Tag Archives: cliffhangers

Author Update: King’s Crossing Series

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Time to read: 9 minutes

city skyline at night. text reads: king's crossing update

I’ve talked a lot about this series, and if you’re tired of reading about it, feel free to skip this post. One day soon these books will be released into the wild and I’ll stop talking about them. 🙂 Until then, this blog may be a bit repetitive as not much is going on, but I’ll try to come up with something better next week. If you have a topic you want me to write about, let me know in the comments. Thanks!

I don’t have much to share with you this week. I’m trying like mad to get these books read, and reading them over was again, so worth it. I don’t have an editing process–it seems to vary from book to book. I barely edited A Heartache for Christmas, listening to it, and proofing the proof after writing it and perhaps going through it once or twice. That’s still four sweeps, by me and me alone. I know I should get other eyes on my work, but there are just so many scammers charging for a service they have no right saying they can provide and the ones whom you could probably trust, well, they just cost too much. I’m not at a point where I would earn back a 700 dollar copy edit, and there’s no point apologizing for it, that’s just the way it is. But I’ve been sitting on this series for a long time, and every time I read it, I find other things to change, small discrepancies that probably a reader might not notice, but I did, and I like past and future details to mesh as much as possible. So, I don’t regret this read through, but besides looking for typos in the printed proofs, it will be the last one. That’s not to say I won’t fix a mistake if I find one. When I was reading the proof of A Heartache for Christmas, I found a timeline issue that I had to fix, but I published that book knowing I did the very best I could and that’s all anyone can do, whether you pay for an editor or not. What I would like is to find a person like me who can do all the things and I could give her a hundred dollars. That probably won’t happen–no one does the amount of work I do for my friends for so little, but it would be nice to have a dev editor, copy editor, and proofer all rolled into one who would catch say, 80% of my mistakes. Though, to be fair, I wrote so many books during the pandemic I wouldn’t use a person that way even if I could. That’s a lot of work for not a lot of pay, and I would feel terrible even if she were willing to do it.

So, sitting on these books was worth it, but this last editing pass before I format and order the proofs will have to be enough. At some point, you have to move forward, and while I liken several editing passes as folding more ingredients into cake batter as you mix, eventually you want to bake the batter and eat the cake.

I’m going to be moving on to researching how to market these. This series will probably be the only one like this that I do, where there is only one entry point–book one–and books one, two, four, and five all have medium to hard cliffhangers. The last thing I need is to be accused of money grabbing or get poor reviews because readers didn’t know the books ended on a cliffhanger and they hate them. Cliffhangers, I mean. So for right now the plan is to use the blurbs to put that information at the bottom and to create A+ content that will also have that information listed as well as the release dates of the other books. I’m a reader who doesn’t like to read a series unless all the books are out, and I know others are the same. I may not get a lot of sales and KU page reads until all the books are live, and that’s okay, that’s what I expect anytime I release a trilogy which is why I dump them all in the same month. Someone on Threads I think it was, or maybe it was a while back in one of my Facebook groups, said when you do that, you waste the 30, 60, and 90 day push Amazon gives you, and that may be true, but I think I’m willing to give that up in exchange for quicker read through. My sales are slow enough that I can see that people do buy all three books in a trilogy at the same time, or do read through them all one right after the next in KU. You would have to decide if Amazon’s push of your new release is worth it, or if you would prefer getting read through right away.

I can’t release all six books at once, or even a month a part, as I need the time to write more books, so I’m going to release them two months apart, though the ebooks will be on preorder which means book 6 will be on preorder for a whole year. That’s not something I usually do, but I want readers to see the series is done, and I can add that information in my A+ content as well.

The other thing that I’m going to do that I don’t usually do is put my books on sale during the preorder phase. I’m going to mark book one at .99, book two at 1.99, book three at 2.99, and the other three books will be regular price, which right now is 4.99. I normally don’t care about preorders because readers who buy books and readers who borrow them in KU are two separate audiences, and I market to my readers in KU, but I’ve never written a six book series before and I know how expensive buying an entire series can be if people want them. I don’t think I’ll get any paperback sales because I’m going to have to put them at 14.99, maybe even 15.99 to cover printing costs and I don’t have to do the math to guess readers don’t have 100 bucks to spend on an author they might never have heard of. Still, I like to offer paperbacks because besides the cost of the ISBN numbers, there’s not a lot of money or time involved so I figure I might as well.

The second I proof the final proof and make any corrections, they’ll go up on Bookfunnel for ARCs. The ARC discussion over on Threads a couple weeks ago made me want to vomit, and I will NOT be treating my reviewers and readers the way I’ve seen some authors treat theirs (such as blaming them if their books end up on pirate sites. That happens to everyone and there’s no one to blame). It was gross, and I should have made a list of all the authors I will never ever buy books from. I’ll put my ARCs on my website, let my subscribers know they’re available, maybe throw a little cash at an ad to build buzz and put them on Booksprout. I need to do that a month in advance to give readers time to read the first book at least, so it will be a lot of work and keeping an eye on the calendar because the ARC links need to come down as my books release and drop into KU. It will be a busy 12 months, and I’m also excited to get these out and work on something fresh.

I keep changing my mind on what that will be–pulled between writing something new and jumping into editing the books I have left on my laptop. I have one standalone I could polish and release, and two books of that other series that I decided I would cut down from six to four. I’m not sure, though cleaning up that standalone sounds appealing because it would be easy, but so does writing a new standalone that I partially have plotted out, but would be a bit more work.

In other news, I started a new blog to talk about coping with my health condition. Since this wasn’t a great place for it and I don’t want to make anyone tired of reading this blog if my topics don’t stay on topic. I started it over on Blogger, just so I wouldn’t confuse myself with another blog on WordPress. I already have two and using a different platform felt right. I’m not going to post on a schedule the way I do here, use it more for an online journal to talk about how I’m feeling. It will just be a place to blow off stream, and you can read it here if you want: chaoscoffeeandconfessions.blogspot.com. It only has one entry so far, and I can only post when I’m not working on something else, which won’t be often until after my series is done.

If you want to read more about marketing a series look here:

https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/marketing-a-book-series-the-power-of-readthrough

https://www.blog.yourfirst10kreaders.com/how_to_write_and_market_your_book_series/

https://insights.bookbub.com/promoting-series-keep-readers-hooked/

A discussion about cliffhangers…..https://mdmassey.com/cliffhanger-endings-writers/

That’s about all I have for this week, and I apologize if it’s repetitive. This series has been my life for a long time, and no one will be happier that I’m done than me.

Have a good week, everyone, and I hope the sun is shining where you are!

An Author’s Thursday Thoughts: How book one is doing, what’s up next, and cliffhangers.

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Happy Thursday!

Happy Thursday! March seems to be going just quickly as February did! I hope you’re getting a lot done while the weather is still a bit dreary, as I know how difficult it is to get those words down when all you want to go is go outside.

I’m still doing the 2020 publishing predictions from Written Word Media with a dash of Mark Coker (from Smashwords) thrown in for good measure. But sometimes life gets in the way. My son had a procedure done that needs wound care, so that has created a new morning and evening schedule. It wasn’t serious, and he’s healing, but I’m still his mother and sometimes doing something while you’re stressed doesn’t work. Hopefully things will get back to normal in a couple weeks.

Until then, I can update you on a few things.

My second book in A Rocky Point Wedding will drop at the end of the month. My manuscript is loaded into the pre-order, but I still need to go in and add the pre order link to book three to the back matter. Not that it matters. Because I have one pre-order for book two. So I’m doubtful if putting the pre-order link in the back of book two for book three will do anything. Such is life.

His Frozen Heart went live on February 11th, 2020, and I suppose you want to know how the launch did. It didn’t break any records, and even though I tried to drum up a little enthusiasm, which is a lot more than I usually do before a release, it didn’t help. Since its release I’ve made $16.51 and that includes both KU page reads and ebook sales. I’ve had no paperback sales. I think the only thing I’ve managed to do is gather some bad reviews, which I have to admit, let bother me for a little while. Now I just shake it off because it is what it is.

I tried to keep an open mind given the fact that both the main characters went through something unpleasant. Truthfully, even the other characters seemed to be carrying enough baggage to sink a ship, which makes up for unnecessary drama.
This is a nice enough book, it started well for me then just went downhill fast because of some of the character’s wishy-washy attitudes. — Goodreads Reviewer

Anyway, I’ve blogged a lot about what I think is selling right now, and we’ll just see what happens with the other books I have lined up to release under a pen name this year. I think I’ll concentrate on the pen name for a little bit. I’m having more fun than I thought writing first person, and I have a continuation in mind that is spun-off from one of the characters from this new trilogy. I’ll spend my summer writing that, and honestly, trying not to worry so much about sales.

I’m done with the last book in my trilogy I just mentioned. It took a little longer than usual to finish this book, mainly because I wanted to make sure that I ended the trilogy on a good note, and end that book well in general. I have a tendency to rush endings because, well, it’s the end, and even with what I have I’ll probably add a little more in editing. I’ve been looking at stock photos for the covers, may have even picked out the couple since I managed to find a nice male and female in different poses that might look good next to each other.

But there is one thing about this trilogy that has me thinking now. I was scrolling through Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Facebook group and there was a woman posting about cliffhangers, particularly in romance. Should she, shouldn’t she? Do readers like them? Loathe them? A little of both?  As you can imagine, she got quite an earful, both pro and con.

Happy Thursday!-2

Then it made me wonder, I have a MASSIVE cliffhanger at the end of book one. I had already planned on releasing these books pretty close together, for that very reason. It’s one big story, after all. A reader has to read book one first, or two wont’t make sense, and reading three before either one or two, well, they just wouldn’t get anything out of it. Now I’m wondering if that’s the death knell for the whole entire series. I mean, I’m all for writing what you want, do that (at your own peril) and if I can avoid some issues before publication, then I should do that. But honestly, I have NO IDEA how I would fix the cliffhanger short of just taking a little bit from the beginning of book two and tacking it on there. But that’s silly. I started book two exactly where I wanted to start it, and it would water down book one’s ending.

It’s a dilemma.

As a writer, we don’t care we write cliffhangers, because the information and “what’s next” is at our disposal. But as readers, is it fair to make them wait, even one second? Would an excerpt from book two be enough to appease them?

I’ve already thought that this isn’t your typical romance. I might not even categorize these as such. Perhaps domestic thriller with romantic elements, or plain thriller, though there’s not too much mystery involved. The thing is, the couple featured aren’t together all that much, though the romance part of it is more than a subplot. I already knew in the back of my mind trying to market it as a full-blown romance won’t cut it.

That’s what happens when you write from your heart, kids. You have a book you don’t know what to do with.

Well, whatever, I suppose. I’ve had more pressing problems in my real life at the moment.

On that note, I am going to bed. It’s already been a long week. With my son’s wound care, sister time, editing for a friend of mine, and of course, all the cats doing all the things, I’ve been pretty busy.

There’s never a dull moment.

I hope all of you are doing well, and I will try my best to be back at it on Monday! Have a lovely weekend!

Happy Thursday!-3