I’ve actually had other things to write about lately, which is a surprise as well as a gift, so this week I can catch you up on what I’ve been doing without feeling bad.
Putting up my King’s Crossing series is slow. I’ve done two so far, hopefully three by the time you read this. I’ve been spacing them out because I didn’t know if putting all six up for preorder would anger some Amazon god. They already asked me for proof of licensing for the stock photos I used for book two. They accepted the DepositPhoto screenshots of my account and the licensing agreements and approved my book on the same day, but I decided to wait a couple days between that approval and book three. That happened on Wednesday, so I put up the third book on Saturday. At this rate it will take me a whole week to get everything up on preorder, which is silly since the first book is scheduled to go live on Monday, uh, today. I can’t even do anything until they’re all available in some way, can’t run ads and I haven’t really posted anywhere the first book is close to being released.
With a series, it’s a double-edged sword. You want people to know your books are coming out, or have been released, but few readers will dive into the first book before they know a series is complete and well, I don’t want them to because I know read through is where the royalties and happy readers are. In fact, someone on Booksprout thanked me for putting all of them up to read. I told her, of course, I don’t know how a reader would read them any other way. I’ve talked a lot about series before, so I’ll leave it there, but for me I can’t do anything until I have all the links. Until they’re all showing up on my Amazon author page. Then, and only then, will I start paying for traffic.
I did a crazy thing, too, and started re-editing my A Rocky Point Wedding series, a 3rd person series I released back in 2018. I had a friend say she read them, then someone else was reading them in KU not long ago, and I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I knew they needed work–I’ve learned a lot and have gotten better at self-editing in the six years since I’ve published them–so just to keep myself from going insane, I decided now would be a good time. I have the time while my King’s Crossing series is releasing and if I can get them done by December, I can push them hard because they take place around Christmas. I’ve already finished book one, and I estimate each book is going to take about two, maybe three, weeks. One week, possibly a week and a half, to do the initial edit, then another week to read it again to make sure what I fixed makes sense. These books are shorter, about 75k words on average, and that helps too, since most of my first person books hit 100k. I really like this series and I’m having fun.
I’ll take the opportunity to freshen up the insides, formatting-wise, and I can update my author bio and my ALSO BY list. I figured it can’t hurt to put my pen name books in the backs and I’ll direct people to my VM Rheault website just for kicks since I didn’t have a call to action (CTA) in the back matter anyway.
All in all, it shouldn’t take too long, maybe be done by the middle of November, then I can hype them up a little bit longer and take the rest of the month off, and December too, for a break and not think about book things during the holidays.
When the first of the New Year hits, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have a standalone that needs editing, so I can put that up after my King’s Crossing series has been released. Do you want to see the cover? I have a concept done already. Wait. What? Am I redoing the covers for my Rocky Point series? I’m glad you asked, because, yes, I am! I mean, yes I did. I am very sorry to say, as much as I loved, absolutely adored, looking for couples to help my friend Melody with her covers, I just couldn’t do it anymore, and breaking with the brand I was building under my Vania Rheault name, decided to go with single characters. Which actually turned out because of what the titles are. You’ll see for yourself.
Unless Amazon thinks Autumn is showing too much cleavage, I’ll finally be able to run ads to these. My ads were always blocked before because the characters were showing too much skin in bed.
Quite a change, but I think they look sleeker, simpler, and more angsty than the original covers. I may explore different fonts since I know the title isn’t legible at thumbnail size, but honestly, with the product page blaring the title and the blurb, I’m not sure how much difference that makes.
Hopefully the new covers and edit will draw readers in. Surprisingly, I don’t think read-through is too bad, though in book one I did catch quite a few typos and an inconsistency that I couldn’t believe I let slip by me. Editing book two will keep me on my toes because it follows the same timeline as book one. I remember when I was writing them that I needed more time, in the stories, I mean. There are four books that take place over two weeks, and the only way I could find the time for all four was to write book one and two during the same timeframe. Then three picks up the timeline and book four finishes out the two weeks. But I’ll have to double check all the characters and what they’re doing in book two line up with book one.
So, that’s what I’ll be doing in the next couple of months. While I’m working on these, I’ll try to remember to give my King’s Crossing books some love because I get way too focused on the current project at hand. I’ve always been this way, never stopping to enjoy the work I put into a book, but for some reason, I’m going to be absurdly proud of my A Rocky Point Wedding series when they’re all fixed up, and I may order some authors copies to give away at Christmas.
That’s about all I have going on here. It might sound like a lot, but I’m still taking the time to relax a bit and I’m watching A Discovery of Witches on Netflix. I already watched it once, but I liked it enough to watch it again. As far as health stuff, I wrote one last blog post on my mental health blog. Since I stopped drinking in June, I haven’t had nearly the anxiety and it’s difficult to write about anxiety if you’re not experiencing it. I still get nervous sometimes, that this is how I’ll feel for the rest of my life, but when the best of the best says, “It is what it is,” there’s not a lot that can be done. I won’t get into it anymore here. If you’re interested in that update, you can look here: https://chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com/2024/09/nothing-good-in-good-situation.html
I might still write on it from time to time, to explore how I feel and what I’m doing. I’m trying to move forward the best I can, working on my books, trying to remember that it’s okay to take a break. I don’t think I’m going to be as hardcore in 2025 as I used to be. Things have changed, and I’m tired. I have my books figured out until August, and I need to find the fun in writing again. I have an idea for another standalone, about a woman who’s sister was involved in a kidnapping gone wrong, and my main character happens to fall in love with the boy’s father. I even have the cover for that one almost done, and I know I want it to be dark. Like depression, death, heartbreakingly dark. It might just be the thing to keep my spirits up because, like a lot of people these days, life has been kind of dragging me down.
Anyway, enough of that. There’s no point in wallowing. Life is good.
I don’t have much to say this week. I was able to finish proofing my proofs and I tweaked their covers. They looked plain, like they were missing something. I had made a series logo when I had the other covers, but with the colored lights, the logo didn’t fit anymore and I had to figure out something else. I really like the bokeh city background. I think it fits in with my other covers and the brand I’ve been able to create with all my books so I didn’t want to change it once I found it.
The tagline doesn’t add much, but I think it fills in the emptiness and balances out all the text at the bottom. I bolded the font (in Canva, if there’s not a choice to bold a font, you can duplicate it and lay it on top of the first which is what I had to do here) and it actually doesn’t look too bad in person. I won’t bother to take a picture of it because it wouldn’t look right anyway, but I’m pleased with how they look and besides moving the guy up on the sixth book, the covers are good. Here are all my covers together, besides my series, if you wanted to see them side by side:
Some might say not being able to read the tagline is a concern, especially at thumbnail size, but it will be bolded on the Amazon product page in the blurb section, so it’s mostly for decoration at this point.
I still have a lot to do–I haven’t even paged through the proofs yet, just opened the box to see how the tagline looked on the covers. I need to make sure the interiors are okay, that I added and took out everything I wanted, change the chapter headers because the paperback and ebook chapter headers have to be different, and then create the ebook files, for both Amazon and Bookfunnel. For six books, that will likely take me all day, and then I still have to create download pages for Bookfunnel and upload the files. I decided that I’m going to put all the ARCs up first before putting my preorders up on Amazon. I just want to do things one step at a time, and I’ll put my ARCs up for a couple of weeks first. I plan to run a Facebook ad to my website to encourage readers to download and I’m also going to use Booksprout since I’ve been nurturing a following there. I was a little hesitant putting the ARCs up while they were on preorder because I don’t want to upset the Amazon gods in any way, and I’d prefer links not being up in other places if they’re on Amazon, even if they’re only available for preorder.
If you’re wondering why I haven’t dug into any of that yet, it’s because I was stupid. On Saturday I had the entire day ahead of me, and instead of reading a book that I didn’t write or making graphics for social media, I opened my reader magnet and started reading My Biggest Mistake.
I didn’t have any intention of editing it, but once I started reading, I started changing things here and there, getting rid of some echoing, that kind of thing. My Vellum file says I last edited it in January of 2023, and while I did a good job, I’m finding things to fix to make it sound better. The story is still solid–I’m only changing things on a paragraph and sentence basis, and not even much of that. I started reading it because I really enjoy the story, and since I’ve been lightly editing it, I’m almost sorry I’m giving this book away. Despite the changes I’ve made so far, it’s one of my better books, deep and angsty, my characters saving each other from the choices they’ve made.
I don’t know how I could sell it and not feel bad since it’s free on my website, and I don’t want to put it for free anywhere since it does encourage visitors to my blog. I’m still giving away copies, about one every two days, though I’m not sure if I’ve been getting new subscribers. I exported my list from MailerLite and fed my list into my website, but since then the numbers have remained steady, though WordPress gives me a notification now and then I have a new subscriber. I’ve been blogging more, trying to get the word out, so I guess if people are getting sick of that, they’ve unsubscribed.
I don’t pay attention to those kinds of numbers, but I would feel bad if I took down my free book. I’ve been giving it away since practically I wrote it–it’s basically part of my brand now.
Anyway, so I enjoyed reading that and it will be better for it besides.
I have a Mayo Clinic appointment on the 23rd, and my sister is taking advantage of the trip to see a dermatologist for her eczema. I’ll be gone August 21-23 and I’ll try to get as much done as I can before then. I don’t know if I’ll be able to get my ARCs up. It would be nice if I could, because once those go up, I’ll be able to take another break. I haven’t been feeling lousy, and it would be fun to actually enjoy this trip down to the Cities–maybe eat at a place we never have before and I want to hit up Half Price Books in Apple Valley, if time allows. I haven’t been in there for a long time, and they may have some craft books I haven’t read yet.
Otherwise, that’s about all I have going on. I’m having an MRI done at one of my appointments, and I think she’s going to tell me I have endometriosis. This isn’t the blog for that, but I’ve been going down there every three months since February and if she wants to see me again, I’m going to put her off until December, or even January. I’d like to enjoy the holidays this year since even though I’m not cured, I’m feeling better, AND my 50th birthday falls on US’s Thanksgiving Day. That has got to be some kind of omen, you’d think. Better things coming for 2025, maybe? Not sure. I’m too hesitant after everything that’s happened to hope.
One thing at a time, at any rate, and getting those ARCs up is what I’m going to be working on this week. My sister and I are dragging my daughter (who is eighteen) to see Twisters (the second time for my sister and me) and I’m looking forward to that. When the original Twister came out, I saw it in the movie theatre thirteen times. There’s just something about seeing a movie like that on the big screen as often as you can. Probably the only good thing I can say about COVID is that the theatres were forced to regurgitate old movies, and my sister and I were able to see Titanic a couple of times in the theatre. She’s young enough she never saw it on the big screen. We made my daughter go to that one too, and I was pleased she sniffled through the entire thing, even though she gave us a hard time for forcing her to go.
Sales are slow at the moment, and there’s nothing to report there. The only thing that will breathe life into my sales now, I’m afraid, is publishing again, and I’ll get on that soon enough. I’ve heard lots of reports of August being a slow month (which I don’t really believe because the world is a big place), and I almost regret putting out my series during an election year. Stupid politics. I have a bad feeling that fiasco is going to ruin my launch and I can only hope the series hangs in there until after the New Year because I’ll be releasing into summer of 2025. But, never fear, it’s the first year my daughter can vote and I’m running her little butt up to the polling place because we both understand the assignment. Besides, I’ve benefited from living in Minnesota. Tim Walz is great, and I would love for the rest of the country to benefit from all he’s done for us, too.
I don’t get political often, and I hope if you’re publishing around that time, too, that you have a great launch!
That’s all I have for today. Good luck this week, keep your chin up if you’re going through the usual garbage. Take care of yourselves.
Things may seem bleak now, Brother. But if I’m learning anything from my art studies, it’s that it is almost always a matter of… perspective. I look at my art, and if I do not like what I see, I may always alter the color palette, but I certainly do not toss the entire design aside. Perhaps you, too, could do the same in your own life.
There is a lot of advice online about indie publishing, and we all know to take advice with a grain of salt. People rarely post the whole story to any situation, but a lot of times that’s not their fault. When you’re given a character limit, there’s not a lot you can do. That’s why when someone is asking about ads or editing or marketing, there’s going to be a lot of missing, or misleading, information. Whole books are written on topics like that and there’s no way the person asking how to run Amazon ads will successfully learn everything they need to know in a Threads post or on Twitter. Even Facebook with their unlimited character limit, people won’t/can’t post everything you should probably know. Besides, it’s not their job to teach you, and their way may not be your way.
Part of the problem is the people asking don’t want to take the time research for themselves. We’re all busy and sitting down to read a 200 page book on Amazon ads may sound bland and time-consuming. They want to know the nitty-gritty, but the problem is, we all have different books, knowledge bases, different budgets, and yeah, different perspectives.
I never considered it until someone I’ve interacted with every once in a while relayed this story on Threads:
I related to the post because I too, break even on Facebook ads, but I never considered myself “failing.” I reason that I’m finding readers–people are reading my books who wouldn’t have before–so I never considered the ads or my books, a failure. So, yeah, in a sense they are “working” but anyone who is in my shoes would want them to work “better.”
That’s why it’s important to know what you want out of your books, what you want out of your business, and what you want out of your ad platform. If you want to sell 100 books a month, your goals are a lot different from someone who’s happy to sell one. If they’re happy with that one book a month, then your marketing strategy is going to be vastly different from theirs.
I haven’t done a very good job of figuring out what I want, mostly because I’ve been happy simply writing the next book and breaking even. I’m rather vague, saying I just would like to make a part-time income to fill in some of the blanks my day job leaves behind. I need to change that mission to earning a part-time income without having to spend on ads, or making 200% ROI so I’m earning more than just being able to cover ad costs. I’m grateful I’m selling books at all, even if I have to pay for ads to do it, because the market is crazy right now–there are so many authors and books out there–and selling books isn’t a guarantee no matter how wonderful your books are or how big of a backlist you have.
So when you seek advice online, be prepared for advice given by people who have different goals and perspectives than you. Rarely do we all want the same things or have the resources to obtain them. Taking advice from someone who has very little to spend on ads will be a lot different than listening to advice from someone who can afford to throw $500.00 a month at them. They can because either they have the day job to afford it, or they’re making money off their books and they’re putting their royalty money right back into their business. You may be a ways off before being able to do that.
If you aren’t making money off your ads or you’re not selling books, changing how you look a your product can help too. Get honest feedback on your cover. Get help rewriting your blurb. We become very close to our books and we’re biased because we don’t want to think anything negative or bad about something we worked so hard on. But it’s essential to look at your book as a reader of that genre and not its creator. Change your perspective and you might be faced with a whole lot of truths that can only help you move forward.
When you think about ads or booking a promo through Written Word Media or something else like Fussy Librarian, it helps to know what you want. Do you just want to make your fee back? Maybe you want some reviews too (keeping in mind on average, only one reader out of 100 will leave a review). Maybe you’re just testing the waters and don’t mind losing a little money. Maybe you’re just paying to get your name out there, wanting the exposure, or maybe you’re pushing out your backlist and laying the groundwork for a new release. If you know what your goals are, you can study what others are doing and twist them to suit you and your business.
If someone does say they are having success with ads and you want to break down the hows and the whys, here are some basic things you can look at:
How are their covers? Covers play an important part when you pay for ads, especially Amazon ads where the book cover is the only thing that’s featured (if you don’t choose to write ad copy). Are yours up to snuff? Because if they’re not and theirs is, you can throw their advice away. It won’t work for you.
Blurbs. You need a strong blurb (and cover) or you could pay for clicks and once they reach your product page, they’ll back out and you won’t get any sales.
How many reviews do they have? Opinions on this vary, but from my own experience, books that have more reviews do better than books that have fewer. If you have five and the person you’re talking to has 500, you’ll have to keep that in mind and maybe realize it will be harder for your ads to encourage sales.
How often do they publish/how big is their backlist. If they publish four times a year and never fall off Amazon’s 90-day cliff, but you can only publish once a year, take that into consideration. You’re going to be pushing a boulder up a mountain, and that author is already at the top.
Are they promoting other ways (like a newsletter)? Any way an author is pushing readers toward Amazon tells Amazon to push your books and ads will work that much better. It’s kind of a crappy cycle: the more you push readers to Amazon, the more they push your books, and the more your books will sell, and the more your ads work, and the more your books will sell, and the more Amazon will push your books. I believe that’s called being “sticky” an achievement I haven’t reached yet.
Changing your perspective can help in other ways, too. Experiment with your bid, experiment with your ad copy/tagline, even changing your keywords or categories. If something isn’t working, you need to look at it from a different point of view. This is what my ad would look like if I ran an Amazon ad with ad copy to Twisted Alibis.
For as good as it sells, I’m disappointed I don’t have more reviews, but it’s better than Captivated by Her that only has like, 11 star-reviews and maybe one text-review, so I’ll take what I can get.
You can study that ad and think of what you could do if it was your book. Is the cover good? If you’re in a country that allows you to add text, is your tagline hooky? How many reviews do you have? Is your Kindle price where it should be, or is it too much… or too little?
You have a lot more freedom with Facebook ads, though they’re making changes now and I bought a class from The Writing Wives because Mal is going to go over them. I’ll be logged into work and I won’t be able to watch it live, but I need to know what to do the next time I want to set up a Facebook ad. I have two running right now that have great social proof and I’m never going to turn them off. As of right now, even though I’m slightly losing money on them because sales are dismal, they are the only thing driving any kind of traffic to my books.
There are a lot of resources out there about how to set up Amazon and Facebook ads. A lot of it is technical information, and you have to take that information and tailor it to your books. Like with Facebook ads, not everyone is going to use the same featured stock photo, or use the same headline, or use the same description. All they can tell you is how to set up the ad and possibly give you tips on hooks. You’ll have to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Look at your ad in the POV of a reader and ask yourself if it would draw you in.
David Gaughran has a ton of information on Facebook ads, and he recently just did a tutorial on how to turn your book’s cover into a graphic using Canva.
This blog post has gotten way out of hand, and honestly, I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say. Listen to what people have to say, but be aware their goals may not be yours. That might not be a bad thing–getting others’ opinions can be helpful. Know what you want out of ads, and be honest with yourself if they’re not working. Or if they are working and you want them to work better, figure out what you can do, even if that’s just adding a dollar to your daily spend (if you can afford it and/or if you know you’ll earn it back). Right now, I’m stalled out, spending about 8 dollars a day and earning 6 if I’m lucky, but I think it’s because I haven’t published anything for a long time, and we always have to keep in mind that writing the next book is the best thing you can do.
It’s been kind of a long week, and it’s hot outside–86F. I’m going to go outside and give some water to my animal friends and walk around the block to clear my head. I swear to God I’ll be a different person once this series is done. Maybe I can finally get some rest.
To no one’s surprise, I’ve been thinking a lot about my series and how people are going to discover them and how I can market them so people do.
It’s really not so much about discoverability, though that is difficult too. What I’ve come to realize is that we all want to build a community around our books. Discoverability, yes, but we also want people to stick around once they do find our books. We want people buy our books and talk about them. We want people to talk about our books to other people. We want those in our groups to talk to each other and engage in conversations about our books, but not only our books–other books in the genre you’re writing in.
Some authors do this really well–I’m a member of Susan Mallory’s and Brenda Novak’s facebook groups. They have thousands of members and they all talk to each other, get excited for the authors’ new releases, and just have a really good time talking books.
If you look at any author’s successful groups, you’ll find some similarities right away.
They post regularly and have chosen the platform that works best for them. They usually have one spot where they focus all their time. I might be showing my age, and other authors who are my age might be showing theirs, but Facebook groups still seem to be the place where authors and readers like to go. I’ll be 50 this year and I’m guessing Susan and Brenda are older than me. But that also means their readers are around the same ages they are. When I look at my Facebook Ads demographics, women 55+ are the ones who click on my ads the most. Which means that maybe since I’m an older author and my readers may be skewing older, places like IG and TikTok aren’t going to drive sales. The characters in most of my books are usually older than 30 years of age, and that’s a great marketing tool. So not only do they post regularly, they chose the platform that works well for them. It helps to know who your readers are and who you’e writing for. Not only do you want to speak to your readers who build your community, relating to them is important, too.
They encourage reader participation. When you peruse author groups, you’ll find out right away that they always encourage reader participation, be it a giveaway, a poll, or simply asking what their summer plans are. The reason I hesitate to do that is because when you encourage reader participation, especially by asking a question, to be courteous and polite, it is nice, every once in a while, to respond back. This is something I have to work on because I tend to blow off notifications and don’t really like to speak to anyone. That could be a byproduct of how I’ve been feeling and now that I’m feeling better, maybe I will be more open to chatting and engaging with people, but for the past four years, I’ve been a lurker and that’s not really great when you’re running your own group. In the past I have tried to run giveaways and such, but no one really participates because my “group” isn’t cohesive. I have 700 subscribers I moved over to my blog from MailerLite and only 28% of them open my emails. Fewer yet click on links. That’s not great participation. I have fewer than 200 likes and followers on my FB author page, when after all this time, I could have had thousands. It’s not that FB is a dud for me, it’s that I don’t post, and when I do post and people engage, it takes me days to respond back. No one wants to join a group where the host isn’t present so if I want to build my following, I need to put more work into it and be present. That’s what anyone has to do, no matter what platform they’ve chosen.
They have confidence in their work. It’s really difficult to have confidence in your book if you’re the only one who worked on it. Doing your own editing and cover design can make you feel like Wonder Woman, but it also elicits a lot of doubts because it’s rare someone can be a one-stop-shop successfully. I’ve gone through most of my books at least once more since they’ve been published (my duet and my Lost & Found trilogy both got massive scene rewrites). We get better as we go along, and you’ll always find changes you want to make in a book that’s three years old or whatever. Even my rockstars have a “with” and “when” problem, though I seemed to have caught on to that when I was editing A Heartache for Christmas and fixed it in that book. I could go back and re-edit my rockstars but even though I love the stories and wouldn’t mind reading them again, the want to do so just isn’t there, at least, not now. I could change my mind after my series is done and not hanging over my head anymore, but we’ll have to see how I feel. I promised myself a break, and re-editing 300,000 words isn’t a break. So, knowing your book is the best it can be is a big deal, and that gives you the confidence you need to push your book out into the world. If you love your book, love the cover, and are proud if it, you show it to everyone and can’t stop talking about it. If you’re excited, others will be too. It helps to know not every book is going to be perfectly published, and it helps to know that not every author has the same skills. I’ve read some books that were not to my taste that had thousands of 5-star reviews. There’s room for everyone, so grab your seat at the table and shine!
They have newsletters. Building a community takes time and consistency. I would love for all 700 of my blog/newsletter subscribers to also follow my FB page and maybe one day I can ask them to follow me there. Maybe a small percentage of the small percentage that reads my blog will do it. But if I do, then I have to commit to posting there, and I rarely post, hence the fewer than 200 followers. Since I started my newsletter, I have actually been really good about sending it out once a month. Writing is probably my biggest strength (as opposed to finding and posting memes or creating videos) and I do use that to my advantage posting here once a week and sending out a newsletter even though I didn’t have much to say because I didn’t have a new release coming out. I like creating content that way, and maybe during the time leading up to my series, I’ll post twice a month. I’ll have a lot to say, even if it’s just posting the blurbs to my books to build buzz. But if you’re creating a community, starting a newsletter is pretty common. My property management sends out a newsletter, so do my local libraries. My children’s schools sent out newsletters, so do churches and other groups. If you’re saying “I don’t want to send out a newsletter because…” You’ll have to find a substitute because no matter what you tell yourself, people really do want to know what you’re up to. I’d like to think my newsletter/blog will complement my FB author page and vice versa. When I start posting.
So what does all this mean for me and my series? In a nutshell, I don’t post enough. I was happy hiding in my books, churning them out, but that’s only half of what you need to do. Having the books and the backlist will always come first, but a close second is getting the word out, and that does mean posting and talking about my books. I don’t have the confidence to do a FB Live or similar, but I would like to start sharing more videos of myself, especially holding author copies of my books. Videos are rewarded by the algorithms after all, and if you film yourself they can be cross-posted. But like I said in my mental health blog, part of what is wearing me down is the fact that for so long I haven’t felt good, and while that adds to me not wanting to do stuff like that, the years have been hard and show on my face. I don’t really notice until someone takes my picture (like my daughter did of me and my sister during a roadtrip to Bismarck, ND last week) and I can barely recognize myself. Hopefully as things continue to improve on that front, my face will perk up too and I won’t look so rundown and downtrodden.
What are my next steps? While I’m proofing these books, I can create graphics that have quotes from the first book and I can make several at a time and either post when I want or schedule them through Canva. Like this one:
I want to put my covers out there for the next month while I proof and get my ARCs ready to go. I’ve always felt a little weird hyping books that aren’t ready yet, but some authors do it the second they decide to write the book. I have covers in place, blurbs, and plenty of words to search for quotes. I should have no problem creating the content, I just need to have the motivation to do it. But, if I’m interested in building a community, no one congregates where there aren’t people around. That’s why they’re called ghost towns, and yeah, right now, all that’s on my FB author page is tumbleweeds. Not great.
I do want community. I do want people talking about my books.
It just sucks I have to talk about them first.
Have a great holiday week, everyone. Stay safe, and if you’re drinking, stay away from those fireworks!
These are the covers I’ve chosen for my series. They just need a few more tweaks before they’ll be ready to submit when I order my proofs.
I’ve written about series a few times on this blog, mostly in favor of them because if your first book is strong there can be potential for great read-through and they have numerous marketing advantages like putting the first book free (a loss leader) or making compilation. But there are cons to writing a series too, such as how much work they are, they cost more to produce, and not everyone likes to dive into a long series, especially by an unknown author.
One thing I didn’t consider when I wrote my first trilogy, or any others after that for that matter, is never finishing once I started. To me, my duets, trilogies, and series are one long story, and like writing a standalone from the first page to the last, they aren’t done until the last book is written. I don’t consider the time or the energy it takes to write it. Once I get it into my head (and the books plotted out) I write until I’m done. I don’t even think about if readers will enjoy them or what kind of return on investment I’ll get after they’re published.
When I first joined the writing community, many years before Musk ruined Twitter, there were authors here and there who wouldn’t finish their series. Being the arrogant new writer that I was, I thought it was simply laziness on their part, but over the years, and days such as yesterday when I’m reminded of it, I’ve learned some authors don’t finish a series because the books they already have published aren’t selling.
This is a huge Catch-22. Some readers don’t read a series until all the books are out, bingeing the books like they would a Netflix show (that actually drops all at once. I’m looking at you, Bridgerton.). That does mean fewer readers of your series if you publish as you write. But since readers do this, maybe you’re not selling as many books as you want and you think finishing isn’t worth it.
I wasn’t aware authors gauged the success of their series this way, mostly because I don’t write and publish that way. In fact, it boggles my mind how you could. The thought of being unable to change details in earlier books to fit with later books gives me hives. I know not all writers need that flexibility (they’re better writers and keep meticulous track of details and/or their stories aren’t too complicated and/or their series are interconnected but true standalones that aren’t as dependent on the books before), but I think needing it also gives me the freedom to finish without worrying about consequences. Consequences such as lost time and lost resources. I’m going to take the time to write and finish because I want to take the time.
The problem with my way of thinking is that if no one reads my series from start to finish, I’ve already lost time. I don’t have the option to bail because that time is already gone. But, even if the books don’t sell, like my duet, I can’t consider it a waste–I’ve written the story I want to tell.
I understand why people don’t want to wait and write them all first. If you have limited time, you may be writing for five or six years before you can publish them all. The series I’m about to publish took me four and a half years to get to where I’m comfortable publishing, but I’ve also written, packaged, and published other books while they were breathing between edits. I’ve said I have a lot of time to write, and not everyone is afforded that luxury. So I get being impatient, wanting to put your books out there, but if you are, that does come with, in my opinion, expectations you’ll have to control. Readers who enjoy your books will want to know when the next one comes out, and that increases the pressure to write and publish quickly. On the flip side, if no one reads, you’ll feel like writing the subsequent books will be a waste of time. On the flip side of that, you’d have to decide if abandoning a series would be worth it because you have no idea how an unrelated book would do and you could find you would have been better off writing the next book in the series you put aside.
Books sell forever and you never know when something will suddenly catch. That may be a book one in a series you didn’t finish and you’re sabotaging your own success. Read through will always earn you more, and an incomplete series can elicit distrust.
It doesn’t happen with only indies… we all know about George RR Martin. I watched the Game of Thrones on HBO because I knew after all this time Martin wouldn’t finish, and I wanted some type of closure, even if it wasn’t his. Whether or not Martin had any input in how the series ended, it ended how I thought it would and I was satisfied, if not happy, though I would have been happier had I been able to read the books. Life happens and he has his fingers in a lot of pies. As an author, I’m not sure how he feels about leaving a project like that unfinished. Maybe it bothers him or maybe he feels HBO finished it for him and he doesn’t think about it. Plenty of fans want the books, and him writing and releasing them would revive the whole series.
What it comes down to is how you want to run your business and how you want to spend your time. It may not be so simple to some, but books end up being products and an incomplete series will never sell as well as one that’s finished. If anything, complete your series to say that you did? I know I wouldn’t be able to write anything else if I didn’t have intentions of finishing. I would feel like I’m letting myself down, and the time it would take to finish would be worth it to me. It’s not for me to judge if it’s not worth it to you.
As for my author update, I finally finished editing my series. The next steps are adding elements to the formatting–even though I said I wouldn’t, I’m going to add chapter headers to the paperbacks, but they’re going to be the same for all six books. I have to make sure all the front and back matter is the same and in the same order, update my copyright pages as I changed the models and backgrounds and I add that information, make sure my Also By pages are updated and rewrite my acknowledgments. I thanked my ex-fiancé and he doesn’t deserve the mention. I still have plenty to do before I can order the proofs, but it won’t take as long as the editing. Toward the end, I just kept rereading the same paragraphs over and over, mostly due to fixating on how I felt instead of the story. I haven’t had any anxiety since my Mayo Clinic appointment on the 28th, and I’m thankful for that. Anxiety attacks were also getting in the way of my editing sessions, causing me to reread more than I should have because I was scared I had missed a mistake.
If you’re reading this the day it posts, I’ll be on a clear liquid diet for a colonoscopy on the 4th. To keep my mind off how hungry I am, formatting these books will be the perfect project. I can make a cup of broth, turn on some music, and pretend I don’t have such a crummy task ahead of me. My doctor at Mayo recommended I have it, and I was very fortunate my local clinic could get me in so quickly so I didn’t have to worry or think about it over the summer. Of course, I’m hoping they don’t find anything–I’m not sure if my mental health could take anymore. I didn’t hear any bad news at Mayo. She reassured me things were okay inside my body and that my hysterectomy hadn’t messed anything up inside me. I was really relieved. I have a follow up on August 23rd, but if my colonoscopy comes back clear, I think that appointment will be the end of things for a while. I know what my issues are and I’m on a treatment plan. I may never feel “normal” again but I’ve come a long way in the four months since my first appointment, and I’m grateful.
I don’t want to bog up this post with health updates–I just mentioned it because my editing was slowed down quite a bit by panic attacks and not feeling well. I still plan on reading most if not all of the proofs, but hopefully that last and final read through will be enjoyable and I can look at it as a kind of closure in two ways: maybe not the end of my health issues, but I worked on these the whole time I was unwell and now I’m feeling better, and the end of four years of work on a six-book series that will be my pride and joy. I doubt I’ll ever be able (or want) to write anything that will compare to these. Writing kept me sane while I was dealing with all this crap, and while they may remind me of these hard years, it will be tough to say goodbye, too.
Besides telling you if my colonoscopy went okay, I don’t think I’ll need to mention my health anymore. It’s under control, and it will be interesting to see how I feel writing new books without that in the back of my mind. But I won’t stop writing on my other blog, and if you want to follow along, you can do it here: chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com
Next week I hope to tell you my positive test results and that I was able to order my proofs. Because of the time I’ll need to read the proofs and submit the changes, I won’t be able to put my ARCs up until the beginning of July, but that’s okay. I know these are done to the best of my ability. It’s time to move on, in a lot of ways, and I’m looking forward to it. Keep your fingers crossed for me! Have a great week!
I don’t listen to many podcasts anymore–I’m hoping that will change after I get more answers at my appointment on Tuesday… and after I get this blasted series done. I have four chapters left, but I know in one of the chapters there’s a scene I want to add to, just to circle back to something a character mentioned in book four that would wrap up this couple’s HEA all the better. I don’t want to rush the rewrite and I conceded a long time ago these would be done when they get done. I’ve been working more seriously on the covers, but damned if I can do better than what I have. I’ve looked at cover after cover, from dark billionaire romances to romantic suspense and the problem I keep running into is that the vibes don’t match. I don’t mean my brand, but the vibes of the stories. While these characters are a little younger than I’m used to, that’s the only difference between this series and what my backlist offers. I can’t go too dark and even if there is a lot of suspense, nothing in the romantic suspense genre grabbed me. I’m stuck with the models–one guy in a suit because he’s the billionaire, one guy (who has been used everywhere FML but I like how he’s dressed) because he’s a PI and wears a suit all of one time in the stories. You wanna see them? Here they are:
The guy on the left is Zane Maddox, billionaire. The guy on the right (who might be familiar as I played with him when I was doing my Christmas novel cover) is Gage Davenport, the PI who falls in love with Zane’s sister. They go well together and match the background I chose for them. Deviating from what I made for covers months ago feels wrong, but I’ve tried because I think the covers are on the plain side. I mean, they’re a good plain and they’ll fit in with the books in my backlist, but I really wanted these to be special, and I feel like I’m letting this series down somehow. Maybe I’m blowing my covers out of proportion. They don’t look any different than the books I’ve published before, but my sales aren’t great and it takes me a lot of telling myself it’s not because of my covers. Because in all honesty, my covers don’t look any worse than anything else that’s out there, and I still like people on my covers, no matter what the trend happens to be right now. I need elegant, not edgy, and even if they are subdued, I think ultimately they’re what I’m going for.
Anyway, so I bring this up because I listened to Craig Martelle’s State of the Industry talk in his Successful Indie Author Facebook group. I like listening to what he has to say. He’s practical and down-to-earth. Maybe in a way that only already successful authors can be because he’s making money and even “slow” periods don’t affect him that much, but he doesn’t freak out about stuff, and I can appreciate that. If you want to listen to what he has to say, he posted it on YouTube here:
I listened to it because I always like hearing speculation and trends, where people think indie publishing is going. Personally, I feel like small-time authors like me are stagnating. Nothing can help us get ahead. Right now FB ads are the only way I’m selling books, and even yesterday I had to go in and pause two of my ads. I spent 140 dollars between two ads for the first book in my duet. The clicks were only costing me .14 USD which is way cheaper than any of my Amazon ads I’ve run, but I wasn’t seeing the sales. I don’t get many sales of Captivated (I think it’s a number of reviews issue), and I would have known if those clicks were turning into buys. In fact, you can go to your Author Central page and look at the sales ranks for your books. My ad spend was going up as my book rank plummeted. That’s not a great match. I have two going for the first in my rockstar trilogy and they have ton of likes and shares. They don’t have an end date and I’ll likely never turn them off. Those two are the only things driving my sales right now. My Freeobooksy for Rescue Me did better in terms of KU reads than I thought, but I haven’t made my fee back yet. (I’ll get into numbers when I do my half-year check in.)
So if you’re a small-time author, or a baby author, you’re going to think the state of the industry is pretty crappy, and you probably aren’t liking the advice everyone throws at you: write the next book. I get the next book is important, but I can understand the conundrum. If no one is around to read it, why write it? It’s very very easy to be defeated, especially since it seems like there aren’t many people around to cheer you on. Everyone is busy with their own struggles and there just aren’t that many people who have time to hold your hand or pat you on the back. I don’t want this post to go all “woes me–” I’d like to keep it practical at least. What can a baby author do to get ahead? What can any author do to move the needle. I understand where people are going when they say write the next book. I’ve said it too. But now many will be enough? There are some authors who have written 100+ and that must feel very intimidating to a debut author whose book sinks a week after launch. The state of the industry is confusing–there has never been a better time to be writer in terms of ease and resources, but I also feel like COVID upped our competition and that competition never really went away. Al (I asked ChatGPT) said 60,000 books are published every month. I used to think that was more, but I haven’t watched a K-lytics report in a long time to know. But even 60,000 books a month is a lot. Other authors aren’t our competition, but when you start throwing numbers around, it sure feels like they are.
Craig also said a few other things, like the election not doing us any favors, and I can believe that. Trump winning wore us down, Biden winning after lifted us up. Whether Biden can win again remains to be seen, but either way, this fall tension will be high. It always is. The holidays don’t do anyone any favors unless you have a Christmas novel to put out, so you could start writing one now and hopefully have it ready to go by November. I’ll push A Heartache for Christmas because last year between November first and December 31st, I sold 31 books and had the equivalent of 96 books read in KU. I also ran ads to it, so I could have technically broke even, but these days, that feels like the best you can do.
I don’t know if Craig said much else. I don’t think he spoke with an outline in mind and he went off on some tangents every once in a while, but I still enjoyed listening to his talk. I guess you take away some negative bits from it (as it seems I have) but the real takeaway I should have gleaned from his talk is that you can’t sell a book that hasn’t been written. That’s true for any author, no matter how many books they have in their backlist, and no one knows that more than an author who has readers wanting their next book.
It’s finding those readers without growing broke or sacrificing your mental or physical health along the way.
I really don’t have anything to write about this week. I finished editing book five of my series, and I’m on to book six … I’ve been looking at my covers thinking they’re a little plain, wondering if I should break my brand mold and put couples on them instead, but I don’t really want to do that. I don’t hate the covers I have now, but this series is special and I feel like they need a bit more pizzazz. Something might come at me while I’m updating the formatting–it seems my best covers materialize the night before I want to upload files, but all I know for right now is they’re missing something and I’m not going to publish until I’m completely happy. I did that when I published my Lost & Found trilogy and botched their launch. I doubt the launch of this series will go perfectly, but I want to do as well as I can and I know for right now these covers aren’t it.
In a rare move, I took last Wednesday off. Wednesdays are my biggest editing/writing days because it’s my last day off of the week (Mondays I do errands and cleaning around the apartment and Tuesday nights I go to dinner and a movie with my sister) and I don’t have any chores, errands, or plans. I can edit from sun up to sun down, and I usually get a good chunk of work done. On Tuesday I had finished book five and I just was not feeling jumping into book six. So I did some admin stuff, took a nap, brought my daughter shopping for a dress to wear to her high school graduation, made dinner, watched a replay of a YouTube live from an indie author I wanted to watch, and then I went to bed. It’s not like me to waste time like that, but I have been working so hard on this series I just needed a day to relax (if I can call that relaxing–yeah, I know).
I did a free run on Captivated by Her and Rescue Me from May 9th to yesterday, the 12th, and I gave away 4616 copies of Rescue Me and 98 copies of Captivated by Her. I paid for a Freebooksy promo for Rescue Me–that’s why I gave away more copies of that book–but I’m happy I moved a few copies of Captivated, too. I’m not sure why I did the promotion except that I hadn’t done one for a while and I’m still shaky on how to get my name out there without having to pay for it. I was happy with the placement of my book in their newsletter–I was first. I had to shrink my screen to fit it all in the screenshot, but this is how it looked:
I know giving away a book is easy, and making the free top 100 list isn’t anything to brag about, but I made it to number 6 in the contemporary romance category and number 15 overall in the free kindle store.
I was getting some page reads from Rescue Mei, but since it’s a standalone I’m not hoping to earn my fee back. I’ll keep an eye on how many people go on to read Addicted to Her, but being I gave away less than 100 copies of Captivated, it may not be that many. We’ll see what happens.
Anyway, so I watched a YouTube Live replay of a romance indie author who went over her six-month marketing plan and I noticed that she heavily used cross-promotion as a way to get the word out. I’ve moaned for a while now that my networking is crap, and while it’s really difficult to think you need to meet people with the intent of using them, I don’t see it that way. I’m more than happy to swap and share. Because writing and publishing is such a solitary thing, I don’t often think about including anyone else. I didn’t tell any of my romance groups in case they were looking for free reads for their subscribers, and when I planned those free days and set up my free days in my KDP dashboard, that was the first thing I should have done so other authors had a heads up in case they were looking for content. It’s just really hard for me to think in terms of including others in my plans and I know I need to do better.
She also was saying how important new releases are, and that you can get a lot of content out of a launch. I think we all know this…snippets…cover reveals… that kind of thing, but I am terrible at doing anything with it. I’ve said before that by the time I have a new book out, I’m already writing something else, and that is a terrible way to treat your newest release. Your books deserve all the love in the world, and I wonder if I haven’t wanted to take the time to do that kind of thing because I’ve been so busy trying to bury how I’m feeling. In the four years I’ve felt like garbage, all I’ve done is try to feel better and forget about how crappy I do feel. Immersing myself in writing has been pretty much the only way I’ve been able to do that, and pressing pause to promote a book has never been on my radar. Releasing six books two months apart will be a different thing for me and it would be a waste to publish these and not freaking tell anyone. There’s no sense in that, but fighting to be seen is a struggle and it’s difficult to add that struggle when you’re already struggling with something else. I try not to go too much into my health anymore because I don’t want to tire you and I really don’t want people to stop reading my blog because they’ll think it’ll be just more of the same. It was just interesting to me when a friend last week asked me if I still get the buzz of releasing a book, and it was a surprising revelation to think that I hadn’t really enjoyed anything in the past few years and that includes starting my pen name and releasing the eleven books I have so far. I mean, I have on some level, but not to the extent a healthy person would have enjoyed it.
So now that I know what’s wrong with me, that I’m on some kind of treatment–even more so since I’ll have had a followup by the time my series is ready to go–I’d like to intentionally enjoy these books and their launches. I would like to intentionally talk them up on social media, intentionally choose snippets and create posts. Intentionally write more blog posts about them and show them off to the world. I didn’t feel like doing that before. I wanted to be distracted by the next story, and I was, to the detriment of the other books. I mean, I’m grateful I was able to build a backlist so quickly, but it makes me wonder too, how I’ll feel writing the next book. If there won’t be such an urgency to write quickly and finish it to get on to the next. Maybe it will be different to savor the drafting part of it, enjoy my characters. I don’t know. It’s just an interesting thing to think about. When your quality of life sucks, can you enjoy anything?
In an uncharacteristic move, I think that’s all I have for today. I have a couple of personal things to do this month, like go to my daughter’s high school graduation ceremony on the 24th and I’ll be gone for two days to go to Rochester, MN for my followup appointment, Memorial Day and the day afterward. I’ve been walking a bit more, even if it’s just walking around the block during my half an hour lunch break when I’m logged into my day job. I bought a new lounger for my balcony and I’m looking forward to lying in the sun. I didn’t feel good enough last year and we didn’t have that great of a summer besides.
Things are topsy-turvy, and maybe heading in a good way for the first time in a while. It’s a different feeling, one I can’t embrace fully because I haven’t had the time to acclimate, but I mused to my friend how I would feel a year from now.
A lot of people wonder, when they start the publishing game, just how long and just how much money it’s going to take until you “make it.” And without muddying the waters with things like “success is what you think of it” or “every sale counts” let’s assume that “making it” is earning a full-time wage. That will be different for different people too (I could do a lot with an extra 30k a year) but let’s go with 50k since the group 20booksto50k put the number out there.
When you’re getting your book, or books, ready to publish, you can put as little or as much money into your product as you want, and chances are unless you publish a real stinker of a novel, the quality of your book will be just fine. Maybe you’ll be shocked to hear it, but when you look at books that have taken off, they aren’t literary masterpieces by any means. So, if you’re looking at editing, do I think you need to spend $1,000 on a developmental edit, $600 on a copy edit after you’ve made changes, then $200 on a proofread? No, and the people who say that you should are probably other authors who are snobs and editors who want you to hire them. I don’t believe you should publish without some kind of feedback, even if you just ask your spouse to read it to look for plot holes, unless you’ve been at this for a long time and have found your voice and you know what your tics and weaknesses are and can edit them out on your own. If you’re patient enough, shoving your book in a drawer for a month can go a long way to reading your manuscript with fresh eyes. Make use of critique partners and beta readers, catch typos on your own by listening to your manuscript and proofing the proof (mistakes really do jump out at you when your book looks like a book). So, the bottom line is, pay for the editing you can afford or think you need and use free where you can get it.
This also applies to covers–some authors make their covers for as little as $7.00 to buy the stock photo from DepositPhotos and use the free Canva plan, some spend hundreds, even thousands on a cover from places like 99Designs and Damonza, or hire artists for one-of-a-kind art. Of course I believe people judge books by their covers, but your cover is only going to be as good as what’s inside. I knew someone who used Damonza, and his cover was beautiful. I tried to read his book in KU to support him, but it was all telling. He had an entire trilogy in 300 pages because of all the telling. If your book isn’t good, the most beautiful, expensive cover in the world won’t help it take off. Your readers will review, your star rating will tank, and even if you can sell a book, that reader won’t enjoy it, she’ll think she wasted money and never buy you again. I think you can find a happy medium when it comes to covers. GetCovers is inexpensive, they do a decent job, and you’re supporting Ukraine. Or buy a premade for $100 dollars. It’s more important to know what the trends are and what other top authors are doing in your genre than how much money you put into your cover. Do your research because being original isn’t the flex you think it is.
Formatting doesn’t have to be complicated, and while you might want the fancy chapter headers, be honest and admit it’s for yourself and not your readers. I don’t sell many paperbacks, and ebook formats can’t support the fancy stuff authors are always talking about. Ebooks don’t have “pages” and frilly extras don’t apply. So you can pay the $300 for the formatting that will have black pages or full-spread graphics, if you think you’re going to put a lot of energy into selling paperbacks to get your fee back, or you can pay $50 for a simple formatting job. Or you can do it yourself for free using Draft2Digital’s free formatting tool, or Reedsy’s, or upload a Word document. It’s all up to you. I wrote about formatting and gave a lot of resources in this blog post, and you can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2022/08/22/formatting-your-paperback-books-interior-tips-and-tools-that-can-help/
That’s packaging your book, and there are always more things you can spend money on like an author logo, the ISBN, or registering your book with the copyright office. When I started my pen name, I swore I would start registering my copyright, but then the fee went up from $35 to $65, and I lost my resolve. If you’re not putting out many books, maybe the $65 dollar fee isn’t that bad, but it can add up if you’re publishing six books a year. Here’s the fee list if you want to bookmark it. https://www.copyright.gov/about/fees.html
I didn’t do a very good job explaining how much it costs to get a book ready to go because depending on their choices, costs can vary from author to author. Some want to bootstrap it because they don’t know if they’ll earn their money back and some don’t care. Some have disposable income and paying for services isn’t a big deal, some can barely afford the seven dollars to buy a stock photo. Some have a huge network and don’t pay for anything because they have a lot of free help or they’ve joined something of an author’s co-op where they all trade services. If you’re like me, pretty much doing this alone, do the best you can. You might be surprised your best is better than you think it is.
Once you have your book ready, reviews are kind of important. I don’t believe in the magical number of 50, but I think if you’re writing commercial fiction, putting your book on a place like Booksprout (there’s a small fee) would give you a few to start out. I didn’t with my duet and published without any, and now Captivated by Her and Addicted to Her are my poorest sellers. I’ve tried doing free promos for Captivated, but I think I ruined any momentum I could have had not launching with a few reviews. Maybe it’s circumstantial, but my other books always had a better launch maybe because I put them on Booksprout first. You never know.
So what do you do after you publish your book? How many times do you have to do that to “make it?” How much money do you throw at marketing to make your book sticky enough to quit your job? The sad part is, I don’t know or I would be doing it. I’m at a point where baby authors would probably envy me my sales dashboard, but authors who knew what they were doing from the very beginning and have been making six figures for the past few years would be unpleasantly surprised if they woke up to my numbers.
Even going viral, in some cases, won’t help. Chelsea Banning (and I’m not picking on her or throwing her shade in any way. She’s an interesting case study because I watched in real time how that all played out and what happened afterward.) went viral on Twitter after Stephen King quote-tweeted her. Suddenly, she was everywhere, from USA Todayto doing a video call on the Kelly Clarkson Show. But when something like this happens, not a lot of people are prepared to keep it going. Having a backlist helps because your sudden popularity will lift up all your books. If the timing is right and you have a new book ready to go, that will boost the algorithms too, as will throwing your unexpected royalty money at some ads (you’d have to borrow from yourself because of how Amazon pays out, but I think in this instance you’d be okay with that). But if you only have one book out, don’t have another ready to go, even if you run ads, you may not be able to keep the momentum going. You can save up a little money, maybe have a few hundred to a couple thousand depending on how viral you really went, to throw at your next book, but you need to be in the right place and be in the right mindset to make the most out of going viral. We all want it, but I don’t think we understand what the rewards and consequences of going viral can entail. At this point in my career, I would love to go viral (in a positive way). I have a few books out, trilogies that have good read through and standalones that have a number of decent reviews. I have a six-book series about to drop, and I have a newsletter (blog) in place to capture new readers. But even I would question if I have what it takes to keep that going–after a while, you get burnt out. Posting on social media to stay relevant is time consuming, and if you’re scrambling to get another book ready or to set up a newsletter because you didn’t have one, creating graphics for Instagram or your FB author page may not be on your list of priorities, especially since more than likely you have a full-time job and maybe some kids and a spouse you’d like to see every once in a while. I brought up Chelsea only because going viral didn’t seem to help her in the long run. She might have been able to put away a small nest egg, but on Threads she was asking people to buy her book because her husband had gotten laid off or some such, and she does only have one book out right now so while going viral must have been exciting, it was only a blip in her career. I wrote a little bit about her here: What I learned from an author’s literal, overnight success
And it’s really hard to say how many of those readers stay with you, or if they bought your books and interacted with you to taste your fifteen minutes of fame. Going viral is a flash in the pan, and no doubt helpful, but how can it compare to writing and publishing consistently for many years and organically attracting readers who love your work? Though I doubt anyone would turn down going viral–that’s like saying you wouldn’t take a $100,00 dollar jackpot because you were disappointed you didn’t win a million dollars.
So let’s go back to the question, how long do you have to fake it before you make it? And the honest answer is, I have no idea. Some unlucky authors fake it forever and don’t truly make it. And why they don’t make it is going to boil down to what they’re doing wrong on an individual basis. (I talked a little about this in my transparency post, and you can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2024/02/29/the-magic-of-transparency/)
I mean, obviously, there are things you can do to up your chances of consistently selling books:
Write in a popular genreand package it properly. Romance, Thrillers, Sci-Fi/Fantasy, maybe? I haven’t watched a K-Lytics report in a while, so I don’t know what the numbers are, but there are some genres that are harder to make a go at it, like horror (that’s not YA–I think Goth Cottagecore is having a moment right now) or speculative fiction, literary fiction. Like that. You’re already making it hard on yourself by choosing a genre that’s not already a bestseller.
Put up a website and start a newsletter/blog then put that link in the back matter of your books. I always have to qualify that now since I moved my newsletter to my blog, but start something where readers can find you and subscribe for updates. But do more than just start one. Keep it updated. If you’re putting out a book a year, you may think you have nothing to talk about, but doing character sheets, character interviews, talk about where and why you chose the setting you did, etc, can fill up a post a month. You can also do author interviews to keep your name out there.
Learn an ad platform. If you only have one book, it might seem repetitive after awhile, but ads are the best way to shove your book out into the world, especially if you don’t want to put it on sale or use any free days (and why would you? You want to make money.). There are millions of readers and you can run ads indefinitely so long as your spend doesn’t outrun your royalties. You can spend (waste) a lot of money if you don’t know what you’re doing. I would start with a solid list of comp authors–this will help whether you run FB ads or Amazon ads. Make sure your keywords and categories are solid and that your book’s cover, title, and blurb complements them. Figure out how much you want to set for a budget. Go slow and see what happens.
Network with authors in your genre, not just authors in the writing community. Romance is big for opportunities such as newsletter swaps, promos, anthologies, auctions, collaborations, and just genre news in general. I missed a lot of chances for exposure because I got sucked into the writing community on Twitter instead of meeting and getting to know authors who write romance. I’m getting better at it now, spending time in romance groups on Facebook, but I should have been introducing myself many many years ago.
One of the pieces of advice I hear from big indie authors is to have multiple streams of income. If you can’t do it now, that’s fine, I’m not in a position to right now either, but if you have an ebook, a paperback, and audio, that’s three ways, setting up a Patreon could be another, going wide rather than enrolling in KU could be one, starting a podcast that businesses could eventually sponsor could be another. Even adding a Ko-fi link to your social media profiles could be one, or maybe editing/beta reading on the side. If you already don’t have time to be working on what you need to be working on, absolutely none of this will sound appealing, and that’s okay. But if you look at what the big indies are doing, I’m thinking of authors like Joanna Penn and Lindsay Buroker, they have money coming in from a lot of places like translations. One day I would just like to add audio, and that’s a long ways off.
So, you can ask me the question again…. how long do I have to fake it before I make it? And does spending more increase my odds of making it? I’m just shaking my head and shrugging. No one knows. I know what to do to increase your chances and I implemented some of those things myself, but the only thing you can really do is publish your best book and publish your best book as often as you can. Build a backlist because the more product you have to sell the more you sell. Always be working on the next book. That might not get you to 50k in a year, or five, maybe not even ten. I’m on year eight, but I don’t know if not making the mistakes I made would have helped. It’s difficult to watch authors zoom ahead of you, and I have. Two that come to mind are Cara Devlin and Elizabeth Bromke. I met them on Twitter, both when maybe we are around the same level. All of sudden they took off making full-time earnings from their books. Then I see some of the authors who have been around for as long as I have, or even longer, who are still in the same place, maybe because they let their lack of sales get them down and they don’t write much anymore, or their covers and/or genres are just off the mark, or they don’t have money for ads and depend on free social media to get anywhere, or maybe life just got in the way and before they knew it, two years went by and they haven’t opened their Word document.
The problem is, we all write such different books, have different resources, have different lives, that someone like Elizabeth (who writes romance/women’s fiction) could tell me exactly what she did, and maybe I would pick up something here and there, but in the end, I’m not sure it would get me anywhere. She hires an editor and cover designer, but if she lives a life where she could afford that before she started making money from her books, that’s two strikes against me, so we could stop writing out the list already. I mean, it’s nothing to get bitter about–I’m sure there are some people who read my blog get a little annoyed when I recommend running ads. Spending ten dollars without a guarantee of ROI is a stretch and a luxury they can’t afford. I get it. So some of us, through no fault of our own, may be blocking our own paths to success.
I’ve given up the idea that I will ever make a full-time author’s wage. A lot of authors don’t–trad and indie–and not because their books aren’t good or they didn’t go viral. They weren’t at the right place at the right time, or they never wrote a book that hit the market just right. But as I always say to myself with every new release, maybe this will be the one.
It never is, but all you can do is keep faking it.
I was going to write about Indie April in a different post, but I don’t have to much to say regarding my author update, so I thought I would squish them together.
I wrote out my first blog post on my author website last week. I gave a brief update on my King’s Crossing series and let everyone know that I’m going to put Give & Take back to the normal price. It’s been .99 for a long time and I need to put it back before the summer promotions begin and my series launches. I can update you on how many views/visits it received once it’s been up for a bit longer. I hope this will be a successful alternative to my newsletter because I don’t know when or if I’ll ever go back to a newsletter aggregator. I’ll give blogging a try for a few months and see how it does. Readers are clicking on the link in my books’ back matter, going to my site, and still downloading my reader magnet. According to my Bookfunnel stats, I’ve given away 4 copies of My Biggest Mistake this month, and 6 copies in the last 30 days. So, even if they aren’t subscribing to the blog, my back matter is doing its job at least, and readers will know if they want updates to look on my website. Do I mind giving away a book for what seems to be no reason? Not really. I’ve been giving away My Biggest Mistake since about 2022 when I first launched my pen name and I’ve given away over 1,000 copies. I love the book and the characters, and I kind of look at it as a loss leader and an introduction to the kinds of books I write hoping to hook readers and entice them to read my other books.
I started reading my series over again, and it’s going faster this time. Each book is only taking a week, as opposed to when I was adding more to the scenes and each chapter was taking 4-7 days to get through. I’m liking the changes I made and some of the things I added surprise me, but in a good way (because I forgot I added them). I was only going to read the first three and then save the entire read through when I ordered the paperback proofs, but I can take a look at the other books and see how they sound. The more work I put into them now before I order the proofs, the more work I save myself later. I hate how long this is taking, but it’s such a big project that I’m probably smart not to rush even though I am getting impatient and want to write something new.
I don’t have much else in terms of an author update. I need to drag out my calendar and look at promo dates and figure out what books I want to put up for what months. I haven’t pushed a book since December, and I want to do one this spring, possibly in May before my series starts to launch, and then in the fall. I’m tired of Written Word Media promos like Freebooksy and BargainBooksy. Even their Red Feather Romance has the same audience. I tried a Fussy Librarian and I would have to log into my profile and see which book I did and figure out the ROI, but being that I can’t remember, the results probably weren’t that great. I think I’m going to try a site I haven’t tried before like Love Kissed or Robin Reads. I might do Rescue Me, since I haven’t pushed that book in a while. It’s got 79 reviews, so it might do okay. I have never done a free promo on Twisted Alibis and since my King’s Crossing series will have started to drop by then, I might put that one for free in say, September. Then of course, I have A Heartache for Christmas that will need some promo October through December, but instead of putting it for free, I might just start up my Facebook ads again. Besides running FB ads to Twisted Alibis and Give & Take, I haven’t done promo for any of books in a while, I need to get something new going.
I think that’s really I have on the author front this week. So let’s talk about #IndieApril.
I hadn’t heard about #IndieApril until a few years ago scrolling on Twitter, something about supporting indie authors, lifting up fellow writers, and promoting your own work without shame.
It sounds great and probably why it’s been around for so long. I appreciate the concept, I really do, but it’s nothing I want to participate in. I support my friends in other ways, like editing and formatting, doing covers if my skill is up to the challenge. Not that I don’t support my friends online too, by sharing their posts and commenting, but we all know social media is a blackhole, and for every 20 minutes I spend making a graphic to promote one of my books somewhere, I earn fewer than 100 views, sometimes even a lot fewer than that, and it’s not worth the time.
But here are the real reasons I don’t participate in Indie April:
It’s mostly other authors hyping up their work and their friends’ books. Like I just said, I think that’s great, but while you can say until your face is blue that authors are readers too, authors (your friends and acquaintances and authors who pop up on your “for you” page) will never buy your books in the numbers you would need to make the sales you want for any kind of real traction or career. Indie April is nothing but preaching to the choir, and what’s the point of that?
I will say this until I die: Readers don’t care who publishes your books. If you’re indie, or small press, or trad, they don’t look, and as long as you’re giving them a good read for their time and money, they will never care. Shouting from the rooftops that you’re an indie author won’t get you anywhere. Indies are always complaining about the line between Trad and Indie, I see it on Threads, and it was a big topic on Twitter too, but you know who draws that line? Indies do! It wouldn’t even exist if indies weren’t calling themselves that all the time. We’re writers, we’re authors. Indie April gives you no traction as an author. What gives you traction as an author is finding readers, who, once again, don’t care how your book is published. This indie reputation was started and cultivated by us. Maybe one or two readers will care if they get seriously burned by an author, but in all honestly, readers will more than likely not read that author again. It has no effect on you or your books.
Indies have a difficult time breaking out of the writing community bubble and then they wonder why they aren’t selling books. I did the same thing–it’s tough, but that’s the line you should pay attention to. Not every author friend is going to buy and read your book. You have a better chance finding a larger number of readers marketing your book to people who read and don’t write. It really doesn’t help when all your author friends follow you on all the social media platforms. I have the same followers on Twitter to Instagram. I’m being introduced to new people on Threads, though most are writers and authors. I didn’t join Threads with the idea to promote my books, but I’m not a surprised others are. They see the platform as another free platform in which to promote their books, and free, unfortunately, doesn’t get you very far anymore.
I understand the concept of us banding together and supporting each other, but we need to let go of the idea our author friends need or will want to read and review our books. There’s a whole world of readers out there, and my ideal reader is a mom who hides from her kids in the tub with a glass of wine and wants to dip into a good story that has a little spice. She doesn’t write her own books. She’s a reader who reads romance, has a KU subscription, and she’ll either binge my trilogies or a quickly read a standalone, and she’s off reading something–someone–else.
Supporting our friends is great, and I love my friends who support me too, but I don’t ask them to, and it’s never an expectation.
Anyway, so I don’t promote my books on Threads, or even on social media at all anymore. I had a good run using a February content calendar but March passed by without a single post from me, and we’re already into the middle of April. Should I be posting more, yes, at the very least so my accounts don’t look abandoned, and maybe after my series is on preorder and I don’t have to think about them much anymore I’ll have the headspace. I’m so caught up in these books (and how I’m feeling) nothing else matters. I know that’s not healthy, either, but it’s how I work and now that I’ve posted my first blog post on my author site, I’ll keep that going. I have no problems blogging every Monday, so I’ll get into a routine over there, as well. I really just wanted to let the MailerLite debacle die down. I’m still embarrassed, but it wasn’t my fault and I rectified the situation in the only way I knew how. Hopefully it works out.
That’s all I have for this week! Have a lovely Monday!
This photo has nothing to do with anything. I just really liked the colors.
Most of the marketing we hear about is how, what, and how often to post on social media. Snippets and book trailers, TikTok videos and reels. Be yourself, don’t talk about your book all the time, support others.
Like I mentioned in a previous post, we think about marketing after we’ve written our books. That’s… not a great time to think about it, to be honest. Yes, we should all love what we’re writing and I’m not even talking about that, necessarily. One of the lessons I learned too late was how important your cover and title are. Each book you put out ends up in your backlist and your backlist is your brand. Each book is a brick in your author career’s foundation, and you want your bricks to look the same, be made of the same material, and be able to hold the same weight as the other bricks. I’m not saying you can never deviate, but having a solid foundation makes it a lot easier to experiment.
I’ve changed five of my books’ covers. My duet got an update I think only 6 months after publication, my Lost & Found trilogy, a year. By then I’d settled into a brand, and I knew that they were okay, but not the best they could be.
When I was writing Rescue Me, I knew it was high-angst, and both characters had some pretty crappy backstories. I wrote a poignant scene between them where they were sitting in the park. They were sharing stories, and he says to her,
“I saw a woman sitting alone in a booth, staring so forlornly into her wineglass she could have been a mirror image of how I was feeling. I sat down with her, and something happened. I can’t describe it. I thought, this woman understands me. I haven’t spoken one word to her, but she understands. When she gathered her purse to leave, I had never felt panic so debilitating. I had to ask her to be with me, and miraculously, she said yes. I was a stupid son of a bitch and didn’t get her name. Don’t ask Samantha what I was like the week afterward.” He blows out a breath, his chest expanding against my back. “You’re not the only one who’s been trampled on. You’re not the only one who feels unfit for someone else because of your pain. If you take my secondhand heart, I’ll take yours.”
REscue me, Vm rheault
Right away, I thought, what a great title. Secondhand Heart. I even started on a book cover for it. I lucked into the perfect couple, as Sam is older and Lily is a redhead, and the scene above happens to take place in the autumn in a park. I couldn’t have been happier.
But by then, I’d already published my duet, and if you remember, I had several books on my computer waiting to be published. I had to make a decision–where did I wanted my brand to go? Billionaires have a specific feel. They’re in suits, they’re wearing “the watch,” they’re meticulous, sometimes they’re coldhearted. They’re untouchable until they meet the right woman. And all that needs to be conveyed in the cover, the title, the font, and the blurb.
The cover above is perfect, but it wasn’t going to meet the vibe of the genre I chose, and while the title fits perfectly, it’s not as hard and as edgy as it needed to be. The cover above is great for a contemporary romance novel, and while Billionaire is contemporary romance, the main category I put all my books into is, well, Billionaire.
And this is the lesson I kind of want you take away from this blog post. Even if the cover and title are perfect, it may still miss the mark and give readers the wrong message.
This is the cover I made that I went with. You’ll notice he’s in a Billionaire suit, and I think he’s wearing a watch. He’s stoic. When I chose him, I didn’t realize that I’d see him everywhere all the time (this model is very popular among indies), but he fits the way Sam looked in my head, and even knowing he’s been used, I would still choose him. Also, the title is a lot stronger–they did rescue each other the way couples who fall in love do. This is a one-night-stand-with-my-boss trope, and I was very happy with the tagline I came up with.
If you compare the two covers, they look really different, don’t they? The titles make them sound like different books, too.
You can start thinking about this stuff when you’re writing your book. Study other books in your genre, the bestsellers, the covers that are reeling readers in. How do the blurb, title, and cover work together to convey the genre? What kind of tagline or hook is on the cover, or the top of the blurb on the Amazon page?
This is part of marketing that we don’t talk about nearly enough. We always say that the cover is your biggest marketing tool, but we don’t say what kind of cover. You could have paid 1,000 dollars for the best cover ever, but if it doesn’t hit the mark with what your book is about and what category it’s in, it won’t matter how much you paid or how professional it is. It won’t entice readers. Or it will, but they’ll be the wrong kind of readers and you’ll pay for it with poor reviews.
Chances are the cover I made with the couple would have been okay–but they wouldn’t have fit in with my overall brand anyway, so an author has a lot to think about when it comes to cover design and title.
I have a terrible terrible time thinking up titles. I’m crap at it, and it took a couple of hours of brainstorming with my ex-fiancé to title my duet. I’m proud of their titles, and I like their covers now too. I need to push them more, but what I’ll do is a different blog post.
I like the direction my brand is going. Even though I slipped off the path for a second and did some rockstar romance, the covers blend in to what I have and they still sell better than all my other books (but I’m not taking the hint. I have no more rockstar plots in me, I’m afraid. Shep and Olivia landed in my lap, and maybe that will happen again one day, but I’m not going to look for it.)
How your books look on Amazon is important. A reader clicks on you, and they can see most of your covers at once. If they’ve already liked one of your books, knowing you’re going to deliver more may make them a fan. Maybe they’ll give you a follow. (This is the top half of my author page on Amazon.) https://www.amazon.com/stores/VM-Rheault/author/B0B1QSXVK4
I’m all for consistency and lots of people say that genre-hopping isn’t that bad, but even if you know an author who is doing well at it, you have no idea how much they’re spending on ads and promos and other marketing activities. Without that transparency, their monthly royalties may look good but they could be pushing all their money back into their business leaving them breaking even at the end of every month.
Now that I have a brand, I want to keep it going, and I have to think of what kind of titles and covers I want for my books going forward. My six-book series is going to fit right in, and I’ve already made the cover for the standalone I’m going to write afterward. I won’t share my series covers yet, but here are the 11 books I have under my pen name right now, plus my reader magnet that is still free on my sister site. I’m proud of how they look. (And the guy on Faking Forever, I think is Eddie on Twisted Lullabies–don’t tell anyone!)
I’m not going to turn this post into a do-it-my-way-because-it’s-the-right-way post. It took me a long time to change my mindset around and start packaging my books in a way that would target the genre and in ways that would sell. It’s also something you need to learn, a lot through trial and error, researching genre and book covers, and in some instances, ignoring trends and staying true to your brand. Just because illustrated covers are still in, or because discreet covers haven’t gone away, that doesn’t mean you have to do it. Your covers are for your readers. Maybe one day down the line because of the lack of variety on DepositPhotos, I may have to start cutting off heads or doing item covers or text covers, but I’ll be really deep into my backlist then and hopefully have more of a readership that will borrow/buy anything I write.
I see covers all the time that don’t look very good, don’t fit the genre their authors say their books are in. It really doesn’t help when other people say their covers are lovely. Yes, they might be, but we already know, and maybe from personal experience like mine, that just because it’s lovely doesn’t mean it’s going to fit. Fit the genre, fit your story, fit your brand. And I think this is a lot of why we don’t talk about it–because negative, or constructive, feedback feels a lot like an attack on what you like. I still believe after all my time writing and publishing you can find a happy medium between what you like and what you need to do to sell your books.
If writing and publishing is really your way or the highway, there’s not much room for improvement. Flexibility got me where I am right now and I’ve already made half of what I did for the whole year last year. I hope finally releasing my series will keep that going.
I know it also took me a long time to get to where I am. Thousands of hours of writing and planning. Organizing and fixing mistakes. There’s always going to be mistakes, but if you can look ahead maybe you won’t make so many. I’m making fewer and fewer. I’m not going to re-edit A Heartache for Christmas because I was aware of my tics when I was writing it. I’m not going to re-edit my rockstars either, though I know I had a “when” problem. They still sound good and readers aren’t counting. This six-book series will probably be the first books where I was aware of everything before I published, but it only took 12 books. We all still learn every day, and the best news is, covers can be changed. Blurbs can be changed.
Vania Margene Rheault 