Tag Archives: blogging

Networking with the Right People at the Right Time

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"life is one big tug of war between mediocrity and trying to find your best self" david goggins quote on cream background

In my last blog post, I talked about the writing community and meeting and networking with the right, or wrong, people. I see this on Threads, even today, though not at the scope it was on Twitter say, eight years ago. Back then, there were, like I said, themed days to post your work, like #1linewed​ #2bittues​ and #fridaykiss​ ​(that has since been moved to Instagram). The #writingcommunity​ was a melting pot of genres and publishing levels. It was easy to get swept away by how “professional” everyone seemed with their websites and debut books. Talk was cheap and sounding like you knew what you were doing had more weight than actually knowing what you were doing. I’m not sure how many books I bought that had fabulous covers that just sounded blah inside. And of course, the number of followers topped everything, and someone with 30k followers interacting with you or retweeting a tweet was like Christmas morning.

It was easy to lose sight of the real reason (if you knew the reason at all) you should have been networking, and a realization like that takes years to come, if it ever does.

If I were to do it over again, I’d stay off Twitter and focus on Facebook groups. I was there, too, in groups like Bryan Cohen, Mark Dawson, and 20booksto50k. But those groups were like being on Twitter–a mishmash of genres. I’d definitely focus more on romance groups and getting to know those authors. Once I started publishing, I did do that a bit, and joined the Romance Writers of America, but I didn’t get involved to nearly the extent I should have. That brings me to where I am today. Not having very many romance author friends and not having the energy (or time) to fix it.

I sound like I’m all gloom and doom, regretting and maybe resenting the path I didn’t realize I was taking, but that’s not entirely true. There’s a lot of good that came out of it, but it doesn’t benefit me in the way I’d like it to now.

When I dove into the Do-It-Yourself part of indie publishing, I didn’t hold back because I love the entire process. The formatting, even back before Vellum existed and we were formatting our CreateSpace manuscripts in Word, and book cover design, also in Word before Canva was around. I bought a book on how to use WordPress and set up my own website. Then tools like Vellum and Canva did come into existence, and with the encouragement of my friend Aila, I started using Canva and learned how to make graphics and later, book covers with it. I remember I wanted to do my book cover for Wherever He Goes in Canva, but I wasn’t sure if it was possible. Up until then, I was doing them in Word with instructions that I found online somewhere, but I thought, A PDF is a PDF, so why not try? So, I did the same thing I was doing in Word but in Canva, and I actually made a very nice (for what I was capable of back then) cover. If you want a sample of what I was doing back in 2017, you can look here: https://vaniamargene.com/2017/03/14/your-books-back-cover/ (Also, yikes!)

I was very into the soup to nuts of indie-publishing like a lot of people were, and while I do think it set me back in some ways, there are some skills that I don’t regret nurturing like learning how to use WordPress so I can maintain my own blog, or learning how to use Vellum so can I re-edited and update back matter whenever I want. The Canva tutorial on how to make a full paperback cover wrap has helped thousands of people, and I never would have been able to write it if I hadn’t learned how to do it myself.

But leaning into nonfiction really wasn’t what I had in mind when I was first starting out. Actually, I’m not really sure what I was doing. I never really thought I’d be able to turn my books into a career, and didn’t know how to go about it anyway. It took many years to figure out that other authors weren’t readers, that your cover, title, and blurb are more important that you realize, and when you’re just starting out, your books aren’t going to be very good. Meaning, I really do think it takes a million words or more to find your voice and style and actually write books that sound good. I think the only way I could describe what I was doing is fucking around, but seriously. Seriously fucking around. While I had good ideas, (I still love the short story I wrote about a woman inheriting a huge mansion on the coast in Oregon and falling in love with its caretaker) we all know that good ideas do not build a readership.

Which is probably why I’m stalled now, because I’m still seriously fucking around. My books have gotten better since I first wrote to publish back in 2016 when I wrote On the Corner of 1700 Hamilton, but I’m still stuck in the same DIY pattern I was back then, doing my own covers, doing my own formatting, and doing my own editing. What was popular and “wow” worthy back then really isn’t so much now, but with the way things have shifted in the industry, it’s not so easy to fix.

That brings us back around to having not met and networked with the right people and forming those connections that I could have used to find trustworthy editors and cover designers that don’t cost a fortune and who won’t use AI. It’s not impossible to find those people now, but it is a lot harder. Editors who will charge you only to feed your book chapter by chapter into AI or ProWritingAid, or book cover designers who use AI and try to hide it. So, not only am I stuck in the DIY trenches, it would take a lot of work to climb out of it.

I mean, where I am isn’t bad. It’s not, especially when you see other authors who are doing the same thing, either out of trust issues or lacking the financial budget to hire out. If your book is mediocre and it’s floating in a sea of mediocre books, it’s not mediocre now, is it?

I think I lost the thread.

What I’m trying to say is, had I networked differently, I could have went down the professional path rather than the DIY path, and maybe I would be in a different place. I say maybe because I have improved a lot over the years, even just re-editing Rescue Me, Faking Forever, and A Heartache for Christmas has shown me that and improvement like that has to come from doing the work. But had I hired an editor and bought premade covers for my books instead of insisting on doing them myself, maybe I could have gotten here faster. I’m not sure.

I don’t know why I threw myself into the nonfiction side of indie-publishing (and giving advice when I had no right to be giving it). Maybe back then I thought blogging was a way to sell books, just like I thought networking with whoever would also sell books, but besides giving me joy because I’m helping people and giving me a way to voice my thoughts to someone who might get something out of them, it’s not doing anything for me professionally. I don’t plan on writing a nonfiction book–I thought about it for five minutes then realized it wasn’t for me–and I’ll never monetize this blog. I don’t have the heart for it and I’m not arrogant enough to think that my opinion and advice is worth a cup of coffee.

So, the way I see it is, I have two choices now that I know what I’m doing: I can go professional and network with romance authors, hire an editor instead of doing it myself, and buy covers that look better than what I’ve been making, or I can keep doing things on my own and hope that it’s good enough to eventually lift me to the next level. Networking alone won’t help so I have to decide what I want to do.

The decision is harder than it seems because the work I’ve been doing for myself has been fine compared to what’s out there. But “fine” rarely makes headlines, so if you’re in my situation where you’re doing what you can but still not where you want to be, be it networking or sales, you can choose a different path. It might be scary since the road you’re on is familiar and you already know all the twists and turns, but we all know finding success won’t be where you’re comfortable. That means networking with the right people and making your product shine, so when those opportunities do come, you’re ready to take them and make the most out of them.

Next week I’ll catch you up on what I’ve been doing and chat about some things that have been happening in the indie community.

Talk to you next week!

Author Websites: Do You Need One?

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Time to read: 10 minutes

Today’s topic on websites is thanks to Melody Loomis, and you can check out her website here: https://www.melodyloomis.com/

I’ve been a writer in some way, shape, or form, all my life, like most writers are, but when I found writing after a failed attempt at going into Human Resources as a career, I didn’t think to create a website. In fact, the idea of it sounded foreign, confusing, and costly. I dusted off my Twitter account–I had made one while I was in school to connect with HR people–and joined the writing community instead (thinking I’d make the connections I would eventually need to sell my books. Ha!). One of the first things they said was to start a website, so, despite my inhibitions, like everything else I’ve done in publishing, in December of 2015, according to my WordPress site, I jumped right in.

I didn’t create my website to tell people about my books though. I started an indie blog, the one you’re reading right now. Almost nine years later, I have never taken my website down or skipped a week publishing, for that matter. I was pretty hardcore back then, writing six times a month about stuff I knew nothing about. Arrogant, I suppose, like a lot of newbie authors are. I don’t recommend having a website where you blog for indie authors and try to sell your books to readers at the same time. Mixing the writing community and the reading community can leave a bad taste in someone’s mouth, be it the writing community who doesn’t like the kinds of books you’re writing or the reading community who doesn’t like what you have to say on your blog that’s intended for other writers and authors. In fact, after typing that sentence, I’m tempted to take my Books page down. I don’t promote them anyway, and really, they don’t belong on a website that I use to write about my publishing experiences. I could always add them to my true author website (vmrheault.com), nesting a page under that Books page and making it clear they’re written under another name, but that’s a thought for another day.

The title of this blogpost is “Author Websites: Do you need one?” and the answer to that question is yes. Yes, you do, and along with the reasons why, I’ll explain how I use my websites and how they differ from each other.

Don’t build your house on other people’s land.
This is really important and I can’t stress this enough. Just a couple of days ago, someone on Threads was saying how her Facebook Author page got taken down and she lost over four thousand followers. Imagine if she had created a newsletter/blog instead. I know this post is about websites, but websites and newsletters/blogs are almost one and the same. A website is yours, and so is your newsletter. Social media platforms come and go (not because they fall apart like Google + but because you’re at the mercy of a bot who decides if you’re breaking their guidelines), but your website and a newsletter will always be around (unless, for some reason, you take them down).

It’s where you should send newsletter subscribers.
It’s a very bad idea to use your newsletter aggregator’s landing page link to send readers to sign up for your newsletter. If you change your landing page or you have an issue with your newsletter, that link might not always work. When you put that link around online and for some reason it gets broken, readers will think you don’t have a newsletter anymore and you could lose a fan. Also, broken links just look plain unprofessional. If you send subscribers to your website instead, you can make changes to your newsletter sign-up link as needed. No one learned this lesson better or faster than I did when my MailerLite newsletter went up in a puff of smoke. I had an invitation to sign up to my newsletter in the back matter of over ten books. That’s a lot of links to change when you think of ebooks, paperbacks on KDP, and paperbacks on IngramSpark. Luckily, I was sending them to my website, and now instead of a landing page link, I edited what the page says and it invites them to subscribe to my blog. My reader magnet is on that page now, instead of in my welcome email, but it is what it is. I’ll never try another newsletter aggregator. I like being in control of my website and blog. The longer I’m in this industry, the more I learn it’s difficult to trust anyone with any part of your business. If you want to see what that page looks like, you can look here: https://vmrheault.com/subscribe/

It doesn’t cost that much.
I can only speak for WordPress. I use WordPress and let them host. I bought my domain name and the email I needed, vania@vaniamargene.com, when I set up my newsletter, through WordPress too. I’ve shared that email enough that I probably won’t get rid of it even if I don’t need it for MailerLite anymore. Way back people said you shouldn’t do that because you can’t enjoy plugins and other things on a WordPress-hosted site. I didn’t care about having popups or selling books on my site, and still really don’t. Selling my books here sounds like a big time-suck and I already have enough of those. So, I went with a Premium plan for both and pay $96.00 dollars a year, each, $19.00 for my domain names, each, and my G Suite email for $72.00. You don’t need all that. Personal plans are $4.00 a month or $48 a year plus the domain for $19. You can have a professional WordPress website for $67.00 a year. Some website providers are even free, and there’s no reason you can’t go that way, but you’ll still end up paying for a domain name. One of the things authors forget is that when you get your taxes done, you can write off your expenses. I keep track of all my yearly spend and give that and my yearly royalties to my accountant. With how much I spend in ads, I break even or I’m in the red, but I can still get some money back for all the money I put into my business. No matter which way you go, free or paid, or if you find a site that’s in between, set something up.

Your website will turn into your hub.
Your website will be around for years and years and years and as you publish books, you’ll add those to build a nice backlist. You don’t need to worry about SEO or how people will find you. You can add your website link to the backs of your books and on all your social media profiles. People who are searching for you or your books already know your name and what to Google. The only time you need to worry about building SEO is if you’re blogging on a topic and you want to be found when someone searches for information about that topic. That really doesn’t apply to authors, unless you write nonfiction, and then you’re probably blogging about your subject.

This website gets anywhere from 30-100 hits a day. Mostly because people are looking for instructions on how to make a paperback cover in Canva. The updated instructions have gotten over 6,000 views since I published it in June of 2022. I get my regular readers who will read every Monday, and they count too, but if you search for “making paperback covers in Canva” my blog post is on the first page of results. That doesn’t matter much since it doesn’t sell books, I’m just happy I can help people publish. I don’t sell books off this website, so that would be another reason to take my Books page down. If you’re worried about SEO for your website, the only thing you can do is blog consistently on it. Being that a normal newsletter is only sent out once a month, if you blog that infrequently, you’ll never get the SEO you want. Building SEO takes hard work and consistency. Anyone who blogs whenever they feel like it and hops around from topic to topic can tell you how difficult it is to grow your following. Still, if you choose a WordPress-hosted site, you can be part of the WordPress Reader. When I moved my newsletter to my blog, not only did my number of opens stay around the same, but my posts were seen in the WordPress Reader, a perk I hadn’t considered but appreciate now. If you truly want your website to come up if someone searches your genre, sell a lot of books. That’s all you can do.

People say they don’t want a website because they don’t have anything to put on it. To me, that sounds like a good reason to have one. There’s no maintenance. I guess then you can argue you’re paying for nothing, but you’re paying for an internet presence you own and you have no idea how helpful it is to have one until you don’t and you need it. I loving having both my websites, and I have to admit, I love blogging on both too. I never understood people who say they don’t have anything to write, and oh, my God, do I hear it a lot. You’re a writer. How hard is it to come up with 500-1000 words once a month? Talk about yourself. Talk about your books. People can’t get to know you or think they’ll try out your books if you don’t put yourself out there. Though, that’s neither here nor there since we’re just talking about websites and not blogging, but if you’re worried your website will become stale, at least copy over your newsletter content to a blog once or twice a month, and maybe you’ll get some new readers who haven’t subscribed to your newsletter.

Content is the name of the game, and you’d need something to post if you make up a Facebook Author Page. You definitely need to create content on FB if you want people to see it, otherwise the algorithms will sink your page faster than Amazon will sink your book. If you write lengthy posts on Facebook, repurpose those posts on your website.

When I started posting about my books on my author site, I really enjoyed myself, and I was surprised at the number of views and visitors I was getting. I put my ARC links up and though they haven’t gone as fast as I would have liked, more signed up than if I wouldn’t have made them available on my website at all.

Your website will be what you make it. It will reflect who you are as author and the kinds of books you write. We’re all grappling for discoverability, for our books to be seen. A website is a good way to do that.

Now, I need to set up a blog for my author site. I’m blogging more over there to create buzz for my series, and it’s working well. In the past week I’ve had 145 views and 95 visitors, plus the opens I get from the list I exported from MailerLite when I deactivated my account. I couldn’t be happier.

I hope you had a good weekend and that you’re enjoying the Labor Day holiday. Check www.vmrheault.com if you want to see what I’m writing to my readers.

Until next time!

Owning vs Renting: An Author’s Dilemma

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Is anything completely ours in this business? Maybe only our books.

Good morning! I hope you all had a good weekend! I worked more on my last book–getting ever so closer to finishing up. I’ll still have to take a break and read the proofs to look for typos I might have edited into my books, but the end is in sight, and I can’t wait! I might treat myself to a new Mac–my T is still driving me crazy, and it would be a nice little present for myself after working on this series for so long.

So, a week ago, on Monday, March 5th, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and Messenger all went down. They were down for a couple of hours, but to say it spread panic across the author universe would be putting it mildly. I know a lot of authors happened to have releases that day, and I’m sure not being able to post was upsetting to a lot of people.

It was kind of eye-opening for me as well, because this was my first outage while on Threads instead of Twitter. Outages never bothered me because I was always able to flip from one platform to the other, but since Meta owns all of them, there was nowhere for me to go. A friend and I went to email for a quick exchange (just to assure each other we hadn’t been hacked), so all wasn’t completely lost, but not having any social media felt strange… scrolling is just habit. I finally was able to kick my Twitter addiction only because I found a substitute on Threads.

Anyway, so this gave way to some thought about how authors are always told never to build on someone else’s grass. I agree with that wholeheartedly–especially since TikTok gave me such a hard time, always accusing me of violating community guidelines. I’m glad I never got invested because it ticked me off and a ding on one of your videos like that affects your entire account and how they show your content.

But after my hassle with MailerLite, I realized that even a list you cultivate on your own doesn’t really belong to you. If your account, for whatever reason, goes down or glitches and you don’t regularly export your list as a backup, those emails you worked so hard for can disappear in a puff of smoke. Sometimes tech support can help, depending on your aggregator. MailerLite charges too much for their tech support and plenty of authors take their chances and stay on the free plan (that does not give you access to tech support) for as long as possible.

My WordPress site feels like it belongs to me. I pay for the domain and for the plan. I have access to tech support if something goes wrong (like when I accidentally deleted DNS records I needed), but the fact is, anything online can go down so even selling direct to avoid dealing with Amazon isn’t always a sure thing.

I guess this post is kind of a warning to pick and choose carefully. Last night I was thinking about all the author things I’m “stuck” with, and it’s kind of scary in a looking-into-the-future-and-adding-up-spend kind of way. Every single one of my books has a link to my author website and a call to action (CTA) to subscribe to my newsletter. Every single book. Over 20, which is over 60 files I would have to change if my author website ever went kaput (the ebooks and paperbacks on Amazon, and then all my paperbacks on IngramSpark). I mean, it wouldn’t be the end of the world to amend all that back matter, but if I didn’t have an IngramSpark code for free revisions, it would add up quickly. I was lucky I directed my readers to go to my website instead of a MailerLite landing signup page, probably one of the few things I did correctly from the start. My homebase, has been, and now with my newsletter gone, always will be, my author website.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m locked into other things too–things I want to keep at the very least because I like how they work. Like Bookfunnel. I may have gotten rid of my expensive plan that supported MailerLite integration after my migration to the new MailerLite platform screwed everything up (saving me 150 dollars a year), but I like how they deliver my free book and readers are used to that platform. The easter egg that I hid in Addicted to Her is delivered that way too. At least the team at Bookfunnel doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, and it helps that thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of authors, use them.

I’m also locked into my Canva account. I have so many designs there, and without it, I could never make changes to any of my book covers. I’ll always need my account, but luckily their business and reputation seem solid and hopefully won’t be disappearing anytime soon.

Maybe it will make you feel better to think that being locked into certain services isn’t only an author thing. I think Amazon is so integrated into our lives now that getting rid of it would cost–I have purchased several movies and TV shows on Prime. I would lose a lot of money if all of a sudden Prime Video disappeared. The same with my Kindle account. I’ve purchased many books that would disappear if something happened to my Kindle account. Several years ago I bought books on Nook, and when I dropped it into the tub, I lost all that content. I could have bought another Nook, but I preferred being on a Kindle anyway, so I swallowed the loss.

When you’re a baby author, as they like to say, you just don’t understand what you’re locking yourself into signing up for all these things. That would be the time to weigh what you’re willing to pay for, for pretty much all of your indie career. You get used to having access to those things and you tie up a lot of your IP into an account like Canva. But, when you’re new, you don’t know what you don’t know, and if you’re proud of your newsletter and start putting the landing page link everywhere, if something happens, you have no idea the damage control it takes to fix it.

I’m very fortunate that I linked to my website everywhere, and I’m very fortunate that I chose Bookfunnel as a way to distribute my reader magnet. I didn’t have to scramble to update any links–I don’t think I can portray in writing how relieved I was that I could just shut down my newsletter and not look back.

Building on someone else’s grass is definitely inconvenient at best (career damaging at worst), but sometimes you just can’t avoid it. We subscribe to products and services every day with the hope that those products and services have the longevity we need to keep our business afloat.

Only time will tell if the things we sign up for have staying power–in terms of the business itself and how we need to use them. I had thought MailerLite was a good fit and I recommended them several times, but they proved to be just as sketchy as any other business has the possibility to be, and some people just learn that the hard way. Lots of scammers in this business, and you’d like to think a steady business like that won’t turn, but like my daughter says, the risk is low but never zero.

I was lying in bed last night thinking about my blogs and how to make them seem more professional, if only on my author blog now, so it comes off as more newslettery and less bloggy, and I decided to create a “footer” of sorts for the ends of my posts. For eight years I’ve struggled with how to end my posts, and I’ve gone through various footers, like creating a graphic that has all my books on it and attaching my Amazon author page to it. This isn’t the right audience for that, but I would still like to end my blogs with some kind of signature so I came up with this. It’s especially important on my author blog now so no one misses the link to download their free book which I will add to every post.

Tell me what you think, and I hope you all have a great week!

Monday Musings and Author Update

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I don’t have much to share this week. I finished my edits for All of Nothing and Wherever He Goes. I uploaded the new interiors to KDP just fine, and the books are already live. IngramSpark is another matter entirely. The small edits created a page number change, and and I didn’t know this, but apparently no matter how many pages your interior changes, they make you adjust your cover. In All of Nothing, my interior changed by 200 words. That’s it. Not a significant change by any means, but they are still forcing me to tweak the cover. Same with Wherever He Goes. It’s insane, and I wish their uploading system was more like KDP in that you know right away if your cover is going to fit and you can adjust before your book even sees human eyes. It’s just a total pain the butt, and I swear, once those changes are approved, I am NEVER touching those books again. After I finish my rockstar romance I’ll have a bit of time and maybe I’ll go through The Years Between Us, maybe even my Rocky Point series, just for kicks because I really do like rereading my own books, and then I can walk away from those. I know you can’t keep going forward if you keep looking backward, but rereading my older books is fun and a break for me, so if I can edit them so they sound better, then it’s a win-win anyway.

I have been writing lately, and I’m 34k into my rockstar romance now. (I was at 28k when I was “stuck.”) I write my blogposts ahead of time, so I’m hoping by the time you read this I’ll actually be at 50k and planning the last 3rd of the book. I keep changing how I want it to end–do I want to go with a cliche and knock her up, or do I want to end it in a different way? I’ve never written an airport scene before, and I’m kind of in love with the idea of her going home and him chasing her to the airport and begging her to stay. I like both, so we’ll see what they decide to do when I get there. I also have to write the song he’s going to write in the book that sets his singing career back on track. That will be fun and I’m looking forward to it.

I wrote my newsletter for December yesterday and announced my trilogy release dates. I also gave them access to download the first book (the first 25 who want it, anyway) so those dates are set. I have to wait a couple more weeks before I put them up on Booksprout because when I do that, I have to publish the paperbacks so they can leave reviews on Amazon, and I don’t want the paperbacks up any longer than necessary when I’m holding the ebooks back.

I was also looking at promo sites, thinking I might try Ereader News Today and Fussy Librarian and do a free couple of days for Captivated by Her when the trilogy releases. But, I was actually forward-thinking for once, and decided not to book a promo until all the books in the trilogy are out for read-through. (I’m releasing them a week apart.) This old dog can be taught new tricks. Then I’ll put the first free in April when I have a new launch and hopefully a new book will boost me and a promo will give me attention. Ereader News Today looks kind of hardcore–they ask you for your book’s star rating, and with Captivated having hardly any reviews or ratings, I’m actually prepared for them to turn me down. There are other places I can try, like Robin Reads, so that’s not really a big deal, it’s scheduling my free days around the promo dates they have available that takes some organization, and you can’t wait too long because dates fill up. Anyway, so I just need some patience, just a couple more weeks of sitting on these books. Made up these cute graphics for my newsletter:

Female hands holding tablet with Give & Take's cover on white background with Christmas cones, snowflakes and confetti. Flat lay composition top view.

If you count sales from other books, and why not, because selling a book is selling a book, last week I earned back my fee from my Freebooksy promo. Not from the series, but all combined, and while I’m disappointed, at least I got my money back. If we’re only looking at sales of my series, I’m halfway to earning my fee back, but my promo isn’t even a month old yet, so that could still be possible. I would have been extremely disappointed if I hadn’t yet at all because I don’t like the idea of wasting money, but I knew I had a chance since I have in the past. I’ll keep an eye on it. I was surprised to see Ereader News Today was $76 dollars for a free romance feature. Fussy Librarian is $50. Robin Reads is $75 for a free steamy romance slot. These prices can be spendy so you want to make absolutely sure that your book is advertising ready. If you’re interested in buying a promo from any of these, here are the links:
Robin Reads: https://robinreads.com/genre-divide/
Ereader News Today: http://www.ereadernewstoday.com/bargain-and-free-book-submissions/
Fussy Librarian: https://www.thefussylibrarian.com/advertising

Because it’s the end of the year, we’re thinking of 2023 and all the ways we can do better. I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions. Either you want to do those things or you don’t and promising yourself you’ll do them won’t get you very far if you don’t want to. But, I understand the need for goals (a dream is only a wish without a plan, blah blah blah) and one of the things I said I wanted to work on next year is my social media activity. I don’t mean hanging out on Twitter picking fights about giving away books, either (though it is fun and degrading at the same time like bad drunk sex). I saw in an FB group where they were recommending social media planners and kits to help with posts and ideas for engagement, and I bought the one from Stephanie Burdett (my bank did not like her, either, and flagged the purchase as fraud that I had to approve). She has a lot of prompts for both social media and blog/newsletter ideas, so the $27 was worth it to me. I don’t have to wrack my brain to think up something every day and I’m hoping it will alleviate the stress of posting. I’m not going to use these prompts on Twitter (I’ll drunk tweet on there instead), I’m going to focus on my Facebook Author page (that I rebranded as VM Rheault) and my V’s Vixens Read Romance page, at least so when I run ads if I get a follower or a like there the page won’t seem so empty. If you want to take a look at it, you can find it here: https://stephanieburdett.com/sm-calendar-fiction-authors/

That’s all I have for today. If I want to make it to 50k by the end of the weekend, I better get writing on my book. Coming up is my end-of-the-year recap and my 2023 plan and goals. Thanks for reading!

Mid-August Check-in and What I’ve Been Doing

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August 2019 blog photo

I usually have some writing-related blog post today, or commenting on something in the publishing or independent publishing space, but today I’ll just update you on what I’ve been doing, what I’m reading, and the things I’m going to try to do before the holidays hit. Christmas is in 128 days, if you can believe it!

It’s hard to believe summer is almost gone, and my daughter (maybe your kids already are) is going back to school in a couple weeks. I’ve done a bit of back to school shopping for her and ordered her pictures online.

I live in Minnesota, so I’m not looking forward to summer’s end. In fact, it’s always nice if the snow can hold off for as long as possible. Last year, we had a bad winter while I was recuperating from surgery and if we only get half the snow that we got last year, I’ll be happy. I’ll be figuring out my new writing rhythm when my daughter goes back to school, and that will take a little time to adjust to, but it shouldn’t be that bad. My work schedule won’t change, so that’s nice.

I changed All of Nothing‘s cover, blurb, and keywords. It’s still too soon to say if they made a difference.

But I am also doing the same for Wherever He Goes.

This is the old cover:

wherever he goes old cover jpg

Pretty and sweet. I have no qualms about it, but it also doesn’t give off the steamy contemporary vibe. So I changed it to this:

wherever he goes new cover jpg

They are both dressed, but I feel it ups the steam factor a bit. I also rewrote the blurb, but I won’t get into that, eventually I’ll get to the keywords. Looking for those will be interesting, as it’s a road trip romance, and that’s a sub-genre I know exists, but I haven’t seen the category for it on Amazon. I ordered a proof so I can see how it looks in print, but the ebook cover is already live. I’ve gotten great feedback on it, so for the skill I have and for the cost I paid ($7) I think it’s a nice change.

Of course, IngramSpark is giving me another pain in the ass about it. Since I published on Amazon, they are saying my ISBN is in use and not mine. I didn’t click on expanded distribution on KDP Print, so the ISBN should be (and is) available for other retailers. It’s just more going around in circles I’m going to have to do with them. Plus they keep insisting I didn’t build my cover within the correct guidelines, but I did. So, I think after I get this book straightened out with them, I won’t be using IS for expanded distribution anymore. Until they can become more indie-friendly, I’ll stick with Amazon.

I can honestly say that through all this wide business and going back and forth, I’ve learned what matters and what doesn’t.

Now that all my covers are how I want them to be for a while, I’ll be focusing on finished up my quartet. Officially called A Rocky Point Wedding (Books 1, 2, 3 and 4) I started book four a couple days ago, and I’m 10,000 words into it. At this point I’ll be trying to figure out covers and get a more concrete idea of what I want. I don’t know what I want yet, and when I don’t feel like writing I poke my eyes out look at stock photos. If I thought doing my trilogy was a pain, this quartet will be the death of me.

I am planning on a slow release . . . possibly one book a month, and while I’m releasing I’ll take a break write a new standalone that I’ve been planning for a while.

But first, book four. This book has its own plot to figure out, plus wrapping up wedding stuff. I do have a book 0 I could write if I ever feel like revisiting Rocky Point, or if I ever feel like starting a newsletter, I could write a prequel novella and offer that as a newsletter sign-up cookie. So there’s that potential, anyway.

I’m reading a really great book right now called Scratch: Writers, Money, and the Art of Making a Living Paperback by Manjula Martin. It has a lot of great essays in there by authors like Cheryl Strayed. They talk about giving work away for exposure and opportunity, living in poverty while trying to make it big, what they do with their advances if they do. I’m enjoying it a lot so far, and I recommend it if you’re interested in the money/business side of writing.

If you like books like that, I also recommend The Business of Being a Writer (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing) by Jane Friedman. She breaks down the publishing industry and what you can do to make money off your writing. Being that it’s always being said writers can’t make a living wage anymore, I like to hear other people’s opinions.

August 2019 podcasts graphic blog post

I listen to a lot of podcasts, too, and here are some of my favorites:

Joanna Penn. The Creative Penn Podcast

We know she’s a powerhouse in the indie space, and she has a lot of great guest interviews. I don’t listen to every episode, and I have to pick and choose what tips I jot down for my own use since she’s a big believer in being wide, but overall I her podcasts are very useful.

***

The Sell More Books Show hosted by Jim Kukral and Bryan Cohen

These guys used to talk about the news, and they still do, but they have started to pad their podcast with “news” of indies making money. They don’t get into the hows or the whys (not in great detail, anyway), and if you’re not a member of the 20booksto50k group on FB (where they cull these stories) you’re not able to dig out the nitty-gritty details for yourself. I understand there are slow news days, and I listen for the big stories like Dean Koontz moving to Amazon from a Big Five. They pull stories from other places like the Hot Sheet by Jane Friedman and Porter Anderson, and if you don’t subscribe to that newsletter, this is one way to hear about the stories they report.

***

Stark Reflections by Mark Leslie Lefebvre

Mark’s a super nice guy, and I can’t wait to meet him at the Career Author Summit in Nashville in 2020. With so much history in the industry, his podcasts are very interesting to listen to, and he also has a bevy of author and publishing expert interviews. In the last podcast I just listened to, he interviewed Craig Martelle, who puts together the 20booksto50k conferences with Michael Anderle.  As with Joanna’s, I pick and choose what I want to listen to. Mark moved from Kobo to Draft2Digital, so it goes without saying he’s a big cheerleader of also being wide.

***

Self-Publishing Formula hosted by Mark Dawson and James Blatch

I listen to this one off and on. He has great interviews with authors and industry professionals, too, and again, I just pick and choose what I like to listen to by reading the details of the podcast episode. Sometimes they can get a little heavy with advertising their courses, but they all sell something, so listening to them tout their wares is going to be part of listening to a podcast.

***

Science Fiction & Fantasy Marketing Podcast hosted by Lindsay Buroker, Joseph Lallo and Jeffrey M. Poole and Laura Kirwan.

These guys took a break this summer, and so far Lindsay hasn’t said when they are coming back. She alluded to them changing their format, so I’m looking forward to them doing more episodes. Even if you don’t write Fantasy or Sci-fi, this is a great podcast to listen to. Keep an eye out for new episodes.

***

Print Run Podcast hosted by Erik Hane and Laura Zats

Erik and Laura are agents at a literary agency in Minneapolis, MN, and that was one of the primary reasons for listening. They talk about a lot of the literary stuff in the state, and if I had a more dependable car, I would go to some of them (the Twin Cities is a 4.5 hour drive away from where I live). But anyway, being that they are agents, they give an inside look at the traditional publishing industry. The last episode I listened to, though, they talked about Dean Koontz and his defection move from the traditional publishing marketing space to move to Amazon. They didn’t say very nice things about it, or about Amazon in general, and be aware, if you’re an indie making money off Amazon, that that is their stance. If you can look past their bias, their takes on books and publishing can be interesting at times, though they defend traditional publishing and an agent’s place in it (of course). Publishing is publishing though, and whether indie or trad, they all fit together, so keeping an ear to the ground isn’t a bad thing.

ku graphic

My books have been moved back to KU since the first of August. I boosted an announcement to that effect on from my FB author page and that grabbed a little attention. I used the audience I created for one of my ads for The Years Between Us that didn’t do anything because my ad copy was poor and the pictures I used weren’t the best. I ran two ads for three days a piece and I think I got one sale. But I blame the ad and the copy and the fact I was just messing around to get a feel for the platform. Anyway, so I already had an audience I’d created for that, so I used it and I think I got about 150 likes ad and a little engagement. It will take some time to let people know my books are in KU again, and I haven’t been very vigilant about it because I’ve been changing out covers.

Seeing page reads again is fun, I’ve made $21.00 since moving my books back to KU. You can look at my numbers in this blog post, but I can tell you that during my two months wide I made $66.00. So in a week with just a little boosted post on FB I’ve made 33% of what I made with wide while spending money on a Freebooksy ad. I feel better being in KU and I don’t check my numbers all the time like I was doing when I was wide. That is all KU reads though, not sales. I think I may need to research price more as maybe $4.99 is a bit too expensive for books by an unknown author. I said in a previous post that it was freeing being back on one platform and it is. I feel like I can focus more on the work instead of sales, and with a small backlist, writing is more important to me right now.

Well, that’s the personal update I’ve got for you. In my next blog post I’ll tell you about my experience with Booksprout, and if it’s useful or not.

Thanks for reading!

end of blog post graphic

Downtime. Not doing a damn thing.

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You know how it is. You have a long list of things you could be doing. As writer, publisher, and entrepreneur, that list is long. There’s always something, and writing new words is right on top.

What’s after writing?

  • Writing a blurb.
  • Looking at hot guys stock photos
  • Reading a non-fiction book
  • Listening to a podcast
  • Beta reading
  • Reading  a book in your genre
  • Creating an ad (after you’ve read the book about it, of course)
  • Blogging, reading and commenting on other people’s blogs

But sometimes you turn on your laptop, a cat crawls into your lap, and boom. You’re tired, and you’d rather watch the next episode of Outlander than see if your blurb is converting (if you don’t know what that means, you need to read Mastering Amazon Descriptions: An Author’s Guide: Copywriting for Authors by Brian D. Meeks. Another thing you can add to your list! Yay!)  I’m sure Diana Gabaldon thanks you. But I probably should point out that without her writing the words, there would be no show. Maybe Outlander was a bad example.

I’m in that predicament tonight. The things that I could be doing right now? Working on the new cover for All of Nothing. Working on the blurb. Writing more words for the third book in my Wedding Party series.

Instead I’m sitting with a fan blowing on me. I’m a little nauseated from sipping too much Prosecco on an empty stomach. I was grinding my teeth in my sleep last night so I have a toothache on the left side of my jaw, top and bottom, that feels a little more than mild, and all in all, I’m just tired.

And feeling like this is always a conundrum. Do you give in, or push through? Give in and practice a little , or do you, in fact, get some shit done?

I suppose it depends on where you are in your schedule. Don’t have one? Well, nothing gets done simply by dreaming, and if you give yourself a pass too many times, you’ll end up with a handful of days where nothing got accomplished. A schedule isn’t a bad thing.You need to be a self starter and self motivator if you want to keep getting your stuff done. It can keep you on track. A schedule or a plan can at least be a guide in that if you do start letting too many days go by, you can tap yourself on the back and ask yourself what the heck is going on.

Taking a break to breathe is advisable, but if you want books to publish, you have to write them, too.

I could put on some coffee and at least get one or two small things done. Work on my blurb. Look over what I have for my cover. I’d like to swap them out so the book is ready to go when I put all my books back into KU next month. The cover is going well, and I’ll update you on that probably Thursday. I’ll be swapping out the cover for IngramSpark, too, so that will be lovely, though I’m getting used to the IS user interface and dealing with the cover template isn’t so hard anymore.

I had a soft deadline of getting book three done by the end of the month. I’ll be close, but maybe not finished. But that’s okay. Without the deadline I probably wouldn’t have made as much progress as I did. I’m proud the book is almost done. It’s a good book with a strong plot and relateable characters. It seems crazy to say that I’ll have finished three books this year.

But I guess that’s the point of this blog post. I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish that had I given myself too much downtime.

For tonight I’ll try to calm my stomach down, make some coffee, and see if I can check one thing off the list before going to bed.

I’m going to a writer’s meeting tomorrow, so that should be interesting. I’m not a joiner, and while I know the value of networking, I can’t lie. More than a little bit of me wants to skip it.

When you decided to be a writer, did you know how many people would be involved?

I didn’t either.

I feel like I should offer you something since you made it this far and have given me 15 minutes of your time or so, so I’ll end my blog post with this.

I recently read Make Money on Medium: Build Your Audience and Grow Your Income with Medium.com. I’m always open to new things, but after reading the book I realized I don’t want to write for Medium–I like blogging for the audience I already have. But whether you’re a blogger or a Medium writer, Nicole gives some good tips for what to write, how to write, and headlines. I’ll share one little tip that she tells her readers about, and that is a blog title, or headline evaluator.

Headlines or titles are important in that you don’t want your readers guessing what your content is about. You could have a GREAT blog post, but no one will read it if you title it something weird. (That goes for book titles too, but that would be a different blog post.)

There are a few headline generators, and you can Google them.

Coschedule.com will analyze your title (if you give them a few pieces of info about yourself and your business) and tell you if it’s too weak. It didn’t like the title I came up with for this blog post:

blogtitle analyzer

Nicole suggests that you want your book to be at 80 or better. She even admits that she might spend more time thinking up a good headline or title than actually writing the post. That seems crazy, but on the other hand, no one is going to read what’s inside if the title isn’t appropriate, so she isn’t that far off the mark. Being she’s a HUGELY popular writer on Medium, I would take her word for it.

You can plug in titles forever, but just to see what I could do, I changed my title:

blogtitle analyzer2

That’s actually a vast improvement, but a lie. That’s not what this post is about. Mainly it’s about not feeling guilty if you don’t feel like doing anything, but also keeping those feelings under control so your to-do list doesn’t look like Mount Kilimanjaro by the end of the week/month/year. Everyone knows how fast time goes.

Anyway, if you’re interested in writing for Medium.com I suggest you take a look at Nicole’s book. She offers you some great tips on how to get started, how to follow and pick up followers, and how to write for a pub. If you’re on the fence about blogging, but feel you should be giving out content in some way to get your name out there, writing for Medium could be a good way to do that.

What am I going to do now? I still haven’t shaken off my blahs, but I did take some Aleve for my mouth and made a cup of coffee.  I could work on my blurb or watch another episode of Outlander.

I’ll let you guess which one.

Have a great week!

thank you for your patince

A Snippet of Book One of my new Wedding Party Quartet

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Series sell. Readers get invested, and that can mean the world to an author. Personally, I prefer to write standalones. Maybe because for now, I prefer reading them, too. But I recognize the value in writing a series, and after writing three stand alones,  I planned out a four-book series consisting of full-length novels.

I’m going to write them, edit them, format them, design the covers and drop them all at once. Risky, perhaps. But there are authors who swear by rapid release, and for consistency reasons, I would finish them all before publishing them, anyway.

Because I said I would update you as I write them, here is the first couple scenes of the first book. This was originally the second book in the series, but I felt it was a stronger start. The second book will need a bit of fluffing up, but nothing too terrible, and I’m looking forward to adding to the plot as I learn more and more about my characters.

Book One is about Callie Carter and Mitch Sinclair. Mitch has been in a horrific accident that has left him scarred, both physically and mentally. Callie has been under her father’s thumb for many years and accepted an offer to be a bridesmaid for a chance to breathe and figure out her life. Little did Mitch and Callie know that Marnie Zimmerman and James Fox’s nuptials would be the catalyst for such significant change.

Enjoy this small, kind of edited, excerpt from the first book of the Wedding Party Quartet. It doesn’t have a title yet, but that’s just one more thing I’m working on as I write. 🙂

“You’re here!”

Callie Carter tugged her suitcase into the Rocky Point Resort’s lobby as Marnie Zimmerman’s shriek zinged across the room.

“I told you I would be, but my dad didn’t make it easy,” Callie said, easing her case to a stop in front of the registration desk.

Marnie frowned. “You deserve the break.”

Callie set her purse on the counter next to a display of resort brochures. “No one knows that more than me. I had the time, and there wasn’t anything he could do about it.”

Her father didn’t believe in taking a break. Horace “Ace” Carter didn’t believe in down time. Rest. Taking care of her emotional health, her physical health. He believed in getting the job done. And for the past ten years, she had. But rubber bands, stretched too tightly, eventually snap, and Callie was almost there.

“I’ll make sure you have fun . . .” Marnie said, linking her arm through hers while the agent ran her card and handed her a small stack of papers.

“Here’s your key, Miss Carter,” the desk agent—her nametag read Sophia—said, handing her an honest-to-goodness key attached to a maroon keychain with the gold Rocky Point Resort logo stamped into the plastic. “You’re in room two-thirty-one, next door to Marnie and James.”

“. . . Starting tonight.”

Callie pulled her suitcase behind her. She’d left a few dresses hanging in her car, and she’d have go to back for those later. “What’s tonight?”

“I planned a get-to-know-you dinner. Jared is picking up Leah in Marengo, and she’ll be here this afternoon. I can’t wait for you to meet her. Hell, I can’t wait to meet her!”

“You are positively giddy,” Callie said, laughing. She stopped at the base of the short set of stairs that would take them to second floor. Purse hanging from the crook of her elbow, she hugged Marnie. “I’m happy for you.”

Marnie hugged her back so hard her spine cracked. “I am happy, and I’m happy you could be here.”

“I wouldn’t have missed it.”

She’d been honored when Marnie asked her to be a bridesmaid, and hadn’t thought for a second about saying no.

Standing outside Callie’s door, Marnie said, “I know you want time for yourself after that long drive. Take a bath, order a bottle of champagne, whatever you want. We’re meeting downstairs for dinner, and you’ll meet everyone then. I’m so excited!”

Marnie’s platinum blonde hair shimmered in the fluorescent lights, her pin curls, thick red lipstick, and clear skin giving her a Marilyn Monroe glow. She even had the curves to go with it, and Callie had always envied Marnie her softness.

Callie worked out seven days a week, three-hundred and sixty-five days a year. She had to. It was part of her job. Speaking of . . . she might be on vacation, but she still needed to workout. “You said the resort has a workout facility?”

“Yep,” Marnie said. “It’s downstairs by the pool. It’s not as big as the set up in your basement, but it will work.”

“Thanks. I’ll see you tonight, then.”

Callie didn’t feel the need for a bath, but a light nap sounded divine.

She let herself into her room and tucked her suitcase into the closet. The room smelled like any hotel room she’d ever stayed in: air freshener and the scent of recycled air.

A huge gift basket sat on a table tucked under the window that overlooked a thick swatch of trees. A brochure said there were woods to the west, the lake to the north, ski slopes on the east side of the building, and the town of Rocky Point on the south side. The resort offered quite a few amenities, Callie noticed, skimming the resort’s brochure. Maybe she would try her hand at skiing while she stayed there.

Callie washed her face in the sink and dried her skin with the bleached white hand towel. She hung it on the bar over the toilet and frowned at the water pooling at bottom of the bowl. “That’s great,” she muttered.

She needed a working sink. If all the pipes were connected, the bathtub might be affected, too, and she wanted to be able to shower in the morning. Or tonight after dinner.

“I need maintenance,” Callie said, using the landline phone on the nightstand to call the front desk. It wasn’t that late in the day, and she hoped someone would be able to come by her room soon. “My sink is plugged and won’t drain.”

She recognized Sophia’s voice. “We’ll have Mitch up there right away.”

“Thank you.”

Callie should have asked to be transferred to room service but she didn’t want to call back. She could save her appetite for dinner, and even though she was on vacation, she shouldn’t give in to wanting to drink too much. Her father told her she needed to be in control at all times. What if someone needed her? He always had an example at the ready of a time when he’d been able to help someone.

Service was a calling.

Ace Carter spoke of their occupation as if they were ministers or missionaries.

And he expected her to behave as such.

But why did being responsible mean she couldn’t have fun?

Someone knocked on her door, and she pushed the thoughts away. This was supposed to be vacation. A break. She’d fought hard for it and won.

Callie opened the door expecting an older man, balding, wearing a t-shirt and stained overalls carrying a red battered toolbox, and she blinked in surprise at the man a few years older than she standing in the hallway.

Her gaze traveled from his dark brown hair to his green yes. Slim, but strong, with the way he carried an enormous toolbox.

He shifted slightly, and asked, “Did you need maintenance?”

The right side of his face and neck made her hide a gasp behind her hand.

Through the crackling of heat in her ears, her mind whispered, fire.

***

Mitch was used to the wide-eyed stares, the stunned silences, the pity and the sneers. He’d become numb to it, and he ignored the shocked gasp the woman emitted when she saw the right side of his face and the scar that started at the top of his hairline and rippled down his temple and cheek, across his jaw, and into the neckline of his work t-shirt. It spread farther than that, but besides doctors and nurses, few had seen it, and Mitch intended to keep it that way.

“Maintenance?” he asked again.

She moved her hand away from her mouth. “Y-yes. The sink in the bathroom won’t drain.”

“I’ll take a look.”

When she didn’t move, he reached out a hand to nudge her from the door, but she flinched away.

So this was the way it was going to be. When he’d taken the job, the manager of the resort, Desiree Arnold, told him not to put himself into situations that could cause trouble for either party. If he felt the need to have someone with him while he did repairs, then that’s the way it would be. When she offered him the job, Desiree hadn’t brought up his scars at all, but Mitch didn’t need her to point out the obvious. He looked a hell of a lot scarier with his scars than he’d look without them.

“Would you like me to call Sophia and ask her to sit with you while I fix your sink? Or would you like to go to the bar and have a drink while you wait? It’d be on the house.” He carried vouchers in his toolbox to offer guests who didn’t want to be alone with him. A free drink to get them out their room so he could work in peace.

No one turned down free drinks, and her refusal took him aback.

“No, it’s fine. I’m sorry. You took me off-guard.”

“I usually do that to people,” he said mildly, stepping into her room. Before he shut the door, he asked, “Are you sure?”

And that question took him back to the last time he’d tried to make love to a woman. She’d been adamant she could handle the scars.

But it turned out she couldn’t, and he’d never tried again. With anyone.

She nodded. “I’m fine. I, ah, washed my face, and the water didn’t go down.”

“Sounds like an easy fix.” And it did. He’d spent the past seven years as the resort’s maintenance man, drawing on his own experiences fixing things around the house with his dad. Desiree, being in a jam when the current maintenance man quit unexpectedly due to a heart attack, had hired him on the spot, making it clear it was probationary. But there hadn’t been anything in the resort he couldn’t repair. His three month tryout ended with a pay raise and a small room with a twin-sized bed. Mitch didn’t need to stay there, but Desiree liked having on-site maintenance twenty-four/seven, and he didn’t have anything else to do.

The sink sat inside the spacious white-tiled room that held the bathtub, shower stall, and toilet.

Last month, Desiree had warned him that several of his old classmates would be trickling in for Marnie Zimmerman’s wedding and they would be filling the resort for two weeks. At the time he’d wondered why she’d bothered to say anything. It wasn’t like he’d never worked with a full resort before. The resort brought in tourist dollars for Rocky Point, and Desiree and her sales manager worked harder than anyone he knew to keep the rooms full all year round.

It was only after, while he thought about their conversation over a tuna sandwich, that he realized what she’d been getting at.

He didn’t recognize this one though. She hadn’t graduated from Rocky Point. He would have remembered.

Mitch hunkered down onto the floor with his toolbox and removed the extra toilet paper, box of Kleenex, and a hair dryer from under the vanity to reach the pipes.

He didn’t bring  a bucket, and he shoved the wastebasket under the pipe to catch the water as he removed it.

The brunette disappeared, and he worked in silence.

The culprit of the clog was a wad of hair and dirt, and a small diamond ring.

Satisfied he’d fixed the problem, he cleaned up. Dirty water filled the wastebasket, forcing Mitch to take it with him. He couldn’t empty it into her bathtub or sink. Desiree hired only the best housekeepers and Sophia said this woman hadn’t been in her room long. Maybe if she would have gone to the bar he could have dumped the water and cleaned up after himself, but he wouldn’t try it now.

“I’ll have housekeeping bring you another wastebasket for the bathroom. I’m sorry I had to use this one.”

She lay on the kind-sized bed staring at the ceiling. “Did you find what was clogging the sink?”

“Yeah.” Free of dirt, the ring sparkled, a platinum setting hugging the modest diamond. “Did you lose a ring?”

“No. Can I see it?”

Mitch shrugged. He didn’t know why not. He’d only take it to the registration desk so they could research the history of the room and ask if anyone had lost a ring recently. If they couldn’t find anyone who had, the ring would sit in the safe as part of their lost and found.

She rolled off the bed and took the ring when he offered it to her.

“I would be freaked out if I lost something like this.”

“I wouldn’t buy something like this,” he said. He caught the bitterness in his tone and pursed his lips.

Startled, her gaze met his. “You don’t want to get married?”

Mitch took the ring from her fingers, his skin brushing hers.

The way she looked at him, like she didn’t see the scars, not once she moved past her initial reaction, made him think that one day maybe he could find a woman who could see through his injury.

He snorted.

Yeah, when pigs flew.

“I learned a long time ago women want Mr. Perfect, and I have never been, and never will be, that kind of man. Have a good afternoon, miss, and enjoy your stay.”

Mitch dropped his toolbox with a large clatter outside her room, and hugged the wastebasket stinking of dirty water close to his chest.

Closing his eyes, he tried to forget about hers.

Callie and Mitch blog graphic

The age-old question, ‘what do you want from your writing?’ isn’t the real question at all. The REAL question? What can your writing GIVE YOU?

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We’ve all been asked the $50,000 dollar question: Why do you write? Do you write for success? For the fame and fortune? Do you have a story that must come out no matter what? We all write for a reason, the reason that keeps us coming back to the laptop again and again.

But the fact is, after the writing is done, what can, what WILL, writing give us?

There are different kinds of writing, and each medium gives us different things:

  1. Blogging. Blogging gives us a place to vent, a place for our voice to be heard. Blogging lets us share information, be an authority. (That’s where the word AUTHOR comes from, don’tcha know?)  But blogging can only give you those things if you have an audience. Also known as, a reader who will read your blog post, maybe share it, maybe leave a comment. Your voice can only be heard if someone is listening. Will the blogger make a sound if no one is around to hear it? Yeah, and her voice sounds like this:
    wah wah wah
    You have to have good content, consistently, to find an audience who will enjoy your posts and keep coming back to you. And that’s difficult. I’ve blogged for the past few years, and finding consistent things I like to blog about and that I think others would enjoy hearing about, is downright hard. I’m not complaining, I love blogging. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. I put a lot of my heart, soul, and time into my website, and I blog to keep it current. That’s something I get out of blogging. Good SEO. Everyone once in a while someone will tell me they learned something on my blog. That’s great, too. But I understand when bloggers give up, because the time it takes, money (let’s get rid of that pesky .wordpress.com at the end of our domain addresses, okay?) and the pounding our heads into the walls to come up with ideas. Well. There’s not a lot of return on investment there, is there?
  2. Other social media. You’re writing when you post a picture on Instagram and tell your audience the story behind it. You’re writing when you update your Facebook Author page. You’re writing when you tweet. What kind of payback is there from spending time on social media? There is some. You find camaraderie, you find support. You can find people who will help you publish, both indie and traditionally. You network. You support the “big guys” by buying their books and promoting them. But besides being involved on social media for all those things, you hope one day you meet the right person who can introduce you to the next right person (hello agent!), you tweet something that goes viral, and that maybe, because you cultivated a social media following, you might sell some books. But realistically, the “might” is pretty big. Skyscraper big. Authors learn early on that joining social media and screaming
    BUY MY BOOK
    will annoy everyone very quickly, and eventually get you muted or blocked. Which, by the way, is the exact opposite of what you want to be doing. Just a little FYI in case you’re doing it wrong. Stop it!
  3. Writing books. If you ask any writer, they’ll tell you that they would still write even if no one were to ever read anything they’ve ever written ever again. And I believe that because there is something that keeps us writing. The innate human need to tell stories and to listen to stories. It’s how we learn, it’s how our cultures are passed down from generation to generation. Someone may not read our stories now, but maybe in 50 years? 60? You never know! Storytelling is in our blood. There is satisfaction in storytelling. There is happiness in typing THE END to a book or a short story or a novella. There is joy in it.
    cricket
    But anyone who has ever published a book to crickets will tell you that sometimes you better be happy with self-satisfaction because that’s all you’re going to get. I was reading my friend Dave’s blog post right before I wrote this, and he gave me the idea for this post. He went through a lot with his release. A lot of anxiety and lot of pushing through panic publishing his book. And I wonder, if you asked him, if he knew what the outcome would be, if he knew that after all he went through publishing his book, if he would do it again.
    Was the payoff big enough?
    What was the payoff? That’s different for different people. Maybe it’s simply holding it in your hand. Maybe it’s seeing it “out in the wild” when your friends and family buy it to show their support. Maybe it’s that first review. Maybe it’s that first review by someone you don’t know.

But this is what this whole post is about–this is what it took 791 words to say. Those small things, they better the hell get you through, because in this day of self-publishing, in this day when 50,000 new books are published on Amazon every month, THAT’S ALL YOU’RE GOING TO GET.

You might not believe me when I tell you this isn’t a bitter post. You probably won’t after all the whining I’ve done about sales these past few months, and the huffing and puffing I’ve done about Amazon and KU. Those days are gone because I’ve made some decisions that feel right, and come hell or high water, I’m going to stick with the choices I’ve made. (My publishing career isn’t a ball in a pinball machine–I need to stay steady to gain ANY traction.)

This isn’t a bitter post, but it is realistic. You’re not going to set the world on fire when you hit publish. Anywhere. Not on FB when you publish an updated author post, not in a Tweet, though you may get a few hundred likes, and good on you if you can. You’re not going to change the world with a blog post. Someone did that already, back in 2011.

This is a new age of publishing, and you HAVE TO find little things you love about it to keep going, or you might as well quit. You’re not going to strike it rich with a book, or two, or even six, as I can tell you. 50 might be the new 30, but it used to be you could make okay money if you had 6-10 books out, and you can’t do that anymore. Indies making any kind of money have 10+ books out. Sure there are outliers, like Jami Albright, but for us little people who don’t have the means to go to an RWA conference and rub elbows with big authors who will put us in their newsletter, success is going to come much slower. We’re talking years. And the slower you write, well . . . you don’t need me to do that math.

So the question of this blog post wasn’t what do you get out of writing? It was, what does writing and publishing give you? 

Besides bills from hiring editors and formatters and graphic designers to do your book covers, what DOES writing give you, and is it enough to keep you going until it finally gives you what you want?

And what is it you want?

Fame and fortune, of course. Fame and fortune.

thank you for your patince

My Midlife Crisis. I Mean, my Mid-Year Check In.

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It seems completely crazy to me that half the year has gone by. After a crappy winter, my first as a divorced lady, plus a surgery (old news) and dealing with a POS car on top of all that, my spring smoothed out, THANK GOD.

surgery photo

How I started 2019. This smile was before I started puking from anesthesia.

Blaze got better and is fitting into our new family dynamics. I post a lot of pictures of her and my other cats over on Instagram. If you want to follow me there, click here for my profile link.

My car, after $600.00 in repairs, is running all right, but the countdown is on to buy something better.

I published The Years Between Us in May, but that too, is old news. Though, really, it doesn’t feel like old news. It still feels like a brand new book. Not many people have read it, and it has 0 reviews on Amazon. I have it on BookSprout, and if you want to nab a copy for review through that service, click here.

I had a nice vacation last month to Georgia with my sister, and I met up with David Willis, a fellow writer I met on Twitter a couple years ago. I can’t even tell you how much I adore the ocean.

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Spring is about new beginnings. Summer about shaking off the winter, sleeping in, and picking up more hours at work. Things are going as well as anyone can say their life is going.

Planning my next six months won’t be much of an undertaking. Like Adam Croft said in a New Year’s interview with Joanna Penn, he doesn’t treat the new year any differently. He does what he needs to do to get the things he needs done to write and publish books. And I feel that way about the rest of 2019.

When you are running your own business, being a self-starter and a self-motivator is a must. No one can force you to do the work. All you can do is look in the mirror and ask yourself if you want to sell your books or not. If the answer is yes, well, you can’t sell what you don’t have.

I’ll be finishing my Wedding Party series in the next few months. I’m 18,000 words into book three. As I write, I’ve been exploring covers. Formatting will be a snap with Vellum, but to put links in the back of the books, I’ll have to publish all of them at once so the links will be available, then I’ll need to add the links to the back matter and swap out those files. It’s nothing less than what other successful indies do, but it still sounds like a pain in the ass.

Anyway, anyone keeping track of my progress knows I’m getting a little fed up with this lack-of-sales thing I’ve got going on. It’s not my way to whine–in fact I tend to avoid those who do on a consistent basis. I can’t handle how energy-sucking it can be. I need all the energy I have for myself.

In the next 12 months, you’ll be seeing a lot more progress reports from me. I’ll do this because:

  1. not all of us are making money at this writing thing, and it’s okay to talk about it.
  2. if I find something that works for me, I want to share it because it might work for you, too.
  3. I’m at a point where my backlist should be making me a little money. Focusing on writing and not marketing has been at fault, but this is why I’m experimenting now. I thought All of Nothing would be a game-changer for me, and it has been in some ways. It’s the most-read book I have. But that was luck or better timing as when I used a free day and ran a Freebooksy, All of Nothing was in KU.

Why in this business does it feel like all roads lead to Amazon_ HMMMM.

My personal life probably has a lot to do with how I look at sales. But I’m not different than any other writer using their royalties to buy a better place to live, buy a newer vehicle, or pay down credit card debt.

Anyway, I’m doing what I can and what I can afford to do.

In September, I will be a part of an author panel and luncheon at the Fargo Public Library. I’ll be able to sell my books there too. A lovely woman who connected with me via LinkedIn emailed me the opportunity, and I said yes. While it may not yield any results, it made me remember that local networking can be just as important as networking online.

Something like this makes me excited I’m wide–if, after the luncheon, the library wants to carry my ebooks in their lending catalog, my books are available in the library program through Draft2Digital.

I’ll continue to blog in lieu of a newsletter. I prefer to blog, and every time I publish a new post, I gain new followers, so thank you for reading!

This post needn’t be too long. I’m struggling to write my books and stay afloat like many others out there. Some may have it better than me, some may have it worse. But as I have said many times in the past, we can only work with what we’ve got. Keep your chin up and a smile on your face.

Why in this business does it feel like all roads lead to Amazon_ HMMMM. (1)

Care to share how your 2019 is going? Drop me a comment.

Share a little triumph that will carry you for the rest of the year. ❤

My books are wide! Find them at your favorite ebook retailer.

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!

all graphics made with Canva.com

May Goals :)

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I didn’t have May Goals, so my title is a bit deceptive.

The only goal I really had was to finish book 2 of my series, and I did that. I’m taking a little breather before I start editing book one. I would like to edit books one and two, so when I finish book four, the editing won’t be such a massive undertaking. Book two finished out at 76,000 words, which is 6,000 more words than book one. But now that I know the characters better, when I edit book one, I could easily add a few more words to that, and write in some foreshadowing of other books since I failed to do that the first time around.

I did manage to change the covers to my trilogy, on all the ereader platforms, and even Ingram, which was pretty cool. I won’t rehash any of that–I’ve written other blog posts about it so . . .

next

The problem is, there isn’t any next. I mean, nothing I wouldn’t be doing anyway.  Outlining books three and four, and just editing my life away, while try to stay on top of this blog.

Speaking of blogs, I need to type out some of Autumn’s blog posts. She’s a character in the series who writes a blog for the newspaper. I thought it would be fun extra content to type out the blog interviews of other characters that she talks about in the books. I don’t have a good place to post those. I thought about creating a free website for her using something like Wix, and trying to make that look like her newspaper’s website, but I don’t know how much time I want to take doing that. Especially since I have a standalone book brewing in the back of my mind already for when this series is complete. I could add a tab to my own website, but how long do I want to keep them up?  I’ll keep writing them and transcribing them, and after I get them all done, I’ll decide then.

I’ll continue to look at stock photos to see what i can come up with for covers. I hated doing my trilogy. Four books should be even more fun.

I did attend that Sell More Books Show Summit, and that put me behind a few days. The experience was wonderful though, and you can read about it here.

I edited for a friend, and that took a bit of time, but I like editing, and her story is sounding fantastic!

I guess that’s about all I have for my May goals. I always know what needs to be done if I want to propel my career forward. That usually means writing fast and writing good, quality work while still being anchored to the land of the living.

I bought a promo for Don’t Run Away for the middle of June. It’s permafree, and I purchased it from Freebooksy. I plan to mark down my other two books in the trilogy to .99 for the rest of the month to encourage read-through rates. My main goals while finishing this series and preparing it for release is pushing my books out there. I need reviews and exposure.

I got turned down again for another Kobo promotion, but I’ll keep trying. As a new author without reviews on that site for any of my books, it will be difficult to be approved, I think.

But, it is what it is.

mountain of success

I’ll share how my wide adventures are going in another blog post.

Thanks for reading!

Don’t Run Away: books2read.com/dont-run-away
Chasing You: books2read.com/Chasing-You
Running Scared: books2read.com/running-scared

Wherever He Goes: books2read.com/whereverhegoes1
All of Nothing: books2read.com/allofnothing1
The Years Between Us: books2read.com/the-years-between-us

Try the Tower City Romance Trilogy Today!

graphics made with photos and font from canva.com