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Monday Musings and an Author Update!

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Words: 1364
Time to read: 7 minutes

It’s another Monday, but not manic, sorry, Susanna Hoffs. I’m just tired AF. By way of author updates, I don’t have too much. A proof job fell into my lap last week, and I started and finished that before working on my own manuscript. I’m 91k into the last book of my rockstar trilogy, and I’m hoping to finish it ASAP. I want to dive into editing them and polishing them up for an August release. The week between books went really well for my other trilogy, so there’s no reason not to do that again if I work hard enough over the summer. It’s crazy how I’m already thinking about a Christmas novel, but we’ll see how much time I have when school starts. My daughter will be in her last year of high school this year, and September is always a little busy as we try to shake off the summer months. I am grateful I write clean first drafts, but my co-worker who read my series and proofed them for typos would like to read the rockstar trilogy before release, so if I take her up on that, I need to make time for it.

I have a book coming out on the 17th, and the first review on Booksprout put my mind at ease. I really wasn’t sure about Fox and Posey’s story, but I was honest in my author note to my reviewers and said as much. I have ARC copies available until it goes into KU on Wednesday, and you can download a copy from Bookfunnel if you’d like. There are eight left, but don’t download one unless you want to read it and leave a review: https://BookHip.com/PPSTKQF

I’ve been trying to shake off some doldrums and with the rain and my girl-stuff flaring up, it’s been difficult. I honestly wasn’t feeling a book launch, and it shows. I need to start Amazon ads to the preorder so they’re up and running when the ebook goes live, and I was going to schedule a promo for Give & Take on either ENT or Fussy Librarian to keep the ball rolling on my books. I haven’t done that either, and they book about a month out, so we’re looking at the middle of June before I can do anything now.

I guess this all kind of feeds into the discussions online lately about writers and their worth. I wrote a blog post about it a while back, which goes to show we’ll always have conversations about things like this. I sound bitter, frantic, almost, and what’s funny is my situation has changed very little. I’m selling more books because of the 1st person POV change, so that’s turning into a good move, but my fiancé and I broke up so I no longer have that “stream of income” I amusingly called it. (I did work for it, so it may be appropriate after all.) The blogpost I wrote in 2020 I could be writing now, except I’ve learned a lot over lockdown and actually put into practice those things as I started releasing new books last year. At any rate, it just goes to show some things will never change, and writers’ pay is one of them.

The conversation this time started over a tweet from an agent who said her agenting was a career and our writing was a passion. Let me dig it up so you can see it.

I honestly understand where she’s coming from (don’t come at me with pitchforks, please), and I often think of something similar myself when I see all the writers querying and complaining about all their rejection emails. Savannah probably could have been a little nicer about it, but agents have bills to pay and they can only pick up what they know will sell. It’s not rocket science. On the flip side, which is where my old blog post comes in, no one pays a writer for all the work that goes into writing a novel. All the months and years that we spend writing, there’s no pay for that, and sometimes, after we find an agent, get that book deal or self-publish, there’s still no pay for that. Certainly not a living wage.

It can be disheartening to keep writing, to keep producing for no little to no gain. And when we complain there’s no money in it, everyone piles on and says you shouldn’t be writing for the money. Which… is what Savannah did. It’s quite the conundrum, especially if you break down all the hours you work on your books for free. I work maybe 20-30 hours a week on my books. I have to if I want to write as quickly as I do. Part time wages compared to what I make full-time at my job would work out to be about 15k a year from just writing. I’ve said before how much easier my life would be if that were a reality. Of course I love it. Of course I love helping my friends publish their books. Of course I love the readership I’m building with my first person books. I don’t know how you can’t be a writer if writing calls to you. How do you shut it off simply because you’re not earning an income?

I listened to the latest Six-Figure Author podcast episode and could really feel Jo’s plight. He revealed he was getting a job for the first time in a long time, and that brought on a lot of emotions for him and the people listening. I doubt I will ever be able to quit some kind of a day job. I need the stability of a paycheck, and I would have to be earning a lot from my books to even think about it, even if my work barely pays me a living wage. If you want to listen to the episode, you can here. He starts talking about that 8:00 minutes into the video.

I guess I don’t know where I’m going with this post, except I can see both sides. There are ways to make your book enticing to agents before you query, just like there are ways to make your book more enticing to readers if you self-publish. Know what’s going on in your genre. Know who your comp authors are. Know what shelf your book is going to be in a bookstore. (It really is amazing how many authors say they wouldn’t know.) Work on your craft. Whenever I see a tweet that says they queried the perfect agent and still got a rejection, I just think the writing isn’t there. It’s a tough industry and you have no idea who’s right. Should you get an editor before you query? I don’t know. How strong is your writing? Should you get one before you self-publish? I don’t know. How strong is your writing? Either way, you have to know the industry. Read Publisher’s Weekly. Read Publisher’s Marketplace if you can afford it. Read Jane Friedman’s The Hot Sheet if you can afford it. Publishing is a business. Learn about the business you’re in. Someone DM’d me and asked me a question because she said I knew more about indie publishing than anyone else she knew. That’s not just from publishing books. That’s from listening to podcasts. Reading blog articles. That’s from listening to talks on YouTube like the 20books50k conference last year in Vegas. That’s from knowing the heavy-hitters in the industry and signing up for their newsletters. Sign up for workshops if you can. Anytime Melanie Harlow speaks, I’m on it. What do you do to stay on top of your industry? When you’re querying, what can you bring to the table? Everyone keeps saying the agent/writer relationship is a partnership. Okay, what’s in your half besides your book?

I don’t understand the helpless mentality online. You are not helpless. Your career is in your hands. You just have to decide how long you want to work for free, because it’s a lot longer than any of us realized it would be.

This is the first year ever that I have sold a book or had page reads every day since January 1st. My craft is better, my brand stronger, and my focus clearer. I didn’t know what I wanted when I first started publishing. I do now. And until I have to be like Jo and cut back to find something else that will pay the bills, I’ll never stop trying.

Hopefully, you don’t either.

Have a great week!

Monday Musings and Quick Author Update

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Words: 1100
Time to read: 6 minutes

Happy Monday, if you like that kind of thing. Today, incidentally, is the first day of May, as well, which means everyone should probably check to see how their ads are doing and compare ad spend with royalties earned. Because my Amazon ads were running away with clicks but my royalties didn’t seem to be keeping up, I paused some of them. Sometimes that’s not the best idea, but until royalties catch up, I can only spend so much. I’ve made $219.62 this month in sales, spent $108.00 on Amazon Ads (my fault I wasn’t keeping track of them) and $39.96 on my Facebook ad for Rescue Me. Of course, that’s not great (an ROI of $71.66), and I take all the blame for my Amazon ads. I had one going for Rescue Me that didn’t make any sense, because those clicks were .34 which is what I earn on a .99 book. My FB ad is .13/click so I make a tiny something. Mostly I’m using it as a gateway to my other books, and just from Rescue Me this month I made $72.22 so at least the FB ad is paying for itself.

Over the weekend I put Faking Forever on Bookfunnel to offer a few ARCs to my newsletter subscribers and later this month I’ll need to put it on Booksprout for reviews. That is going to go live around the 17th sometime, and I need to book another promo for Give & Take. I wanted to for Captivated but that duet isn’t selling and as I have lamented before, there’s no point in trying to throw money at that duet anymore. If people find it with my low click bid ads, that’s cool, but as my backlist grows, it may just get lost in the shuffle.

Today I wanted to talk a little bit about why I give away a full novel as my reader magnet for my newsletter subscribers. You hear a lot of opinions on it. No one wants to put in that amount of work into something for nothing, or they want to make money off selling it instead. Maybe they can write something shorter that still gets the job done (but how you would measure that is debatable–maybe if no one signs up would be a hint). I can understand the reluctance, and I tried writing short for my reader magnet too. But when I realized it would be easier to just give away something longer, the idea wasn’t so painful. Mostly, I heard advice a long time ago that made sense: you want to give your readers a taste of what you write. I will never write a novella, nor do I write short stories. My Biggest Mistake is the perfect example of what I’m writing under my pen name. It’s 78k words long, is about a billionaire who finds love (and family), and it’s steamy. There really is nothing better I could give away, and if the readers who picked it up don’t like that, they sure as hell aren’t going to like what’s in my backlist I’m selling.

Someone in one of my writing groups said she read that people think their email is worth ten to twenty dollars. I tried to find the source, but after snooping around online for a bit, I gave up. What’s important here is that people don’t give their email addresses to just anyone and for just anything. Authors who don’t like newsletters and haven’t started one because of their own personal biases will probably believe this more than anyone. They protect their email and will only give it away if they know it’s worth it. A $4.99 ebook more than likely isn’t worth it unless the cover and blurb really pull them in, but perhaps the books you’ve already written add to the value, the books you’ll write, and the special offers you’ll only give newsletter subscribers might be enough to tip them over the edge. Since I started my newsletter last year around this time, I’ve given my reader magnet away 952 times. I collect email addresses through Bookfunnel and Bookfunnel sends them directly to my MailerLite account. I don’t force people to give me their address, so I’m 300 email addresses short in my MailerLite account. I was hoping to add people who really wanted to be there by giving them the choice.

I suppose what I’m trying to say is, you need to make sure you’re giving value to your subscribers, and not think you’re entitled to emails just because you have a newsletter. A little short story may not do it, though there are plenty of ways to entice readers, one way being writing bonus content for newsletter subscribers only. I’m too lazy to do this– and once a story’s done in my mind, it’s done. I had one reviewer for Rescue Me say she appreciated I didn’t dangle bonus content in front of her in the form of a newsletter sign up, and I don’t do that because I’m already giving away a book and don’t feel the need to give away anything more than that. It frees up a lot of headspace.

My novel took 3 months to write and I can use it for years to build my list. I think that’s a great return on investment. I can understand if it takes you longer to write a book, but you will have to decide what you want to offer instead. It may not be good enough to entice subscribers and it will take you a lot longer to build your list.

This is all I have for his week. I’m just trying like mad to get the last book of this trilogy written, and it’s been one of those books that are more fun to read than to write. I’m going to have to make a serious effort to finish up in the next couple of weeks. I’ve already went back and read this book from the beginning twice, so I don’t need to do it again. I know exactly what I need to get it done, I just need to stop letting things get in the way. I’ve enjoyed writing this trilogy very much, and like all the other books I’ve written, I’ll be sad when their stories are done and it’s time to move on. After these are good to go, I may be able to squeeze in a Christmas novel. I really want to write one and have some kind of holiday auction plot simmering in the back of my mind, but we’ll see. I need to finish the book I AM writing first and take it from there.

Have a great first week of May everyone! Make every day count!

Monday Musings–when your book won’t sell–and Author Update

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Words: 1792
Time to read: 9 minutes

I’ll try to keep my musing short this week. I’m tired. I finished the second book in my rockstar trilogy. It came in at 92,633 which is shorter than the first one, but I didn’t expect them to be equal in length–not when the first turned out to be 107k. I created the file on February first, which makes no sense why I felt like I was working on this book forever, but I did.

Anyway, I’m proud of it and proud of the twists and turns that developed while I was writing it. I’ll have to take a break because while I know some of the backstory to both characters of the last book, I don’t know much else. I need to plot more before I start writing. In the meantime, I have a book coming out in May, and I’ll read that one more time and fix the back matter as I probably have the old covers to my duet there and maybe I’ll put the trilogy link there instead. They are better sellers no matter how much I push my duet, and there’s no point in beating a dead horse.

That’s part of my musings for today. Why some books sell practically by themselves and why some don’t. It seems every author has this issue. In fact, Joanna Penn said as much when I (finally) listened to her interview with Jane Friedman back in December. She said:

Because it explains why — like, I’ve got 35 books now, and most of my income comes from a handful of them. And, obviously, every single one I thought was going to sell, but it’s only a few.

JOanna Penn https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2022/12/19/changes-in-publishing-with-jane-friedman/

It’s disheartening, in a way. Not because books are our babies and we love them all equally, but I put a lot of time into each and every book. I watched hours of construction accidents on YouTube to write Captivated by Her. Yes, I might have fudged on a few things because it’s a romance and not a crane operating manual, but I did a lot of research to write Rick’s accident and what caused it as realistically as possible.

Of course, I made two mistakes when I put them out: I didn’t offer them to Booksprout first for reviews, and I published them with covers I changed–wasting the bump Amazon gives new releases. With almost no reviews on either book, that time is nothing I’ll get back. What also didn’t help was that I waited two months between books, when really what I should have done is just released them together or a week apart like I did my trilogy. At the very least, I should have put the second one on pre-order so readers who read the first book would know the second is coming in a decent amount of time.

I can look back at those mistakes, but there’s no way to know that even if I had done those things it would have made a difference. I can always pull them out of KU and offer them to Booksprout reviewers, or take a chance with Amazon and put them on there anyway (I am definitely not comfortable doing that) or keep pushing them with promos and ads. Or, I can just let them go, which isn’t what I want to do, for obvious reasons. It doesn’t hurt to run low cost-per-click Amazon ads, impressions are free so you’re not necessarily wasting money setting them up, but looking at what a small backlist I have so far, it is a bummer that they aren’t doing better. Since their release last summer, they’ve made $214.62 together. To put that in perceptive, because I’m sure there are some of you who are saying that’s good, Rescue Me has made that on its own since its release in September.

I’ve moaned about this before, but actually, this is common. What’s depressing about it is when you have a very small backlist or if you only have one or two books out that aren’t doing well, you’ll have no sales or traction and you’ll have no idea why. Your book could have all the right things–good cover, good blurb, but just for some unknown reason it’s not “hitting” and the longer it’s out without sales, the faster it will sink. You can try to bump it up with a new cover, but if you’ve already spent money on a cover you’ll probably be reluctant to spend more–especially when positive results aren’t a sure thing.

When I re-edited Wherever He Goes, I thought about putting an illustrated cover on it instead of what it is now (it’s funnier than my other books and the content would have supported that change). I don’t have any experience with illustrated covers and I would have had to hire out. It’s not a gamble I took, one because the book is old, but two, an illustrated cover wouldn’t have fit in with the rest of the books in my backlist. I like the cover that’s on it now, and I think the blurb is a good one, but despite it being my favorite, no matter how many ads I set up, I can’t sell it.

What can you do when this happens to you?

*Realize that it happens to everyone. Not every author’s books are going to sell like gang-busters–probably not even Colleen Hoover sells all her books equally.

*Focus on the books that do sell–even if it hurts. The ad gurus tell you to throw your money at your books that do sell, and that’s good advice if you don’t have a money to gamble with. If your books already have a natural momentum or easily find traction with a little bit of help, no point in trying to push a rock up a mountain when it can tumble down on its own.

*In that vein, you can try different advertising strategies if you have a little money to play with. Maybe you can’t get any impressions or clicks on with Amazon ads, but with the freedom of a graphic, being able to choose a target audience, and being able to use as many words as you want in the description, maybe you get more interested eyes using FB ads.

*Another thing you can do is write and publish more. I don’t want to say eventually you’ll write something that will sell, because that just sounds dreary and after a while you’re writing for money and sales instead of writing what you love. Wherever He Goes is a road trip/close proximity contemporary romance. There’s nothing unconventional about it. I loved writing it, and that will have to be satisfaction on its own.

*Think about the risks you want to take. Series are great for read-through, if your book one is solid and hits the market in the right way. A book one that sinks won’t get read-through to the other books. It’s a conundrum I see on Twitter a lot. Authors love to release books as they write them (find some patience, y’all), and then they’re faced with the question of, Is my book not selling because it’s not hitting the market in the right way, or is it not selling because it’s a book in a series and the series isn’t done yet. Then they have to decide if they want to keep going. It’s difficult to find motivation to keep writing a series when the evidence, misleading or not, points to the fact no one wants to read it. That’s a lot of work for no foreseeable gain. For better or for worse, I write all the books at once and only release when they’re done. I put my trilogy up on Booksprout and let reviewers download all of them so they could read the books separately but also review the trilogy as a whole (many did in the review of the last book). You can say that I take my risk ahead of time, and I do. Wasted time is wasted time, but at least I’m not constantly worried about finishing a series if I’m not finding any readers. Had I done that, I would have been in the same predicament many are. Captivated by Her is half of a duet, but I could never let myself not finish the story. Even if you only have one or two readers, I feel you owe it to them to give them closure. Don’t make them waste their time…or their money.

What am I going to do next? I haven’t run a promo on Captivated by Her, and I’ll plan one soon. I wanted to run a couple of free days when I paid for my Freebooksy for Give & Take, hoping to piggyback off that sale (and promo fee), but its time in Kindle Select was about to renew and KDP wouldn’t let me. So I can buy a promo somewhere I haven’t before if they don’t take the number of reviews into consideration when they vet the books for approval. Otherwise, I’ll just have to keep running ads and hope for the best. I can throw myself at my readers’ mercy and beg for reviews in the back matter, but this where you have decide where you want to put your energy. It’s not that I want to let those go, exactly, but the trilogy I’m working on now needs my attention or I”ll never get them done by the time I want to publish them.

That’s all I have for this week. Besides writing and watching my Freebooksy sale results fade on my trilogy, I’m not doing much else. My coworker finished hunting for typos with my King’s Crossing series, and she loved it! That’s a relief, but even bigger is she didn’t find any plot holes, which would have been a bear to fix at this point. After my rockstar trilogy is finished, I’ll be getting those ready for release–I need to fix what she found and tweak the covers. I have a standalone plotted out that I’ll write next as kind of a palette cleanser, and then on to another 6 books series. I have two written and don’t want them to go to waste, so I’ll work on those for a 2025 release. That is too far into the future for me, and I can only focus on getting through each day and hoping it doesn’t freaking snow anymore. By the middle of March in Minnesota, we are all waiting for spring to come.

Anyway, have a great week, and if you have a book that’s not selling or ideas on how to fix that, let me know in the comments! Until next time!

Monday Author Update and Plot-Driven vs. Character-Driven Novels

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Words: 1155
Time to read: 6 minutes

I have zero things to write about this week. All I’ve been focused on is getting words down for this trilogy, and as of right now I’m 62k into the second book. I am loving this couple though, and turning that standalone into more books was a good choice.

These are character-driven books, and every once in a while I get a touch of imposter syndrome. Are these books going to be boring? Is there enough going on? But I’ve come to realize that character-driven books are what I write. Probably the only book I’ve ever written where characters are actually moving around on the page is Wherever He Goes, but that’s a road trip novel. There’s not much of a road trip if they aren’t moving and things aren’t happening. I’ve described my books as “quiet”–characters exploring themselves and how they need to overcome their flaws to get what they want. There’s a fine line between a character-driven book that’s “quiet” and a book that drags. I don’t get a lot of feedback before I publish, but I’ve already had some volunteers for this trilogy. I’m going to need them, I think, if only to reassure myself that the books move forward and keep readers interested.

The biggest tip I have for anyone who wants to write a character-driven book, or think they are, is you can’t be repetitious. My books depend a great deal on dialogue, but that means when characters are speaking to each other, new information must be presented at all times or there must be some kind of internal revelation. If your characters are only rehashing what has been spoken of previously, you’re wasting your readers’ time. Always know what you want out of a scene, and if you have characters talking just for the hell of it, usually that’s a sign you don’t know what your characters need, what they want, or how they’ll go about getting it. With every conversation, information must be revealed for the first time and/or a personal discovery must be made because of that information. Most of the time, that’s not difficult, but sometimes, especially in real life, people need to hear something more than once for it to sink in, or they need to hear it from more than one person. That’s not a great thing in a novel and rehashing can slow your pace and bore your reader. Try to make each scene count.

Some people might be a little confused between what a plot-driven novel is and what a character-driven novel is. There are plenty of resources out there if you want to explore, but I like this slide by a presentation Melanie Harlow did a while back.

Surface problems are usually not that important in a character-driven romance novel. It’s the emotional wounds of the characters that keep them apart and are a bitch to overcome. The emotional wounds and the flaws they must overcome is what the 3rd act breakup is all about–if there is one. As you can see, the emotional wounds are what causes the true conflict in a romance novel, and if you don’t have those, everything that keeps your couple apart is superficial and readers won’t be invested in your couple staying together for their happily ever after.

Melanie spoke at the 20booksto50k conference last November, but her talk is incomplete and the audio for what is available is poor. But, I mention it because the slides are available, and they are a goldmine of information if you want to download them. https://drive.google.com/drive/folder… She’s also part of a steamy romance panel, which I haven’t watched yet (hello work/life balance) so I can’t comment on quality, but you can check it out here.

Also, there is an Emotional Wounds thesaurus available, and it’s great for digging and thinking up ideas for how to make your characters miserable. You can check it out here. https://www.amazon.com/Emotional-Wound-Thesaurus-Writers-Psychological/dp/0989772594

screenshot of cover taken from Amazon

My Freebooksy for the first in my trilogy went really well. For the two days it was free, I gave away 3,797 copies. I think people are still confused how this can convert to royalties earned, and I’ve said in the past that a Freebooksy only works well if you’re giving away a first in series. Read-through is where the royalties come in. Also, if you’re in Kindle Select some readers will borrow your book instead of downloading it, and if they do that, you get paid for page reads. You have to weigh the pros on cons of paying to give your book away. It won’t give everyone the return on investment they’re looking for. In my case, between borrows and read-through, I earned back my fee ($120.00) in 4 days and so far have had a ROI of 131%. (ROI = Net income / Cost of investment x 100.) People don’t read right away and my book is sitting on 3,797 Kindles. I can only hope that as the weeks and months go by that people get to my book in their TBR piles and go on to read the other two books in the trilogy.

I admit I dropped the ball and didn’t have Amazon ads running during that time. That will probably turn into a mistake for me as I had nothing propping up that promotion. The only other thing I was doing was running an FB ad to Rescue Me, and I already said last week how that turned out. Right now I’m running an ad to Captivated by Her, but I’m watching it closely as the last time I tried, I didn’t get any sales for the clicks. I ended up pausing the ad. I have it on sale for .99 right now and I used a different graphic to go along with the ad. I’m hoping for a better outcome.

The next big push might be a Freebooksy for Captivated when my next standalone book comes out in May. Though I did want to try Fussy Librarian and Robin Reads as well. It’s hard to believe that I’ll have had 7 books come out in 11 months, but I know some authors can do that all day long for years. I think this pen name is coming along though, and I have no regrets pivoting.

Screenshot taken from Jane’s website.

The only thing I have left is what I’m loving right now. I’m excited I signed up for a TikTok class with Jane Friedman and Rebecca Regnier. It’s $25 and the slides (if there are any) and a replay is available if you can’t watch live. TikTok is probably going to be my next step in trying to get the word out there for my books, but I like to explore and learn before jumping in. If you want to sign up, you can do it here. https://www.janefriedman.com/tiktok-basics-for-writers-with-rebecca-regnier/

That’s all I have for this week. Until next time!

What does investing in your business mean to you?

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We all hear that we need to invest in our business. To different people that can mean different things. When it comes to being an author running a book business, there are a lot of different ways to shove resources at your books.

Money. When you’re an indie author, there are a lot of places your money can go. You have to decide where that money goes and prioritize that spending. ISBNs are not cheap in the US, book covers can be expensive, too. Subscription services like Office 365, Canva, WordPress, and Bookfunnel, just to name a few, eat up a lot of my business money. Then on top of that you have ads and promos, an email aggregator for your newsletter. The list is endless. But you have to put some money into your books or you’ll never get to a place where you can sell them.

Education. One of the things I didn’t realize when I started publishing was all that I was going to have to learn. Back in 2016 we didn’t have Vellum for formatting, and I didn’t start using Canva for book covers and graphics until about 2018 when my friend Aila turned me on to it. Like most software, I didn’t like it right away because I didn’t know how to use it. Now I love it, even though I still don’t know half of what it can do. The same goes for my Mailerlite account. I watched several YouTube videos to learn how to set up an automated welcome sequence, and I had a heck of a time figuring out landing pages and how to connect my Mailerlite account with my Bookfunnel account.

Some things you can find out on your own through free resources, and there are some things you might want to pay for. I always start with the free stuff first and move on to paid classes if I don’t learn what I need to know. There is always someone selling something, an Amazon Ads course or a book marketing course that promises you you’ll sell 1,000 copies of your next book. Around the holidays, especially Black Friday and Cyber Monday, I have terrible FOMO because a lot of that stuff goes on sale. I’ve wasted money buying classes I shouldn’t have. I paid $49 for a ticket to Mini InkersCon hosted by Alessandra Torre that I never attended, and I paid that much for a virtual ticket to the 20booksto50k Vegas conference back in November. I didn’t attend live so that was a waste of money as later, they put a lot of the speakers on YouTube for free. I regret not trying to attend as I missed a wonderful talk by Melanie Harlow that would have been worth the entire price of the ticket. There are a lot of craft classes, book cover design, and editing courses. I have to admit, I’m kind of a class junkie (if you didn’t know that by now) and I have classes I bought through Mark Dawson’s SPF that I haven’t finished, and also classes I purchased through Jane Friedman I have saved on my computer. I have always loved school (I would love to try to get my MFA before I die) and I’m always $50 away from my next class. But I think the idea behind a class is you have to be open to learning what you don’t know. I’ll end this section with this Tweet from a few weeks ago. Learning is vital to your business and you’ll fall behind if you think you know everything there is to know.

Time. Time is precious, and you’ll waste a lot of it doing things that don’t help your book business grow. It’s up to you how you want to spend your time where you think it’s best for return on investment. You can say you’re “networking” hanging out on Twitter all day, but be honest. Are you networking or scrolling to waste time? Is there a better place to network? A Facebook group with authors in your genre, perhaps? If you’ve hit a hard spot in your WIP, it’s easy to find something else to do, but when time is a limited resource because we all have more on our plates than just our books, you’ll find you can be stuck in the same spot for a lot longer than you’d like. Marketing shouldn’t take up that much time–you can’t forget that without books (product) marketing doesn’t mean much. In Elana Johnson’s book about writing and marketing systems, she recommends keeping track of where you spend your time. You may realize that getting out of bed a half an hour earlier, timing yourself on Social Media, or skipping another episode of your favorite show can open up the writing time you need to move forward.

What else can you do with your time?
1. Classes, like I said above. It does take time to do watch the classes and probably the main reason I have so many unfinished. I’d rather write.
2. Read in your genre–with intent but also to fill your creative well. Reading in your genre is really important. Not only do you see what’s selling, but you’ll learn what reader expectations are and how your comp authors are delivering it.
3. Sleep. That sounds crazy, but you’re not going to get good words down when you’re tired.
4. Practice. If you’re taking a class about book covers, you need to practice those skills. I watched a lot of videos when it came to learning Vellum, and the first couple of books I formatted weren’t only to publish but to learn the software. Even if you take an ads course, you still have to put your knowledge into practice on the actual platform. These platforms don’t make it easy, either, when they’re constantly changing their dashboards. It still takes me a while to properly set up a Facebook ad, but without ads, no one will know about my books, so that’s a return on investment I can get behind.

My friend Cara said I could use her response to my tweet in my blog, and this is what she said when I asked what investing in your business means to you:

Effort is a big one, and something I didn’t consider. It takes a lot of effort and energy to keep going, especially when you’re not seeing the results you want. As I just started a new pen name last summer, I’m no stranger to the amount of effort and energy you need to start over. Unfortunately, it can take a while to see if those decisions will pay off.

Sometimes we have to experiment with what will work and what won’t and be willing to let go the parts that aren’t working and try something new. I let go of Twitter a long time ago, and I’m glad. Now when I tweet about my books and get zero response, I can feel good knowing I have other ways of finding readers.

I did a little experiment myself this month and put Rescue Me on sale for .99. I ran an FB ad to it, and while I’m two days short of the end of the month, I’ll tell you how it went. This is my FB ad:

This is a standalone without any read-through potential unless they go on to read my duet or my trilogy. A .99 book on Amazon will only earn you .34 per book, so after you pay for a click (my cost per click is .14 on this particular ad), the ROI may not be that high (in this case, .20 per sale). Kindle Unlimited is good though, and if I get page reads for the entire book, I earn approximately $1.32. As of Sunday morning, I spent $72.20 on that ad. I’ve been running it for the entire month of February. Between sales and pages read, I’ve made $97.99, ($24.98 sales/$73.01 pages read) for a return on investment of $25.79. Maybe you don’t think it’s that much. Maybe you think it’s not worth it for only 25 bucks, but that’s where you have to think about what you want for your business, how much you’re willing invest, and what kind of resources you’re investing (for example, time to learn the FB ads platform and money for the clicks). There’s more to a sale than the royalties you earn. You could get a review, you could find a new fan. You could get a new subscriber to your newsletter. If anything, you’re finding out what kinds of ads work and what kinds of ads don’t. I would have made 0 royalties if my ad didn’t work. So, was it worth it to me? Yeah. But I won’t leave Rescue Me on sale forever. Maybe I’ll try this experiment with the same type of ad for Captivated by Her. There’s read through potential for that book as it’s the first half of a duet.

I also paid for a Freekbooksy for the first in my Lost & Found Trilogy, but I’ll wait to update you on how that went. It’s only 4 days old and I’m $23.00 shy of earning my fee back. I can run down how my February did as a whole, but let me tell you–I forgot I was running Amazon Ads in Canada. Bad move. They really took off and unfortunately, they didn’t have the sales to go along with them. That was my mistake and I’ll have to eat the ad cost. There’s a lesson to learn every day.

Thanks to Cara Devlin who said I could add her response to my tweet in this blog post. Her covers are gorgeous and if you like historical romance, check out her books.

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Cara-Devlin/author/B083ZMCWM8

Have a great week, everyone!

Thursday Thoughts: Where do you post?

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I was scrolling through Instagram the other day, and I saw a fun “about the author” type graphic–and I thought right away, that’s cute and if I did that, I could post it to Twitter. I had to stop and think for a minute. Even after saying I’m dropping the platform, it’s a habit I can’t break, and I still scroll religiously every day. I had to stop and think about what posting something like that to Twitter would do for me, and the answer is nothing. The last tweet that had any substance about me (not a retweet or an article) was only viewed 93 times–and I have almost fifteen thousand followers.

It doesn’t matter the why–no one likes me, the algorithms, I posted at a bad time of day–if I’m going to post and no one sees it, there’s no point in wasting time there.

My Facebook author page has 154 likes and 164 followers, only a small percentage of my followers on Twitter, and I get way more interaction when I post than when I tweet on Twitter, yet, I rarely post on my author page. I had to think about that for a minute. Why am I neglecting my page when it takes just as much time to create content for Twitter as it does anywhere else?

I think some of it is fear–the people who like my author page, most of them I know in real life. I have co-workers who like my page, family members, people I went to school with, and you can pick any school. High school, Moorhead State University when I was there getting my English degree, Moorhead State Community and Technical College when I had the misfortune of thinking I wanted to go into HR. These people know me, on a personal level, on a level that my followers on Twitter do not.

But while I’m afraid of those connections, when it comes to selling books, those connections would probably earn me a sale faster than tweeting promotions on Twitter. They say you shouldn’t ask your friends and family to buy your books unless you write in a genre they read to keep your also-boughts on Amazon pure, and I believe that, but platforms also like engagement and social proof, and for every family member who likes my post, that’s more valuable than followers scrolling past a tweet. It will help me earn followers who aren’t my family and friends.

It sounds as if maybe I don’t want my books to be found, and that’s not true. I buy promos, I’m paying for two FB ads right now (one to my newsletter and one for my .99 cent sale for Rescue Me) so it’s not a discovery fear or impostor syndrome keeping me from posting in places where people might actually engage with me. I’m really not sure what it is, except, I’ve been on Twitter forever and it’s a knee-jerk reaction to post there.

I did a blog post a while back about how 20% of your work should fuel 80% of your success, and if you don’t want to work yourself to the bone, anyone, in any business, needs to learn to work smarter not harder. That means focusing your time where you’ll receive the most ROI, and for most authors, that’s usually writing the next book. If you have a limited supply of time, that doesn’t leave you much to post on social media. You want to make your posts count.

You can always cross-post, which a lot of authors do, and I still don’t really subscribe to that, though there is no harm in posting on Twitter if you’re not going to get any views anyway–as long as you can handle the crappy feeling you get when you don’t have any engagement with your posts. Then again, you have to figure out what you want and where you want to get it from. I don’t find my readers on Twitter–I never have and I never will–BUT it’s a great place for blog traffic. Which makes sense considering I’ve been nurturing my Twitter account for non-fiction subjects for a long time. Like any author who is caught in the #writingcommunity bubble, it’s difficult to break out and it takes constant reminders that it doesn’t matter if I don’t get engagement on Twitter. It’s the shares and likes on my FB ads that count because the social proof on those ads will end up selling books.

Anyway, so I was just using this blog post to kind of think things through, and maybe my rambling will help you decide where you want to spend your time online.

As for the graphic? I made it in Canva–their templates make posting things like this so cute and fun–and I’ll share on my FB author page and on Instagram.

Where are you posting your graphics? Let me know! Have a great weekend!

Author Update and Monday Musings

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Well, I finally finished my first rockstar romance–the book that turned into a trilogy. It topped out at 107,709 words, and I’m not sure how that happened, but it’s fine. That word count will change when I edit it, adding more foreshadowing to the next book (now that it is very loosely plotted out) and after some beta feedback, maybe there will be a scene or two that I can cut (though after reading that, a scene or two won’t help with the overall word count, haha).

It felt like it took me forever to write this book, when in reality, it wasn’t that long.

According to the file information, I created the file on November 10th, and I finished on January 28th. That’s 78 days, and 1,380 words per day. If you ever feel like a project of this scope is out of your reach, just remember, that’s fewer words per day than what’s required to win NaNoWriMo. I don’t write every day, and some days I’ll have a 0 word count and other days I’ll make up for it with a 5k day. You have to find a system that works for you, and if you have a problem with productivity, I recommend Elana Johnson’s book. It helps to know what kind of author you are as well, and she can help you figure it out.

https://www.amazon.com/Writing-Marketing-Systems-Inspiration-Self-Publishers-ebook/dp/B08B4MN9BJ

I don’t have too much else to share. My third book in my trilogy should be live when you read this. The books on my VM Rheault Goodreads page are all messed up because subtitles on the ebooks don’t match the paperback and there are two entries for the same book. I asked in the librarians group to fix Rescue Me when that happened and the last time I checked, they hadn’t. When Safe & Sound is live and the ebook is posted over there, I’ll ask again to fix Rescue Me and the entire trilogy. I hate going over there, I hate inadvertently looking at my ratings. When you’re on your profile you practically have no choice, and I hate having to be there for anything at all.

Speaking of reviews, there was so much talk about them last week on Twitter and it drove me insane. One author complained about a 1 star review, and she received so much support. I don’t understand. I don’t understand complaining, and I don’t understand those people who say, “It’s says more about them than it says about your book.” Are you for real? I’m pissy enough right now to say, SOME BOOKS DESERVE ONE STAR REVIEWS! Not every book on the planet is going to be worth 5 stars, or even 4 stars, and her complaining got her called out on TikTok and grabbed her a couple more one stars on Goodreads. She said she wanted a supportive place to vent, but a public Twitter profile is not a supportive, or safe, place. There are no private places on the Internet. The only way you can be private on Twitter is if you lock your profile down, and if you’re on there to network and sell books you won’t cut off your reach that way. Blocking people won’t help–anyone can easily open an incognito window and search your name or create a fake account to stalk you with. There are crazies who screenshot everything because they have no life. She said she deleted that tweet, but I’m sure that tweet still lives on in many many computers and phones.

What bothers me the most though, and what authors can’t seem to understand, is that if you’re using Twitter as a promotional tool, you’re using it to find readers, and it’s no longer an author space for you but a reader space. You shouldn’t complain about reviews or sales because your READERS are seeing that. If you launch a book and you’re tweeting about it all day for weeks on end, but you only grabbed three or four sales out of all that promo, the last thing you should do is complain about it in the very space you were looking for readers. It’s disrespectful to the people who did buy your book. A reader space and an author space is NOT the same place, and I see this all the time. If I see you promo and then in the next breath complain you have no sales, that is a sure fire way for me not to want to buy any of your books. I’m on Twitter to network, share publishing news, and if I mention I published something, it’s to prove I walk my talk. I can’t tweet about writing, publishing, and marketing if I’m not doing those things. It’s silly, and I learned early on the very best thing I could do for my books was to separate what I do online into two areas: my nonfiction like this blog and Twitter, and my fiction like my newsletter and ads.

I’m only at 800 words right now, so let me tell you a little story–I have a friend who is a staunch MAGA supporter. Very vocal about it. (I’m not sorry to say I muted her.) Some people don’t like your political views thrown into their faces, and she kept saying she wasn’t going to hide who she was. Okay. You’re not hiding keeping something to yourself, but whatever. So she was supposed to be part of this anthology, and she was so vocal about her MAGA support that her editor had to cancel the anthology. No one wanted to work with her or the editor since the editor was affiliated with her. This caused her to apologize profusely, but the damage was already done. You don’t have to tell everybody everything about yourself, and you certainly don’t have to put every little thing online. Sometimes it pays off, like Chelsea Banning going viral, and sometimes it doesn’t. I guess only you can weigh the pros and cons of sharing something like that.

Surprisingly, that’s all I have to share. I hope you were able to accomplish a lot this first month of the new year!

See you next week!

Plot Twist! Turning a standalone into a trilogy.

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While I was writing, as I am wont to do for 30 hours a week because I don’t have a life, I stumbled upon something that was a surprise I honestly didn’t see it coming. It’s not entirely unwelcome, but it will put a wrench in my plans for this year. If you follow the blog at all, you’ll know I’m almost done with a rockstar standalone. At 94k at the moment of this writing, I know exactly what I need to finish up–how many words I’ll need is another thing, but no more than 20k, for sure. It’s a long book about a depressed and washed up rockstar whose manager hires a life coach to get him back on track to record another album. This rockstar has bandmates, and they’ve been kind of hanging out, literally and figuratively, and I had no plans whatsoever to give them their own stories…until I wrote this line on Thursday evening….

Brock sighs, and I understand all that sigh encompasses. An end of an era, but the start of a life they’re unsure of. They don’t have Liv in their corner, a future with a woman they love. Divorced and single, they’ve been drifting since Derrick’s death, the band the only thing anchoring them to the ground. If Ghost Town disappears, they’ll have nothing.

Twisted Lies and Alibis by VM Rheault

That made me sad… I don’t want to leave Brock and Eddie with nothing, even if I don’t know who they are, even if I haven’t invested in them one little bit and in my head they are completely interchangeable.

And so began the idea to turn this standalone into a trilogy….but it will require some work. Here’s what I’ll have to do:

Turn the secondary characters into people and write them into the story. Like I just said, I didn’t consider them anything more than prop characters and they barely have families much less backstories and almost no page time besides brief scenes here and there. Readers will need to get invested in their lives and who they are as people or they won’t care there are books about them. That may require some rewriting on my part and giving them more page time. Usually when I write a series, I plan them out first allowing me to foreshadow what will happen in the other books. They both have children and ex-wives, and that’s about as far as I got. Not a good foundation for two more books.

Who would their love interests be? This is a tough one because I had to sort out who I’ve already mentioned and how I could turn them into romantic partners for my characters. This book is about Sheppard Carpenter who is having an issue moving forward when one of his bandmates dies in a freak accident on stage and it triggers his depression. The bandmate, Derrick, who passed away, left a wife behind, and depending on why they were married and for how long, I think that could work. I don’t know anything about Clarissa, either (even her name is a placeholder because I’m not sure if she’s going to keep it), except she was filing for divorce at the time of her husband’s untimely death, and that could work in my favor. Olivia, the life coach who is helping Sheppard, wrote a self-help book some time ago and has an agent she’s still friends with who could potentially be the other love interest. I made her old…in her sixties, but that’s an easy fix. But book one is set in California, and Agatha’s based in Minnesota. How would they meet, and what’s her story? The possibilities are there, and that’s what counts.

What are their backstories? A good romance needs two people who have a lot to overcome to be together. Since I’m working with a primarily clean slate besides their names and a mention or two of their families, the sky’s the limit….but I’ll need to sit and brainstorm because I need to think of the tropes and emotional wounds I haven’t used before. The tropes aren’t so bad–they’re easy to change to differentiate one book from another, but unique tragic backstories, or front stories for that matter, need a bit more creative juice and in the best case scenario, I’ll figure them out soon so I can plant seeds in this first book. The best series string readers along so they have no choice but to read the next book and the next book. If I can’t even imply what book two will be about, you can forget read-through.

How long will these books be? I was thinking the standalone would be 110k, but if I kept up that pace, we’re looking at another 220,000 words. Sheppard’s and Olivia’s character arcs are long….they need space because they are both grappling with so much and they have so much to overcome mental health-wise for them to be together. I might be too close to my story, but for now, all my scenes seem to be needed for their character development, so we’ll see. I’m still writing it and I haven’t reread from the beginning. I also already have a couple betas lined up so maybe they can help me cut it down a little bit. I’m not opposed to longer stories, but if I have two more books in the works at 110k a piece, I’m looking at a minimum of another 6 months of writing. But, if I do keep the books that long, at 330,000 words, it will be my second biggest project (my 6-book series is over half a million words long, and my 4-book small town winter series is 288,000 words).

Covers. I already had a tentative cover if this was going to be a standalone, and quite honestly, I’m getting tired of doing my own. Doing standalones is a lot easier than coming up with a concept I can handle with my limited skills and finding stock images that I haven’t used before but accurately portray how old my male characters usually are is getting harder and harder. You can tease me all you want, but I’m not cutting their heads in half, no matter how much easier that would make my life. I’m also up against Amazon’s advertising guidelines, and I’m not popular enough to sell books by my name alone. I said a long time I don’t care if they reject my ads, but it’s a lie. Amazon ads are a big part of my marketing, and if I can’t advertise a trilogy, that’s page reads down the drain. So knowing I would have to do three covers instead of one is a small deterrent, but nothing that would keep me from the project.

Covers Update: As I wrote this blogpost on Thursday, I did some cover experimenting on Friday, flipping through stock photos for hours and hours. Literally, hours and hours. But, I think it might have paid off as I came up with a tentative concept for the trilogy. I was so pleased I found the cover models, I have already purchased them (do you know how difficult it is to find men that look like old rockstars???), and since I always let you in on my creative process, I’ll show you what I came up with. For some reason I don’t feel the doubt (and still feel, to be honest) that I did with the trilogy that’s releasing right now, but I still can’t say for sure if these will end up being the final thing. They kind of appear washed out and I may need to change the background, but I used screenshots and they’re grainy, so we’ll see what working with proper photos will do. It’s funny, while doing research for rockstar romances, that there isn’t one definite kind of cover. Of course, there are shirtless men galore, but I can’t go that way, and besides maybe a stage/audience in the background, there are no similar styles. A lot of times, like mine, the model isn’t even holding a guitar. That can be good for a designer in terms of flexibility, but bad for creating something that will for sure work to bring in sales. Anyway, I’ve never been one for a cover reveal, so here they are with tentative titles–those definitely are subject to change:

All in all, it sounds like I’m going to do it, especially since I have covers now, and it would be a nice addition to my backlist. It puts a glitch into my publishing schedule though, as I was going to put out two more standalones after my trilogy releases before I start publishing my 6-book series. I’m only pushing back my series because I really really really wanted some kind of audience already in place when I release these books. I honestly think they are going to either make or break my career (think Sylvia Day’s Crossfire series)… and I wanted to give them the best possible chance. I can only do that if I have some branding and a backlist in place already. I’m growing my newsletter, and I’ll be looking at promo opportunities through Bookfunnel as soon as THIS trilogy releases in full. The second book is out today, and I have had some good feedback on the first book. Releasing another trilogy before the series goes live would be great, but I need time to write. I have a standalone (billionaire’s fake fiancé trope) already queued up for April, and if I waited until July or even August, that gives me 7 months to finish this trilogy before I start needing something to release. That’s kind of pushing it, but as I have been dragging my feet with this book anyway, it would give me a deadline to work toward. Had I known this was going to happen, I would have strung out the Lost & Found Trilogy a little more, releasing two weeks apart instead of just one to buy me a more time, but that’s okay. That just means less time on Twitter, which is no big loss. I’ll miss touching base with some of my friends, but all the negativity is getting me down again. When authors have to drag other authors down so they feel good about themselves, that’s when I have to cut out. If you think you can write better, then go do that, publish, and market your bestseller. It’s obvious people like that think they have one, so prove it. Shut your mouth and go do that. Jealousy looks terrible and I hope one day their bitterness bites them in the butt.

If you want to read more about turning a standalone into a series, here are a couple of articles that helped me:

Writing A Series – And How to Grow A Series from a Standalone Book by Kate Frost

The Essential Guide for Writing a Series vs. a Standalone Novel
Written by Kyla Jo Magin in Fiction Writing

That is all I have for this post and I’ll keep you updated on my progress. Have a good week!

Monday Author Update

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Believe it or not, I don’t have much to say this week. If things went correctly with KDP, the first in my trilogy should be live today. Over the weekend I set up some Amazon ads for the preorder hoping that the ads would have a little time to click in. Being I’m writing this post on Saturday afternoon, the ads are still in review, but I’m hoping they are moderated and approved with little fuss. I don’t know why they wouldn’t be–the men are clad in a suits from head to toe, after all. [Insert rolling eyes here]

If you remember from a previous blog post, I put all three up on Booksprout for reviews, and one kind reviewer read all of them and pointed out a couple of typos. Two real typos and a stylistic choice among three books is amazing, I think, and I was grateful she took the time to let me know. The typos appeared in books two and three, so I was able to find and correct them and upload new files before the preorders went live. I was happy.

I’m reluctant to schedule any promos yet because I want them all to release before I do. I haven’t had any unfortunate encounters with Amazon besides them blocking one of my Large Print books that I eventually gave up on, but I have heard of preorders being canceled for no reason and other glitches, so I’ll wait. I don’t know how busy the promo sites are in February, but hopefully I can get something lined up before the first in my trilogy drops off its 30 day cliff. I also want to set up a promo for Captivated at the same time using a different site and maybe the two promos will feed each other and I can get a nice lift on this pen name.

Otherwise, I spent a couple days beta reading for a friend and that put me behind a tiny bit, but I haven’t needed a reason to set my WIP aside. I’ve been dragging my heels from the start, and I have no idea why. At 80k I’m almost done, maybe 20-30k more, but I just need to sit with a notebook and write down every single scene that’s left so I don’t have plotting excuses. I had set the end of January as my original done-by date, so I guess we’ll be going with that despite my good intentions to finish faster.

Last week was pretty quiet, and surprisingly I don’t have any news or Twitter gripes. Like I said, my Booksprout reviews have started coming in, and sometimes I get a little annoyed when someone who says they aren’t the target audience reads it and doesn’t like it. I kind of feel that if you’re not the audience, don’t bother because you already know you won’t like it, but she complimented me anyway saying the concept was too good for her to pass up. (I’m hoping this means the blurb is good!) She gave me 2 stars because she didn’t like Jack, but what are you gonna do? She didn’t say my writing was bad or that I needed an editor, so I’ll take the good for what it is and move on. If you want to read it, she’s already posted it on the product page of Give & Take. In all honesty, I don’t mind. A book with all five-star reviews seems shady anyway. In private feedback I thanked her for her time and if she reads the other two books to let me know what she thought of the trilogy as a whole. We’ll see as she didn’t respond, but maybe my graciousness will lead her to read more of my books in the future. I will gladly take an honest and well-thought out review over a five-star lie. Though I will always love Jack no matter what anyone says. He’s just a little misguided.

I suppose you can have a heart attack now because that’s all I have for this week. Cross your fingers for me that my trilogy launch goes well, and that I make more progress on Twisted Lies and Alibis. We have two weeks left in the first months of 2023. Make them count!

Monday Motivation and My Word for 2023

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Happy Monday! We are now nine days into the new year, and I’ve always been a big fan of beginning how you wish to continue. Sometimes that’s not always possible as we learn new things along the way, but setting manageable goals and ways to get there instead of expecting too much of yourself and getting burnt out is a recipe for self-esteem issues, a hit to your confidence, and an overall sense of failure. Instead of trying to do all the things, tell yourself you’ll make one positive change this year that will help you get closer to your goals. That might be learning ONE ad platform, finding ONE podcast you like and going for a walk while you listen to it, or signing up for an informative newsletter (or starting your own!).

So my word for 2023 is INFORMATION. I’ve always been really surprised (shocked really) that more indies don’t care what’s going on in the industry. They’re an author, a publisher, a small business, yet they don’t care about learning what’s going on in the publishing world. It’s mystifying to me that when Draft2Digital bought Smashwords how many indies didn’t know what that was. Smashwords has only been around since the beginning of indie publishing and was one of the first distributors for authors if they wanted to sell their ebooks wide. That’s one example of how not keeping your fingers on the pulse of the publishing world can hurt you and your sales in the long run. They were missing out on one of the largest ebook sellers online! Not to mention Mark Coker, founder of Smashwords, has given a lot of great interviews over the years that I have enjoyed listening to. Take an interest in the industry that you made into your career (or at least an important hobby) and stay on top of news in the publishing world and your genre.

In the past year or so I’ve been lax with listening to podcasts and keeping up with my Clubhouse rooms. When all you want to do is write, it’s tough to find time, especially if you have a day job and kids or other responsibilities. But I have to remind myself I don’t need to listen to all the things or read all the newsletters and blog posts and I only have to listen to one or two every week or skim a couple of newsletters when I empty out my email box. You never know when you’ll hear a nugget of information that will elevate your career to the next level, or maybe you’ll hear something you can pass along to a fellow indie that will help them with their business.

In no particular order, here are my must-haves for 2023. While I don’t listen to every single podcast episode or read every newsletter, I like to subscribe and at least skim the subject lines in my email to make sure I’m not missing information I’m interested in.

Newsletters and blogs I’ve subscribed to:

Jane Friedman’s Electric Speed is great for publishing news. I love all things Jane, and recommend listening to her podcast appearances, reading her blog, and grabbing a copy of her book, The Business of Being a Writer. While you may not think traditional publishing news is worth knowing, what the Big 5 do and the choices they make do affect us. She gives equal time to both trad and indie publishing, and hosts many affordable writing/publishing/marketing classes. I’ve taken some of them, and if you’re not following Jane, you’re missing out. Sign up for her newsletter and blog here: https://www.janefriedman.com/free-newsletter/

Jeffrey Bruner/Fussy Librarian. Fussy Librarian is a paid promo newsletter and I while I haven’t used them yet (planning to next month when my trilogy is released) they have an excellent newsletter full of curated blog articles all in one place. I love skimming their articles and sharing bits on Twitter. You can subscribe here: https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/newswire/for-authors/subscribe. And I will definitely share how my promo does!

Written Word Media. Written Word Media is home to promo newsletters like Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, and Red Feather Romance. They host a yearly indie survey and blog about publishing trends in marketing. I’ve used their promos to great success (the Freebooksy I paid for in November moved almost 3,000 books and I’m still getting read-through). You may not care about trends, but they are my favorite thing. They tell you what readers are reading, what they’re interested in, and to an indie who wants to find readers, that can be invaluable. You can sign up here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/sign-up/

Draft2Digital. I can’t mention them without suggesting you sign up for their blog! While Draft2Digital is used by authors going wide with their ebooks, they still offer lots of information to authors in KU. I love Dan Wood, Kevin Tumlinson and Mark Lefebvre, part of the D2D team. They are doing such great things for indies such as the free ebook/paperback formatting tool that is available even if you don’t use them to publish. What’s fun is both Kevin and Mark are indie authors so they know what indie author life is all about. If you don’t have an account with them, you can bookmark their blog here: https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/

BookBub. Even if you’ve never used their ads before or tried for a BookBub Featured Deal, you probably try to maintain a profile there, maybe even ask readers to follow you. Their author blog is full of marketing advice and if you like making graphics, they show you the best ways to make an impact on readers. I love their blog and I recommend their articles on Twitter frequently. You can sign up here: https://insights.bookbub.com/

Dave Chesson at Kindlepreneur has a wealth of information on his blog, and reading all his tips and tricks and using his free tools feels almost illegal. I purchased Publisher Rocket years ago and have never regretted it, but there are a lot of free things he offers too, such as a QR code generator and barcode generator for paperback books. He stays on top of industry news and his blog is a great place to keep up to date. You can sign up here: https://kindlepreneur.com/

Getcovers. You may think this is an odd choice of a newsletter, but being that I create my own covers, their tips are actually a lot of fun to read. I love looking at the covers they create from stock photos and every once in a while I try to duplicate them. If I ever get tired of doing my own, this is where I’ll go, and you can sign up for their newsletter here: https://getcovers.com/blog/

Once you get going with some of these, you’ll find others to sign up for. I also get newsletters from Matthew J Holmes about Amazon Ads, Bryan Cohen about Amazon ads and other industry news items (sign up for his January ads challenge that starts on the 11th and you’ll be added to his email list), Tiffany Yates Martin and her editing blog, Nick Thacker and his curated blog of industry articles, Joanna Penn (more on her later) and her blog and podcast, and David Gaughran who has a wonderful blog and YouTube channel regarding all things indie. That might be a lot, but this industry is a fast business and thing move quickly.

But if you’re like me and like to get stuff done while listening, here are the podcasts and YouTube channels I can’t live without:

Joanna Penn’s Creative Penn. I love all her interviews and the sections she has at the beginning filling us in on what she’s been doing and her Futurist segment are favorites of mine. You can follow on YouTube, and she also will let you know when she has a new episode if you follow her blog. Here’s an interview between her and Jane Friedman I’ve been salivating to listen to. I just need to get my crap together and stop watching Turkish dramas.

Another podcast I love listening to is Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula. One of my most favorite interviews they’ve done is with Melanie Harlow. I think I mentioned her interview before, but if you’re a romance author, definitely devour anything she has to say about writing and craft. She’s phenomenal and you can learn a lot from her and the podcast as a whole.

The last is the Six Figure Authors podcast. While they don’t record regularly anymore, they did record one extra episode since they retired. Their backlist of episodes is evergreen, however, and you can still learn a lot. I refer these two episodes to Twitter people more than any other, though not sure it does much good. Haha.

I love consuming information about the publishing industry. I love being able to help other authors with that knowledge by passing it along via this blog and Twitter when I’m over there. I’m still trying to break the habit, but it’s so easy to scroll and when I clean out my email I schedule tweets with useful blog articles I pick out of all the newsletters I’m subscribed to. Not really sure if it helps anyone, but it doesn’t take long to share and maybe it can help someone, no matter how insignificant.

I have a few things I’ve been doing the past week. I re-edited my novelette I published back in 2016. It was all telling gibberish and it took me a day and a half to pretty much rewrite it. I’m not sure how many felts, saws, wondered, realized, and heards I took out of it, but it’s a lot tighter now and I won’t feel bad anymore if someone happens upon it. I also added two more short stories I had sitting on my laptop because I didn’t feel right charging .99 for 10,000 words. That would be something I would give away if I were wide, but the best I can do is sell it for as cheaply as I can. I had to rework the other two stories, too, but they sound better. I published one on here a few years ago, and I had to trash the blog post as they are in KU now. The other one I’m going to turn into a series at some point. It’s about an attorney who lives underground a huge city with a certain population who doesn’t mix with people who live above. It’s actually kind of a throwback to Linda Hamilton and Ron Perlman’s Beauty and the Beast I grew up watching. There’s something romantic about it, living underground, and I’ve been thinking about a project like that for a very long time. To get the dark vibes I’ll need, toward the end of this year after my other series is finished I’ll read lots of mafia. I want it dark and dirty. I’m showing my age, but I should watch this again. It probably didn’t age well, but it would be interesting too.

https://www.themoviedb.org/tv/2397-beauty-and-the-beast

I’m still 72k into my rockstar romance. I was distracted by a Turkish drama that my friend Devika recommended on Twitter. It was good, and a craft lesson in writing a dual timeline if you’re interested in that kind of thing. The pacing was phenomenal, and while it didn’t end exactly as I wanted it to, I think all the characters had their HEAs in their own way. If you’re interested in 16 episodes of angst, and who isn’t, look up Love 101 on Netflix. It’s an Original Series, so you won’t find it anywhere else.

https://netflix.fandom.com/wiki/Love_101

I’m going to finish my book this month. I started it in November, so I’m done messing around. My characters want their own HEA and I’m eager to finish a series I started two years ago. I have four books left and that will eat up the rest of my year.

Have a good week, everyone, and listen to Joanna’s interview with Jane! 🙂