Writing Tics: What they are, how to spot them, and how to fix them.

Posted on October 30, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

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I don’t delve into writing craft that often on my blog. Writing quality is subjective, after all, and what is one person’s favorite book is another person’s trash. It’s fine, but I still believe there are some things that are universally downers like too much telling, too many crutch words, characters that are not well-rounded, scenes that aren’t anchored in a setting. There aren’t many things that can ruin a book for me, but one of my biggest pet peeves is characters who don’t act their age. I’ve read a few books now where the female main character is just a brat but we’re expected to believe a mature, grown (and running a billion dollar company as they are wont to do in billionaire books) hero is going to fall in love with her, warts and all. It instantly makes the story unbelievable–if I can’t stand reading her, how can he love her?

But, that’s not the point of my blogpost today. Last week I talked about redoing my covers for my trilogy, and I thought, well, there’s nothing I like more than reading my own work, so having a little look-see at the insides before I go through all the work of changing out the covers wouldn’t be a bad idea.

I’m glad I did because what I found was just not good. The first book wasn’t as bad as the other two, though I did find quite a few things to change. But when you go back to read something you haven’t looked at for ten months, that will happen. The second book…I have no idea what happened. This is where writing tics come in. A writing tic is something you write over and over again without realizing it. Maybe you get into a zone and the words are flowing, and before you know it you’ve got your favorite writing tic all over the place.

That’s what happened to me. I fell into a sentence structure I didn’t see. Since I didn’t see it, with all the editing I did, I couldn’t fix it. And it was only after ten months of distance did I read that book and think, WTF happened?

A writing tic can be almost anything. Your favorite word, turn of phrase, a description you can’t let go of (how many times can moonlight glimmer in her eyes?). My writing tic was using the word “as.” An example of that is a sentence like this: He sits back, turns the beer bottle on the table as he thinks. I found a few other tics too, during my read-through. I decided I liked the words when and while. While she was doing this, he was doing that.

Writing tics can be harmless, but if you get too carried away, they can actually destroy a good piece of writing. The problem is, sometimes you can’t always see them, and maybe if a reader is used to reading that particular tic, they aren’t going to see it either. Using “as” in first person writing seems to be common. Now that I’m sensitive to it, I see it everywhere, but that doesn’t mean I want it in my books, even if a reader isn’t going to notice it.

That’s why writing about craft is so difficult and why some authors and writers get so up in arms about it. Getting better takes work, and not everyone wants to put in that work (or thinks that they should or needs to). I did not have any fun practically rewriting all of book two… and book three. It was hard, messy, and time consuming, and I’m going to have to order more proofs and read the whole trilogy over again to make sure I didn’t edit in any typos which is always a concern no matter how meticulous you are. Not to mention how easy it is to adopt another tic while trying to edit out the one you noticed.

The real problem I have with tics is getting fixated on other books in my backlist and wondering if they have the same issue. I get almost manic with the need to go back and read them and find out if they sound good or not.

During one of my editing sweeps of my six book series, I noticed I had a love affair with the words “take” and “make.” They were all over the place, and once I realized that, I had a heart attack. By the time I noticed, I had written other books, and I found the same problem. Luckily, I had saved them up and was able to fix them. Tackling a writing tic in six books made me want to cry, and I am so so glad I didn’t publish them right away.

So, what’s next then? I’m going to finish editing out my writing tics in my third book. I’m forcing myself to go slowly because there’s no reason to rush. My books are out there, and who knows if readers think they’re poorly written. Sometimes a reader can overlook poor writing for a good story, and I may never have any proof that my tics ruined the book for them. So, I’ll take it slow, finish editing the third book over again, smooth out the prose. I’ll tweak the covers and fix a few things I found there, and order new proofs. Then, I need to read them all again to double check I didn’t edit in any mistakes. Yes, it’s a pain in the neck, and yes, it actually would have been nice if I could have done this the first time around. They were edited several times (unfortunately, only by me) and honestly, God only knows if a different editor would have spotted it.

I don’t edit for many people anymore, but one person I’ve edited for recently had the same “as” problem that I do. Another friend I edited for a while back used way too many hyphenated adjectives to describe a noun (think, long-legged blonde). When I read first person books that aren’t mine, the “as” sentence structure jumps out at me. I’ve blogged before that I can’t read a certain author who uses the word “got” over and over again. Once I saw them I couldn’t stop seeing them and now I can’t read anything from him. What’s funny is it just occurred to me now that got/get/gotten/getting could be his writing tic. Since I wrote him off my TBR list, I don’t know if his recent books still have this problem or if he’s managed to find an editor who told him to stop it. (He’s a small press author.)

Anyway, the whole thing makes me sad. I’ve documented my struggles on here, and finding something in a book that’s been published (for almost a whole year too!) is depressing as hell. I’m not chasing perfection, but I would like to say my books are published to the best of my ability. The problem is, if you’re going backward, you can’t go forward, but after this trilogy, all my books will be how I want them to be. I’ve already gone back and did the same thing with my duet (I edited them after redoing their covers). I’ve pulled enough hooks from Rescue Me for TikTok videos to know that book doesn’t have the writing tic problem, at least, not the “as” one. I’ve read my rockstars so many times I know they’re good. With this new knowledge, the only book I could probably read again is Faking Forever, but, even if it is only a standalone, going back to that one doesn’t thrill me. Especially since I’m tweaking the cover of my Christmas novel and reading it over again while I wait for the second proof to make sure the cover is going to come out how I want it.

I hate feeling like the whole world is coming to an end, but I can’t stop feeling the urgency to get these books done as quickly as possible. I won’t let myself rush–that only sets myself up to make more mistakes, but this project definitely isn’t something I thought I would be dealing with right now. Still, it’s for the best. New insides, new covers, and I can push them hard after Christmas for their one year birthdays and see what happens, because no matter if the covers weren’t great or the prose wasn’t what I thought it was, they are still really good books. I was going to jump right into editing my series again and publish the first book in January, but I don’t think that’s going to happen now. They still need a lot of work, and I may not get that all sorted until March.

I can’t look that far ahead though. My two main priorities at the moment are getting through this trilogy and getting them done knowing I will never go back to them again, and publishing my Christmas novel in a timely manner with as few issues as I can. There should be no reason to have to go back to it, now that I know I have tics that need to be fixed that could show up in that novel. I still have plenty of time to hit the readers who like Christmas stories, so I just need to keep my head on straight and remind myself the world won’t come to an end if I miss my release date, which, at the moment, is November 13th.

Writing tics can cause a lot of trouble, especially if you do something so much you need to do a lot of rewriting like it did with my second and third books. I have no tips on how to spot them, except just letting time go by and then rereading (especially if you read or work on something between editing passes). That seems to do it for me. You may have a fantastic editor who spots those things for you, or you may use a program like ProWritingAid which would probably point them out too, depending on how bad they are.

I would suggest keeping a list, and that could help. I have a list of garbage words that I avoid, but the thing I’ve noticed with my writing tics is that they can change from book to book. It would be nice if I could just not write with any, but I don’t know if anyone can do that. I suppose I should just be thankful I spotted them at all. I’m so sensitive to asking people to spend their money on my books and I want them to have the best product possible. I would love to find a writing partner that I could depend on, but after so many years trying to make friends and connections, the one thing I’ve learned is that if you want something done (maybe not right, but at this point done at all), you have to do it yourself. No one will care about your books more than you. That’s a sad fact.

I will update you with other news next week! Have a great day!

If you want to read more about writing tics, look here:

https://patthomson.net/2016/06/23/writers-tics-its-all-about-the-invisible-gorillas/

I Finally Updated My Trilogy Covers!

Posted on October 23, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

I’ve only been complaining all year about how I didn’t think my Lost & Found Trilogy covers were doing their jobs. Ten months after the fact, I finally had time in my schedule to redo them. Actually, as with my Christmas cover I talked about last week, redoing them was a process over several weeks (even months), and can outline it for you here.

I always had the basic idea of a city background in mind. Billionaire book covers usually have a city behind them and sometimes the look of the male model positioned in front of a window, alluding to him being in his office. This was the look I was going for here:

I really, really like the background, and I still wish I could have made it work somehow. But the windowpanes are in a bad spot, and while Canva has tools that could get rid of them on the back cover, it just wasn’t working. I realized I wanted color.

I went the complete opposite way and came up with these. I’m not sure why I didn’t do the third, or maybe I did and deleted it, but at one point, I was almost sure I was going to go with these and even announced it on Twitter.

They aren’t bad. I remember looking through Google searches of Billionaire book covers and this was a style I borrowed off of a premade, I think. Floating around somewhere is a book that actually uses this background, but I’m not going to waste time trying to find it. Let’s just say she probably did a better job than I did. There’s nothing precisely wrong with these… I love the ombré look of the blurb… but they aren’t eye catching, either.

I went back to square one, and came up with different renditions of the the covers I published:

Part of the problem I had, and will always have, is looking for age-appropriate men. Two characters are in their middle forties, and one is in his middle thirties. I liked the dark background enough that I kept it, but I wasn’t sold on the models. Especially for Safe & Sound since he came from 123rf.com and I don’t have a package with them. Not that that would deter me if I found the perfect model, but as you can tell by now, I change my mind a lot, and there was no point throwing money at him if he wasn’t going to stick around.

In the end, I did stay with the background but swapped out the men at the last second. The only requirement was that they wore a navy suit, and my standards, no offense to the models I did use, should have been higher. Even if I’ve seen them on covers before, they were just not romance cover material.

By now I was at my wits’ ends, and I just didn’t care about anything but getting my books published, which was a bad move. I’m usually pretty patient when it comes to things like that, but It took me eight months or so to write and edit them. I’d been experimenting from the beginning because I knew how important the covers were going to be, but I blew it anyway.

So, since my Christmas novel was pretty much a wrap while the proof was with my proofer but I didn’t want to start working on my six book series until it was scheduled and the final files were uploaded, I decided to use the time to redo my trilogy. It was a long time in coming, but like A Heartache for Christmas things just kind of fell into place while I was scrolling. I’m waiting on the proofs now (I always order proofs whenever I change something significant with a book).

You can see I found a background image that depicts what I was trying to go for before. The sunset, but almost an arial view of the city. Like I commented in last week’s post, don’t be afraid to zoom in and move your photo around. This is the original:

Los Angeles downtown at sunset, California

I like the first guy a lot better than the smarmy man (my apologies to the model I chose for Jack) I published with, and the second guy is the same but in a different pose. He was fine, I didn’t have much to say about him. Maybe he’s a little plain with a guppy look thrown in, but hot businessmen are pretty picked over on DepositPhotos. The last guy I’ve seen around, but he’s a better fit than the model I used before and looks more like the character I think of. Plus his coloring blends in with the background which was lucky for me. I also like that they are all standing in a bit of an angle which makes them look cohesive.

Changing out covers is a pain, and my track record so far hasn’t been the best–something I was trying to avoid when I started this pen name. I switched out the covers to my duet too, so out of eleven books if you include the Christmas one coming out soon, I’ve changed the covers to a little less than half. Surprisingly, I like the covers to my two standalones, and Rescue Me sells well. I don’t push Faking Forever because I don’t like the storyline all that much, but I’m thinking of putting it on sale for .99 and running an FB to it, just to see if I can sell some.

I’m relieved to have this done–I’ve lamented about the covers since practically I published, but I was so busy moving forward that I just didn’t want to take the time to redo them. I would scroll through photos when I was tired and didn’t feel like doing anything else, and I lucked out with the background. I had starred the model I used on the first book a while back so finding him was just a matter of going through my favorites on DepositPhotos and plopping him in front of the skyscrapers. Once I look over the proofs and okay them and change out the ebook covers and swap out the covers on IngramSpark, I’m not going to worry about those books anymore. It will be interesting to see if they sell better, and I’ll run some FB ads to the first one. I’ll definitely report back.

It would be nice if I could not have to redo covers at all, and I’ll try harder going forward. I love my rockstars, and those aren’t going anywhere. They sell well, and there’s nothing wrong with the models I chose. I’m also in love with A Heartache for Christmas, so that will be sticking around for a long time too.

Don’t feel bad if you have to or want to switch out covers to your books. Sometimes a refresh is needed to give older titles a boost, and since my trilogy was published in January, almost a year later a refresh could be just what they needed whether I liked the covers or not.

I’ll definitely be more careful with my six book series. I’m not going to do those covers over again, ever. I can’t think of a bigger pain. It’s bad enough I have to replace all the files for the trilogy, and the interior files too, since I name the photo contributor and photo ID on the copyright pages, but I refuse to do that for six books.

Hopefully, my mistakes can help you not to make any.

Do you have any before and after pictures of your book covers? Email them to me at vaniarheault(at)gmail(dot)com, and if I get enough, I’ll make a blog post out of them.

Thanks for listening to all the whining! Have a good week!

The evolution of a book cover

Posted on October 16, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

The creative process is messy, much like falling in love, and like relationships, sometimes you have to take two steps backward before you can take a step forward. Sometimes you rush, getting married or getting pregnant before you’re ready, publishing a book with a cover that’s only so-so, and while there are remedies for all three situations, they aren’t always pleasant.

I started thinking about my Christmas cover the second I started writing A Heartache for Christmas. I knew I was going to need time to go back and forth, and I didn’t want to make the same mistakes I did when I published my Lost & Found Trilogy. I don’t like the covers, settled on them because I didn’t know what else to do and I wanted to publish. I’ve spent the past ten months regretting the decision, and only God will know what waiting and publishing with proper covers could have done for my launch and sales.

Sometimes you can get a burst of creative juice at the zero hour, and that’s pretty much what happened to me: I created the perfect cover two days before I uploaded everything to KDP to order my proof, and that was after eight weeks of writing, several attempts at a cover, and too many hours of scrolling through men to count.

The problem was, and I see a lot of authors go through this too, is that there is so much that needs to go into your cover. You have to blend in while standing out, do what the top 100 in your genre are doing without looking like your pilfering a design, try to stay away from the guys who are hogging the covers and give some other hot dude a chance, all the while trying to stay true to your brand and the look you want to present on social media and to your readers. It doesn’t help if your design skills are lacking because that only limits what restrictions are already in place. So, when I first started thinking about my cover, I started with these ideas:

*I looked at other billionaire Christmas novels. A big concern was that this isn’t a holiday RomCom, and I didn’t want to give any readers a false impression, so an illustrated cover was out. Not to sound harsh, but there were quite a few billionaire Christmas covers out there and they just seemed cheap, like you know you’re sitting down for a B-list movie and you’re expecting the worst. My blending skills are nil, so finding a background with a model that takes little manipulation is a must. I didn’t want my man to look cut and pasted in front of a Christmas tree, nor did I want to settle for a Christmas lovers stock photo that had been used before. I scrolled a lot, not finding anything to draw inspiration from and concluded that whatever I make would be fine. There was no set billionaire holiday cover to use as a template.

*I thought a lot about my genre. The billionaire Christmas thing was only part of my book. There is also a mystery involved and a little violence (not between my H and h, though) and I definitely wanted that to come across in the cover. This wasn’t a lighthearted romp, even if it did take place over Christmas and New Year’s Day. This novel is very angsty, kind of dark (but not sex-dark, if you know what I mean) and it also takes place in a small town, which means I couldn’t use the reliable city background that I’m used to. It’s a lot to take into consideration, but I also know you can’t (and shouldn’t) cram every facet of your book onto the cover either. Choose the themes that stand out the most, and I decided on dark and the guy. That gave me a lot more room to play with but even then I still made plenty of mistakes before I came up with the right thing.

*Choosing the guy. You know from a previous blostpost that I don’t like using male models that have been on hundreds of covers before. I think in some ways it can pull your book down and make readers confused. There was an article I read somewhere, or maybe it was a discussion on FB years ago, where it was speculated whale readers don’t remember the author of the book, they only remember the book. If that’s true, the last thing you need as a romance author is for a reader to think she already read your book because the cover might resemble a different book she read. You might think this isn’t a concern and that I’m over thinking it, and maybe I am. But seeing the same five models on a fresh wave of new releases can’t do much for your book if your new release is grouped in with them. If you you missed that blogpost, you can read it here.

*Title. Choosing a title has always been a pain in my ass, or a$$ as we have to say on TikTok, much like naming my characters. I pull something out of the air and hope for the best. I wanted something with Christmas or Holiday in it, because I wrote this book specifically for a Christmas release. It takes place over Christmas in Minnesota–I don’t think you can get more holiday than that. I also didn’t want to use modified Christmas lyrics, though I did sort through some songs just to see what I could find. I asked Al for help, but nothing he came up with triggered anything. I finally settled on A Heartache for Christmas because while this book does have an HEA, there is nothing happy about this book until the end. A friend gave me a few suggestions, and I almost with with Heartache for the Holidays because I like the alliteration, or Holiday Heartache, if you wanted to shorten it up, but this isn’t a Harlequin Desire so I didn’t think I needed to be cute. I also didn’t want to cram my title full of keywords like a lot of indie romance authors are doing right now —A Grumpy Billionaire’s Christmas Gift–for example because that just seems like you’re trying too hard. That’s what the blurb is for anyway.

*Fonts suck. You can go through a million of them and nothing will work right. My go-tos when I have a hard time are Playfair Display, either in all caps (like my Lost & Found trilogy) or lowercase italicized (like my 3rd person holiday series). I also like Calgary if you need something simple yet classy (Faking Forever and my reader magnet My Biggest Mistake). I didn’t want to follow the trend of stuffing my title full of keywords, but I do like the script plus serif font duos that have been popping up. The fastest way to find a duo that goes together is to search duos on CreativeFabrica or do a Google search for font pairings. I ended up buying a font duo off CreativeFabrica for eight dollars. Canva also has some font duos, and I think I was looking in their newsletter emails because I captured some like this for future inspiration:

It helps to have the cover done so you can experiment, and finding my font duo was the last step I took, though I ended up changing the man and the background at the last minute. I kept the fonts because they still worked.

When I came up with my first cover, I decided on the guy because I had never seen him before:

This attempt didn’t stick around for very long. If you’re experimenting and come up with something you hate, that’s okay. It’s part of the creative process. You can see I went with my standby for the title font, but I struggled with how to make it look “Christmasy” — hence the bow — because that was a concern of mine at the time. The guy is younger than my MMC, and while I have never seen him on a cover before, he didn’t look right on mine, either. Canva has some great manipulation tools now. They aren’t 100% foolproof but I’ve used their magic erase with some success. This was the original picture of him:

After I decided against him, (though his drink looks really good) I thought maybe I needed to do more of the Christmas part of the story, and I looked through lots of Holiday stock photo backgrounds. Lots of trees and fireplaces, like this one:

Lexi Timms used a similar background for hers, but I don’t have the skills to do something like it (and there’s that guy again):

I mocked up a lot of half-hearted attempts at trying to figure out what worked and what didn’t, what I could do with Canva and what I couldn’t. I came up with this one, and I mentioned it in my blogpost I referenced above about book covers:

It was one of my better attempts, but I still wasn’t happy with the guy. I liked the background and I thought I lucked out because it depicted Christmas but in a dark way. If hadn’t had time to play, I might have stuck with him just because it fit my needs. I’m not even sure where I was with writing it, but I knew I had time and kept looking for a better guy.

Later I found this model and kept the background:

I actually workshopped him in the Indie Cover Facebook group, and but everyone agreed there was something missing. I still think so too and maybe if I was’t writing Billionaires, it would have worked for a simple Romantic Suspense that took place over the holidays, but I knew I needed more. They also said the font wasn’t the best, and the word placement needed work. I agreed and went back to the drawing board. (Don’t skim over this part. Feedback is important and could trigger an idea that makes all the difference.)

I decided I was trying to put too much emphasis on the mystery part of the novel and in my next attempt went in a completely different direction while keeping with the Christmas theme:

The title didn’t grab me but I did give other things a chance. I thought the guy and background was good. I like his hands and his watch, but I hated that his head was cut off, and when I put the KDP cover template on top of him I noticed that I was going to lose even more of his face:

That was when I thought I needed a new man (not the first time in my life, let’s be honest). I asked in the Book Cover Design 101 FB group I’m a part of and they offered some suggestions as to what I could do to keep the part of his face I had, but they were out of my skill set. Canva has a magic fill AI option but when I tried to build up his head using it, I got a caveman instead, and that idea went out the window. Here’s the stock photo I was trying to work with:

I almost still kept this cover though, because it was the best I had come up with by far and my time was running out. I had already finished and read through my book a couple of times by then and was almost settled on the final draft:

You can see I had almost everything in place besides the blurb I don’t write until I can’t do anything else without it. There is nothing wrong with this cover (depending on how much of his face I really would have lost, but I wouldn’t have found that out until I ordered a proof). It probably would have sold my book just fine. But there was still something pulling at me and telling me I could do better.

I started looking through backgrounds again on DepositPhotos. I looked up the trees, using search phrases like “dark trees” “dark Christmas” scrolling and scrolling. I found something almost by chance, (which is how most of my covers are made–by a chance find), and I favorited it right away so I wouldn’t lose it:

Then I started looking through all the stock photos of men I have starred over the past few weeks trying to build up a selection of models that haven’t really been used before but could still work on a cover meaning, handsome enough. I came across this guy, and after I plopped him in front of the background, everything fit together like the last handful of pieces of a jigsaw puzzle:

Shot of a stylishly dressed man posing against a gray background in the studio.

I zoomed in on the background, used Canva’s magic erase to blur out some of the lights, and with the font duo I had purchased, came up with a new cover two nights before I uploaded to KDP:

The Christmas tree vector in the corner on the back cover I used as my chapter headers:

I needed to have a little knowledge of GIMP because this is the stock photo:

An abstract of Christmas tree with sketch stroke and yellow stars as decoration.

I used color fill in GIMP to change the colors:

Then I placed it on the back cover.

I used the title’s script font for my author website and that was the last detail I added to the back.

Overall, I’m really pleased with how this cover came out. I haven’t seen the proof yet, but I’m hoping it’s just as pretty in real life as it is on screen.

If you want to ask me for tips, this is what I would advise you to keep in mind:

*Manipulate, Manipulate, Manipulate. (As much as you know how.) Don’t forget you can use the adjust feature in the “edit photo” tools. You can use the shadows and highlights, brightness and contrast, and black and white to adjust the colors of your photos. Zoom in and crop when you need to. Flip if you have to. Canva isn’t as flexible as Photoshop or the person who knows how to use it, but there is still a lot you can do with Canva’s tools–you just have to experiment.

*Look for similar colors between the background and your model. My cover works well because he blends in without me having to do anything to him. His black melds with the trees, and his scarf pops with the clouds/fog. Even his skin tone complements the orange lights. The colors of my text blend in–the blurb and the tagline aren’t white–they’re a light grey. Attention to detail matters.

*Don’t be afraid to try things. I went through a lot of men and a lot of backgrounds. Not everything will work, but sometimes you won’t know until you use a screenshot or download the composite photo and try. The least likely photo might be the one to make it on your cover.

*Have patience. I didn’t have patience when I created my trilogy’s covers and now I’m still paying. It takes a lot of patience to scroll through and bookmark photos you think you may want to use some day. I have over 700 photos bookmarked in my DepositPhotos account. One I “gave” to a friend because I knew it would fit her book. Put on a TV show and scroll. I have a lot of men that might one day make it onto a cover. You just never know.

*Create a steal file of inspiration. Lots of authors do this. See a cover you like, save it. You’re not necessarily going to copy it, but if you pick it apart, study the vibe, you could find elements that you could use in your own covers. That goes for fonts, too. If you like a font, save a screenshot of it. In the Book Cover Design 101 group, I bet you there will be at least one person who can identify it for you, or use a website like What the Font to get similar examples.

*Start as early as you can. All this is a process and it takes time. Like getting good at anything, you can’t expect to create the perfect cover the first time out. Also, get feedback. It hurts to be told something you made isn’t working or could be better, but you need to know that. The ultimate goal is to sell your books, not boost up your ego. (Let sales do that.)

I hope this was a helpful post. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments, and I will do my best to answer them for you!

Have a great week!

Spoilers, to give or not to give.

Posted on October 9, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

picture taken from Canva and made with Canva Pro

Whenever I’m on social media, there’s always someone who doesn’t want to talk about their book’s plot details. They say, “Sorry, I can’t talk about that….SPOILERS,” like it’s life or death and they have to keep such information to themselves. We’re not talking nuke codes here, but authors who are asked what their book is about act as if we were.

I have a completely different take when it comes to spoilers. I don’t care about revealing them, and here’s why. Even if you let a plot twist slip, a reader still has the entire book to read, if they want to read it. I think a lot of authors overestimate just how interesting their books are, and honestly, I don’t have that problem. Romance books are a dime a dozen, and the ending is already spoiled: the couple gets together at the end. I can’t think of a worse spoiler than that. So, I don’t mind talking about my books’ details, fights and makeups, breakups, and secret babies. Sometimes spoilers can even be a good thing, like when you’re querying. I saw an agent on Twitter say exactly that. She said, please don’t hide your spoilers in the query letter. I need to know what your book is about.

I mean, can you really spoil a 80,000 word book with a sentence or two? That seems very unlikely, especially if your book has depth, deep character arcs, and a plot that moves. Personally, I think you if you can spoil a book giving away a few details, your book is in trouble. You need more than one or two interesting things about it.

I started thinking about this last night when I was watching a free Teachable lesson about TikTok. He was saying how you need to find the hooks in your book, and a well-written book should have, I can’t remember now, fifty or so hooks that you can pull out to suck a reader in to buying it. Hooks aren’t exactly spoilers, but they’re close. Couples fighting or hurting each other, telling each other secrets. Emotional scenes that force a reader to get invested in quickly. Romance hooks on TikTok aren’t going to be all sexy scenes. My romances aren’t dark, and while I have spicy scenes, I only have three or four per 80,000 words. That’s not a lot when you think about it, and while I have used sex scenes on TikTok (and just got my first ban for violating community guidelines), I also search for scenes where there is high angst–that I may have to stick with because I don’t want my account suspended.

You almost have to use spoilers because how else are you going to captivate a reader in such a short amount of time? A reader isn’t going to want to buy your book if all you offer is bland excerpts because you’re afraid of giving away the good stuff.

I don’t have a problem with giving my work away. I give out a free full-length novel for newsletter signups, buy a Freebooksy regularly, and participated in Zoe York’s free promo last month. I think there is value in giving away content, and if the free content is good, it will entice readers and customers to buy more content, which hopefully is as good as or better than what you’ve been giving away. I’ve actually had fights with people who have said giving away content is useless (the one woman who blocked me on Twitter for it later turned around and gave away ARCs, so I guess she found value in giving away books after all), but there is a lot of evidence to the contrary, especially if you’re giving away a first in a series and that book is so good it propels readers to buy the others.

Now that my publishing has slowed down for the rest of the year (I formatted my Christmas novel and ordered the proof) I’m going to go through my rockstar proofs and bookmark hooks that I can use in videos and in social media. It’s interesting that I can post the same content on IG, FB, and TT, and the only place I have to worry about saying the word ASS is on TT. It’s kind of ridiculous, especially since you see accounts that have all sorts of raunchy things in them that aren’t being hit with a violation. But I will tone it down because surprisingly, I’ve been having fun on there, and looking for hooks and short scenes for the videos helps me find ad copy for FB ads and FB and IG posts. Like book covers, you need an eye to find excerpts that will resonate with readers, and something that you might think is intriguing is actually kinda boring. Remember that you have your whole book memorized and understand the context, a new-to-you reader won’t, and you can’t confuse anyone. Like your blurb on your Amazon’s buy-page, if it’s confusing, that won’t convert a browser to a buyer.

I’ve seen authors complain that sometimes a book review will reveal spoilers, and I have seen them with my books–one reviewer pointing out that there is no baby in Give & Take, a baby-for-the-billionaire trope. I wasn’t mad about it, in fact, it will encourage readers who want an actual baby (and not just the baby-making fun) in their books to steer clear. And it’s really important not to respond to reviews–reviews are for readers and you won’t gain any points with either reviewers or other readers if you comment or challenge. I never say anything–it was my choice not to make Emma pregnant in the story, and I’ll suffer whatever consequences come from that. But honestly, I don’t mind spoilers in any capacity–there’s a lot that goes into my books, and a spoiler isn’t going to ruin the experience for anyone if the rest of your book is as good as the plot twist that’s been “spoiled.”

Authors can be so precious about their books, but I see them as a product after they’re released and customers can say whatever they want about something they spent money on. Also, you need to put aside your feelings when it comes to reveals and spoilers because the one thing you’re hiding may be the very thing that draws in new readers.

Now, I’m going to go look for more spoilers, I mean, hooks, for TikTok videos that hopefully will not get me banned. It’s just another thing that made me crabby–this publishing can’t be easy, can it?

To read more about spoilers, look here:
Spoilers actually enhance your enjoyment

The case for spoilers: Why some people are happier knowing how the story ends

BOOKISH MUSINGS: DO SPOILERS ACTUALLY RUIN BOOKS?

Until next time!

Advertising versus Marketing: an Indie’s interpretation

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Words: 2725
Time to read: 14 minutes (FML, I’m sorry!)

When I go through and read threads and posts about marketing, I’m surprised sometimes by the misunderstanding. I shouldn’t be because I had the same misunderstandings long ago. I don’t think authors really grasp the concept of what a long game writing and publishing is. We’re still hopeful that we’ll be an overnight success and that marketing will be taken care of for us by a viral TikTok or a random influencer who happens to love our book. The problem with that though, is that even if something like that were to happen, a lot of us don’t have our ducks in a row to keep that tail going.

During my first five or six years of publishing, I didn’t get what marketing was because I was thinking of each book singly as I published it. I also didn’t understand the magnitude of putting my work out there for strangers to enjoy (or not)…the responsibility I had as an author who is asking for readers to pay for a product. I was caught in an indie Twitter bubble, and honestly, it took me many many years to get out of it, or to realize I was in it, to be honest. Looking back at the first three books I published that I had no right to publish at all, and then the first trilogy I published that is still not good but better than what I had published before, I’m a little embarrassed I was so clueless. Sometimes you can’t learn unless you do it and fuck it up while you’re at it, but when you’re selling something, you’re also playing with people’s money.

When we talk about advertising vs. marketing, we’re going to assume your book is as good as it can be inside. If you’re getting any type of poor review that indicates the editing isn’t there, your character arcs aren’t fully formed, or there’s just an overall discontent with your book, you may need to revisit and revise. No amount of advertising or marketing is going to sell your subpar book and you can’t build an author brand on a shaky foundation. That’s what took me six years to learn, and maybe you need six years too, but six years is a long time to waste if you just believe what I say instead.

So this is what I’ve parsed out in my years publishing, especially the past three when I started writing for my pen name:

Advertising: Deciding what book you want to write next! Yay!
Marketing: Choosing a standalone or a series and which genre, knowing if you’re going to meet reader expectations, if you’re going to write to market, how long the book(s) are going to be, and if you’re going to write a series, if you’re going to write them all at once and rapid release them or if you’re going to publish as you go and how long that’s going to take.
Publishing, as we say, is a very long game, and you have to be honest with yourself. If you’re planning a five book series but you work full-time and have children, how long is that five books going to take you to write? Five years? If you do that and want to publish as you go, how are you going to keep your audience interested so they don’t forget about you while you’re writing the next one? I’ve spoken a lot about series on this blog, and I’m not going to rehash my pros and cons here, but advertising one book because it’s done and published is a lot different than creating a marketing and publishing plan for an entire series–especially if it’s long and won’t be completed for several years.

Advertising: You’re creating a cover for your book that you’ll use in ads like Amazon Ads and Bookbub CPC ads and social media graphics.
Marketing: You’re creating a cover for your book that will fit in with the image you want to project as an author, build your brand, and be recognizable to readers the instant they see a cover that belongs to one of your books. Not to mention convey the genre your book is written in (because you chose a genre, right?).
I think this is one of the hardest lessons I learned. I was pretty adamant that I was going to make my own covers when I first started writing and publishing, teaching myself with the help from a book that is now 100% obsolete how to make a PDF in Word. Because of that, you can thank me for the Canva how-to blog posts I have here on the website, which gets hits every day. I never would have been able to do that for others if I hadn’t learned it for myself first. That’s not to say it was the smartest thing I ever did, considering I made a lot of mistakes I still see indies make today–using a free photo from Pixabay, et al, not having any idea of a consistency stretching across other books in their catalogue, and having zero idea that the cover should actually match the spice-level my book was written in (people will tell you to browse the top 100 in your genre for a reason). I guess because my book had no specific genre, that made it kind of difficult to do any research had I even known to do it. (Romantic Speculative fiction, anyone? Blah.) One of my favorite examples of what I mean is Melanie Harlow. She has the cutest font for her name, her covers all have the same vibe, and with the sweeping font she uses for a lot of her titles, I know right away if it’s a Melanie Harlow book. I love everything she does and she knows her brand like nobody’s business. If you want to see what I mean, look at her website: https://www.melanieharlow.com/
If you work with the same designer (or do them for yourself) you’ll eventually end up with a cohesive vibe. We all have our own styles, and that will show. Choose a nice font for your name that you won’t get tired of. Decide if you’re going to do single men, couples, lighthouses, streets, what have you, depending on your genre. You want your Amazon author page to look TOGETHER. I’ve seen some author pages that look like I’m digging through a giveaway book box at a rummage sale, and that’s not a way to grab a reader . . . or their loyalty.

Advertising: You’re buying a promo spot like Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, E-Reader News Today, Fussy Librarian, or something similar for one of your books to see if you can generate some buzz.
Marketing: You’re mapping out your promos for the next 12 months based on what you have coming down your publishing pipeline.
I heard a big-time author say you should be doing something every quarter–that’s four times a year. (It comes in handy if you’re in Kindle Select because they give you 5 free days per title, you guessed it, four times a year.) If you don’t have the backlist (or the front list) to continually run sales, you have to sit down and decide how fast you can write and what the next three to five years are going to hold for you. You don’t have much to market or advertise if you’re not writing and publishing, and what you’re writing and publishing will be important. You can do a sale or do a free promo, but unless you’re in KU where you might get some page reads during your promo, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to give away a standalone novel, especially if it’s your only book. If all you have are standalone novels, make sure your back matter is pointing your reader to the next standalone (if you like this book, check out this book) and/or to your newsletter.
You may be thinking you can’t afford to do something like that four times a year, and I understand that completely. In time you’ll start to earn out your fee or get ahead, and if you never do, then the conversation turns back to quality (book covers and blurbs) and craft (how well are the insides written).
So, grab a wall calendar and map out the next 12 months. I can mark up my new releases from now until the beginning of 2025. Can you?

Advertising: You decide to write XX genre for your next release, but you’ve written and published XX genre under the same name so your backlist is going to look a bit wonky. That’s okay though because you’re going to focus all your social media efforts and advertising promo dollars on your new release.
Marketing: You’ve decided on Small Town Romance, that is where you will stay, and that is what you want to be known for.
Everyone tells you not to genre-hop, and a lot of indies don’t listen, saying that it boxes them in or stifles their creativity. I get it. I went from Billionaires to Rockstars because I wanted to write my Rockstar trilogy and that’s what I did. I had an amazing idea for a trilogy and I wasn’t going to not write it–that would be dumb, right? I mean, rockstars are rich too, and as I’ve pointed out in the past, my books are still more contemporary romance than true Billionaire romances. Just because I make them rich doesn’t exactly mean they’re going to meet reader expectations, but so far I haven’t gotten any feedback to indicate readers are unhappy. Romance is neat in that you can choose a genre like small town romance, but the sky’s the limit when it comes to tropes. Most romances are written with a trope for a foundation, and it doesn’t matter which genre or subgenre you choose. So far, I haven’t found that writing Billionaire is stifling–there are many many tropes and you can twist them your own way to keep them fresh. Here’s a blog post I did on consistency: https://vaniamargene.com/2021/12/20/buzzword-consistency/

Advertising: I’m going to post on Social Media every chance I get. All my followers are other writers, but that’s okay–authors are readers too.
Marketing: Starting a reader group or author page on FB and joining reader groups for the genre you write in. Using author groups for publishing information and networking to find beta readers, editors, and making friends for newsletter swaps.
Bursting out of the writing community bubble was hard, but I think I’m finally doing it. It helps that Twitter imploded and I don’t waste time there anymore and besides all the authors whom I follow and who follow me back on IG where I rarely post, all my social media (besides this blog) now is for readers. I’m slowly building up a readership on my FB author page, VM Rheault, and my V’s Vixens Read Romance FB page, mostly because I run ads from it and I post so it doesn’t look empty. When I started my TikTok account, the smartest thing I did was not label myself as an author. I didn’t think it was necessary as I’m not posting non-fiction (like writing updates) there, and I’m keeping my author following to a minimum, too. I understand that social media is free and falling into the writing community is easy, especially on Twitter and Instagram, but there really is no cheap way to find readers that’s effective. Surprisingly, I’ve had better cost per click using Facebook ads, and when I paused my Amazon ads during Zoe York’s Stuff Your eReader day, I didn’t turn them back on. My sales haven’t suffered, so I’ll wait and see. I have two ads running on FB right now, one for Twisted Alibis and one for Rescue Me. I don’t want to say free social media is useless–established authors still have great success and engagement with reader groups, but filling your social media following with other writers or family and friends won’t get you the sales you’ll want long-term.

Advertising: You start a newsletter but don’t offer anything as an incentive to sign up and don’t push the link anywhere but on social media where the same people hang out.
Marketing: You start a newsletter and have a reader magnet that is a great sample of the kinds of things you’ll be writing or reflect what’s in your backlist. You add the sign up link to the back matter of all your books, you add the link wherever you can–Amazon Author Page bio, your BookBub Author Page bio, FB reader groups (if it’s allowed) and anywhere else you can get signups like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin promotions. You also push the link and your reader magnet with FB ads and promos like Fussy Librarian and Bookdoggy.
Probably the number one reason I hear for not starting a newsletter is that authors don’t like them so therefore don’t want to offer them, and the second is that they don’t know what to write. Like publishing, building a newsletter list a long game, but the longer you wait, the harder it is and the more urgent it will feel. I should have started one a long time ago, but I can genuinely say the first six years I’ve been doing this was all just one big learning curve. Maybe you aren’t ready for the information in this blogpost–and that’s okay. We do have to write the books of our hearts and in our own time, learn for ourselves that shilling books on Twitter will only go so far, and realize that if you try, you can actually make some money at this publishing thing.

If you don’t think I know what I’m talking about, I pulled up the graph from my lifetime of publishing. As you can see, I had some spikes, anomalies, but the slight upward trajectory since June of 2022 when I first released Captivated by Her and Addicted to Her means more to me than the unexplained sale spikes. Consistency will win the race, and one day my sales will make me a small, if not steady, profit.

I could be sad that it took me so long to figure things out, but I met some great people along the way and learned a lot. I wasn’t prepared for success to come any earlier, but if I wrote something and a TikTok influence loved it now, I would know what to do with the attention and that’s really important. I’m still small potatoes, and I know that, especially since I’ve joined some TikTok for Author groups on FB, and holy hell, can those billionaire/mafia/dark romance authors rake it in. But after all the books I’ve written, I think I found where my heart truly lies–with rich guys written in angsty first person. Finding my niche may have been the biggest accomplishment from the past six years. Now I can write happily in a genre while building my audience.

You can look at advertising as something you do in the present, something that builds buzz short term, but marketing is something you do over months and years, pushing yourself as an author, what your brand is, as well as your books and what they’re about. But, you do need content, and that’s what trips people up, I think. You need be writing, need to have something for people to read, be it books or newsletter content. Time can be a huge factor and that’s why I suggested buying a wall calendar and mapping out what you think you can do for the next year or two.

It’s tiring, believe me, I know. If I didn’t love writing so much, I would have quit long ago, but I do love it, already thinking of what I’m going to write next, even if that won’t be published until the spring of 2025. God knows if I’ll even be alive then with the way I feel some days, but I never want people to think I’m floating on this cloud tapping away at my keyboard, when you probably would never believe the number of down days I have. My sexy men keep me going, and I hope your characters, when you’re down, keep you going too.

Have a good week!

The Secret to Leveling Up?

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Like any author publishing today, be it indie or trad, I’m always looking for ways to level up. Take your career to the next level. We hear a lot of advice, some I’ve repeated here: learn an ad platform, network with authors in your genre for promo opportunities and newsletter swaps, write and publish a lot, that kind of thing. It can be frustrating when you think you’re doing everything right, and the success you’re hoping for is still out of reach.

I can personally attest to how frustrating that is, to the point where I think that maybe this whole writing career thing isn’t meant to be, and it will always be considered a hobby by the people in my life and the IRS.

I read some advice about leveling and it was enlightening as well as confusing. She said, and this is an author who makes six to seven figures a year, to focus on writing the next best book you can.

It made me a bit crabby (no offense to the advice-giver because I love her and she does a lot for the indie community), because when you’re writing a book you intend to publish, you’re always thinking it’s going to be your best book ever. Back when I wrote All of Nothing, I thought it was an 85k word masterpiece. (Little did I know it would take several edits after initial publication for me to be happy with it, and one that I actually did not long ago.)

This is akin to the question, how do you know what you don’t know? But, if your books aren’t selling, and you’ve tried ads and newsletter swaps and you’ve bought a Freebooksy promo that didn’t move books, there is unfortunately, room for improvement.

Craft is difficult to tackle mostly because it takes so long to make any kind of positive progress–depending on how you already write, it could take months or even years and hundreds of thousands of words. You have to write a lot to get better at it, and not only do you have to write a lot, you need constant feedback on that writing so you know what’s working and what’s not. How do you level up your craft?

*Join a critique group or work with an alpha reader who reads as you write.

*Get lets of beta reader feedback. And find people who are honest. If your characters are flat, you want, and need, to know about it.

*Read the kinds of books you want to write. One of the very first “complicated” series I read when I was thinking of writing my own books was a romantic suspense series by Lisa Marie Rice. She’s since expanded on those books, but the four I read have stuck with me for years. In fact, I want to read them again just to see if they are as good as I remember.

*Just swallow it and admit series sell and read-through is what will make you money. I love writing standalones, I do. The Christmas novel I just finished is a standalone and I fixed it so I couldn’t write any sequels from it. But the fact is, series sell because readers love reading them. But, from a writer’s standpoint, they’re difficult and stressful. They take planning, something a lot of pantsers aren’t willing to do too much of, but you need to have some details fit together from every book. If you’re a new writer, that’s hard to do. There’s a lot of details to remember, breadcrumbs to drop. You can start “small” and write a duet, then as you get more experienced, add books.

Writing a book, and a good one, is a group effort until you can get the hang of it. But what if you already think you have? When I read that advice, it didn’t know what to think. I feel like my writing is pretty good, I get positive feedback from reviews, readers reach out to me to say how much they enjoy my books. I have the skills, ability, (talent?) to write a long series–my six books I have coming out next year–and the beta feedback I’ve already received–is proof of that. So, I mean, what can you do if you think your work is already there?

If I had an answer, I’d probably be a six-figure author myself. You can study the market and see if what you’re writing is not hitting the target. Romantic suspense, psychological and domestic thrillers, and several other genres and subgenres will always be popular, but if you’re writing something mainstream and still not selling, maybe you aren’t including enough to meet reader expectations. Maybe your mystery plot isn’t twisty enough, or your characters are flat–meaning their backstories are bland and you haven’t given them enough to fight through.

Be that as it may, you can write the most perfect book in the world, and no one will be able to read it if no one knows it exists. There is the idea of word of mouth, and that does work if your book blows people away. It’s not like you can ask every reader who reads your book to spread it around like an STD, they have to want to do it, be passionate enough about your book to do it. If a booktoker doesn’t get a hold of it though, you’ll have to run ads or buy a newsletter promo spot. Those don’t work unless your cover is good, so part of leveling up may be refreshing book covers or doing better than you have in the past.

It helps to have a hook too, something I didn’t have with my first billionaire trilogy. I have decided for their book birthdays in January that I’m going to redo their covers and come up with better hooks for ad copy. Obviously, doing what I should have done a year after the fact was part of that commenter’s point. You lose a lot of time and opportunity if you don’t do what you should have done at the start. Still though, you can get some marketing juice from a relaunch–especially if you actually make improvements and the changes you make aren’t lateral moves. Maybe that means hiring someone like GetCovers to redo them, or learning new techniques on your own. Maybe that means letting go of what you want and putting a cover on your book that will sell.

As for me, we’ll see what my series does next year. I’m rethinking the covers since I made them last year and my tastes have changed. I also need to read through them one more time and make sure the writing is there. My beta/proofer found a few things, too, so I’m glad I sat on these books and waited to publish. Before I do that, though, I need to get my Christmas novel ready to go, finalize the cover (I changed the man again) write the blurb, listen to my manuscript, and get the paperback proof to my beta/proofer. Then the new covers for the trilogy, and then my series. I’m already thinking of what I’m going to write next while those release, six books at two months apart will give me all of 2024 to write something else.

Anyway, leveling up can take different forms, but there is always room for improvement. If people have read you and are willing to give you feedback, take their advice to heart. It’s okay to listen and realize that what you thought was good isn’t. It’s what you do with that and were you go from there that will help you really level up.

Have a good week, everyone!

Romance Covers: Finding the right stock photo

Posted on August 14, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

You know when you buy a new (or new to you) car? You’ve never seen it on the road before, but once you drive yours off the lot, it’s everywhere? That actually has a name and it’s called the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon. That happened to me when I bought my Ford Escape a few years ago. I never noticed one in my life, but after I bought mine, they were everywhere. Not just the make and model, either, but the color.

Screenshot taken from the first results page of a Google search

I think that can happen when we look for stock photos when we create covers for our books. You’re searching for the perfect man (haha, aren’t we all) who will accurately depict what your character looks like. He’s got the vibe, the dangerous glint in his eyes, and you think, Yes! He’s the one! And like what happens in real life, maybe he’s not the one after all.

A lot of romance authors and cover designers use DepositPhotos for stock images for our covers. Not only because I’ve heard Amazon will accept their copyright contract if KDP asks you for proof you own the licensing to use the photo without argument, but because with deals like AppSumo around Black Friday and one or two other times during the year, you can get a package of 100 photos for $39.00. It’s a cost-effective way to buy images safe to use.

But it also limits the selection, and as more and more authors publish books, we’re going to see the same models on romance covers. I, of course, haven’t been immune to the selection (as you will see below). And I can’t even call it a meagre selection because DepositPhotos offers hundreds of thousands of photos.

But what I do wonder is if using a stock photo that’s been used a hundred times before confuses readers, lowers discoverability, and maybe, in terms of Amazon since they only use your cover photo for their ads, suppresses the ad lowering impressions and clicks.

Covers found in a Google search, graphic made in Canva

I’m not posting these book covers to shame the authors–in fact, I have used the same stock photos many do, so I’m in the same situation. The male model I used for Rescue Me is everywhere, and I honestly didn’t even know he was everywhere until after I published.

Images found on Google and Amazon, made with Canva

It’s even to the point where similar backgrounds are being used by some authors. I saw this one by Nicole Snow first, and now different variations are used by other authors. Maybe not all the time, but we know as trends heat up, indie publishing is quick enough to follow them before they fizzle.

Images found on Google and Amazon, made with Canva

You can find your own by doing a search for business city window backgrounds.

https://depositphotos.com/314780774/stock-photo-beautiful-sunlight-on-modern-office.html

When I did my covers for my Lost & Found Trilogy, one of the reasons I took so long was because didn’t, DID NOT want to use the same models other authors and book cover designers have. I wanted to be original but still fit in–the secret sauce for selling books. Of course, that didn’t work so well. I scrolled through pages and pages and pages of men. It didn’t help I write a bit older, and the good-looking models are in their 20s and 30s. I got so frustrated I finally just closed my eyes, said whatever, and poked at my screen with the DepositPhotos website up. That’s not exactly what I did, but it felt like it. I’m still not happy with the covers, but I’m getting reads and sales. The models have been on other books, but they aren’t the best. The first guy is too smarmy, the second is fine, and the third has an odd look about him that I ignored.

I chose a darker background because everyone at the time was going light (like the city window backgrounds above) and I wanted something different. Does it work? Probably not. I tried really hard though to get the covers, the titles, the trilogy name, and the backgrounds as tight as I could so marketing them would be easy. There is no mistake they are a trilogy, but I still think that I could do better with the models if I had time and wherewithal to hunt. Time is relative, and I do have it, at the cost of something else. Like this blog post, or my Christmas novel. It it worth it to go back? That’s where the energy part comes in, and I don’t know. Maybe if I had a different place to source photos it wouldn’t be so difficult.

My rockstar trilogy was easier, but the models have still been used before.

I am really really happy with these though, so the few covers I have seen with the same models don’t bother me.

When it comes to covers and models that have been used relentlessly, I don’t know if staying away from them is helpful. There’s not a lot written on the subject, and from what I can see in groups, not a lot of reader feedback, either. There was talk a couple of years ago that some authors were choosing to do the illustrated covers for something different, but that had consequences. The cutsie covers don’t depict the right level of spice in some of the steamier books and either readers don’t pick up those books because they want sexytimes, or they picked up those books because they didn’t and got a nasty surprise with the open-door sex scenes.

It’s difficult too, finding sexy guys who are dressed because Amazon ads won’t let you advertise manchest covers. That was hard because when I was doing my rockstar romances, I found several shirtless models who would have looked great. Unfortunately, I need ads to sell my books and using a model that would get me suspended wouldn’t work.

I’m not sure what the solution is, but I plan to try to stay away from the men who come up first when you search for “handsome man in a suit.” Which really is funny, because when I search for it, the first guy that comes up is the one I chose when I redid my covers for my duet.

covers found in a Google search, mine, and the DP search results
https://depositphotos.com/stock-photos/handsome-man-in-suit.html?filter=all

You can try your best to give them a different background or flip them so they appear different, but that’s not always going to work.

When I was looking for my man for the Christmas novel I’m going to publish in November, I was really excited to find a guy I had never seen on a cover before. My novel is kind of a romantic suspense that takes place over the Christmas holiday, and I needed someone who looks dangerous but protective. I starred him so I wouldn’t lose him and downloaded the composite the second I scrolled into him:

https://depositphotos.com/photo/strict-male-portrait-guy-classic-black-suit-half-face-light-560566482.html

But, you know, nothing can be easy, and while I was scrolling Instagram, I came across this book cover on an account that posts new releases. If you’re on Instagram, you should follow them. I love looking at their new book release compilations. https://www.instagram.com/sebrero_sisters/

Anyway, so this is my working book cover, and this is the cover I saw on IG:

I like the guy and finding him on a different cover won’t deter me for keeping him. He looks different enough that I had doubts it was even him, but the tiny spot under his lower lip without any whiskers gives him away. This is the only cover I’ve seen him on so far, but now that I spotted him, that will probably change.

I like studying covers and looking out for the trends. Illustrated covers seem here to stay–I could barely find any real models on romance Christmas books when I was doing research for my own. I’m not interested in those and wouldn’t fit the story I’m writing anyway. Since I’ve done my own covers since I started publishing and probably will never stop, researching and taking note of the models and font choices is fun homework.

Are there repercussions for using the same models over and over again? I don’t know. I have noticed that there are levels of professionalism that doesn’t always coincide with sales. Some of the drabbest covers I’ve seen on Amazon have reviews in the thousands, so I wouldn’t always discount a middle-class cover. It gives me hope as I’ve often wondered if my books would sell better if my covers were more professional, but at this point, I really don’t know. That would have to be an experiment that I’m not quite ready to run. At any rate, tell me what you think! If you read romance does a recognizable model turn you off or doesn’t it matter?

Until next time!

All photos screenshot from DepositPhotos.com. Compilation made with Canva

Mid-Year Check In and Author News

Posted on August 7, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

open journal with rose petals and pencil. text says midyear check in and author news

It’s not exactly mid-year–we’re two months past that, but I thought I would write a check in, look back and what I’ve accomplished this year, and try to drag myself out of the self-pitying hole I fell into these past few weeks due to circumstance beyond my control.

January started with a bang, as that is the month I published my Lost & Found Trilogy. By no means did I have a strong launch, and while Give & Take, the first book in the trilogy, has sold better than a lot of my books, the trilogy in total has earned less than a thousand dollars since release. Depending on where you are in your career, that may sound pretty good to you, but I’ve put money into ads and promos and actual take-home from that total is less than five hundred dollars. Still though, despite my ongoing doubt about the covers, readers seemed to have liked them so far, and I’m going to put the first one in a promo in September and see how it does.

February, March, and April were slow months, only because I was busy writing my rockstar trilogy. I thought the first book was going to be a standalone but it turned out, like most side characters do, they wanted their own stories told, and I spent December of 2022 to May of this year writing them. Editing took some time, more adding and rewriting than I’ve done in the past to make them cohesive since the two others weren’t planned until I was almost done writing book one. I did the usual Amazon ads for my backlist, struggled with if I wanted to be on Twitter anymore, helped a friend edit and format one of her books, and mostly kept my head down.

In May, I published Faking Forever, a fake fiancée standalone I wasn’t sure about. I haven’t checked the reviews to see if anyone liked it or not. The reviews from Booksprout were favorable, but it’s not often, in my experience, people will really tell you what they think. Since I published it, it’s made less than a hundred dollars, and I really don’t know what to do about it. My other standalone, Rescue Me, has made around five hundred since I published it in October of 2022, but that’s also been on sale for a while now and I ran Facebook ads to it. That five hundred is not take-home, but if I look at how much I spent on ads to push that book, I just get depressed, so I won’t do that here. I’ve been thinking about pulling it off sale and putting Faking Forever at .99 to see what that does. I have a hooky hook for the ad copy, so I may do that at the end of the month and see what happens. I won’t do that until my SNAFU with KDP and the last book in my rockstar trilogy has worked itself out, but more on that later.

June and July were for getting my rockstar trilogy ready to release. Lost a beta reader and a friend, so that was disheartening, not only because I was counting on her feedback, but you know, it’s tough when people move out of your life for whatever reason. My other beta/friend/co-worker is still plodding along even though my books are (kind of) up. I told her I need to get them going for marketing purposes and if she finds anything I didn’t, I can change out the files later. She found only a couple things in book one, nothing major, so I’m confident that books two and three are just as clean. It’s not like I haven’t released books without feedback before, but I was trying something different that didn’t end up working completely in my favor. Such is life.

This month, August, I had a free book promotion opportunity fall into my lap. I had passed it by and then it opened up again, so I decided to take that as an omen and enter my book. I put Captivated by Her for free from August 4-6, and I’ve been moving some books–528 at the time of this writing, but we’re only half way through the promotion. Not a lot of people read free books, though, and so far that movement hasn’t gone on to the other books in my backlist. I guess we’ll see in the coming weeks if anyone reads it and goes on to buy/borrow Addicted to Her. I think the cover changed helped, but that duet has earned only a little over three hundred dollars since I published them in June of 2022.

I also lost a cat this month. Blaze was sick when we got her (we didn’t know that though), and we’ve had nothing but ongoing medical issues with her for the past five years. It was a relief to make the decision after some bloodwork, but I miss her dearly and it’s been such a blow to my mental health as this is the first time in over twenty years we haven’t had a cat in our apartment. We can’t get another unless my financial situation changes because we were grandfathered in when this property management took over our apartment building. We’ll be starting from scratch with them, and I can’t afford the pet deposit or pet rent they’ll charge us if we wanted another. I’m still missing Harley, too, so I’m just not going down that path right now, and maybe never will again.

So to recap the year so far:

Books published: 6.5-7
Royalties: $1,711.49 as of this writing. (I write my posts in advance so add, oh, I don’t know, ten bucks to that total unless for some reason I got extremely lucky.)
Ad spend: I don’t feel like doing the math, but I’ve spent $569.00 on Amazon ads, ran an FB ad to Rescue Me off and on for a couple of months and bought a Freebooksy promo through Written Word Media for Give & Take at $120.00. So obviously, the total royalties are not all take-home, but rarely is any author’s.

I haven’t found a way to get “sticky” with Amazon, struggling to “level up.” Each book I write has the “will this be the golden ticket?” feel about it, and then each book has a lackluster turn. I cleaned out my newsletter subscriber list–I got rid of 103 inactive email accounts. MailerLite is making me move over to their new platform so once my trilogy is out and I’m done sending newsletters for that for a bit, I’ll do the migration. Apparently it’s not smooth, and I’m worried about the setup I have with BookFunnel. I learned just enough to put in place what I needed for them to collect email addresses for me when I give out the link to my reader magnet. If that gets messed up, I’ll have to learn it all over again, and that will be painful since, for the most part, I’ve given up drinking for my physical health.

Ghost Town’s Fate:

So, I was able to publish book one and two without an issue, but I was one of the (un)lucky ones and KDP asked me for copyright proof for the cover images for book three. I sent them what I had from DepositPhotos–screenshots of the licensing agreement that they give you when you download/purchase. I also gave them a screenshot of my DepositPhoto’s account profile. I’m lucky that my email address and my physical/mailing address match what I use for KDP as well, so they know it’s me. The first rep approved my proof and told me to go into my account and resubmit the books for publication. I did that, but then got another email from their content team and was asked for proof again. So I sent what I had before, plus the screenshot of the first rep’s email that said my books were okay. It didn’t take them long to get back to me and say my books were approved and would take up to 48 hours to publish. So, that is where I am now–this morning when I got up, they were still in review, but while I was writing this, I checked my dashboard and they have moved into “Publishing.”

So I’m going to assume that the third book is going to go through after all, and maybe by the time you read this, it will be live. (At the time of this writing, it’s only been 15 hours since the last email correspondence.)

As far as reviews, I put the books on Booksprout, and this trilogy is the slowest to get picked up since I started offering books. Only 16 of 35 copies have been claimed for each book, and either it’s because they’re long (I did warn readers of that in my note to readers section) or because no one cares about aging, depressed rockstars. Maybe both. Whatever the case may be, I hope this isn’t going to be more of the same when the books move out of preorder and are live. Once the third book is actually published and accessible, I can start ads to the trilogy, but I hope these do better than my gut is telling me they will.

I have to be honest, all this put me in a real downward spiral last night, and just an FYI, crying in the grocery store is not a good look. It also gave me a really queasy feeling for the past two days and I have not felt well. You’re probably thinking I sound burnt out, and I probably am. When that book goes through I’ll have published 7 this year, 8 if I get my Christmas novel done and published by November like I hope. I haven’t made much progress on it, as I went through my Ghost Town paperback proofs myself (glad I did) but that took an extra little bit of time. When I finish the first draft, I need to put it aside and take a real break while it breathes. Watch the shows I want to watch, read through some of the books on my Kindle (I still need to read the Hunger Games sequel before November). Network with some authors in my FB groups, experiment with making videos for TikTok. I need to find my joy because it has been sucked right out of me, and never did I want to throw my laptop over my balcony as much I did last night.

I don’t have any books planned for the next little while. I have that King’s Crossing 6-book series I need to polish up and publish starting in January. I’m having second thoughts about the covers, and my proofer/coworker went through them some time ago, and I haven’t looked at her feedback yet. That will be a project and I will love to get those off my plate. I also haven’t read them myself in a long time, so it will be fun to read them one last time before I publish.

Anyway, so stats here show that this blog post will take 10 minutes to read, so I’m going to wrap it up for now and get going on my Christmas novel. Have a great week, everyone, and thanks for listening!

Author Update: Knowing your limits and what I’m working on now.

Posted on June 19, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

Happy Monday! This week holds the first day of Summer, though we have felt the hotter temperatures for a while now. I don’t mind, and I frequently lie out on my apartment’s balcony with a podcast and soak up all the sun. This week is my sister’s birthday and we’re taking a road trip to Bismarck, North Dakota to eat at Cracker Barrel, bum around, and look at a different boring city with nothing to do there, either. But there are plenty of fields and plenty of cows, and I need a break.

I’ve been giving my trilogy a rest (to the best of my ability) and reading The Hunger Games books because I promised my daughter I would read the prequel before the movie comes out in November. Soon I’ll start listening to them (my books, not Suzanne’s), and I’ll have to divide my time or else I won’t them read and my books won’t get done for my proofer. I want to give her most of July so I have time to enter in the typo fixes and any cover changes I need. I only set an August deadline because if I don’t, I won’t work on my books in any meaningful timeline. But once I do set a deadline, and I announce to my newsletter that I have books coming out on a certain date, I’ll honor that. My publishing schedule is important to me; my integrity is important to me. Readers won’t trust you if you tell them one thing and then do another, and that’s why I got ticked off when one of my betas backed out of reading for me. (In the back of my mind I must not have trusted her because I still worked on them while she had them. I would have been even angrier had I waited thinking she was going to honor our agreement. It’s sad, but my lack of trust in people has served me well, and I don’t think I’ll ever change.)

Every week that passes, I see behavior like this in the writing community, and I don’t question why people are doing more and more on their own. If you want something done (and done right) you have to do yourself, and that’s evident in the uprising of sneaky AI covers, scammers charging for services they don’t have the right or experience to provide, and people unwilling or unable to keep their end of any bargain or contract they enter into. I’m always amazed when I look up the stats for my blog post on how to do a paperback wrap in Canva:

I really shouldn’t be though because book cover designers aren’t cheap and with AI and scammers creating their own book cover design businesses who don’t understand you need to find your stock photos from a reputable (read: Amazon accepted) source, authors are just needing clear instructions on how to do it themselves because they’re the only ones they can trust to do it correctly.

I’m at the point where I have one online friend who will help me with blurbs and some shorter beta reading and a real life friend/co-worker who’s willing to help me proof my books. I’m tired of trying to weed through people who like the idea of helping but when it comes time to actually put in the work, they balk. It’s especially infuriating when you see them later tweeting about the time they are spending on their own work since they dumped yours. I’m bitter and refuse to put myself in that position again. So, when you offer to help someone, please follow through. It really hurts to get dumped. I’ve helped many authors since I’ve started this indie stuff. I’ve done everything from editing to blurb feedback to formatting, even some simple cover design work, and I have never, not once, backed out of a project. I do all of it for free (unless someone insists on throwing me a bone, but it’s not required) simply because I know how difficult trustworthy and affordable help is to come by. I couldn’t imagine getting halfway through a project and telling someone I couldn’t help them anymore. Even the idea makes me sick. Of course, like I said, life happens, and if my kids had an emergency, or my health was suddenly in peril (my mom and her mom both died from breast cancer) then that’s something else, but realistically, if you’re backing out because you bit off more than you can chew, that’s your own problem. What’s the saying? Don’t make your problem my emergency? Know your limitations and don’t offer to help anyone if you really don’t want to. Honestly, it’s a lot easier to say no than it is to back out of a project when someone is depending on you to finish. I’m not one for predictions, though I enjoy reading them at the beginning of every New Year, but I will say this: I think more and more indies will put out their work without any help. It’s just getting way too hard to pick through the scammers to find the dependable people, and indies are going to forgo the whole thing and just put their books out themselves. Whether or not they can put out a quality product is one thing, but the community is driving us to to do everything ourselves because it either costs too much or it’s too much of a headache to find someone who won’t screw you over.

Anyway, while my friend has my paperback proofs, I’m going to start writing my holiday novel. I found a notebook with the first chapter of a book and some plotting. I wasn’t experienced enough to connect the dots, and I tabled it. This was before COVID, maybe even a couple to three years before, so this shaky outline is old, but the plot has stayed with me. I’m going to turn it into a Christmas standalone. When I was plotting it, I hadn’t started my pen name yet, so I wasn’t writing strictly billionaire. When I go back, I’m going to have to figure out how to keep him in the situation he’s in because the original character didn’t have money and was essentially trapped where he is. But, I’m excited to use this plot, and I’m aiming for a November release. Even though it’s a Christmas novel, it will be dark, and I’m going to shoot for about 80k words. This will keep me busy during the remainder of the summer and into the Fall. I’m helping someone with formatting and editing, and I told her yesterday that Novembers can be busy for me. Decembers with Christmas can be too, but November will be particularly busy with my daughter’s golden birthday on the 18th, and my birthday on the 28th, and Thanksgiving I usually cook for. I wanted her to be able to plan accordingly but I won’t be working on any of my stuff by then. A standalone should be easy-peasy considering the two trilogies I’ve put together this year, and meeting my self-imposed deadline should be a snap.

I earned out my Fussy Librarian fee ($75.00), so that’s nice. (It was on the 9th of June.) I haven’t done the math to see what my read through is for the trilogy, but since my free promo wasn’t that long ago, my numbers would be way off anyway. It seems like I get decent read through, at least, book three is making money, so that’s something. We hear a lot about saturation. Is the market saturated? Too many books, not enough readers. Too many promos and not enough readers. I’ve read where these newsletter promos like Freebooksy, Fussy Librarian, and E-Reader News Today aren’t working as well as they used to. Being that I never used them FL or ENT, I can’t say one way or the other. I’ve used Freebooksy in the past, and I have proof a lot depends on your cover, if you write in a series, and how good your book is. I did a Freebooksy for the first book in my very first trilogy and it didn’t do well. My writing just wasn’t there and it didn’t earn back my fee. Same with All of Nothing. The writing was better, but that’s a standalone. Paying $120 dollars to give away a standalone doesn’t make any sense, and I didn’t have read through to other books because that’s an enemies to lovers and the only one in my 3rd person backlist. I’m going to keep an eye on how well my promos do for my 1st person brand. So far, the ones I’ve done have earned their fee back and then some, which is how you want it. But I made a conscious effort to niche down, change POVs, and write in more series. We’ll see if it pays off.

That’s about all I have for this week. I have plenty to keep me busy for the next little while, and I am really really excited to put out my rockstar trilogy. I thought my Lost & Found Trilogy was some of the best work I’ve ever done, but I’m really eager to see how readers like my rockstar stuff. I’m very proud of them, and I hope my readers love them as much as I do.

I hope you all have a good week, and if you ask, I can regale you with all the cow pictures I take on the road.

Until next time!

Why I have an author website and the advantages of having one.

Posted on June 5, 2023 by Vania Margene Rheault

When I decided to publish my first person POV under a pen name, I was torn between starting a whole new website, or simply adding a page and listing my books on this one. I already knew my way around WordPress (this theme, anyway) and starting another and letting WordPress host my domain would be easy, if I chose to go that route. I don’t pay for an outside host, WordPress takes care of that for me, and I bought both of my domain names through them too. I’ve blogged for seven and a half years, I think, and I have never had a problem logging in, hackers taking over, or spam comments dirtying up my posts. I’ve always been very happy with WordPress and I like being part of the WordPress Reader. I think over the past seven and a half years I’ve found a lot of readers showing up in WordPress community, and that traffic is invaluable.

The main issue for me was keeping my nonfiction and writing community separate from my readers and my books. For a long time I put a graphic of my books and author page at the end of posts, and I realized that my audience isn’t here. You guys come to me for publishing news, indie information, and how-to posts like my how to do a full wrap in Canva instructions. You come here to read about my experiences, and I love sharing them. If I ever sold any books from having them at the end of my blogposts, it was few, and I decided instead of trying to cram two readerships together, I took my graphic down and stopped. It didn’t do anything to my sales, such as they were, and well, I think I made the right choice.

But, readers like somewhere to go, a place to look at your stuff, even if you don’t think they do. So, I decided to put up a website just for my first person books.

One of the first things I realized is that I needed a brand. My books are about Billionaires (kind of. I have a rockstar trilogy coming out at the end of the summer, and they’re rich, but in a different way LOL). Sexy men with gobs of money, wanting, needing, things money can’t buy. I needed graphics, fonts, that would carry across the website, my newsletter, and any other social media posts. Starting my website was a way to put everything I learned from five years of doing it wrong into practice, and I still made a lot of mistakes along the way.

The first thing I did was think about the font for my author name on my books. I got some flack in some feedback groups on FB for using Cinzel Decorative for my name.

This is the cover for the first in my rockstar trilogy I’m playing with. My name will look like this on all my first person POV books. Always. I wanted it to look similar to my name on the third person books, but with a little twist. I may go back to writing in third person. I don’t know. I still sell a few here and there, and I don’t want to completely write that name off.

That was the first thing I had to decide. Next I had to figure out what would denote sophistication, elegance, and money, but also sex as I have open-door sex scenes and I thought I should hint at that. The brand of a billionaire. I chose this photo as a header for my FB reader group page, my FB author page I rebranded instead of starting a new one, and it’s the header for my newsletter sign up landing page. It’s important to be consistent all over the web.

My home page header and tagline.

My landing page for my newsletter signup through MailerLite

I went through a lot of graphics and I changed a lot of things before settling on him.

The reason why I’m telling you all this is because when you decide to create and pay for a website, it’s more than just putting up a list of your books. It’s part of your marketing strategy. You’re giving your readers a look at what they’re going to be be getting buying and reading your books and signing up for your newsletter.

So, after I got all that up and running, I decided I didn’t want to blog. I wanted to do things differently than what I was doing for my non-fiction part of writing. Instead of blogging, I started a newsletter to reach readers, and it’s a lot easier writing a newsletter once or twice a month than it is thinking about relevant topics for this blog once a week. This is like a journal about my publishing journey, and readers don’t care about that. It’s fun to think of little things to tell my readers about my books, and now that I’ve gotten used to the MailerLite platform, it doesn’t take any time at all to knock out a newsletter and send it off.

My author website doesn’t have much to it. An about me page, how to contact me, my books, and a subscribe link to my newsletter. The only thing I keep up to date is the list of my books, and that doesn’t take much time at all. There are other things I could add, like a list of trigger warnings, or when I have more books published, I could list them by trope. There is always something to add, but for now my website is very simple.

I got the idea to write this blog post is because I wanted to give you some numbers. I don’t promote my website anywhere. I have the link on my Twitter bio (along with this one, too) and my subscribe link is at the back of all my books (www.vmrheault.com/subscribe). You would think I wouldn’t get any views, but I do. You may not believe readers will find you, that a website isn’t relevant, but it readers will find you. They really will.

I started my author website in September of 2021 and I published my first 1st person POV book in June of 2022. I already had a reader magnet written, and I started up my newsletter a few months after I published my website.

In 2021 I only had 33 views:

In 2022 I had 213 views.

So far, this year, I’ve had 266 views.

I don’t use attribution links, so I can’t tell you how many people have bought books using my Books page, but all those views could be readers, and I never would have had them if I hadn’t had a website.

I’ve had 44 newsletter signups that came from my landing page I have connected to my website. That may not seem like much, but that’s 44 people who may not have signed up. Every little bit helps when it comes to building your mailing list.

I call it my No Freebie List because I have a different way to collect email addresses through Bookfunnel when I have a little money to play with to run FB ads to my Bookfunnel link. They are still able to download a copy of my reader magnet–that was just how I differentiated them in my mind.

For as little time as keeping up website updated costs me, I think it is worth it to have one. When you’re building a readership, each reader counts and they want a consistent way to be able to find you. I don’t do much with any of my Facebook pages. Sometimes I’ll take a couple hours and schedule posts for a few weeks in advance, but I’m terrible at keeping those up to date. I like my newsletter for that, because I don’t send it out often, and I don’t have that much to share. I write a lot. That’s where my time goes.

If you’re on the fence about an author website, ask yourself why you wouldn’t want one. Would the lack of views get you down? You do have to write and put the links in the back and not be afraid to share it on social media. I admit, having a reader magnet goes a long way. I’ve given my reader magnet away 1,004 times, and that probably has brought traffic to my website, too. It all works together, and that’s part of your marketing strategy. All the wheels need to turn, and a vehicle stops moving if you have a flat tire. I’m happy with the stats of my website, and I’m glad I put one up.

Do you have any other reasons why you would have an author website? Let me know!

Have a great week!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Tag Archives: book marketing

Writing Tics: What they are, how to spot them, and how to fix them.

I Finally Updated My Trilogy Covers!

The evolution of a book cover

Spoilers, to give or not to give.

Advertising versus Marketing: an Indie’s interpretation

The Secret to Leveling Up?

Romance Covers: Finding the right stock photo

Mid-Year Check In and Author News

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