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

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Words: 1155
Time to read: 6 minutes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

screenshot of cover taken from Amazon

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

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

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

Screenshot taken from Jane’s website.

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

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

Monday Author Update: What I’m up to this week

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Happy Monday! It’s President’s Day in the United States, and hopefully you have the day off to sit and relax and enjoy a slow, easy Monday! If not, I hope the holiday slows your workload down and it’s not such a hectic day for you.

I don’t have a lot of news this week. I’ve had some personal stuff going on–I think a lot of you know I lost my cat three weeks ago to old age and colon issues. Then the week after that my car battery died and that cost me a lot of money I didn’t have on top of Harley’s vet bill. It was a blow to my wallet and I’ll need a long time to recover. But, as the saying goes, just keep on keeping on because it’s all you can do.

I”m 40k into the second book of my trilogy as of this writing, and I’m excited I turned what was supposed to be a standalone into more books. This might be the first time with any of my series where I actually like all the characters equally. Does this happen to you? Maybe that might be getting ahead of myself as I haven’t written the third book yet, but I’m actually eager to start their stories. Bits and pieces of who are they’re going to be are already flitting to the surface of my brain, and that is the best feeling in the world.

I added up all my book spending and subtracted that with the royalties I made in 2022, leaving me in the red by 268 dollars. I did my year-end summary in December, but didn’t do a full tally like I have to for my accountant. In my blog post I approximated that I broke even, and I really would have, but last year I had two new things I paid for: Bookfunnel and my Alli membership. Two very important things that will aid my writing business, but my royalties did not cover everything I spent on my books last year. On the bright side, I’ve already made 34% of what I made for the entire year last year, so I’m hoping that trend continues.

I’m very excited about my Freebooksy Promo coming up on Thursday. I have two free days scheduled Thursday, February 23rd and Friday, February 24th. I have my promo booked on Thursday and I add an extra free day because not everyone opens their emails on that day and I would hate for anyone to miss out. I’m giving away Give & Take, the first in the trilogy I published last month. This promo will be different than the ones in the past and I’m hoping this promo will bump up sales overall. Here’s why I think it’s different than the ones I’ve done for my 3rd person books:

All my books are billionaire (I have 6 under my pen name right now). Unlike my 3rd person books, my billionaire books are the same sub-genre–though I do have a lot of fun with tropes. Hopefully that will make it easier for readers to want to read more of my books after the promo if they like Give & Take and hopefully the rest of the trilogy. When I bought a promo for my small town holiday series, those were the only small town holiday books I had. We like to fool ourselves and think readers will read anything if they like us, but you have to have a very large audience for that to actually work. When you’re just starting out, genre-hopping is hard and you’ll lose readers if the rest of your books aren’t what they like.

They’re written in first person present. I haven’t done a survey for the past couple of years, mostly because I drank the Kool-Aid and gave in, so the number of books written in first vs. third on the Amazon bestseller lists didn’t mean that much to me. But when I was promoting my small town holiday series, they were written in third person past which, for romance, has fallen to the wayside when it comes to popularity. We can take a quick look at what’s selling right now–not to prove myself right, but out of sheer curiosity now that I brought it up. The top five Billionaire Romances are:

1. The Temporary Wife by Catharina Maura: First Person Present, KU
2. Final Offer by Lauren Asher: First Person Present, KU
3. Black Ties & White Lies by Kat Singleton: First Person Present, KU
4. The Auction by Maggie Cole, First Person Present, KU
5. The Vow by Maggie Cole, First Person Present, KU

I could do that with other subgenres or Contemporary Romance in general, but it’s part of market research and just with that quick of a glance, I think any billionaire books written in 3rd person might be a tough sell. I get where authors would say, your book is going to sound the same as everyone else’s, but readers like familiar, they like similar, and in my case, I said, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.” If I don’t have to work so hard to find readers, sign me the hell up!

Because I’m more curious than a cat, I looked at the top five of Contemporary Romance on Amazon, and three are the same. The two changes are The Wrong Bride by Catharina Maura (First Person Present, KU) bumped The Auction, and a new title coming in at Number 2 is Beyond the Moonlit Sea by Julianne MacLean (First Person Past, KU). This is a very small sampling, of course, and when I was debating switching over from 3rd to 1st I spent hours pouring over the lists to see where exactly the shift was taking place, when it did, and I guess more importantly, why. Maybe I never found out, but it still interests me nonetheless.

They’re in KU. My books always have been, but doing a free promo will usually lead to page reads. When a KU subscriber sees that it’s in KU, they will more than likely borrow it rather than download the free book. The promo brought our book to their attention, and we get paid for the page reads. When I did my free promo for my series back in November, it earned me page reads for the entire series.

I said in previous blog posts that my promo earned out, and it did. I gave away three other books at the same time, bumping me over the fee cost. I counted them because without the promo, those books never would have gotten the attention they did.

Anyway, that was an “oh well” kind of promotion because I’m not writing under 3rd person anymore and I don’t have a newsletter signup for that name, either. It was just something fun I did, but I also regretted spending the money and trying to garner attention for books that don’t really need it. That will probably be my last promo for those books I’ll do for a while. I can’t split my focus and my marketing budget anymore.

I’m doing my own version of “promo stacking.” Promo stacking is when you pay for more than one promo and you spread out your advertising to other promotional services. While I’m paying for a Freebooksy, I’m also running Amazon ads and paying for a Facebook ad to Rescue Me, which has sold 55 books this month (at .99 that’s only 17.99) and has netted me $46.36 in page reads. With the promo, I hope even more people see the .99 cent sticker on Rescue Me and go on to buy that too, or borrow it in KU.

Depending on how this promo does, I probably will do something with Captivated by Her when my next standalone is set to release in May. I’ll use the bump the new release of Faking Forever will give me and hopefully get some sales and reviews for Captivated and Addicted. What little feedback I’ve heard about those books is favorable, so I just need to push those books out there. I didn’t put them on Booksprout first, so the reviews are lacking. I had an FB ad running to Captivated, but something was off. I was getting clicks, but no sales, so my ad wasn’t giving readers the right idea and they were bailing when they reached my Amazon product page. I’ll have to think about what I can do to fix that.

Anyway, if you want some quick tips on how to make promos work for you, here’s what I’ve tried and what others advise:
1. Promo a first in series. You’ll earn your royalties with read-through.
2. Make sure your series look like a series. Amazon does a good job of letting a reader know what the next in series is, but make it easy for your reader, too. Make your covers cohesive.
3. Keep in mind your price. As you can see from my small-town holiday series above, a few people actually bought the other books instead of reading them in KU. At $4.99 that’s 15 dollars!) Make sure your price is competitive and in line with what others are doing in your genre. Readers won’t overpay for your book. There is too many choices out there for them to do that.
4. Don’t forget a call to action in your back matter. Add a newsletter sign up link, or the link to another book you really want them to read. All my back matter now has my newsletter signup link that offers a free full-length novel. Always give your reader somewhere new to go if they like your stuff.

While it won’t be a full picture of what my promo did (I’m hoping for a long tail), I will write about my initial first couple of days for my blog next week. Wish me luck, and I hope you all have a wonderful week!

My Freebooksy Promo Results for His Frozen Heart (A Rocky Point Wedding Book 1)

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I did a Freebooksy on July 17 for the first book in my series to try to jumpstart some sales. Here are the results:

First I spent a little more time with the ad:

I really wanted to make sure that readers knew what they were getting. It’s a holiday romance, so it takes place in the winter. It’s got kind of a Beauty and the Beast type theme, and I wanted to bring that home because not every reader likes that kind of trope. Damaged heroes, yes, but damaged on the outside, not so much. Plus I wanted to highlight that it’s first in a series that’s complete because indies have burned too many readers with series that aren’t done or won’t be finished for many years. Readers are smart enough to know not to get invested. I’ve seen Chris Fox do this too, in his ad copy on Amazon. Plus it’s a great way to let readers know there is more than one book available.

I didn’t care so much about the ranking since potential read-through of the other books is more important. But I think I did okay in the free list in Small Town Romance:

Eleven was as high as I got, but I did go up to number 2 in Holiday Romance:

So that was fine. I don’t think it means much, to be honest–I kind of feel like anyone can give away a book. Especially if you’re paying to do it.

So the promo ran on July 17th, and the first day of the promo I gave away 3,866. I always give away the book the next day in case someone opens their email late and by chance looks to see if the book is still available. On July 18th I gave away 915. I did give away some on the 19th probably because of a time zone thing: 51. So in all total my promo gave away 4,832.

The first couple of days didn’t earn me any read-through, and that’s to be expected because a lot of people download a book but don’t/can’t read it right away. Twelve days later, I am getting some read-through and I’ve made back what spent on the promo.

Here are the stats for each book in the series this month. And if anyone wants to know, more than half of my royalties come from KU page reads.

It thrills me I’m getting read-through. I was so full of doubt when the first few reviews of book one came in and they were bad. Now, hopefully with Amazon ads I can have long tail off this promo. And if the people reading the whole series would review, that would be fantastic too. I need a few good ones to wipe out the negative ones on Amazon and Goodreads.

So all in all, I had a positive experience with Freebooksy this time around. If I could give you advice it would be this:

  • Make your ad copy in the Freebooksy newsletter count. I tried to add as much information as I could so the reader knew exactly what they were getting.
  • You’ll get more bang for your buck if you’re promoting a series. If you’re not, at least fix your back matter and offer links to other books so if your reader likes your book they have something else they can immediately read when they’re done. Don’t make them hunt–make it easy to read your books. All my books in the series link to the next. That did mean going in and adding the buy-link after publishing the next book, but the extra effort is very much worth it.
  • Make sure you have a good cover that conveys your genre.
  • Make sure the blurb is well-written.
  • Make sure if you’re promoting a first in series, that all your books look like they belong together.

Obviously, I haven’t made what I could have if those 4,000+ giveaways had been sales. And I’m not really sure what’s going on with more books. The books I’m writing now are different from these, and I think I”m going to be publishing them under a pen name. Does that mean my next book is going to be in 3rd person past? Or do I want to write in first person present? If I’m going to keep promoting these, then I should eventually have something new readers can move on to. On the other hand, if I have to fight like a trout upstream for sales, then I need to stop beating my head against a brick wall. Writing first person present is fun, and if I can find a foothold writing that, I would be content to let my 3rd person past stuff rest for a while.

Lots of choices!

Tell me, have you done a pomo lately? Let me know!