A week ago or so, I was scrolling Threads as I do while I’m waiting for my daughter to get out of work or something, and there was an author who posted a screenshot of her KDP author dashboard in the name of “author transparency.” It showed she had made $13,000 in one month. I didn’t save it, and I wish I would have because along with the usual “Congratulations” posts, she said that she was getting nasty emails from throwaway email addresses accusing her of bragging.
This made me wonder how much good author transparency posts actually do. To be honest, I don’t think they accomplish much without context—and that context rarely fits in a Threads post. Because those numbers don’t always inspire hope. They evoke defensiveness, anxiety, and sometimes, hostility.
It’s worth taking a look at why that is, and I can tell you why because when I see posts like that, I feel it.
It’s annoying and frustrating because you don’t know how they got there, and unless they blog about it or write a lengthy post in an author group like 20Booksto50k, you’re not going to know. You could do a little snooping (if they aren’t making that money with a pen name you’re not aware of) and see how many books they have out and how many books they consistently publish in a year. You can look at their Facebook ad library and see if they’re running ads or if you scroll through their author page maybe you can ferret out if they run regular promotions. But even if you do all that, you’re still not seeing the whole picture. They could have gone viral on TikTok or an influencer could have hyped them up. They could be paying a PR company. Every algorithm out there could love them. Maybe it’s all of the above.
Ironically, there are people who ask for this kind of transparency, and they accuse authors of gatekeeping if they don’t want to share their numbers. What I don’t think they realize is those numbers don’t mean a whole heck of a lot if you don’t have the why and how behind them. And you and I know the why and how can be anything from the genre they write in to how quickly they publish.
Do I think authors need to stop sharing? I don’t post my numbers on places like Threads because I know how useless it really is. I mean, you don’t need to have the why and how if you’re posting zeroes, but on the flip side, those zeroes come with their own story that you should be prepared to tell. When I talk about my numbers here, that gives me space to explain what I’m doing or not doing and I believe that’s more helpful than posting a screenshot of your dashboard and saying, “If I can do it, you can too!”
In this current industry climate, I think authors who share their large numbers are going to be on the receiving end of some bad feelings. The publishing industry isn’t in the best place right now, AI is taking over, and it feels like there are even more real authors out there writing and publishing books than ever before. Someone who manages to cut through all that and say that they’re making a living wage isn’t going to be viewed as helpful when they post their dashboard screenshots because they’re sharing a destination that doesn’t feel reachable. I mean, let’s be real. If it was easy, more people would be doing it.
What do you think about author transparency? Do big numbers get you down or are they inspirational? Let me know in the comments.
In the name of author transparency [insert smirking emoji here] I do have some semi-positive thoughts to share about my own numbers. Lately I’ve been trying Trial Reels on Instagram that I talked about in my last blog post, and for a little while they worked. I had a couple take off, one even getting 62.1k views. I have never posted anything in my life (that’s not true, on Threads I posted a picture of some turkeys I saw on my way home from dropping off recycling that got over 64k views but I don’t count that) that has gotten that much attention. And then I had some smaller ones that took off (44.6k and 47.3k) and then had one that I forgot to make a trial reel and it was just a normal one on my profile that got up to 11.2k before dying. I hate to admit that those reels did result in a bump in sales. You can tell they worked too, because looking at my dashboard, it’s just obvious:
But you can also see that I haven’t been able to keep it up, and the reels I’ve been posting now are more like what I was getting when I was on TikTok, barely making it past 300 views. I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to keep that up long-term, but it was still a downer when it happened, and I wish that kind of luck hadn’t happened so quickly. Trying to keep your expectations at a reasonable level is really hard. But it does tell me that I have marketable books that people want to read, so I’ll keep feeding the machine because you never know what will hit just right that will cause another bump.
As for what I’m doing now, it feels like my free time is being sucked away minute by minute, and I just haven’t been finding the time to write like I have in the past. I’m only 40k words into Cold Mercy, which, I guess is a milestone since I don’t plan for it to get past 80k, keeping in range with Frozen Assets, but I just kind of thought that since I have the whole book plotted out that I’d be further along. Still, I’m having fun with the characters, and when it’s done, I’ll let them both breathe for a while and flip back over to Bitter Love to get that ready for whenever I want to put it up. Despite my recent “success” such as it is, I’m still going to give that away for a while before publishing it, and I probably won’t do ARCs for it either. The results for Wicked Games weren’t worth the hassle, and it feels like the ARC environment is changing into something that I don’t want to be a part of anymore. If readers bump into the book and want to leave a review when it’s possible, that’s fine, but I’m going to stop asking and hoping.
(Yes, I did choose the title for the alliteration. I’m not doing anything this month except trying to sleep in this heat.)
Happy Monday! And hello to the last month of summer. Not that it’s truly the last month of warm weather. I remember taking the kids to many a Fall Festival in September and always overdressing because in my mind, a Fall Festival was associated with hot apple cider, leaves crunching, and woodsmoke in the air. What we got was sweating while picking out pumpkins and everyone being crabby by the time we got home. But, every year I did it, and every year was the same result. Until the kids got old enough to say they didn’t want to go, and I started buying my pumpkins at Walmart. Nothing stays the same.
There’s not a lot going on with me since the last time we spoke. I’ve been dipping my toes into the Trial Reels waters on Instagram, and it’s been fun. A couple of my reels have taken off, and I’ve gotten quite a few new followers on my Facebook author page–something I hadn’t counted on. I’ve always treated my author page as something I had to keep going because I’ve had that page for close to ten years and God only knows where that link has been. I can’t stand broken links, so I never took the page down and only post proof-of-life posts in case someone lands there. I want them to see I was at least still writing and publishing. So those new followers had somewhat of an updated page to scroll through when they followed me, but I’m not sure how much I’m going to enjoy posting on there now. That’s not to say I don’t want to talk to my readers, but social interaction as a whole is kind of hmmm, and you can see that by how often I post, or don’t, on my personal Facebook page and Threads. Still, I’m having a good time making reels and not worrying about the BS TikTok was known for. Their 200 views dungeon scarred me, but it taught me to keep expectations low. If that’s anything positive to say.
I’ve stalled with writing Cold Mercy and I’m not any further than where I was last week. It’s not that I don’t know what’s going on, it’s just that, I think the past two weeks wore me out and it’s been so hot that I haven’t been sleeping well. I hope the busy weeks are behind me, though my daughter’s post-op for her wisdom teeth surgery was rescheduled and I have to deal with that this week. But as long as nothing happens to my car, we all keep our health, and we all have jobs so we can pay our bills, I’m happy to keep chipping away at my book around my day job and playing with Pim.
Here she is lying on my bookshelf for the cat tax:
There’s a lot we can say about things like this, but on the other hand, nothing at all. This is going to keep happening, that’s pretty clear. Someone who doesn’t like the way a metaphor is written is going to automatically jump to the AI conclusion. Someone who doesn’t like the way a book’s prose is written is going to jump to the AI conclusion. Someone who doesn’t like an author’s vocabulary is going to jump to the AI conclusion. Five years ago, if you didn’t like a book, you set it aside and started reading something else. Nowadays, if someone doesn’t like it, it’s almost natural to say, “Well, they probably used AI to write it.”
What was interesting to me was this quote by Sandy Hodgman, Jerry Falade’s UK agent who pulled back its submission of the novel to international publishers:
It’s curious how she included the “editorial process” when she vetted the manuscript with the author because given all the “purists” online and what they classify as AI, assistive AI like ProWriting Aid and Grammarly is still okay to use. If that’s changing, then where do we draw the line? No spellcheck and grammar check in Word? It’s infuriating when companies like Microsoft (CoPilot) shove AI down your throat to the point where it’s almost impossible to turn off those features, then later, you’re penalized for using them. (I’m looking at you Canva and Instagram respectively.)
But even if you go old school and write your book by hand and type it up with no AI whatsoever, the burden is still on the author to prove it. I’m Gen X and love me a good notebook and a brand new pen. In fact, even after writing and publishing for ten years, that’s still how I start all my books–writing in longhand. I create a character bible and write out their plots and character arcs. Sometimes if I’m stuck and can’t get into a scene, I’ll muse longhand until I can get into their heads again, so I do have bits and pieces tucked away. But I don’t know if that would be enough to fight AI allegations if any where to come my way. Writing is hard, and I’ve said more than once that I would just stop writing rather than turn to AI to write books for me. Publishing isn’t a moneymaker and there’s no guarantee that you’ll make a dime after you publish a book. After a decade of writing and publishing, I don’t see any benefit to using AI because at the end of the day, when your dashboard is zero, you better love the process because that’s all you have.
We’re treading into a new era of book publishing, and it will be interesting to see what the trad industry does in the future. Maybe they’ll stop paying advances all together because it sure seems odd to win a 2.5 million dollar bidding war only to yank it back when someone in a meeting says, “This sounds like AI.” Once that seed is planted, by anyone, for any book, you can never take it back. Which means maybe people need to stop assuming an author used AI when they don’t like something, and decide they don’t like it long before an offer is made. To read a down-to-earth take by Kathleen Schmidt, you can here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-209258189
That’s about all I have for this week. I have to admit, creating reels and posting them has pushed me out of my groove and I haven’t gotten as much writing done as I’d like. It’s not difficult to create reel, but I can say that now because I know how. Like anything, figuring out how to make parts in Canva and make parts in the Instagram app then putting them together was a small learning curve. Once I knew that Instagram wants you to make as much as possible in the app, things clicked for me. There are things that are impossible to make, like the B-roll and snippet because even if you make your snippet the “real” way by taking a screenshot of your book on your Kindle, that screenshot still has to be uploaded from your photos. But I don’t make the whole thing in Canva, like typing out the hook and putting the snippet graphic on top of the video, and I think that helps a lot with Instagram willing to push your video out. I never quite got a hang of doing the editing in TikTok which (besides them tagging my videos as AI) might have held me back. So to be able to create a reel and not have it take all day helps the motivation to keep posting and possibly make reels a small only part of my marketing plan.
As for other Mondays on the blog, I’ll just wing it. I have one more editor Q & A to post, then I’ll be on my own again. We’ll see what happens.
I hope you all have a good week! Enjoy the dog days of summer. I know I have been!
It’s the end of July, which means the summer is two-thirds over. It’s going by so fast, but I’ve done a couple of things like take a road trip to Bismarck, North Dakota with my sister and daughter, and we drove to a town forty-five minutes from here to go to their zoo. We have a couple of other things we’d like to do, like go to another town forty-five minutes away in a different direction and play lake tourist there, and possibly go to the zoo here in Fargo, ND, though it’s smaller and more expensive. We didn’t go last summer, so that’s on our maybe list, and if it works out, it works out.
This week is terrible with things to do, like my daughter’s follow-appointment for her wisdom teeth surgery she had done last week, and my own dentist appointment for a cleaning Thursday afternoon. My son has a dermatology appointment that same day and adding all that to the normal grind of life, maybe you shouldn’t try to get a hold of me until Sunday because there’s a high possibility I’ll be a quivering lump of jelly on the floor come Friday morning. Which is too bad because I have to work.
But, sometimes stuff is just crammed together and there’s nothing you can do. The good news is August should be slower, and my main goal is to finish Cold Mercy. Only because my sister, daughter, and I are planning to go to Florida for a week in September, and it would be nice to get it done so I can put it aside mentally and enjoy the first vacation I’ve had in over seven years. My daughter hasn’t been on a plane since she was about ten (she’s twenty now) so she’s also looking forward to it.
Cold Mercy is coming along, and I’m happy about that. I’m enjoying writing Trevor and Celina, but as I’ve said, I don’t have any plans to publish my hockey duet (that I’ve decided to call Black Ice) as of yet. I’ve actually been hunting down couples on DepositPhotos for Bitter Love, just because I think a couple would fit better than a single guy since it’s a small town second chance. So, I’m doing a little bit of everything, and I have a hockey standalone planned after Cold Mercy because I didn’t want to let all that hockey research go to waste.
After bumping into a Threads post about trial reels on Instagram and the easy videos she was making, I decided to give it a try. After posting a few, I can tell you that I like how simple they are to put together and that there isn’t a 200 view dungeon like there is on TikTok (as far as I can tell). That alone is a motivation and confidence booster, because back when I was on TikTok, it really sucked to put an hour into a carousel for it only to get 130 views or whatever. The only thing that tripped me up was figuring out the editing tools, but watching a quick tutorial on YouTube took care of my biggest annoyance. Because I still have a lot of TikTok hooks and Kindle screenshot slides, I’m going to try to post a reel every day and see how it works.
Do I think I’ll go viral and sell lots of books? No. Do I think I’ll go viral at all? Probably not, but I’m not focusing on numbers either. Do I think I’ll sell books? That’s another “probably not” but I was a little sad when I had to get rid of my TikTok account–I felt like I was actually reaching readers with the likes and saves–and this is an easier alternative. Like TikTok, they want you to do as much in-app as possible, so I’m not assembling the whole video in Canva. Here are my quick steps if you want to try it:
Film or find a b-roll. I didn’t even know what that was last year, haha. I filmed my bookshelf and my laptop with a cup of coffee, but so far I haven’t used them. Right now I just go to Canva, choose an Instagram Reel canvas, and find a video that kind of has the snippet vibe. Like the one I posted today–it’s a snippet of Rick finding Devyn at his construction site zip-tied to a support beam. So I found a video of a snowy, city street at night. That’s all you really need. I have no plans to show my face right now, but that could change. I don’t really care either way as long as I do my hair and makeup first.
Make a Kindle screenshot of your snippet. I fake those. I use an Instagram post-sized canvas and just copy and paste the text over from an ePub. To make a “highlight” I use a Square in Elements, change the color and size, and make it transparent. I don’t have all my books on a real Kindle, so this works for me.
I still have a fear thing left over from TikTok, and I mark out the naughty words. I don’t know how Instagram likes swear words and sex, but I’ve always gone more angsty in my snippets anyway so I don’t think I need to worry too much about that.
Write your two sentence hook that will go above your snippet. I still see some authors using the X, but Y, formula, like “When he falls first, but she’s off limits” kind of thing, so you’ll have to play around with what works for you.
Write your description. I write a quick couple paragraphs that I put in my Mac’s notes app, then I can copy and paste it over on my iPhone. Don’t forget the title and where they can find the book. I use keywords instead of hashtags, since that seems to be the trend right now.
Put it all together. I go into Reels on my phone, and use the b-roll I chose from Canva, add my snippet, add the hook with their text tool, copy and paste the description, add music, and I’m done. Some authors will add a “cover” to their reel, but honestly, the woman who showed us her views in that Threads post didn’t have covers for hers, and I’m inclined to just leave it and see how a simple reel without a cover works first. I’m still in the “experimenting and having fun” stage, so I’m not going to complicate it unless I have to.
I was missing posting on TikTok, so thanks to Jessica for the motivation!
Another thing I did was revamp my FB author page banner and my website header. Since I no longer consider myself strictly a billionaire romance author, I thought it was time to change it up. I also have never made myself an author logo, so I played around in Canva and came up with something that might be a little too pink, but I like for it now.
That takes care of my backlist, my small town, second chance that I’ll be publishing next year sometime, and the hockey romances that I’m writing now. Those banners can just stay there for however long since I won’t be changing it anywhere to announce a new release.
Last month I teased I would put my Cedar Hill Duet for free, and I did that. Both of them are free until Wednesday, and if you were wanting to grab them or just download them to support me (thank you!) here’s the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0B1PV65WD
I didn’t do much for them except boost a post on Instagram and send a real newsletter to the few subscribers I still have. These are older books, but since they have new covers and they’ve been re-edited, I thought I’d promote them and see how they do. They’re free until Wednesday, July 28th, so if you know of anyone who would want a billionaire romantic suspense duet, you can point them that way.
I’m also putting Rescue Me in a romance book blast next month. I’m to the point where I just want people to see my books, download them if they think they sound good, and maybe read them if they ever get around to it. That’s not me being meh–I know how long people’s TBR lists are. Mine is the same, as I’ve been downloading free hockey books lately if I see them pop up in my Freebooksy newsletters, so I understand that someone downloading one of my books might not read it for months or years, if ever. I’ve stopped thinking about sales, really, and I might do a free blast of one of my trilogies next. Do a special one-day sale of all of them and see how many downloads I get. I think it’s nice to give them all away instead of just a book one. It’s just how I’ve been feeling, at least.
That’s about all I have going on. When I have a second in the evening and I’m too tired to write but it’s too early to go to bed, I’ve been watching the new season of The House of the Dragon. If you like small-town romance shows, a new season of Ransom Canyon just released on the 23rd on Netflix, and I’m wondering if I should rewatch the first season again before diving into the second. We’ll see. There are some evenings when the day hasn’t beat the shit out of me and I still have the energy to write, so I don’t watch too much TV, but it’s nice to have something to look forward to when my brain is mush.
I hope your summer has been going well so far. Do you have anything you want to get done before spooky season starts? Let me know!
Good morning to everyone except the people who hate Amazon and won’t shut up about it. Here’s your monthly reminder that if you hate them that much, you don’t have to publish with them! Ta-da! If that’s not you, I hope that wherever you are the skies are sunny and your coffee is hot!
There have been a couple things in the indie industry that caught my eye over the past couple of weeks and I thought I’d touch on them since I like keeping up with changes and then maybe I’ll mention quick what I’ve been doing at the end.
One of the biggest pieces of news that floated by me last week was that MailerLite is going down to only 250 subscribers in their free plan. I feel like this is in line with what I’ve been speculating since Draft2Digital launched a 12 dollar per year service fee for active accounts and everyone went crazy because of it. Free services are slowly being phased out, or the services are being so pared back that they’re almost useless. An author who is starting a newsletter with the intention of actually growing it isn’t going to begin with a platform that cuts you off at such a low number. That means if they’re going to hustle for signups, they could be looking at a platform change just months after starting or they’ve made the decision that they’re going to pay so they can stay.
I’ve always been of the mind to begin as you wish to continue–since it’s just easier that way all around–and I’d look for a different provider. If you’re looking to move or start a newsletter and want a bigger number, Kit seems to have the biggest number of free subscribers that I’ve seen in their free plan at 10,000 (that isn’t a typo). Use the slider to adjust to the 10k number and you’ll see that the free plan stays free for that number. I have never used Kit before, but I know people who have, and you need to get your SPF, DKIM, and DMARC in order and also use a professional email (like hello@pennymaxwellauthor.com) or your emails will go to people’s spam/junk folders. Gmail has tightened up how they deliver emails, and that’s just the way it is now. As they say, nothing in this life is free. Still, my email attached to this site is $84.00 a year, which doesn’t seem so bad if your newsletter aggregator is free. Kit will also integrate with BookFunnel if you pay for the Mid-List Author tier, though BookFunnel’s prices went up this year too, so you’re going to be paying for something if you want to offer a newsletter to your readers.
Whatever you do, export your list regularly! Don’t lose your list. Then you’re free to move to whatever aggregator you want, even if that means just blogging on your own website like I’ve started doing.
Another big news item that everyone lost their minds over is that KDP is now offering groundwood paper as a page color choice. I didn’t think this was a big deal really. Cream has always been fine for me, but there are a couple of things worth noting. For one, KDP will allow you to change already published titles to groundwood, which is interesting because page color used to be tied to your ISBN number. That appears to no longer be the case. I buy all my ISBNs from Bowker and KDP has offered me the choice to switch, though like putting my ebooks in libraries, I’m not going to bother.
The other thing to keep in mind is that your spine width might change. KDP encourages you to double check by using the Print Previewer and/or ordering a proof before you publish with the changes. Be sure to read their guidelines so your book will print properly if you make the change.
Amazon was on a roll with changes this month and sent out an email notifying authors that if they were using a Payment Service Provider that is not a participant in Amazon’s Payment Service Provider Program, you would need to change where your royalties are deposited. I didn’t get the email because I have my royalties deposited into a local bank, but there were plenty of authors who did, and of course, because it’s Amazon, everyone was unhappy.
h/t to Emma Hamm for showing us her email on Threads.
In other news that’s equally disheartening, is this article in The Independent. Three out of five winners of the Commonwealth Short Story Prize were accused of writing their stories with AI. Upon an investigation, those writers were cleared. Unfortunately, I think we are going to be seeing more and more of this as time goes on. What really bothers me is that there doesn’t seem to be any repercussions for the people doing the accusing. Accusations like that can destroy careers and reputations, but there doesn’t seem to be any consequences. Another thing that bothers me is that when they investigated the claims, they went over evidence including “working drafts, time-stamped documents, and notes.” What if we don’t have any of that? I write in one Word file and edit in that file. I have some notes in a notebook and I also have bits and pieces of prose since writing in a notebook is how I get unstuck, but that may not be enough evidence if I am ever accused of using AI to write my books.
Life has been kind of busy lately so I haven’t gotten much done on Frozen Assets. I’m 74,722 into it with maybe around 10k more to finish it up. I was a little concerned that it’s going to be shorter than my usual, but then I thought that gives me some leeway when I start writing Cold Mercy. I don’t have all of Celina and Trevor’s story plotted out yet, and it will make things easier if I don’t feel like I have to compete with a 110k word book. I’ve been thinking about Cold Mercy off and on and I’ll take a break after I’m done with Frozen Assets to watch more hockey documentaries and read We Breed Lions by Rick Westhead. The research has been half the fun of writing a hockey romance and I think I might have said in a different blog post that rather than using it for only two books, I’ve been thinking about a standalone after my duet is done. Though I was reading about an “Alpine Divorce” situation on Threads that gave me an idea, but that will have to get in the queue.
As of right now, I’m not sure when I’ll publish again, as I’m leaning toward saving up some books for the next couple of years or just putting them on my website for free when I feel like it. I have come to the sad conclusion there is no point in publishing anymore, not in the way that I have been with cover reveals, blurb reveals, ARC copies, trying to have a big launch, and paying for ads and buying promos. I’ve done all there is to do, and like I told a friend earlier, I’m taking my hands off the wheel.
I have two more editor Q & As to post, then I will be done with the people who were kind enough to give me their time. I hope you’ve been enjoying them. I know it’s been fun for me to see the different ways editors work.
This is all from me this week. Enjoy the rest of June, and if you have plans over the 4th of July, be careful and stay safe!
When I was an indie author back in 2016, branding and marketing weren’t really “big things” yet. Amazon had been letting authors publish since 2007 and it geared up around 2010 when they rebranded into what we know now as Kindle Direct Publishing. That set the foundation for the Kindle Gold Rush that took place between 2011 and 2013 when, as legend says, you could just publish a book and print your own money. I missed that by a couple of years and things were harder. There was more competition and the authors who had been publishing all that time understood things like putting good covers on your books and writing in a series and did things differently than us newbies to keep their readers and find new ones. They were on K-Boards sharing best practices while everyone else fumbled around in the dark.
I was staggering around on Twitter like a drunk along with thousands of other authors and we were divided into two camps: those of us who wanted to improve and do things the “right” way and those who chose indie to do things their way and only their way.
You can guess which camp I spread out my sleeping bag in. (Just kidding. I don’t camp. My idea of camping is staying at a hotel that doesn’t offer 24/7 coffee access.) I wanted to succeed, and after doing what I wanted when I wrote On the Corner of 1700 Hamilton and my Summer Secrets erotica novellas, that meant starting to follow the “rules.” Write to market, cover to market, make your book’s insides look their best. Even following best practices on what to put on your copyright page. I was the ultimate “Do it right or don’t do it at all” preacher, and if you look back at my blog posts from around that time, I was pretty nauseating. This isn’t the exact blog post I was thinking of, it’s old and I can’t find it now, but I have many that sound similar: https://vaniamargene.com/2021/10/18/you-dont-have-to-do-it-if-you-dont-want-to-how-true-is-that-statement/ And after a while they all said the same thing. Follow the rules or you won’t sell books. Or you’ll sell books but you won’t make your readers happy.
When things go to shit, one of the first things you’ll hear authors who have weathered the storms say, “You have to be able to pivot,” and then you get all the authors who have been at this a while say, “Yes! Pivoting saved my career.” With the way things are in publishing presently, I’ve been hearing a little bit of this now. Be flexible, mix things up. Take a chance. Evolve. It’s the only way to stay relevant.
They aren’t wrong, and I’ve done some pivoting myself. Did it make me money? No. Did it keep me relevant? Well, I wasn’t relevant when I pivoted. I was hoping that starting a pen name and doing everything intentionally would help put me on the map. Choose a genre and stick to it (billionaire). Follow the trends (writing in first person present). Fit in with other books in your genre (putting sexy men in suits on the covers). Create your brand (billionaires in sexy suits). For many many books, I did that and only slipped up once when I wrote my rockstars. (Still sexy, still rich, so I told myself I’d allow it).
It didn’t put me on the map. It . . . didn’t do anything. Pivoting was like walking down a street I had never been on before in a town that I lived in all my life. It was new but didn’t bring me anywhere that I hadn’t been before.
So, this is year ten of publishing and I’m where I was when I published my first book. That’s not totally true–the knowledge I’ve gained would probably be enough to teach a class on self-publishing and I know a lot about marketing now. But I’m making the same amount of money I did then, which to say not very much, and with nineteen books under this pen name and ten under the other, going to bed with zeroes on my dashboard would seem almost impossible, but I do it.
Given all of that, I’m thinking about pivoting again.
The thing is, I’m not going to pivot into something that’s even tighter than what I’m doing, if that makes sense. When I was writing in third person, I thought I couldn’t get anywhere writing contemporary romance. Romance is so narrowed into subgenres that “contemporary romance” is just too wide of an umbrella for any traction. When I pivoted, I niched down hoping that tightening up what I was doing (subgenre and covers) would help, so rather than twist the screw again, I’m going to loosen it up and maybe even toss it aside.
One of the biggest changes I think will be just putting whatever I want on the covers of my books and saying to hell with how they look. I’m tired of the guy in the suit. When I publish Bitter Love, maybe I’ll put a couple on the cover. It’s a small town romance, and I think a couple would be a good fit anyway. And I’m exploring what I want to put on my hockey duet. I was looking at hockey arenas and hot guys and none of that looks appealing anymore. All my covers, all my hot guys in suits, they look like they could be on any billionaire book, and maybe that isn’t a compliment. Branding is one thing. Boring is another. Maybe I’ll do an object cover. I’m still not sure if an illustrated cover would work, especially since my hockey duet is a bit unconventional. (Beckett retired at 21 because of a family tragedy and at 40 inherited the team his grandpa owned.)
I don’t want to be held prisoner by my own backlist, but that means I have to let go of the fear that if I veer off or pivot away from what I’ve been doing since 2020 that I’m not suddenly going to miss my chance to be a bestselling author. I’ve been doing the same thing for many years now and it has always been met with the same result.
I get needing to know what the package is going to look like, and I get that romance is tropey. I like tropes and I’m not talking about throwing away the things that make a romance work. I want to go back to when I was creating for me first and readers second, but marketing and the “rules” have sunk their teeth into me and it won’t be so easy to let them go. I’m going to try though, because things aren’t working and when things aren’t working, there’s no point in doing them anymore.
I’m scared of change, only because I’ve had FOMO since I started publishing and that probably won’t lighten up anytime soon. But these days I might be more afraid of what I’m going to miss if I don’t try something new rather than the opportunities I’ll miss if I keep doing the same thing. I’ve done the same thing since 2020, and I have to get over the idea that “one more book” will change things for me.
I want to be 2015 me, with a good cup of coffee, my cat, and two hours of writing time. Because what I’ve learned over the past ten years along with Canva and Vellum and WordPress and Bookfunnel and KDP and IngramSpark is that everything else is just noise.
Along with pivoting with my fiction, I may be pivoting with my blog and cutting back to only twice a month. After ten years, there’s not a lot to say about writing and publishing anymore and I’m really reluctant to keep writing weekly if I don’t have anything to contribute. I won’t shut down though–I’m paid up for a couple of years and people are still loving and needing that paperback cover Canva tutorial–so follow me and you’ll get notified when I have a new post up!
It’s that time of time of week when I say I don’t have anything to talk about but then end up writing 2,000 words on how much I love to write while pretending I don’t care about my sales dashboard. I still love to write, and I’m trying to care less about my dashboard. I need to find my inner Gen X, stop giving a fuck, and go drink some water out of a garden hose.
Last week we had a heat wave and spent five consecutive days sunny and in the nineties. I didn’t mind this so much–because of my mother I’m a Floridian at heart–but Thursday night I had a terrible time sleeping and spent Friday in a heat-induced zombie state. That broke with a weekend of cloudy days and rain, but my car battery decided to lose charge and that was just a stress I didn’t need in the middle of it all. Luckily, it was under warranty from when I had it replaced in January, so it didn’t cost anything except some worry and time.
Friday morning Pim decided to chew on a sticker she peeled off the bottom of one of the dining room chairs, and I was lucky that years ago we had a cat who had what amounted to feline pica and knew right away she was trying to eat something she shouldn’t. I pulled two inches of paper out of her throat and she sauntered away like nothing happened while I laid down on the kitchen floor and peeled all the rest of the stickers off the chairs before I even had a cup of coffee. Picture of Pim for the cat tax:
Pim doing whatever she wants. Not thankful at all.
All that to say I had an eventful week last week.
I didn’t realize when I was thinking of post for this week that it would land on June first, and that’s perfect because now I can do a mid-year check in. Things have been pretty quiet around here. Wicked Games‘s launch did poorly, even with Amazon ads, hardly anyone reviewed out of the fifty or so ARC copies I gave away, and it’s just going to be another book added to a backlist that nobody’s reading. And that’s fine. It really is. I’m going to take a different route publishing Bitter Love next year, and for the rest of this year, I’m going to focus on writing my hockey duet. Since this is a check-in, let’s talk numbers. I’ll keep to my author side this time.
Number of words written this month I’m really happy to say I’m 46,000 words into the first book of my hockey duet, Frozen Assets. I jumped the gun and announced it last summer, but then I decided to re-edit a couple of books and wrote Bitter Love instead. So I’ve been thinking about these books for a long time and have them mostly plotted out. I hate that it’s gotten to the point where authors have to defend their word count so they’re not accused of using AI to write, even though 46k in a month (I created the Word file and started writing on May 3rd) isn’t terribly fast. It’s not even NaNoWriMo standards fast. I’m not trying to get this book done as quickly as I can like I have in the past . . . I’m just having a lot of fun writing Beckett and Sloane and write whenever I have free time, which, even with the shenanigans my work is having with my schedule, is still a lot. I’m not going to speculate when this book will be done, or when I can start Cold Mercy or when those books will be published. I will put them up somehow and eventually they’ll get to Amazon, but I have very little caring about anything right now except watching hockey documentaries in the evening and writing Beckett falling in love with his fake wife.
Author Website Numbers I still keep seeing authors ask if having a website is something they should do, because of cost or time or whatever, and even for as quiet as my hobby has become, I think it is. This year so far I’ve had 707 views of blog posts and 540 visitors. Maybe I still have the sun shining in my face, but I take that as a good thing. That’s 707 people who know who I am. Does it make a difference? Maybe not. But that’s more than I would have had without a website at all. My blog is connected to my old list of MailerLite newsletter subscribers, but I don’t send them every post because I don’t get the open rates to justify it. I’ve actually been tempted to delete my whole list, but the email addresses can sit there. I’m not going to bother to send if no one opens, but I like posting updates on my blog, and doing cover reveals and snippets and all the rest keeps me excited about my projects. I pay about 100 dollars a year (I pay for two years at a time for the discount) and if we’re talking measurable ROI, it might not be worth the cost to some, but I can afford it and I’ll keep it going.
Screenshot of my WordPress Author Site Dashboard
My Biggest Mistake Not like the biggest mistake I’ve made in publishing this year, but my reader magnet is still getting downloads. I don’t check the stats that often, but someone on Threads the other day was saying how discouraged she was because books sales weren’t there and she wasn’t getting any traction with the free stuff she was giving away on her website, either. My website page (vmrheault.com/subcribe) where my reader magnet lives, is in all my back matter and in all my bios across social media, like IG, Goodreads, and BookBub. In May I gave away 34 copies. There was a spike at one point, and the link must have been shared somewhere because I usually give away around 15 month. That’s still pretty good for a free book that’s just sitting on my website without much active promo. I think it helps that it’s a standalone and that I’m not asking for an email in return. I re-edited it not long ago, but it could probably use another sweep since I’ve been making my books sound more conversational and I re-edited that one before I started doing that intentionally. I have Rescue Me in the back matter for readers who like standalones, but I haven’t gotten many sales of that so I don’t think the link is doing anything. Still, I’m proud of My Biggest Mistake, and sometimes I wish I could give it a new cover, but the cover is in all my back matter as well and that’s too much work to change it when the cover I have on it now is just fine. I’m locked into giving it away for the rest of my life because I’m not editing back matter for 20+ books. If I ever feel like I’m missing out and need another book, I’ll just write one.
Wicked Games launch I published Wicked Games on May 15th, 2026, and I am sorry to say the launch did even more poorly than Loss and Damages back in September. I feel like every book I publish does less than the book before it. Only 11 people out of the 18 who took copies on Booksprout have reviewed, and I have the same number of reviews on Goodreads, which is pretty sad considering I gave away 35 copies to people on IG and my website. I wasn’t going to do Booksprout this time, but I caved. I won’t be doing it again. Because out of the 11 who have reviewed, not even half wrote a review a potential reader could use to decide to read my book. I’d rather have zero reviews than ten that say, “Good book. Would recommend.” That’s not a review. To me it’s just someone phoning it in because I asked them not to use AI. Harsh, maybe, but I’m also paying for the service, and readers are willingly downloading a copy of my book to read and review. Anyway, Wicked Games has made less than twenty dollars this month, 8.28 in sales, and 10.59 in KU page reads. I spent 11.81 on Amazon ads before I turned them off because lately my ads have been doing really good impressions- and click-wise but the clicks don’t turn into sales and I can’t let them get out of control like they did last month. I don’t have any plans to do anything else with it. I’m terribly proud of Seth and Avery, and the “real” reviews I’ve gotten have said it’s good and makes sense (which was one of my worries because no beta readers and no editor besides Pim and me) so like Rose dropping her necklace in the ocean, I’m just going to let it go and move on. Though, I’m not going to go to my stateroom and pass away. I don’t plan on going on any boats anytime soon.
Backlist Sales I don’t check yearly sales unless I’m writing a post like this, but across all my books this year, I’ve made $306.00. With Canva, WordPress, etc, I’m not ahead or even breaking even, and I don’t expect to ever again. I got really excited when I finished editing my Cedar Hill Duet and gave them new covers, and I spent $85.52 on Amazon ads trying to promote them. The ads went gangbusters, resulting in 436,861 impressions and 91 clicks while I had them running, but even at a lower click-rate, I couldn’t keep them going. Those books didn’t take off with their new covers like I thought they would, and maybe I’ll give them away later this month during a free promo. This year they’ve only made me 35 dollars together, and unfortunately, they aren’t worth spending money on.
It’s been a while now since my King’s Crossing Serial has been published and out in the world. Since I’m only doing a recap of 2026 so far, I’ll just give you those numbers. All six books together have sold in royalties $172.86, but I was running Amazon ads to those as well. Those ads also went crazy and I turned them off. I spent over 200 dollars on ads to that serial this year, resulting in a small loss.
This just circles back to what I’ve been having problems with for the past couple of years. I can get ads to work, but I operate on a small loss or break even. I can never get them to do more than that, and it requires me to keep a constant watch on them so I don’t wake up hundreds of dollars in the red.
Right now I don’t have any ads going to any of my books, and I don’t have any promos planned. I always think I should do this or I should do that, but then I think I’d rather write my book or something else and never do anything beyond the thought.
What’s aheadfor the rest of 2026 What’s ahead is just writing Beckett and Sloane and Sloane’s sister Celina and her love interest who has yet to be named. All my research has been paying off and I can drop cap talk and contracts into dialogue like nobody’s business. It’s also helpful to know that most of a hockey team’s management is still paid out their contract fees even if you fire them, and sometimes no matter how much a player sucks, you can’t cut them. A lot of what I know I learned from watching Faceoff: Inside the NHL on Amazon Prime and reading sports articles (who knew free agents could be so interesting!). I’m lucky I love watching documentaries and right now I’m watching NHL Hall of Fame stuff on Prime to get a feel for the career Beckett lost walking away from the sport. The worst is coming up with team names that haven’t been used before by an “important” or “real” team, but you still want the name to be powerful and befitting of a hockey team. So you can get silly, like the Idaho Gum Chewers, but it’s just in fun until you can think of something passable.
I have Bitter Love in reserve until I feel like editing and publishing it, which I doubt will be this year, to be honest because while I love Jesse and Jordan, I’m just not feeling it, and maybe next year I’ll re-edit my rockstar trilogy. I love the characters and their stories, so it won’t be a chore like Faking Forever was (I never want to read that book again), but I’ll do it when my hockey duet needs to breathe, and I can settle in and enjoy a couple months of that. They don’t need new covers, I’m very happy with how they look, but those books are a couple of years old now and could use a proofread.
I have things on the table to keep me busy, and summer is just starting. My sister, daughter, and I have a couple of roadtrips planned, and I think we’re postponing Florida until September when school starts and fewer families will be traveling to Disney. I’m feeling okay, every once in a while a bad day will knock me over, usually when the night before I didn’t get much sleep. I’d still like to lose a little weight, but I’d have to get off my butt a lot more than what I have been. I’ll be getting new author pictures done too, since the ones on social media are a good five years old now. I need some new clothes before that happens, and my sister and I will just drive to a city park near my apartment. I might even sit in the same place. The flowers the city plants make a nice background.
That’s it from me this week. Next week is another editor Q & A. I hope you’ve been enjoying them! I don’t have many left to post.
Take care, and have a great summer! See you next week! ☀️ 🌸
I’ve only had whiplash once in my life. When I was thirteen or so, I was taking the van home from church. I did this a lot even when my parents had also gone to church, because it was fun and one of my friends didn’t live that far from me and we rode the whole way together. The roads were slippery, and at an intersection, a school bus hit us from behind. I didn’t feel it for a couple of days, but when I did, I was miserable for weeks. Luckily, I have never been in a car accident where I have suffered like that again, but being online these days gives me a different kind of whiplash.
Everyone is talking about sales, KDP reporting, and what you can or can’t do to sell books.
On the one hand, there are people who say there’s nothing you can do. Good books are buried every day, and it doesn’t matter how well your book is written or how wonderful your cover is. The algorithms are against you, and it does feel like that. You publish a book and it joins the ranks of the thousand other books that are published that day. There is no organic discovery, it feels like Amazon no longer pushes your books (is the 30-day cliff even a thing anymore?), and word of mouth is bestowed among a fortunate few.
But on the other hand, I am seeing a lot of, If your books aren’t selling have you…?
started a newsletter posted on socials consistently? asked beged for reviews? optimized metadata? picked the right tropes? run ads? rapid released? made or bought the right cover? written the perfect blurb? built an ARC team?
And anyone who has been publishing for a while will say they’ve done all those things, and it can get annoying and frustrating hearing that same chorus over and over again.
Because we can dissect that list and find many reasons why they don’t work anymore. It’s harder than ever to entice, persuade, or cajole someone to sign up for your newsletter, and when they do, good luck getting them to regularly open it and engage with what’s inside. Social media is a time suck and you’re fighting a different kind of algorithm war. Reviews can be hit or miss, but my experience with BookSprout, PenPinery, and giving ARCs away on my FB author page and through my newsletter has been less than stellar. Optimizing metadata isn’t a secret anymore and everyone knows how important categories and keywords are. Running ads is a gamble, especially with Facebook making it increasingly harder with their AI and interest targeting changes. Not having the right cover is so 2016 and it’s easier than ever to make something yourself in Canva or buy a premade, and maybe people still struggle with blurbs, but they’re doing their best. We know how important it is to build an ARC team, but everyone is trying to build one, and while publishing is a marathon, you may die before you reach that finish line.
So, what’s left?
I know this post sounds like a lot of what I’ve been talking about for the past six months, maybe even the past year, but it’s only lately that I’ve been seeing the tug of war online . . . or maybe it’s always been there and I haven’t been sensitive to it until now.
Perhaps one thing that made me go, “Hey….” is Becca Syme’s recent Substack article. In it, she says to stop worrying about saturation and start writing better books. In a lot of areas, I agree with her. For the past fifteen years we’ve been swept up in the culture that faster is better and that more books will earn you more money. She mentions authors publishing their Minimum Viable Products, and that truly did used to be a thing–just get it done and out. I think authors still think faster is better, just for the sake of feeding the algorithm and building a backlist, or if not that, then they publish the second their book is done because they’re excited. I mean, I just saw someone post on Threads that they put the first two books of a new series on preorder, but now they have writer’s block and were panicking because they barely had anything written. I get being excited, I even understand needing a deadline to work toward to keep motivation up, but that sounded like unnecessary sabotage to me.
So, in some ways, Becca is absolutely right. Stop thinking you’re going to fade away into obscurity if you’re not publishing three times a year, focus on enjoying the process, and give your readers an experience that they won’t regret paying for.
But I also disagreed with her. Not because I think authors shouldn’t focus on craft–we should all be trying to level up every time we write a new book–but because the authors who write good books have the same problem that everyone else has: discoverability. In fact, some could argue that poorly-written books seem to do better, but that’s a discussion that leads to nowhere so we probably shouldn’t do that here.
The truth is both sides are right, and that’s what gives me whiplash. Yes, authors should focus on craft and giving a reader something they’ll love to read. Yes, we should package our books professionally, write the best blurbs we can, and understand the basics of marketing. But there comes a point where “Have you tried…?” stops being helpful and starts sounding rather accusatory and condescending, like if you had just posted one more reel or spent five more dollars on ads, you would have made it.
And you know the people who keep telling you to keep writing, those are the people who have made it, and they have the “Just Do It” mentality because it worked for them. That doesn’t make them wrong (maybe annoying, though), but people who have found success sometimes wear rose-colored glasses, and it’s difficult for them to take them off.
So we can look at publishing and focus on what we can control. We can level up our craft in a way that our time and expenses allow, we can put good covers on our books and write good blurbs. But I also think we need to be honest about what control actually looks like. Not everyone has the money for developmental edits, professional copywriting, or custom covers. Not everyone has an army of beta readers, honest author friends who will tell you the truth if your cover sucks, or an ARC team that will actually read and leave a coherent review. A lot of publishing advice assumes access to resources that a person working two jobs, parenting, and running a household may simply not have.
Over the past ten years I’ve learned a lot. I’ve leveled up my craft, and I know I have. I never could have written Wicked Games five years ago, and I have said in the past that I tabled A Heartache for Christmas because I didn’t have the skill to write the book I wanted to write. I’ve learned a lot about covers, not just making nice ones in Canva, but making ones that specifically fit the genre and vibe of the book. And yeah, I do it alone. But even though I do it alone, I don’t stagnate because I love doing what I do, and getting better is a part of having a passion.
In my last blog post, I said that this post would be about finding discoverability if you don’t like posting on socials and if ads don’t work for you. I’m not sure what I thought I was going to offer, since my books’ discoverability is pretty much nonexistent. I make pennies a day, even with nineteen books in my backlist. And because of that, I decided to stop writing to publish and write because I love it. I don’t know when I’ll publish again and that’s okay. I’ve done everything on that list and it’s time to move on.
I’m tired of thinking I could have done more, and I’m tired of being told I could have done more.
I don’t have whiplash anymore. I don’t go to church anymore, either, and the friend I used to sit with, she’s been in my past for a long time.
But five months out of the year the roads are still slippery, so I’ve learned to slow down and enjoy the view.
Don’t get me wrong. The title of this post is a little deceiving. There are some flowers here and there and the grass of our apartment complex is dotted with yellow dandelions that look cheerful. But, sparing you the Minnesota weather forecast, it’s still cold outside, and well, after dealing with the doom and gloom, it would just be nice to be able to go outside without a coat on.
Wicked Games will be out this Friday, May 15th, and I’m not really doing anything extra for it. The book has just kind of slipped out of my brain, and it will be a struggle to shove it back in, so maybe I won’t. I’m not running ads and I feel like I’ve exhausted how much people on social media care (even if the truth is no one has seen the posts in order to get tired of them). It used to be that releasing a book was a big deal, and it still is, in some ways. I’ve gotten good feedback about it, some nice reviewers posting on Instagram, but going through the publishing motions isn’t as exciting as it used to be. I don’t want to be a killjoy, and I’ve been trying very hard not to be on this blog because you don’t come here to listen to me whine.
But I think it’s safe to say that I don’t have the time, energy, or money to do what it takes to move books, and I’m not alone. I’m willing to do a lot of things, or, I was. Like sending out a newsletter, a real one, not just on my author blog, consistently releasing three to four books a year, and posting on socials. It used to be fun, and that’s the crux of it. The hustle isn’t fun anymore, and at fifty-one, I’m understanding what my limits are and don’t want to waste energy on things that consistently produce very little in return.
What still is fun? The writing, of course. I’d walk away completely if that stopped being fun. Cover design. Scrolling through stock photos is tedious and getting up there with being not fun, but for now, putting together a cover I can be proud of that accurately depicts the story is fun. Formatting, to some extent, is fun. I like deciding how pretty I want to get with the insides, but a lot of the time I think simple is best and at the last minute throw out any plans to get fancy/complicated and just do a clean formatting job instead.
Uploading files and entering metadata is not fun, and having to do it over and over again on different platforms is really not fun. Bookfunnel, Booksprout, Amazon, IngramSpark when the timing is right. It’s tedious, really, especially when you pair that with the stress of hoping that what you’re doing will help just a little bit and you might actually sell a few copies during your launch.
So, I think any sane person would say, just do the fun stuff then, and forget the rest. And honestly, I’m really close to doing that. I’ve been thinking about what I want publishing to be going forward, and with my personality in general, having fun means trying new things. That means doing something I haven’t done before, like only making my book available on my site for a while, or going wide with it instead (I know those are completely opposite ideas LOL). But publishing the way I always have is getting stale, and I’m hoping for different results doing the same thing every time. Because when I look at what I’ve done over the past couple of years, doing promos, book blasts, and running ads, I don’t get different results, and I don’t get different feelings either. So, I’m not thinking about things the way I used to. We’ll see. The easiest thing I can think of would be to do something like, put Bitter Love on Bookfunnel and give it away as a freebie for a couple of months. No thinking about sales, no hoping for reviews, just giving it away and seeing what happens. I wouldn’t even bother to collect email addresses because I would have to change my Bookfunnel plan and I don’t want to do that. It’s interesting to think about. I’m not selling much now, so giving away a book wouldn’t cannibalize any sales, and I doubt that will change within the next year or so because I’m not convinced the publishing landscape will get easier anytime soon.
In other news, I got a preorder reminder today, and it’s interesting that KDP is now locking your book down five days before your publishing date, not 72 hours. So, with that change I would suggest that you have your final files uploaded and ready for your preorder/scheduled date at least a week in advance. The warning doesn’t bother me at all because I never put my book on preorder until my book is 100% ready to go, but I know a lot of authors edit right up until the last minute, so I would keep this in mind if you like to live dangerously. I have both the print and the ebook scheduled, so this could only apply to the paperback, but it never hurts to be safe and just have both of them ready at the same time.
As of this writing, I’m 12,000 words into Frozen Assets, and I’m really liking my progress so far. Of course, you know I get the “This book is going to be so short!” fear while I’m writing, but then I look over my outline and think there is no way this book will be under 80k words. All the research I’m doing seems to be paying off, and my characters can talk about hockey naturally without sounding like I’m injecting facts just for the sake of sounding like a sports romance. I’ll still have to research as I go along because when we get to team dynamics, player positions, and contracts, I don’t know much about those things and I want to sound realistic and believable. Just in case a hardcore hockey fan happens to read my books. There are things you can fudge in the name of artistic freedom, but I want the important aspects correct at least.
Alex Newton of K-Lytics just came out with his annual sports report, and in the email, he says:
Romance > Sports is currently the #2 highest-ranking bestseller list out of 69 main Romance sub-categories on Kindle.
Even more striking: 11 out of the Top 100 highest-selling Kindle books of 2026 thus far are sports or hockey romance titles. Eleven!
Google search interest in sports romance and hockey romance surged to an all-time high at the end of 2025, just as the TV adaptation of Rachel Reid’s hockey romance Heated Rivalry became the biggest original series debut on record for Canada’s streaming platform Crave.
And the next publicity boost is already around the corner: Elle Kennedy’s Off Campus will premiere on Prime Video next week, on May 13.
if Alex’s numbers are anything to go by, hockey romance is an extremely popular subgenre right now and if you were thinking of sliding onto the ice, there’s probably never been a better time. If you want to purchase the report (that also covers football and other sports), I’ll give you the link (not an affiliate link). I used to buy them every once in a while, but I can’t afford to now. I’m sad, too, because his reports are very informative and I miss his data (and sense of humor). There’s a little more information about his seminar, and you can buy it here: https://k-lytics.com/sports-romance
That’s all I have for you this week. Next week I have an editor Q & A from the lovely Megan Harris, and after that, I’m going to talk about discoverability if you hate social media and ads don’t work.
Have a good week, everyone, and take time to smell the flowers! 🌺
Hello, hello, from the frozen north where it actually got to 85F the other day and it made us all think that summer might once again be possible!
I have been very busy for the past few days, and I got a lot done. I finally finished edits for my Cedar Hill Duet, and got all the files uploaded to KDP and IngramSpark with their new covers. This will be the last time I edit them or redo their covers. What will be with them will be, but I was very excited to get that off my plate once and for all. If you want to see how the covers have changed since I published them four years ago, I dredged them up on Canva:
I don’t think my skill necessarily changed that much, but my taste did. The covers I just changed them to are more indicative of what’s inside, Rick with his lighthouse and Beau with the city behind him, rather than the generic background that a lot of billionaire novels have even today. I did end up changing the model for Addicted to Her, just because the guy didn’t match the vibe I had in mind for the character. I had to find a different pose for the other model because his arms were cropped and I needed all of him so I could show more of the city buildings. I really like how they turned out, and since I edited these within an inch of their lives, there’s no reason to revisit them ever again. It’s a good feeling. After KDP approved the paperbacks, I started some low cost-per-click Amazon ads and I’ll be thinking about what I can do for the “relaunch party” I want to have. I’d like to use my free days and run a Facebook ad to them or something because I think with the new covers they’ll sell better. Anyway, I’ll let you know what I decide and what the outcome is. If anything, it’s more content for social media because I always have trouble coming up with things to post.
While I was messing around in IngramSpark, I updated all of my prices (something they told us to do months ago), and I upped all my paperbacks to $16.99 which just seems so high considering I had some of my older books priced at $9.99. I don’t sell many paperback off there anyway–I only have my books listed in case a miracle happens and suddenly bookstores need access. So I adjusted my prices, made sure the discount was the same across the board, and turned off returns on the books that still had that on. Getting that pricing maintenance out of the way was a nice thing to check off my list, as was catching up and publishing my King’s Crossing serial, A Heartache for Christmas, and Loss and Damages. I was behind because I don’t like having to tweak the covers, but it will be a while before I have to do any more. I won’t be able to publish Wicked Games there until that title and ISBN “settle” on Amazon so I’ll get around to it this summer. It’s just a lot of busy work what with the covers and filling out all the meta data and uploading files.
I was going to wait to put Wicked Games on preorder since I had been messing around so much with my KDP account, but I ended up submitting the ebook for preorder anyway, and that went through just fine. I’m not sure what I was expecting, them to flag my account for unusual activity, I guess, but they didn’t bother me. I had an ARC reader message me on IG and told me about a typo that I fixed, but it will be there in all the ARC copies that were claimed and in the nine author copies that I have. It’s fine. I had typed “here” instead of “her” but honestly, if that’s all she caught because that’s all there is, I’m pretty happy. And I got this review on BookSprout and it makes me happy that this book has the potential to be a good read. That sounds doomsday, but you really don’t know how a book is going to hit until people start reading it.
A great suspense story that includes finding love at a difficult time and all that it involves. What a lovely personality Avery has. Considering the pain she has gone through she is very generous to Seth when he is so cruel with his words to her. I know Seth has his demons too but I felt that didn’t give him the right to be so vicious early on in the story. He redeems himself though and Avery gives him a second chance. What comes across is two people who have both suffered immense losses and whilst grieving are trying to find a way to live their lives. There’s lots of intrigue and suspense throughout the whole story. I felt it was well written and it was intriguing with so many avenues to go down. Seth’s long standing friendship with his business partner Violet was an added dimension that Avery quickly understood. Definitely worth reading, even if I did end up with a tear in my eye.
–BookSprout Reviewer
Eighteen out of twenty-five copies went on that site, and most of them were familiar usernames, meaning, they’ve stuck with me for several books. I was going to mention in the “Note to Readers” section that this would the last book, but I didn’t. I won’t be publishing anything else for a while, so I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it. I suppose it will depend on what kind of reviews I get this time. Not good or bad, I mean, quality. For Loss and Damages, I got one that was written with AI, and a lot of plot summaries. So, even though I don’t pay much, those aren’t the kind of reviews I want attached to my books anyway. If the reviews are better this time, I’ll reevaluate next year.
I gave away 35 out of the 50 I made available on Bookfunnel, I think mostly through Instagram since I boosted a post over there for a week. Here are my open stats for my “newsletter”–the subscribers I have from when I was building a list on MailerLite.
Out of a decent open percentage, only 1.85% clicked, which ends up being about 11 people. Of those, all of them could have downloaded, I’m not sure, but between BookSprout and my Bookfunnel link, I’m hoping Wicked Games can go live with around 50 reviews. Not because I think it’s a magical or number or anything, I just think the more reviews your book has, the better it looks and the better it will sell.
I said I was going to try a site called PenPinery for book reviews, and I’m glad I only paid ten dollars because that bombed. I don’t know if it’s still too new and they don’t have readers, or if I did something wrong. According to the site, I had one person apply, but I never got an email and when I tried to click on the notification to approve them, it didn’t do anything. That was after the campaign closed, because again, I didn’t get an email to know anyone applied, so I’m not sure if that had anything to do with it. Because it could have been an operator error and not the machine, I’m not going to ask for a refund, but it will be the only time I try them. Because if was my fault, then it shouldn’t be that hard to list a book, as I’m a fairly educated and intelligent person. Either way, my experience is what you come here for so I would find a better, perhaps a more straightforward, way to get reviews, and where maybe ten dollars will get you something more than confusion and disappointment.
I don’t have much more to do on my list, which I am really grateful for. I was getting really burnt out and I needed the break. Not that doing ten hours of admin is a break, but uploading files while listening to music and drinking lime Perrier is a lot different than editing two books that are five years old. If I wanted to, I could upload all my books into Draft2Digital and put them into libraries, but it would take a lot of work and I’m not sure if it’s worth it. Like every other place that has books, libraries are saturated. People finding any of my books and borrowing one are slim so I’m not sure if it’s worth the time. I’m not concerned about the fees they implemented. Twelve dollars a year for distribution services and account maintenance sounds pretty fair to me, and I’m not going to say much beyond that because anything that could be said already has been . . . last week. I will leave this hypothesis here that someone left in a comment on James Blatch’s Substack article about the subject. You can read what he has to say here: https://jamesrblatch.substack.com/p/the-reaction-to-the-draft2digital
I think in the next few years, John is going to be right. Everything will be going to paid eventually, and what remains free will be so pared back it won’t be usable in any long-term way. So if you were one of the people who had a problem with how Draft2Digital decided to combat AI books and scammer accounts, I would ask that you look at your business and consider where you’re going to be in five years. You’ll always get back what you put into something, so it’s worth thinking about.
Now that I’m done with most of my admin list, I’ve been watching Faceoff: Inside the NHL on Prime and just mulling over plots and characters for my hockey duet. I think I’ll give myself another week of rest and then jump in at the beginning of next month. I haven’t decided what or when I’ll publish next, and it’s kind of freeing just to be writing to write. I finally got around to watching the new season of Bridgerton, and that was fine. I don’t think Benedict’s story is my favorite–that honor might always belong to Anthony unless Eloise’s story blows me away–but it was fine. I also watched Heated Rivalry to see what all the fuss was about–it was hockey so I considered it research–and that was okay. I didn’t freak out over it like most of Romancelandia, but I can at least say I watched it now so my FOMO can STFU, LOL.
Anyway, I think that’s all I have for this week. I’m in a really good place mental health-wise with my writing. I’m excited to start writing my hockey books and just have fun with the world- and team-building. It will be a lot of work, but I’m looking forward to it. 🏒
Last week was kind of a bummer. I was down, not really because of book sales, which have actually sprung up lately since it seems like Amazon has gotten their reporting back under control, but mostly the weather has been dragging me down. We got a lot of snow and it hasn’t warmed up enough to melt off completely yet. Along with all the brown grass and mud, it’s depressing to look at. I haven’t been hit by SAD in a long time, but I really hope that the sun starts coming out regularly and everything dries up. I think it will make me feel better.
I also had a painful carpal tunnel flare up that took me out for a couple of days. They happened to be my days off work which, fine, I didn’t feel terrible while I was working, but it did ruin my time off. That happens every couple of months where my elbows feel like they’re softballs on fire, and the pain goes up into my neck and back. Stretching helps a little, but mostly I just have to suffer until it goes away. I was taking a lot of Tylenol since it seems like with my health issues my body has a harder time tolerating ibuprofen. The Tylenol took the edge off, but really all I could do was wait it out. I feel okay now, besides a little puffiness in my hands that will never go away because I type forty hours a week for my job (I’m a relay operator for the deaf and hard of hearing which requires a lot of fast typing), and then on my days off and after my shifts I’m working on my books in some way.
If you’re reading this on the Monday it posted, I’m almost done going over my proof. I only have about the twenty-five percent left, thank goodness. I’m still fighting to make my prose and dialogue sound more conversational, and in this proof pass I’m still getting rid of a lot of words, though not so many that I should have to adjust my cover. It will be a heavy weight taken off my shoulders when this project is done. I promised myself I’d take a break, and I’m going to finish watching the second season of Faceoff: Inside the NHL on Prime as part of my research for when I start writing my hockey duet. I also saw the trailer for Finding Her Edge on Netflix, and between the hints of a love triangle I thought I saw and all the ice, I figured I could add this to my list of . . . research. If I’m going to take a break, I might as well make it worth my time, haha.
I don’t have much else going on at the moment. I’ve been scrolling Substack more and more and I came across this article by Zoe Lea about newsletters. You can read it here: https://substack.com/home/post/p-191487138
Like with a lot of things indies are “supposed” to do, I had a really difficult time deciding not to offer a “real” newsletter anymore and just blog on my author website. I know that blogging doesn’t offer the same benefits, like compelling readers to sign up with bonus content they can’t get anywhere else. If I write something, it will be for everyone. The free book on my website also doesn’t seem “special” when it’s available to anyone who happens to land on my subscribe page. I get all that. So reading Zoe’s Substack article about what she found out when she asked readers what they really wanted out of an author’s newsletter made me feel better about my choices.
We’re told to send out a newsletter once a month. To remind readers of who you are when you’re not releasing books. That’s hard to do when you’re a slow writer, maybe releasing a book a year, which is the rhythm I’m going to fall into now that my day job has changed things and I have less time to write. What do you write about when you’re not launching a book? More importantly, what do you write about that doesn’t waste a reader’s time and make them click the unsubscribe button, or worse yet, mark your newsletter as spam?
Zoe’s findings aren’t going to be representative of every reader out there, but when readers say they don’t want: cover reveals, slice of life posts, and newsletter swaps, I think we can listen and at least consider what those things are giving, or not giving, our readers. A cover reveal doesn’t do much without a CTA like a preorder link or a buy link. Slice of life posts don’t have much weight either. How many times can you say you like reading during a thunderstorm? But what surprised me was when they said they didn’t care when you featured a book by an author who writes in the same genre that you do. Newsletters swaps are one of the biggest marketing opportunities that indies have. You share your audience and I’ll share mine. So when readers say they don’t want book recommendations? That’s surprising and maybe a little unsettling.
I feel like I’ve reached a happy medium on my blog. I do the cover reveals and slice of life posts, but they don’t go out to my newsletter subscribers. They hang out on my website where they’re open to the public and will show up in the WordPress Reader. I also have those posts connected to my LinkedIn profile. I used to have it connected to my Facebook author page, but I stopped that since I usually do a condensed version of my blog post over there anyway. Then when I do have something huge to say, like a new release or a free book promo, I send that out to my newsletter subscribers as well as put it on my website. I haven’t gotten many new subscribers since moving my MailerLite newsletter to a blog, and I understood that going in. Why give me your email address for something you can read for free. Sometimes I’ll get a couple people sign up if I’m doing a huge push like a book launch and I’m boosting a lot of posts on Instagram. I think the only way I can “force” someone to sign up now is if I add email collection to my reader magnet, but Bookfunnel announced recently that they were upping their prices, so I doubt I’ll ever pay to do that again. That just starts a cycle of trying to build my newsletter list so I’m not wasting money, and I’ve been happier not getting caught up in that hustle. According to my Bookfunnel stats, I give away about fifteen copies of My Biggest Mistake every thirty days. That readers are coming to my site and downloading is enough for me.
Zoe’s article did offer a couple of things that readers did want, which is just as valuable, or even more so: bonus content related to a series they loved or behind the scenes research. While I was mulling this article over and trying to come up with what I could offer as bonus content, I realized that if I were to offer “extras” like a chapter written in the opposite POV from the one that’s in the book, I need to write that stuff while I’m drafting, or I don’t care about it. For example, in Wicked Games, the book opens with Seth’s POV. He drives into Lakehaven Falls and finds the house he rented for the summer. A fun bonus would be if I had written when Avery had also arrived in Lakehaven Falls and checked out the house she had rented. I can’t write that now because she has her HEA and I wouldn’t be able to get back into her head before she was fully formed in mine. I need to get all the extras that I want to offer written so when I move on, I don’t have to worry going back when I’m no longer interested. That does mean planning ahead and figuring out what I want to give my readers while I’m drafting or even plotting out the book so I know ahead of time what I want or need to write.
I think the information that readers shared with Zoe about their likes and dislikes is important–rarely do we get to hear what readers really want. But then my first question was, what do you write to your readers to keep them warm between releases? It’s something slow writers will always struggle with. You can’t send your readers eleven months’ worth of fluff, and bonus content will only go so far. And if they don’t want to hear about what you’ve been reading, the shows you’ve been watching, or what your cat is doing when she thinks you aren’t around, there’s very little else to say.
This will be something I’ll need to tackle after the release of Wicked Games in May because I’m not going to publish anything else until next year. I have Bitter Love written, but I’m sitting on it to have something to publish twelve months from now while I write my hockey duet and get them ready to go. That might not take me twelve months, but I can’t only talk about Bitter Love for six months or however long. I’ve been hyping up Wicked Games for the past two months and most days I feel like a broken record whenever I post to social media.
Anyway, I just found it interesting because what worked in the past might not be working now (for example, people’s tastes obviously changing and shorter attention spans) and it’s always better to be aware than be taken by surprise later.
That’s all I have for this week. Short and sweet, which normally I don’t do, haha, but the past few days have kicked my butt and I’m still trying to bounce back. I think I really will feel better after I get this duet re-published, and I’m looking forward to relaunching them with *cough* cover reveals and promos.
As a PS, I have seen some really terrible behavior online with authors sharing their chats with KDP support. Some authors have gotten downright nasty with those poor reps and then they think it’s cool to put the screenshot of the actual chat up in a public space. They get a lot of people agreeing with them or sympathizing with them, but all it does is make them look . . . You know, it’s kind of like how you don’t wanna date anyone who’s going to treat a server like garbage. I don’t wanna read a book written by anyone who’s going to treat KDP support staff like crap and be proud of themselves enough to splash it around. I’m sure I’m not the only reader who feels that way, nor do I want to work with anyone who would do that.
It makes me sad that people are doing this and I just hope the KDP support staff is treated well on the employer’s side of things and are compensated for dealing with . . . what they deal with. They’re just working a job that helps them take care of their families. I hope if you need ever need to contact KDP support you treat the reps with kindness. The Amazon’s issues are not their fault.
Special thanks to Zoe Lea for sharing what she learned in her reader groups and other places online. If you’re on Substack, give her a follow! Next week I’m going to post another lovely editor who is participating in my editing series. Lennon K. Riley was very nice and happily answered all of my questions. I’m looking forward to sharing them with you. Have a great week, and I hope the sun is shining where you are! ☀️
![screenshot of Sandy Hodgman's quote:
[The author] produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion. During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with [the author] for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilizing AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process. We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.
This raises so many questions about authorship and what AI means for this industry but those are questions for another day. We regret that our enthusiasm led to this outcome and we apologize to our publishing partners.](https://vaniamargene.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/screenshot-2026-08-01-at-10.33.46-am.png?w=1024)
Vania Margene Rheault 