz and awareness (and bleeding into the red with clicks), and just focusing on editing my series to maybe boost my 3rd person backlist. I’ll be releasing four books in 2025, and anyone would be proud of that, other goals be damned.

I probably should try to think of some kind of plan to push book one out more, beyond the author driven promos and promos you can buy like Freebooksy, but that would require hustling and networking, and since I haven’t felt well, that just sounds exhausting. I have a rockstar promo opportunity someone sent me months ago and I just haven’t felt like reaching out to follow up, but if I want to spread the word I’m going to have to start doing the work and that can probably be one of my goals for next year. I need a mindset change because not feeling well has been a valid excuse not to do a lot of things, but I need to start being present in the present and not hiding, writing a book because my doctor didn’t know what was wrong with me. That’s all in the past, so 2025 will have to be different in that regard.

I don’t have a lot of goals and I really don’t want to make any beyond what I’ve touched on here. I’m not struggling as much as I have been, a clearer (and sober) mind has helped me come to terms with knowing that a lot of what I’m doing will (still) be on my own, ie, forgoing a beta readers/editors/proofers and cover designers. I have a few friends I touch base with, and I’m grateful to them because they keep me sane and remind me I’m not totally alone. Writing has always been something you need to do by yourself (have you ever tried to write while someone was talking to you?) so that part is understandable and something I have enjoyed even while I wasn’t feeling well. I’m just still adjusting to the loss of my fiancé who loved to talk publishing and a friend here and there who would like to brainstorm. Now that I’m doing better, I can focus more on replacing those relationships and reaching out to the romance community, which I should be doing anyway.

I’ll be approaching 2025 a little differently, trying to find the fun I lost in the writing, and trying to find the fun I lost in my life overall. It was a real miracle my doctor at Mayo knew what was wrong with me and could actually fix it (to the best of her ability) and while I’m adjusting to how things are in my writing and the writing community, I’ll be adjusting to my new way of feeling. I’ll never be “normal,” but I’m better than what I was and I’m grateful for that.

I suppose that’s all I have for this week. Four more weeks of 2024. Make them count, and maybe, maybe 2025 will actually be different for many of us!

Until next time!

Writing Billionaire Romance Novels (in these trying times)

Posted on November 25, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

So someone on Threads said something interesting the other day. She said since the election and its outcome, she’s questioning even writing Billionaire romances anymore. She said the whole concept is not what it used to be, and I wondered about that.

There’s no mistake that billionaires don’t have a positive reputation, and maybe they never did. Elon Musk is kind of a slime (just my personal opinion–like him if you want), interfering with the election and caring more about space than helping people here on earth. Jeff Bezos is similar, I suppose, not letting the Washington Post endorse a presidential candidate and having his own odd fascination with reaching for the stars. I don’t know much about billionaires or their lifestyles, far from it, and when I write my own Billionaire romances, a lot of Googling is involved.

I can understand the idea. You don’t get to be a billionaire without stepping on a lot of toes, to put it mildly, and being willing to do that, some might consider you an asshole, cutthroat, unfeeling and uncaring. Female billionaires like Bezos’s ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, who has been giving a lot of her divorce settlement money to charity, Ruth Gottesman who gave $1 billion to the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, ensuring free tuition for all future students, even Taylor Swift who donates heavily, have more positive reputations than any of their male counterparts.

That’s not to say that billionaires are… bad. I guess I could consider hoarding money bad, but I also admire the tenacity and intelligence of the people who are capable of earning that money on their own in the first place. Billionaires like Mark Zuckerburg and Bill Gates earned their money, even if it was through a lot of luck (hitting the market at the right time with their products). I wouldn’t know where to begin to build a social media/technological empire.

I think the point though, or at least, assuming without talking to her about it further, is the fact that no one needs that much money, no matter how much they give away. We all say tax the rich, and we should, but we also forget that where that money is supposed to go doesn’t always get there. You’ll find crooked, greedy politicians at every level of the government (and one will be our president), and just because the billionaires are taxed doesn’t mean us poor people will see a dime.

So what does this mean for Billionaire romance novels? I think it’s fair to say that readers will still read to escape… not everyone wants to read a novel that echoes real life. Sometimes someone wants to be trapped on Mars or get seduced by a handsome stranger in a rundown bar. There’s a certain fairytale feeling about Billionaire romance, a dreamlike quality readers like to get swept up in, especially, if, like myself, they’re so far removed from that kind of life there’s no possibility of even meeting a billionaire, much less one falling in love with them.

I understand the conundrum. The pull of having that much money but the repulsion of it too, how it makes people behave. As a Billionaire romance author, you can tackle that idea that a billionaire character doesn’t have to be bad. That being rich hasn’t turned him into an entitled asshole. Your conflict can come from other things, like Sam, in my novel Rescue Me. He’s a billionaire (on and off, he admits because he does give to charity), but he’s kind and worn out. His wife passed away from breast cancer, and he’s mourning her. His and Lily’s story doesn’t have much to do with money. She doesn’t fall in love with him because he’s rich, and he doesn’t not fall in love with her because she’s not. They’re just two people who are trying to live with their pain in the only way they know how.

There’s a danger in making your billionaire characters too soft, as another person on Threads noticed. She said she also writes kind billionaires, but she thinks thats why her books have never taken off. They aren’t alphaholes. I commiserated. My male characters won’t be mean to their love interests. I write instalove and I find it incredibly difficult to force my MMCs to mistreat the women they love. Sometimes they do because they simply don’t want to fall in love and they’re lashing out, but the kind of violence needed to write dark romance or some mafia, I’ll never be able to write.

That’s part of my point though. Just because you’re writing Billionaire, or any character that has more than a little money, you don’t have to make them mean and entitled. You don’t have to make them behave like children, stomping their feet and yelling at everyone. They can act grownup and go after what they want without hurting people. Does that sell books? (So far my answer is no. At least, I doubt I’ll ever find Haunting Adeline fame.) My characters hurt each other, don’t get me wrong, but they aren’t mean to each other just to be mean.

Readers want conflict and they want stakes, and they want men who will fall on their knees in front of their women begging them not to leave when they fuck up. That doesn’t have anything do with money, and maybe that’s where I’m going wrong.

A while back I posted a blurb in a Facebook group looking for help, and one person said just because my characters have money doesn’t make the book fall into the Billionaire category. She said this to me years ago, but it’s stuck with me, mainly because what she said is true. In a “real” Billionaire novel, characters’ problems come from having money. Like the two most famous Billionaires, Christian Grey (EL James) and Gideon Cross (Sylvia Day), you can blame most of their issues on the fact that they have money. People are always going after them out of jealousy. They have heavy backstories too, like Christian’s mother’s death and Gideon’s history with rape, and mixing their money and enemies with their backstories makes for some pretty anguishing novels. I use my characters’ money to help them get out of situations but their situations don’t always come from having money. The series I’m releasing now is probably the closest I’ve come to that. Zane’s and Zarah’s problems come from their father’s legacy–a multi-billion dollar company and more enemies than they can count. They don’t have backstories, all their problems are in their present, a first for me, because half the fun of writing is giving my characters a painful character arch they have to overcome to find happiness.

I doubt I’d sell more books not labeling them Billionaire. Just because their problems aren’t caused by money doesn’t mean that their money doesn’t influence how they live. I already put them in the contemporary romance categories anyway, so not much would change.

I’m not going to stop writing Billionaire romance, even though sales have slowed and I’m struggling like other authors. I’m ahead of where I was three years ago and I’m sure my pivot to first person present Billionaire is to thank. Not to mention, I just enjoy writing it, so why stop? Although, ironically enough, a lot of my royalties have come from my Rockstar trilogy I published in August last year. Maybe that’s a fluke or maybe Rockstars are where it’s at. Really hard to say, but unfortunately, I can only write what falls into my lap and I don’t have another rockstar plot in me at the moment. I do have three completed Billionaire novels waiting for my attention, one standalone plotted out (that I really should write before I forget it all), and two that I need to write that will complete an already-started series. That will keep me busy for quite a long time, unless all of a sudden I decide to pivot again, though with so much planned out, I’m not sure why I would.

I think the bottom line for me is that I’m going to keep writing Billionaire because I like to. Because whether my books are selling or not, my characters are kind and use their money for good. I don’t think as Billionaire authors we’re required to do anything different. Asshole billionaires sell books, and I wouldn’t begrudge any author if they didn’t want to change their ways. Nor should they have to just because of what’s going on in the world today. The fact is, there will always be billionaires, and there will always be billionaires who are fucking assholes, just like they will always be fucking assholes who are poor.

I’ll leave you with Zane’s thoughts in the third book of my King’s Crossing series, Cruel Dreams:

Pretending as if nothing is out of the ordinary, we mingle with the other guests. I see what Stella saw when she first started hanging out with Zarah and me. Jewels, gowns, expensive bags. So much waste trying to outdo each other and pretending to be better than everyone else. Talking tee times and country clubs, mergers and acquisitions. The meaningless words flow over me like a cold shower.

It’s a wonder Stella loves me at all.

Have a good week, everyone! Until next time!

Past Decisions and Their Consequences

Posted on November 18, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

Too tired to look for a stock image. Imagine something pretty here.

Everything we do results in some kind of consequence, some kind of reward, whether we know it or not. Whether we want to admit it or not.

Last week was another crazy day on social media when I saw someone encouraging people to use KDP’s POD, but mark up their paperback prices on Amazon to $200.00 so they could sell off their website instead. This is such a bad take for so many reasons, and when I replied saying that at least IngramSpark was a better option because you can print without distributing, she went off on me saying IS wasn’t viable for everyone and that I was toxic and privileged for even suggesting it. That really hurt and I dropped out of our conversation because I’m not going to let people assume how I live. It’s not toxic to suggest a better way of doing things, it’s not privilege to suggest a platform many authors have access to. She wanted to be right, and there were plenty of people who agreed with her. That’s fine. Look like an idiot selling your paperback for $200.00. Doesn’t bother me at all.

The main issue is that IngramSpark costs money. If you live in the US, you know how expensive ISBNs are. Part of her privilege insult was because she assumed I buy my ISBNs and that I was telling people they should do the same by suggesting they use IS. She doesn’t know that yeah, I did buy a pack of 100 (costs $575 which was almost as much as my rent) but I charged them on a credit card and it took me several years to pay them off. My ex-fiancé said he would buy them for me, but you know how that turned out and I ended up paying off a massive credit card bill that he said he would take care of. Anyway, the outcome of that story is that yeah, I did buy own ISBNs, and it’s none of her business it took me years to pay them off.

Very rarely on this blog do I suggest you spend money on your book business, but on the flip side, I’m very clear that I believe you can’t start a business properly without spending some cash. If you want to sell YOUR book off YOUR website because you’re running a business YOU own, why would you want to use an ISBN that didn’t belong to you? That’s MY main reason for buying ISBNs. They belong to me, I’m registered as the publisher, and if Amazon is ever a dick and closes my account, my books are safe. For all the hating on Amazon over on the sewing platform, they’re quick enough to take what Amazon gives them.

Anyway, so when you use free ISBNs you’re taking a risk Amazon will treat you well and if you take free ISBNs from anywhere else, you’re accepting any eventual consequences.

This isn’t a post just about ISBNs. You take risks making your own covers, especially if you don’t have the skill to create a cover that will tell readers what your genre is and won’t look homemade. Just the other day someone was bemoaning the fact he couldn’t get preorders for his book. I told him to look at his cover and maybe redo it, that it looked homemade. He actually was very nice about it, and maybe he will change it, I have no idea. That kind of consequence you may never see–you could not sell any books and blame it on lack of marketing or algorithms. Unless someone you believe and trust says your cover is garbage and you change it, you could go years without knowing what kind of damage your cover caused. I mean, you know I do my own covers, and back in the day they weren’t great. I still see the free stock photo I used on 1700 Hamilton other places, and I published that book eight years ago now. Canva templates taught me a lot, and I still like how this cover came out, the first for Wherever He Goes, even though I changed it to something sexier later that’s still the cover on the book now.

Not listening to your editor and having a book bomb after the fact can have dire consequences–a reader won’t give you another chance if they spent money on a book that had plot holes and grammatical errors every two sentences. And, you know, poor reviews last forever. I’ve been editing my own books for a while, and I know the risks, may have even suffered from some of them. God only knows who’s read my books and said they’d never read me again. I also know the risks of trusting people, and well, tired of that, so you have to choose the lesser of the two evils.

My biggest regret so far was not starting a newsletter sooner, and I wonder how far I’d be now if I had given as much attention to a newsletter as I have to this blog. Maybe because of the change in direction I decided on in 2020, it wouldn’t have mattered, or those people who signed up wouldn’t have cared either way.

After unpublishing some hardbacks and Large Print, I thought about unpublishing a couple of my first books, just because they aren’t the quality of the others, nor are they in the genre I decided to write in. Some say romance is romance, but my romantic speculative fiction could probably go, also my erotica that I decided I couldn’t write because there was just too much sex. (If you have to remind yourself to put in the sex scenes, erotica probably isn’t for you.) When you say you want to write and publish whatever, those consequences can catch up with you. Difficult to make a brand out of “whatever” and you may look back in five years at all the word salad you hoped people would buy.

The one thing all these have in common is that no one can tell you these things. I mean, yeah, the advice is out there, cover to market, hire an editor, start a newsletter, buy your ISBNs if you can. All that’s out there but it’s funny because we’ve turned being indie into defying the rules and maybe some rules are meant to be broken, but this is a business and whether we like it or not, there are best practices.

I almost didn’t write this blog post because I realize the subject is boring and repetitive, even if I’ve made similar mistakes. The bad advice out there can really take me aback, and that woman who had supporters telling people to price up their book left me speechless. What would readers think stumbling upon a book that cost $200.00? How is that author going to tell those readers she preferred to sell off her website? It all seemed so bizarre to me, yet people agreed, said they were going to try it. I don’t know, it just seems like one of those things that you could look back on later and say, “What was I thinking?” Of course, you can do that for just about anything, the cover that wasn’t right, blowing off your editor, not listening to someone who knew what they were talking about because you were determined to fail on your own. That’s how people learn, and I’ve had people tell me to hire an editor, but some things are easier said than done.

So this post is 1200 words of drivel (it’s almost Thanksgiving in the US so I’ll refer to it as turkey gravy), but honestly, my brain is fried. I’m halfway through editing my age-gap. I’m really loving the story and it’s fun to see how far my writing as come, but editing is tiring, probably more so than simply writing. I also have to proof my series proofs, and that will take a minute, but I’m hoping that I’ll get everything wrapped up by the end of the year. I want to start working on my first person stuff again, putting into practice the things I finally know that I didn’t before. I’ve come a long way working on my King’s Crossing series. Really, smoothing out over a half a million words taught me a lot, and I know it did because working on my Rocky Point series was really eye-opening. I agree that sometimes you have to fail on your own to learn, but you do have to keep working on your craft and level up on your own if you don’t want to take anyone’s advice.

That’s all I have for this week. I’ll probably post my Billionaire post next week. I think it’s still relevant, and tempers, while they haven’t cooled all the way down, aren’t so hot, at least, and even if it makes some readers crabby, I think it was wise to wait.

After that, well, it’s year-end stuff, and before you know it, it will be January. The world keeps spinning, no matter what kind of rut you’re in. Do your best to keep moving forward, and hopefully you’ll see more rewards than consequences.

A Massive Monday Author Update

Posted on November 11, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I was going to blog about something different today, and I even had the post written and scheduled. It had to do with writing billionaire romance in the current political climate, but I don’t have the heart to post it. We had a chance to do something great, to make positive change, and we blew it. We chose hate and violence, and we will pay for that for the next four years, and possibly beyond. All I can hope is that the Democrats who did win state by state will slow him down and block him as much as possible. Maybe he’ll be too busy golfing to cause all the damage he says he’s going to cause.

I know lots of people didn’t get much done last week, and it’s understandable. I’ve always used my writing to hide from reality (or, more accurately, my health issues), and this week was no exception. I was able to finish editing my Rocky Point Wedding series, finish the covers, and order the proofs. I’m going to read them over to look for mistakes and make sure the changes I made make sense. I had a lot of timeline discrepancies because the first three books overlap and I didn’t keep track of my characters and what they were doing. Then I fluffed up some scenes, took out some things to streamline the prose, and I’ll just read them over quick before I approve them. I’m also interested in how the covers are going to print. When I chose the background stock photo, I knew I’d have trouble with the spine and back cover, so we’ll see if my “fix” looks good or if I need to try something else. On screen I think it looks okay and I tried really hard to match up the grey blocks and black gradients with the spine lines but printing isn’t always accurate, so we’ll see what happens.

I ended up using the same ISBNs for the books, which I probably shouldn’t have done since these will have new covers and substantial changes to the insides. On the other hand, unpublishing the old ones so I can publish new ones seemed to be a waste of ISBNs, especially since before I revamped them I wasn’t selling (m)any anyway. I put in the copyright pages that these were re-edited and re-released but I don’t know if it was necessary or will do any good. I have quite a few of the first book floating around out there due to free promos I’ve done in the past, but I don’t think it will make a difference to ask KDP to push out the new version to the readers who have the old version on their Kindles. I’ve heard of authors doing that, but I have never tried. If they don’t give me a hard time and just let me update, I think I’ll be happy with that and leave the rest alone. I don’t like messing with KDP, and I’m relieved that so far the preorders for my King’s Crossing series are still okay, that Amazon hasn’t arbitrarily canceled them. So, whether using the same ISBNs was the right call or not, I don’t know, but no one is really policing these changes, so I guess there’s no harm in it.

I’m going to do some more cleaning up of my third person books. While I’m waiting for my proofs to come back, I started re-editing The Years Between Us, an age-gap standalone. I’m halfway through the first chapter and haven’t found anything too bad, I just like to echo words and hadn’t caught on to it yet. No matter what Stephen King says, the thesaurus is your friend. I updated the back matter too, deleting people out of my Acknowledgements page that no longer had a place there, updated my Also By page, and a few other odds and ends. I’ve started directing all my readers to my vmrheault.com website and eventually I’ll take books off this one. It makes sense to turn my author website into my real author site and just use this site to blog. I’m having fun reading this book though, since I haven’t for many years. It has the same kind of tone Rescue Me does, and it’s funny that all my books have the same style, even between 3rd person past and 1st person present. I guess that’s why they say a reader falls in love with your voice. I won’t be changing the cover for this book–I think it looks fine how it is, and being that it’s age-gap, I doubt I’d be able to find a couple that fits as well as the one I found a few years ago. I know a couple years back I wrote a blog post on the differences, but I can’t find it now. For curiosity, this was the old one when I first published, then changed to the second when I couldn’t sell books. Very different vibe from the blurb.

I unpublished the two Large Print books I was able to publish before Amazon started blocking them due to duplicate content. I want to offer the same versions of all my books, so I unpublished the Hardcover versions of Captivated by Her, Addicted to Her, and Rescue Me. Hardcovers don’t sell and I wasn’t going to bother publishing more. Because they’re a mess and didn’t sell anyway, I also unpublished my two ebook boxset compilations–my Tower City series and my Rocky Point Wedding series. That sounds like a lot of unpublishing, but I mainly wanted to clean up my editions. The ISBNs will always be attached to those versions and they might even stay on my Amazon product pages, but from here on, I’m only going to offer the Kindle version and a plain paperback.

I was also going to unpublish the first three books I published (1700 Hamilton and my Summer Secrets series) but that would require updating back matter of books I’m not going to re-edit and I don’t want to do that. I was even going to unpublish my first trilogy, but then I remembered I wrote a bonus novella that sounds better than the original trilogy and closed out the story nicely, so even if they’re not well-written, I’d be taking down at least a quarter of a million words. I guess there’s no harm in keeping them up, but they aren’t my best work and I’ll never promote them in any way.

I probably should have done this stuff a long time ago, but I wasn’t feeling well and during the pandemic when everything was just kind of shitty, I wasn’t really thinking about it. I was more focused on building my pen name and writing books for that. Now that my King’s Crossing series is slowly releasing, I have a bit of free time, though not much if I don’t want my conveyor belt of content to slow down. I like knowing I have books scheduled–it takes the pressure off to write quickly.

That’s what I’m doing until the end of the year, and I have to remember what I do on KDP I have to do on IngramSpark. I updated the interior of All of Nothing after I re-edited it a few weeks ago, and I’ll have no choice but to replace both the interior and cover files for my Rocky Point series. Even though it’s going to cost a good $200.00, there’s just too much discrepancy for them to share the same ISBNs but look so different on other retailers. I used to get free revisions with my Alliance of Independent Authors membership, but now I noticed that instead of five or six free revisions you only get one. When I re-edited and re-covered my Lost and Found trilogy, I had enough revision codes I only had to pay $25.00. Unfortunately, that seems not to be the case anymore, but I’m tenacious and I’ll see what I can find when it’s time to do it.

I’d like to start 2025 with a clean slate, putting my 3rd person stuff behind me and looking forward to the future and building my 1st person pen name. I just felt like my 3rd person stuff was unfinished somehow. This won’t make that feeling entirely go away, but I can push them aside knowing that they’re better than they were before. I know for sure that my Rocky Point series sounds 100% better and I don’t consider the time I spent on them a waste, even if it will be an expensive hassle to swap out their files on Ingram. (It was actually fun to see how far my writing has come.) I might even stop putting books on there. There’s no real benefit, but it’s easy because I do my own formatting and covers. All it costs is a bit of time.

That’s about all I have this week. I’m busy doing what I want to do. I’m not going to worry about sales or page reads anymore. Those numbers have been dismal since summer and I honestly don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m doing all I can, and I need to find the fun in writing again. I’m proud of my books and what I’m doing for the indie community with this blog, beta reading, formatting, and editing for others. Sometimes I forget about what matters most, but it gets easier as I feel better. I have more gratitude for the small things and maybe getting my 3rd person stuff situated feels like a bigger project than I really wanted to tackle right now, but it will be a relief when it’s all done.

I said this was a massive update only because it felt massive. I never thought I would unpublish anything, and pushing unpublish made my stomach quiver. It’s nice because KDP keeps your title there and if I ever wanted to publish those things again, I can, but I think I’ll stick with my decision to keep my books in KU, offer the Kindle version, and price my paperbacks as cheaply as I can. There are discrepancies with some of my prices too, like my series versus standalones. I just price whatever I feel like pricing which doesn’t look very professional, but that’s something I”ll have to look into another time.

For the rest of this week I’ll be re-editing The Years Between Us and diving into proofing my wedding series proofs. I’m on track to get those done by December so I can promote them for Christmas. I think that may be my last hurrah I’m going to give my 3rd person stuff.

2025 is meant for new things. I’m going to leave behind the people who have hurt me, focus on marketing my King’s Crossing series, and plan my next releases. Now that I have a diagnosis, I’m feeling better than I have in a long time and I can leave those four years behind me.

I hope 2025 can be the start of something new for you too, despite the election outcome. We’ve dealt with him before, and we’ll do it again.

Take care of yourselves, and I’ll catch up with you you next week!

Results of My Goodreads Giveaway

Posted on November 4, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,610 words
9 minutes read time

I don’t mind trying new things, mostly because (for now) I can afford to experiment. I give all my receipts to my tax guy and he works his magic. I don’t know how much I get back, but it helps to know that I’m not taking a complete loss on all the extras I need to buy to keep my business going. (I’m looking at you, WordPress, Canva, Booksprout, and Bookfunnel.)

Anyway, because I saw someone on Threads saying Goodreads giveaways should be free, I bought one out of spite (the entitlement on that site is outrageous). It was good timing, since from what I’ve gathered, they’re used to build buzz for new releases. Cruel Fate had only been out for a week when I bought the giveaway, and I did make sure it was okay to run a giveaway on a book that’s enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. It is, and a Goodreads giveaway is probably the only thing you can do while your book is enrolled.

I hit a snag right away because I didn’t realize I couldn’t host the giveaway under my pen name. The giveaway is connected to the name that you have your Amazon/KDP bank account information under (which makes sense because that’s how they bill you). Then I had to verify my email which was a hassle and I wrote about it in a different blog post. You can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2024/09/23/housekeeping-update-and-verifying-your-email-address-on-goodreads/

Besides those two things, set up was pretty easy. I researched a little about it, and Al said to put it on for a month, so that’s what I did (don’t always listen to him, sometimes he lies). Looking through other giveaways, thirty days seemed to be about standard, though there were some that were shorter, probably in an attempt to create urgency which can work depending on who your publisher is and how big of an author you are. I’m still just a baby author as far as I’m concerned and didn’t have many expectations. Thirty days worked for me and I gave away the maximum number of ebooks, which is one hundred. I thought back in the olden days you could mix and match and I was going to give away five signed copies of the paperback as well, but if that was true then, it’s not the case now. I was going to give them away on my Facebook author page or something, but honestly, having one book out of six, that ends on a cliffhanger at that, seems pretty useless, and I’ll buy the other five and bundle them up next spring for a giveaway when the last book is released.

So, all in all, the giveaway went okay. In total, there were 2,240 people who entered.

I can’t say that’s more or fewer than what I was expecting since I’d never done one before. Of course, comparison is the thief of joy, but I did notice some books received fewer entries that had the same timeframe as mine and some books by bigger authors that had five-figure entries. I posted the giveaway where I could, and as often as I thought I could get away with, without irritating people. I posted it on IG a few times (and changed the blog subscribe link in my bio to the giveaway link), I told my newsletter/blog, and put it on my Facebook author page. The only place I didn’t put it was on Threads because I don’t have readers there and I’m not trying to find any. I don’t know if posting on social media helped–I think Goodreads pushes your giveaway somehow because my posts have never solicited that kind of response before, and if they do promote on your behalf, I’m grateful. I just don’t have the social media platform to promote something like this which is why I didn’t have high expectations going in.

You can’t measure this kind of return on investment. Sure, when they entered the giveaway, my book was added to their Want To Read list, but I’m not sure how far that really goes.

Everyone knows that in reality, a reader’s TBR list could wrap around the earth twice, so that’s another reason why I considered the giveaway an experiment. Since the last book doesn’t even release until April, I may not see any ROI for months. I could get a few reviews out of it if people read the copy they won right away, but there’s no telling if the reviews or read-through to the next book that’s available can be attributed to this giveaway.

One thing that took my by surprise was that the one hundred copies that were given away showed up on my KDP dashboard. They showed up as processed orders, and I was very confused. First because had I sold them, I would have gotten the royalties. They didn’t show up as free copies on the new reports dashboard, but they did on the old reporting dashboard (that’s going away November 11th, incidentally).

Don’t mind the blank space–my KENP graph looks a lot better.

I even went so far as to contact KDP chat who said the sales looked fine on her end, but she didn’t tell me the books were connected to the giveaway. It was only one night while I was trying to fall asleep and planning this post and what to say that it hit me. So that was a strange lesson learned, but I’m glad I figured it out because a phantom one hundred copies of my book floating around, or KDP glitching, would have driven me crazy.

So why did I do it? I don’t know. Something to try, I guess. I’m not stupid and I know that had I been more active on Goodreads the giveaway probably could have gone even better. But since becoming an author, I just don’t think being active in a space like that is a good idea. There’s an expectation if someone finds out you’re reading their book and honestly, it’s no one’s business what I’m reading (or not reading) or what I think of it. Part of being an author is the literary citizenship, recommending books you’ve read, discussing a book if you know someone who has read the same one. I get it. But in the land of poor reviews and authors who will retaliate if you don’t like their book, I keep what I do pretty private.

Both of my Goodreads profiles are dumpster fires. It’s on my list to clean them up and have a Goodreads librarian update the covers to almost every single book I ever published because they’ve all changed. Maybe answer some questions so they’ll have recent answers. Update my bios because I think a lot of them still say I have my cats, and Blaze passed away almost a year ago already. (She was our last cat and due to financial reasons we will remain pet-free). Look like I’m at least still alive even if I’m not active. That’s the problem with all these book sites popping up. It’s like you’re tasked to keep a profile up to date when you don’t even want to participate. Fable, StoryGraph, LibraryThing. BookBub. I don’t want to be involved like that. Goodreads I almost have to because I need to move all my books over to my “real” profile whenever I publish because of an issue with the initials on my pen name. I get that, and it is what it is. But beyond that, I don’t want to do their reading challenge, I don’t want to update my status. I don’t think everything I read needs to be shouted from the rooftops because it’s no one’s business what I’m doing.

I got a little off track there just because when we talk about places like Goodreads, it’s natural to start talking about reviews, and I don’t like talking about reviews. I don’t write them anymore because I don’t think I should be criticizing my peers’ work, and I’ll leave it at that.

Will I run another giveaway? I don’t know. If I’m going to pay $99.00, I feel like I could put that money toward a promotion where I can measure the ROI better. On the other hand, I reached readers I haven’t before, and depending on who won a copy, maybe a bookstagrammer or someone on TikTok or an influencer of some kind, someone will read it and fall in love with the series. A lot of this publishing game is luck, and you just never know what can happen which is why I don’t mind trying new things in the first place.

Would I recommend it? Not if you don’t have the money to burn. If you need reliable ROI, I would pay for a promo through Freekbooksy or BargainBooksy or Bookspry or Fussy Librarian, Robin Reads, or Ereader News Today. Those work well, especially if you don’t use them often and their newsletter subscribers are new-to-you readers. But as I said, I think this could have gone better had I been active there, and if you treat Goodreads as its own social media platform and have friends and followers there that you interact with, you could see some positive ROl. We’re all different and we write different books, and what can work for someone won’t do anything for you and vice versa. If you do try it, keep an open mind and remember you may not see any positive movement for months. Hope for the best and at worst, chalk it up as an experience. That’s all you can do.

Until next time!

Are Stuff Your E-reader Days Beneficial?

Posted on October 28, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

black bomb on black background. text says are book blasts worth it

With the number of book blasts on the rise, once again we’re talking about if giving away books is worth it. Not even giving away books because if you’ve read my blog for any amount of time you know I’m a big fan of giving books away. But there are so many book blasts coming into existence now, when before there were just one or two prominent ones and that was all. These book blasts can have anywhere from 100 to 2,000 free books and they always bring up questions such as, “Are readers actually going to read my book or will it sit on their Kindle?” “Do these book blasts hurt authors who don’t give books away?” “Do readers take a chance on new authors?” “If I give away a first in series will a reader read the rest of the series?”

No one can know the answers to these questions, but I don’t think authors really care about the answers anyway. What they’re concerned about is getting lost in the shuffle, and you can get lost during a free book blast just as easily as publishing a book and watching it sink to the bottom of your category because you don’t know how to market.

I’ve given a couple of my books away, during book blasts and using promos like Written Word Media’s Freebooksy. I don’t think there’s a lot of difference between them besides cost. Most, if not all, of the book blasts are free (the only cost is spreading the word around online and with your newsletter) and a Freebooksy is about 120 dollars depending on the genre you write in. The only time I’ve never not gotten my money back is when I’m giving away a first in series that no one likes. (I’m looking at you, poorly edited His Frozen Heart, book one in my Rocky Point series I happen to be re-editing now.) I’ve also discovered that my standalones do better than first in series, and I’m not sure why. Maybe some readers don’t want to get locked into a series by an unknown author and they just want an uncomplicated taste of your writing style. Maybe the tropes hit a little better. I mean, there could be a thousand reasons why one reader picks up one book but not another.

At any rate, the number of downloads your book gets doesn’t mean that readers are going to read it, or if they do, turn into a fan. Free book blasts are a way to get your name out there, but you have a responsibility to the readers who do try your book. If a book blast has 2,000 books available, and you get downloads, that’s half your battle. Here’s how to tackle the other half.

Write the best book you can.
I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but for a lot of readers, grabbing your book out of a book blast will be their first taste of your work. You want the cover to look great and you want your book to have as few typos as possible. I realized that no one is going to waste their time on a poorly written book, and if it’s a first in series, you can forget about read-through to other books. I know firsthand. I think these numbers reflect a couple different free promos I’ve done over the years, but I’ve given away 10,604 copies of His Frozen Heart. The series was rapid-released back in 2018 and I tried to promote the hell out of it. You all know I do my own editing, and you’d think I’d learn my lesson, especially after crunching these numbers.

His Frozen Heart:
Free: 10,604
Paid: 83
KU pages converted into books sold: 362

His Frozen Dreams:
Free: 0
Paid: 34
KU pages converted into books sold: 105

Her Frozen Memories:
Free: 0
Paid: 32
KU pages converted into books sold: 96

Her Frozen Promises:
Free: 0
Paid 31
KU pages converted into books sold: 77

You could tell me that out of 10,000 books given away that people did go on to read, and yeah, it looks like a few did, but the numbers aren’t great because the first book was a dumpster fire, and to be fair, so are (were) the rest. After these have new covers and they’re re-edited, it will be a very interesting experiment to see if any of these numbers increase. Of course, the first one will be exposed to the same readers, who may or may not remember they downloaded the first before, but Amazon will remind them when they click on the product page. So, putting my book in another blast may not do what I want it to do anyway.

The moral of this story of course, is to put out the best book you can. You’ll increase your chances of growing your readership if you’re publishing good books.

Be consistent.
I talk about this a lot, but this is especially true if you’re hoping to expand your readership through a book blast. You’re giving out a free sample of your work, and hopefully that sample reflects other books that your reader can choose from. I doubt any of the readers who managed to choke down my series went on to read other books, even if they did forgive all the flaws. My Rocky Point series is a small town holiday and other books under that name are enemies to lovers, close proximity, and age gap. And let’s not forget the first trilogy I ever published that probably sounds even worse than my Rock Point series that I should just unpublish and sweep under the rug (which happens to be a sports/running romance). That was probably one of the biggest publishing lessons of my life: if you hope to build a readership, don’t genre-hop. I thought I was writing “contemporary romance” and that anything under that umbrella was okay. It is okay. For Nora Roberts. The thing is, traditional publishing and indie publishing are different, and you can maybe attribute my sales going up to just being a better writer, but I did start selling more books when I created my pen name and niched down to Billionaire. I also changed my POV from 3rd past to 1st present, so that could have had an impact too, but when we try to drill down like that, we’ll never know for sure.

Make use of your back matter.
You should be doing this anyway, but capture those readers who chose to read your book out of 2,000 books. Put your newsletter link in the back and give them a way to stay connected to you. Then, actually send out your newsletter. Authors get so weird about saying they have nothing to say or that they don’t want to bother anyone. People don’t sign up for things they don’t want. It’s actually a confusing take, but the point is to stay connected so readers know you have more to offer or that you’re going to be publishing soon.

Be real.
In an era of AI, readers are going to seek real people to connect with. They want to know about you, what your struggles are, what you like to do when you’re not writing. I know this sounds like a load of crap, but look at the engagement of any huge author and the activity on their Facebook Author pages. Authors like Brenda Novak and Lori Foster have thousands of members and they talk about everything from what kind of wine they like to drink to sharing pictures of family vacations. They treat their members like family, and when they have a new book out, all it takes is a post to make them a best seller. Start by personalizing your bio on Amazon. A reader may look at it when going through book blast entries. Whether you want to use a real author photo or an avatar or a logo, that’s up to you, but I’ve never regretted putting my real photo on my author pages and in the backs of my books.

Do I think that book blasts are harmful or there aren’t good reasons to participate? I don’t think they’re harmful at all, no matter what other authors say. Yes, there are lot of free books on that day, but honestly, there are a lot of free books out there every day. I don’t have any reasons why you wouldn’t want to participate unless you have few books out. If you only have one or two, there’s not much for a reader to move on to if they like you, so you would have to fit the blast into your marketing strategy so you know what you’re getting and that you’re okay with the outcome. I don’t participate in every romance book blast that’s available. There are books I haven’t given away, like my first rockstar book in that trilogy or my Christmas novel. The last book I gave away was the first in my Lost & Found trilogy, but I don’t think it did too much. I got a few downloads (3,000) but not a lot of read through after the fact because it wasn’t the first time I’d given it away. It’s really difficult to let a book blast pass me by because I have terrible FOMO and I worry I’m giving up a golden opportunity to be seen. Because of the money I save doing the blasts with other authors, I feel okay paying for a promo every now and then, or something different like the Goodreads giveaway I paid for last month. I pay for ads, too, so the blasts are just a part of my overall marketing strategy.

You can use them as a learning opportunity, like my Rocky Point series. If you’re getting downloads but no read through, or if your book is also in KU and you get very few pages read, you know something is wrong with your book. It’s not well-written or the first ten percent is too slow and doesn’t keep their attention. It’s a costly lesson, as those readers may not try anything else you’ve written, even if you leveled up your craft and you’re doing better now.

I don’t know if I’ll do any more blasts this year. I did two, and that seems like enough. My King’s Crossing series is slowly releasing, the next book will be out on the 28th, and I’ve been trying to do better posting on social media to keep sales up. The second book has 7 preorders, which is amazing to me since I’ve never had that many preorders for a book before, and Cruel Fate, the first book in the series, has sold 7 ebook copies and has had the equivalent of 7 books read in KU. Not the greatest launch by any means, but the book ends on a cliffhanger, and I’ve been very clear about it, so I hope that just means readers are waiting to dig in.

If I can give you any advice as to joining a book blast, it’s to figure out what you want out of it. Do you want downloads? KU reads? Are you doing it to simply get your name out there? If you’re giving away a first in series but your series isn’t done yet, what are you hoping to accomplish? That’s not a derogatory question, it’s something you should ask yourself as your read-through won’t reach its full potential and you’ll have to work at dragging those people back to your series when the next book releases, which, if they didn’t connect with you in some way, is easier said than done.

I’m not going to whine about book blasts or support others who do. I don’t think they take away from my audience on days I don’t participate, in fact, I still tell my newsletter and social media followers about them because it’s content they appreciate. It would just be sour grapes to keep that information from my list.

If you choose not to do them, that’s a business choice, as well as doing them over and over again. It really does help to know what you want out them, though, and to keep your expectations realistic depending on the books you’re giving away. They can be a great marketing tool if used correctly, and free exposure never hurts.

Here’s a list of book blasts I’ve put together. Someone is always asking how to join but either don’t know where to start to search or are too lazy to do the legwork. Either way, the list is mostly romance, though it wouldn’t surprise me if more genres start forming. It’s a lot of work to put together, so if you do join, please be kind to the facilitator. They are doing a lot of work on your behalf, so the least you can do is follow their rules to make things easier for them. I don’t run any of these, and I’m not interested in doing so, so please use the contact information for the blast you want to participate in if you have questions.

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/

That’s all I have for this week. I hope you’re doing well and if you celebrate Halloween, be safe!

Amazon Ads: A Case Study

Posted on October 21, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

logo taken from https://advertising.amazon.com/

I stumbled upon something interesting on Threads the other day. Someone was asking for tips and tricks on how to make Amazon ads work for her. Of course, I looked at the book she was trying to sell, noted a few things, and told her what I thought. That never works well in the land of the public, and there were a couple of people who commented on my comment. It’s interesting to me how people can tell you their opinions without looking at what you’re trying to sell or just spew stuff based on their own poor experiences. I’m not going to call this author out, but you can apply what I’m going to say to almost any debut author.

One of the things you should do when wanting to run ads is look at your product. We think we’re pretty wonderful we’ve managed to write a book and publish it, but that doesn’t mean everyone is going to want to read it. In fact, there are so many books out there it’s actually a miracle if you can find anyone who wants to pay for what you’ve written. Thinking that you’re going to set the world on fire will only set you up for disappointment. You have to be realistic when it comes to your book and by that I mean you have to look at your book and your author career as a whole.

What did I see when I saw her book?

It was only the first in a duology and the second book wasn’t on preorder. This is a Catch-22, and we know it is. People won’t buy the first book in a series without the others available because they don’t want to wait or won’t take a chance the author will finish. Authors who don’t sell enough of their first book think there’s no interest, lose motivation, and may not want to finish. I get it, but we also need to look at it from a reader’s point of view. Not being able to start and finish a series on their timetable is unsatisfying. Bingeing is a way of life now and when we are kept from it, we hear about it. No one wants to wait for the next season of Bridgerton or The House of the Dragon. No one knows where they’re going to be in 2026. This author doesn’t have the second book even on preorder, so God only knows when it will be out. She may not have even started writing it yet. It’s a sad fact that if she’s selling a duology, the first would sell better if readers had access to the second, even if only in preorder form.

She’s wide.
Amazon ads can be used if you’re wide, but to me, it makes more sense to use Facebook ads so that you can capture readers on all devices (by targeting them in your audience list). I told her that, and someone said she uses Amazon ads to great effect even though she’s wide. I just scoffed. Okay, Karen. The person who said that has been publishing for years, has over 30 books in her backlist, and, I would imagine, a very large newsletter list. She started way back in the Kindle gold rush where it was possible to make a lot of money simply publishing books and buying ads to fuel the flames. Publishing isn’t like that today, and only running ads won’t get you very far, especially as a debut author. I wasn’t impressed with her answer since it was clear she didn’t look at this author’s book or lack of backlist to provide any real, personalized direction. There’s no reason why you can’t run Amazon ads if you’re wide, but Amazon ads are known to be spendy, can’t get any traction for less than 30 cents a click, and you’re only reaching one audience. Facebook ads can reach more than only Kindle readers, can be cheaper (there are ads where I’ve gotten my clicks down to 9 cents a piece), and just seems all around a better investment. For her.

She’s not in KU, and her book is priced at $5.99.
This goes along with the “wide” part of the case study. I’m not saying Amazon readers are cheap, I’m sure there are people on Amazon who buy books at full price. But, we’re also talking about a debut author who has one book and the other book doesn’t look to be forthcoming. I’m not sure how many readers will really take a chance on a book that’s $5.99. I’m not arguing for or against being in Kindle Unlimited, that’s a business choice and being wide can be beneficial, but you are choosing your audience and that audience has disposable cash to buy entertainment. I don’t think it’s easier or harder to reach those people, you just have to know how. She may have her book in the Kobo Plus program (Kobo’s KU) but running Amazon ads won’t help her find those readers. So, she’s using Amazon ads to find readers who are willing to pay $5.99 for a debut author who is more than likely still writing the next book. If she’s getting a lot of clicks and no sales, her price could be part of the reason.

She has few reviews.
We like to think that reviews don’t matter, but they do. My duet won’t move no matter what I do and I attribute that to not putting them on Booksprout for reviews. The first book is only at twelve, and the second book is only at ten. I didn’t look to see if those are text reviews or only star ratings, but it doesn’t really matter. I don’t know the statistics on the number of readers who read reviews or just glance at the stars, but it does stand to reason the more star ratings you have, the better your book looks. Even if you have a good cover and solid blurb, a reader could nope right out of there if you don’t have enough social proof.

The book is old.
She published a while back, about eight months ago, well past the ninety-day grace period Amazon gives you. Running ads to a book that is old and already not selling well is like pushing a boulder up a mountain. Amazon is all about relevancy, and if your book isn’t relevant, meaning, people aren’t buying it, Amazon doesn’t care about it. They may still show your ad, and you get evidence of that when you see your impressions, but who knows if Amazon is pushing down your ad when it could be doing better. She’d do better to put her second book on preorder and then create an ad that targets both of them. That may be her plan once her book is closer to completion, I don’t know, but trying to drum up buzz for an old book takes a lot of time and money. Being that I have no idea how many ads or what kind she’s running, it’s hard to say if creating more and different kinds of ads (category vs. auto placement vs. keywords for example) with a higher budget would work.

So that’s what I saw when I looked at her Amazon page. Marketing is more than just figuring out an ad platform or posting social media graphics. It’s the genre you’re writing in, what your publishing schedule is like, if you offer a newsletter. She’s just getting started, so it’s no surprise her marketing tactics will be slow to take off.

I mentioned a little bit about the ad platforms, but let’s just take a shallow dive into them (I don’t have the expertise to go deep). Amazon’s ad platform isn’t complicated, though you do have to invest in clicks if you want any traction. I can’t get anywhere if I’m not bidding 40 cents or more, and that’s for contemporary romance/billionaires/rockstars. The ad itself only consists of your book cover, a tagline if you live in a country where that’s offered, and the number of reviews your book has. You need a strong cover, and if you get clicks, your cover is doing its job. It’s after you get the click and it doesn’t convert into a sale that you need to look at your product page. If your price doesn’t attract readers or if they’re looking for KU books and your book is wide, or your blurb is confusing, or they decide you don’t have enough reviews. Those can affect other ad platforms too, but if we’re just talking clicks, having your book in solid categories so they show up in the right spots on Amazon and having a fabulous cover will go a long way.

There’s a lot that goes into Facebook ads, and the potential to get one part wrong is huge. It’s probably the reason why the guy who said my Facebook ads recommendation was garbage. He had a bad experience, didn’t know how to put the ad together and maybe lost some money, but not everyone is going to have that experience. You need a good description, a good hook (headline), a good stock photo (creative) that will draw readers in enough to click. They can take a lot of trial and error and it can be costly, but I know it can be worth it once you figure out the secret sauce. Again, though, clicks can be a waste of money if readers don’t like what they see after they click on your ad. Facebook ads allow you to target more than just one kind of reader (versus Amazon ads whose readers only read on Kindles). You can target Google Play readers, Apple readers, Nook readers, Kobo, hoping to draw in those Kobo Plus subscription holders. Facebook will spend your money faster than Amazon does, but I found overall the clicks can be cheaper which allows for a little wiggle room. The dashboard is hella complicated, and I hate clicking around in it, but like any platform, once you get used it it, it’s not so bad. She could start small and boost a post off her author page and see how it goes. She would still need to create an audience, but you’d want to do that anyway. Every author needs comps.

I saw someone who was having bad luck with BookBub ads (not the featured deal you have to approved for) saying she was getting impressions but no clicks. It’s really important to understand what kind of platform you’re using. Amazon ads can cater to regular-priced books as does Facebook, but BookBub’s audience are freebie seekers and if she was trying to sell a book at full price, she wasn’t going to get any clicks. I asked her if she was trying to sell a full-priced book and if she had the price on her creative like they encourage you to do, but she didn’t answer me. Whether she didn’t see my response or she resented me telling her a full-priced book wouldn’t sell there, I have no idea, but I’ve heard of other authors trying to sell full-priced books on BookBub and it just won’t work. They have built their entire readership on readers who want free and cheap books. Trying to go against years of that will be futile. You can use them if you put your book on sale, though I have noticed that not a lot of authors want to do that. The author who is trying to sell the first in a duology might do that when her second book comes out, but without knowing her, I would guess the chances are slim.

When you decide to run ads, you have to take a look at your product and your company, which is you. Backlist, number of reviews, how long you’ve been publishing (there’s a reason why companies love to say they were established in XXXX–it creates trust in the person who’s looking at the advertisement), and how often you publish can all influence a reader’s potential to buy. Being a debut author isn’t a bad thing–we all have to start somewhere–but you have to keep your expectations in check. When she does release the second book in her duology, how long will it take her to write another book? Will she be marketing two books for the next two years? Will she release another first in series and expect readers to wait while she writes the next? Building a backlist can take years and she may not get ads to work for her for just as long.

There’s a reason why they say writing the next book is your best marketing tool. I understand the want to push your book out into the world, and I applaud her for trying, but she seemed to think the ads were what was going wrong, and well, I think in this case, it’s the operator and not the machine.

I’m certainly not an expert and I’ve killed ads that were costing me money, not making it. Like I said, I stopped trying to run ads to my duet, and now when I get someone reading them, I just figure they found out about them some other way. I’m running Amazon ads to my King’s Crossing series, and I had to kill a very productive ad. No one was preordering and the clicks were adding up. I may turn it back on once more books are available to purchase or read in KU. I knew from the start I would be paying for exposure, and I left three of the slower-moving ads on. I created two for my rockstars but they are very slow moving right now but maybe rockstars aren’t in and the books are a year old already (relevancy).

Once I write a blurb for the whole series I’ll set up a Facebook ad for it. I need a blurb that explains what the series is about, but I’ve been busy doing other things (which isn’t great since marketing this series should be on the top of my list) and well, I hate writing blurbs.

Anyway, ads are a great marketing too, just be sure you’re in a place in your career where you can benefit from them and always make more than you spend.

I found this in my email from James Blatch–Is your book advertising ready? Could be a fun webinar to listen in on. It’s free, and you can click here to sign up:

https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_RqcLtAxuSd-ioWbFGZiIKQ?inf_contact_key=d2952934bcb214bf7377961b3d3304084dfbc39d7283b2cb89d5189540b69330#/registration

Quick Links:

Bryan Cohen’s free five day Amazon Ads course: https://www.bestpageforward.net/getting-ready-for-the-5-day-amazon-ad-challenge/
The link at the bottom directs you to his Facebook page. Join his group to stay up to date on all the webinars he offers. https://www.facebook.com/groups/2230194167089012

Dave Chesson’s Free Amazon Ad course: https://kindlepreneur.com/free-amazon-ads-course/

Matthew J. Holmes offers a newsletter and classes on Amazon and Facebook ads: https://www.matthewjholmes.com/

David Gaughran has free tools on his YouTube channel that includes using Canva to make Facebook ads graphics: https://www.youtube.com/@DavidGaughran

There are a lot more resources out there when it comes to learning ads. Robert Ryan’s books are great, and if you want to learn BookBub ads, David Gaughran has one that will read outdated because the platform has surely changed, but the tactics described to find your audience are probably still on target. Ricardo Fayet of Reedsy also wrote one that is really informative.

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