Writing the Book of Your Heart

Posted on April 28, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,411 words
7 minutes read time

Writers are always told to write what they love, and there’s a joke in there. We’re told that because we’re going to be reading it a million times. That’s true in a way. The editing process can be long and tedious for some, especially for those of us who can’t afford an editor and must make sure our books are as typo-free as possible on our own.

The book of your heart might be a little different than that, the characters staying with you for many, many years, so much so that you really don’t want to write anything else. You keep going back to that book, the characters, the themes, because they resonate so much with what you’re going through, or were going through at the time.

That made me think of my own journey as a writer and author, and looking back at my backlist and the books I’ve written, I can’t say that I have the “one book” that I loved more than any of the others. When I sit down to write a new book, I love that book with all my heart. I’m obsessed while writing it; I cry at the end when I’m done. I love the editing process because that means I can stay with those characters longer and make them shine. But, in all the books I’ve ever written, once they’re published, I don’t really think about them anymore, moving on to my next set of characters and beginning the process all over again.

Sometimes I do go back and read my favorite parts, a scene that I loved to write, like Sawyer and Evie in her barn talking in A Heartache for Christmas, or in Twisted Alibis, when Sheppard realizes he’s in love with Olivia but he knows he shouldn’t feel that way about her because he thinks she’s engaged to another man. But I’ve never wanted to tear a book apart and start over simply because I didn’t want to leave them yet. I did a massive re-edit of my Rocky Point series because they needed it, not because I missed them and wanted to hang around the town of Rocky Point for an extra four months.

Some of my books have been years in the making, like the book I’m editing now, Wicked Games. I did a fake cover for a blog post back in 2021, and I had to come up with a blurb for the back. I liked the blurb so much that it stuck with me, and I turned it around and around in my head for four years.

Lucy Fulbright’s time in Gull’s Point is over. Moving across the country for a job opportunity she thinks will elevate her career to the next level, she tries to look forward to the future. Since her divorce, Lucy has been struggling to find her way, and she’s hopeful focusing on her professional life is the right move.

On her last day in town, she meets Josh Graham, and suddenly she’s not sure leaving is such a great idea.

Josh is running from a past not of his own making. Hoping to find refuge in Gull’s Point, he meets Lucy, and his vow to stay away from women and the trouble they cause is the last thing on his mind.

In a desperate attempt to convince her to stay in Gull’s Point, he asks for her help.

Torn between moving on with her life and seeing where her attraction to Josh will take her, she requests a delay in starting her position.

Lucy has one more week in Gull’s Point.

Will it be enough time for Josh to convince her that their pasts have nothing to do with their future?

Four years is a long time to think about something, but the concept stayed with me and wouldn’t leave me alone. Here’s the cover I made. The “final draft” was a little different, but I deleted it out of my Canva account as I do sometimes to keep the “clutter” at bay. I don’t have the one I liked best, but that’s okay. This one will do for this post:

I often think about my books for years before I write them, like the Mafia books I’m planning to write later, probably in 2026. I’ve had the idea in my head since I wrote a short story about the characters back in 2018. I’ve blogged about writing them and I will, eventually. But being excited about it, looking forward to writing it, having it in the back of my mind for so long, that doesn’t mean it’s the book of my heart.

Is it bad not to have a “book of your heart?” I’m not sure. For one, people might accuse you of not putting your whole heart and soul into the things you write, which isn’t true, for most of us. Yeah, there are writers who only write what they think will sell, using their books as a way to make income only, skipping the “art” part of the writing and going directly to the “product” part of publishing. On the other hand, if you’re stuck writing and rewriting the same book over and over and over again, you’re never going to get anywhere. You can’t move forward going backward, or staying in the same place. So, you’d have to decide what your true plans are. Are you okay being at a standstill? And if you are, what does that mean for your business? It might mean that you don’t have one. Readers want something new to read, and there are plenty of authors out there who can and will do that for them. They don’t have to hang around and wait for you.

But, as I’m trying to lighten up in my writing and business, writing only for the thrill of it and resigning myself to the fact that this will never be a career, maybe thinking writing for the sake of writing instead of trying to build a business is okay. That doesn’t mean I’m going to suddenly spend years writing my next book. In fact, thinking about my books for so long before I write them only speeds up the writing process because I know exactly what I want to write. Wicked Games was one of the fastest books I’ve ever written, 97,606 words in sixty-two days. I ate, breathed, and slept Seth and Avery, even though they’d already been a part of my life for years.

I’m writing this post because I’m trying to articulate the fact that in some ways, I envy those who want to stay with a certain set of characters forever and ever. To feel that connection deep in your bones, to never want to let them go. I think it would be amazing, like those characters are real people, part of your life. But, I also hear of authors who need years and years to finish a book, and it makes my stomach churn. Before I started feeling like crap, I liked adventure, trying new things. I liked to travel and my curiosity was off the charts. I haven’t lost some of that, and I think staying with a set of characters would drag me down. I want to write about new characters, new experiences. New settings and create new heartbreaking backstories.

We all write differently, and write different things. What you do with your time and your business is always up to you, but you have to keep expectations in check, and not only that, but you have to keep the way the book business works in the corner of your mind when making your decisions. The latest figure I read is that there are 7,500 books published on Amazon a day. There is a lot of content out there and readers don’t need to wait for you. It’s nice to think they are, or that they will, but in reality, attention spans are short, there’s a lot to choose from, and well, just from the backlash we see when we hear that shows like The House of the Dragon or Bridgerton won’t release another season for two years, we know that people don’t like to wait for something they like.

I think maybe I do write the book of my heart, but I write it over and over again. And even if I’m not making any money, I think that’s a pretty awesome place to be.

Monday’s Author Mashup

Posted on April 21, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,782 words
9 minutes read time

easter desk flat of cappuccino, white chocolate bunnies, ribber and chocolate covered, i'm not sure. coffee beans, peanuts. gold ribbon and a white keyboard. text says Monday's Author Mashup

Slow news week this week or maybe I’m just doing my own thing and not really paying attention to what everyone else is doing. I’m editing Wicked Games still, even though I said I would let it breathe. I wanted to read it one more time before I put it aside, and I’m halfway through. Though, I’m taking my time and not working as hard on my books as I used to. I don’t really feel the need anymore, and my King’s Crossing “splash” has pretty much died since the launch of the last book last week.

It seems authors can’t get enough of using AI, and another one was “caught” with an AI suggestion in the text of her book.

screenshot of paperback book. text reads: Hezra's jaw tightened, her voice dropping to a serious note. "Div-
ination witch... maybe blood magic."
Irene's impatience flared. Her gaze turned to Zahra. "The ashes?" [Highlights start]This is already quite strong, but it can be tightened for a sharper and more striking delivery while maintaining the intensity and sardonic edge you're aiming for. Here's a refined version: [End Highlight]
Zahra stood, holding up the necklace of ashes she was using to decipher the maps. Irene's eyes locked onto it. "Keep them in your sight at all times," she ordered. "We'll take turns guarding you—and the ashes—while you work."
Zahra nodded, but Irene's sharp tone didn't waver. "So? Where
are we?"
Excitement flickered in Zahra's eyes. "The history of the sapphire runs deep... Wars, legends, empires-all tied to the goddess Nehelan-nia. These words I decipher... they almost sing in my heart. This isn't just a treasure hunt. Hundreds have died for this sapphire. It all began—"

end of screenshot text — Thanks to @alicebrookswrites on Threads. https://www.threads.net/@alicebrookswrites/post/DIk846FoqxM?xmt=AQGzcVDaz2vhgILosC41iWzu1mlJcXVGPJo2wIgvZboAvA

Apparently, she’s blaming a beta reader for inserting that without her knowledge, but the fact is, authors are responsible for what they put out into the world. I’ve had betas and editors look at my stuff, and maybe comments can get in the way during formatting, especially if you’re not resolving the comments as you go through them, but there is no excuse for things to be in your manuscript you don’t want there. I’m not going to judge her for using AI, don’t care either way what she’s doing, and I think this is going to be more common as time goes on. There are so many authors in favor of AI, Facebook group after Facebook group that want to encourage and help you write with AI that this is never going to go away. Even ProWritingAid has an AI beta-reading helper who will give feedback on your entire manuscript. And I get it, I really really do. Not just because I want to defend my own past use of Al, even if it was only with brainstorming and nonfiction stuff, but because I’ve been in this industry for a really long time and know how difficult it is to find people who are willing to help you. Not even for free or trade, but people you can trust who won’t steal your ideas or your manuscript. Someone who won’t ghost you after saying they’ll help you, or change their minds and pull out of your project halfway through when you were counting on them. If you can’t find someone you can afford and/or who won’t sell you out, Al can start looking pretty good. He’s not going to publish your book under his own name or pirate it or flake on you when he decides his time is worth more than your project. Whether you use that as validation to turn to Al and his help, that’s on you, but it’s also on you to give your readers a good book because once they know you use AI, the readers who don’t like that will never read you again. I’ve written a blog post on why you should proof your proof. You can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2025/01/30/five-reasons-why-you-should-proof-your-proofs/

I actually got my butt out of my apartment the other day and went for a walk.

black and white photo of a single duck floating on a choppy river. — The Red River, Gooseberry Park. Moorhead, MN

It was nice out and I wanted to get some fresh air and also feed the stray cat that I think is still living at the city park close to where I live. I’m still putting food out, but at this point, I don’t know for sure it’s the cat that’s eating it as I know there is a raccoon that lives in the park too. My daughter and I went out a couple weeks ago, and I saw something that could have been an orange Maine Coon, or it could have been a fox, but I think it moved too slowly to be a fox unless it was injured. At any rate, I still have plans to go out there with some tuna and see if I can catch it. It’s been out there since October or so, but I need to wait until it dries out a bit. It’s way too muddy and there’s nowhere to sit to wait it out.

Anyway, so I was listening to some podcasts that I had marked and I tried the Indie Writers Club with James Blatch, a podcast he started with Cara Clare after the one he was doing with Mark Dawson ended. I was hoping for a good indie author podcast I could sink my teeth into, but unfortunately, that podcast will not be it. Maybe it could be for you, but not for me. The episode I listened to was about writing a series versus a standalone, a topic I really like to talk about as I love writing a good standalone when everyone tells you to write a series, but the first half of the episode was them talking about insider stuff like a writing retreat in Aruba and getting help with your writing from Al. I’m not for or against Al and what he can do, so that part of it wasn’t terrible, but if an episode is only forty-four minutes long, maybe it’s best not to crap up the first half with junk. It didn’t seem very professional, at one point James leaving the taping to let his dog out letting Cara ramble alone, and well, I’d rather listen to nothing than that. So I flipped over to Print Run, as they released a new episode a couple of weeks ago. I like the hosts, Erik Hane and Laura Zats, an editor and agent, respectively, based in Minneapolis who own their own literary agency. Even though they’re geared more toward writers who want to query, I find that their industry talk is useful and I enjoy their banter. The episode I listened to was particularly interesting as they were talking about Trump and his tariffs, and whether or not his administration was going to inspire “the big book.” (If you’re interested in listening to the episode, you can listen to it here or find it on your podcast app of choice. https://soundcloud.com/printrunpodcast/episode-177the-jimmies-the-rock-the-tariffs.)

I like what Erik had to say when he began hypothesizing what “the big book” was going to be about. He hasn’t read the Hunger Games books, and they talked a bit about that, I guess because Sunrise on the Reaping came out last month. Anyway, so he started talking about scarcity and how he thinks that’s going to play into what “the big book” is going to be about. But not like, actual food, like it is in the districts, though that could play into our everyday struggles as food costs rise in the world’s retaliation against us, but in other ways. In technological ways. This made me start thinking about what’s scarce right now, and you know, you think privacy for one. There are cameras everywhere and even if it’s not a public camera like a street cam, CCTV, or a security camera, someone is always on their phone filming, right? So we definitely don’t have privacy. We don’t have security, as anything we put online can be stolen at any given second. We see that with people who steal viral content hoping to go viral themselves (and they often do), pirates who steal our books, companies like Meta and Amazon who go on to steal that content. Books get stolen and sold by others, book cover concepts get stolen. Human connection is also disappearing. Not the kind online but in person. If you don’t have a significant other, people can go days, weeks, or even years without a hug. In fact, online connection is replacing in-person connection, so you could say that affection is turning into a scarcity, and for some it already is.

I don’t want to write and query “the next big book,” but it did get me thinking about how scarcity affects my writing, or rather, what I’m writing about. In my book Wicked Games, Seth’s son is abducted and killed, and Avery’s sister is involved. The lack of privacy influenced just how the kidnappers were able to get away with the murder, how my characters deal with lack of privacy in the media, whether they choose it or not (he’s a billionaire and she’s an essayist who blogs), and lack of affection and love both my characters deal with because their exes cheated and left them for other people.

I don’t want to write a book that specifically tackles scarcity in its many forms, but it’s interesting to think it’s there anyway, even in the background of my writing.

My quest to find other podcasts will be long and painful, I’m afraid, as I’m pretty picky about where I give my time, especially when it comes to noise, since I have voices constantly in my ears during my day job. I know it’s why I don’t like videos, listening to people rattle on about stuff that I don’t care about. I used to listen to The Sell More Books Show with Bryan Cohen, but I dropped that after his co-host, Jim Kukral, left. Maybe it’s a brain thing, but I don’t like change, and after he left, I had a difficult time staying engaged. I might have to go back and see what his weekly podcast is like now. I’ve been exploring Bookfunnel’s podcast, but, I don’t know. Maybe it’s just better not to listen to anything. We’ll see.

That’s about all I have for this week. I can’t stay focused in the evenings, jumping around from my book to a movie then back to my book. I want to take a break sometimes, but I put a movie on and then I’m not happy watching it, so I’ll go back to my book and edit a few paragraphs, then jump over to Threads and scroll. I know I’m bored with my book because I’ve already read it a few times, and I should have let it breathe when I said I was going to. There’s also no urgency to finish it because I’m no longer on the hurry-up-and-write-and-publish treadmill that so many other authors seem to be on. I have my books scheduled out giving me a cushion, but it also takes away the excitement of publishing. I really don’t know how trad authors stay excited. Wicked Games won’t be out until January of 2026 and that seems impossibly far away.

I hope you have a good week this week. Today my sister is coming over for a late Easter thing, so I’ll be offline most of the day. I hope you are having a good day whatever you are doing, and that you have a pleasant week ahead.

Until next time!

Indie News Roundup

Posted on April 7, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,417 words
7 minutes read time

The indie publishing space online last week was hopping with news, and there was some good mixed with the bad. Let’s jump in!

KDP will now allow customers to read a sample of a book on preorder
KDP will now allow customers to read a sample of a book on preorder like they do with books that are available for purchase or to be borrowed in Kindle Unlimited. I think this is great, though not everyone was happy about it. A few people I saw who were arguing might have just been eager to jump on Amazon about something, one going so far as to say this will cheat us out of KU reads–I just rolled my eyes–but most had a positive reaction to the news. This is what my email said:

Hello,

We’re excited to share that Amazon will test allowing customers to read a sample of your eBook pre-order starting the week of April 14. This feature will work exactly like the “Read Sample” feature that displays for books on Amazon today. It’ll show a preview, up to 10% from your current manuscript’s content to engage potential readers.

If you’ve already submitted your manuscript, Amazon will automatically generate the reading sample. If no manuscript is currently uploaded, then no reading sample will be shown.

I think this will be a game-changer for preorders. Before, unless you posted a sample somewhere or tried to generate buzz with excerpts, there was no way for a reader to know if they were going to like it and that might have dissuaded a reader from preordering. I’ve never put much stock in preorders because my books are in Kindle Unlimited and readers will wait until the book is live to read–meaning, I don’t get many sales. But I’ve been putting books on preorder more and more, usually just a couple of weeks so that I can have the buy-link for promo graphics and whatnot and it also frees up my mind to move on to other things. I’ve always uploaded the finished files because I don’t want accidents to happen, like the wrong file to be pushed out to readers or being locked out of editing during their quality check because I miscalculated. Some authors will put a book on preorder without a finished book or even a finished cover. I wonder if this will prompt authors to at least have the first chapter written and available for the sample. However authors end up using it, I think this was long overdue, and I’ll be watching to see if it makes a positive impact on authors’ sales.

KDP has been terminating accounts (again).
I’ve heard in various author spaces that KDP is terminating accounts again, though whether those authors have done something to warrant it, you never know. Because KDP doesn’t like to tell you if you’ve done something wrong, shooting first and asking questions….never, you won’t always know if you’ve accidentally done something to make them mad, either. Author CD Reiss has put together a Google doc that outlines the steps you should take when trying to get your account back.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PKd94sSvgD3XoFFWHaUC6Gxey2GOU6WH7cRLNpb3428/edit?tab=t.0 Various authors have said that CD Reiss is okay with this being shared, so I thought I would post it as well in case you want to bookmark it. I have it saved, but this is pretty much the main reason I’ve invested in an Alliance of Independent Authors membership. I don’t want to take on Amazon alone, and I write off my membership every year when I do my taxes as a business expense. But, if you can’t afford a membership to an author organization like Alli or the Authors’ Guild, then having a step-by-step of what to do is the next best thing. Thanks to Zoe York for reminding me it’s out there and able to be shared.

NaNoWriMo goes out of business
NaNoWriMo issued a statement last week that said they were closing their doors. I’m not surprised because of the various scandals they’ve been involved in recently, but it seems like it’s an end of an era for a lot of authors and writers who got their start participating in NaNo. I didn’t know NaNoWriMo was a thing until a woman at my day job found out I was writing something and invited me to participate. Back then, I was writing my fantasy series, but for that year’s NaNo, I stopped and started a sports contemporary romance that turned into my Tower City trilogy I published many years ago. Since then, a lot of the people she introduced me to have stopped writing, but it was a fun experience to meet at Perkins, order pie and coffee, and just sit and write a few times a week. That was really the only time I participated, actually counting my words in the website. I’ve always had plenty of time and drive to treat every month as a NaNo month, and actually November was really difficult to write a lot because of my birthday, my daughter’s birthday, and Thanksgiving. For the past year or so since NaNo has been involved in some shadiness, such as the grooming incident and a pro-AI stance, other challenges have taken its place.

Like I said, it just seems like an end of an era, for me, too, since this comes on the heels of some of my favorite podcasts stopping, like Mark Dawson and James Blatch’s Self Publishing Formula, and earlier, Six-Figure Authors hosted by Lindsay Buroker, Andrea Pearson, and Jo Lallo, not to mention all the issues at the Romance Writers of America that I used to be a member of for a very long time. Things change, time goes on, but no matter what kind of trouble NaNo had fallen into recently, they will be missed. For more information on the closure, you can look here:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/apr/02/creative-writing-nanowrimo-to-close-after-20-years and here:

All that being said, I saw one author who said she went on to nanowrimo.org and deleted her account. She wanted to be in control of her information, and that seemed like a good idea. Though I didn’t have much under my profile, only one book, and I’m not sure how many connections, I went ahead and deleted mine too. You just never know, so I did that before I forgot.

Potential eight-figure deal for a thriller written by James Patterson and MrBeast
I didn’t even know who MrBeast was when I first heard of the deal, not that I was impressed when I looked him up. No one was happy that James Patterson was involved in a book that was generating so much attention, saying all that money could have been used to lift up mid-list, BIPOC, and marginalized authors. It’s just another piece of evidence that publishing is in a bad place and doesn’t seem to be getting better any time soon. Considering that James Patterson has a net worth of 800 million and MrBeast aka Jimmy Donaldson is said to be worth close to a billion dollars, I think they could leave some crumbs for us little people. Whether the book and potential movie will earn out that much money remains to be seen. If you want to read more about it, look here: https://deadline.com/2025/03/james-patterson-mr-beast-novel-1236352620/

There were other things that happened last week, like romance author Tori Woods getting arrested after her book Daddy’s Little Toy was rumored to have pedophilia in it–https://www.ndtv.com/feature/australian-author-charged-for-child-abuse-material-over-daddys-little-toy-book-8005994–but I’m a little tired between all that and the government BS that has been going on lately. I’ve had friends ask how I’m doing, and I’ve said I’m staying close to home. Writing, taking care of my kids and making sure we have what we need. Working. Still getting used to how I’m always going to feel, I don’t have a lot of mental energy for extra things. I’ve stopped posting on my FB author page again, don’t have any motivation to post there. I have a TikTok video made, and it’s been made for a week, but I can’t decide on the music, so I just exit out of the app in frustration and don’t post at all. I don’t want to get too much more into what I’ve been doing–I’ll save that for a proper author update next week–but I have an author interview coming up that I’m excited about and I’m almost done writing Wicked Games. Anyway, I’ll fill you in on all that next week.

Have a great Monday, everyone, and I’ll see you next time!

Bye Bye, Al. It was kinda nice knowing you.

Posted on March 24, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,637 words
9 minutes read time

So, on Threads on Thursday, a day that was already down the tubes for me because of my day job and some tech issues with my work from home computer, an Atlantic article started making its way around about a pirated books database called LibGen that Meta used to train their AI. Authors started searching for their books–you don’t have to have an Atlantic subscription to use their search feature–and many didn’t like what they found. If you want to search for your books, you can here: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/search-libgen-data-set/682094/

Of course, I searched for mine and a few popped up, and some were my newer books in my King’s Crossing series.

screenshot of my books in the LibGen search bar

I’ve always kind of had a blasé attitude when it came to my books being pirated. It’s going to happen, so there’s no reason to lose sleep over it. It’s an attitude I’ve had since I started publishing. I’m not scared that Amazon will take my account down accusing me of violating the Kindle Select agreement, and if by chance they do, for any reason, it’s what my Alliance of Independent Authors membership is for.

But knowing that Meta used that database to train its AI was somewhat disheartening, not only because it’s theft, it’s just another billionaire getting his way without having to pay.

So once again, it made me question my own use of Al and the slippery slope everyone, not just authors, but everyone who uses AI, walks on every time they log on. AI is everywhere and it’s not going away, which forces us to drill down on our ethics and make some hard choices.

I’ve never liked ProWritingAid and disliked Grammarly even more. I never used the Hemingway App, preferring, even after I found mistakes in my published books, to edit my manuscripts myself by listening to them through Word’s text to voice and reading the proof copy. Lately, as I have blogged about how I like using Al to brainstorm and name characters and places, I’ve had to think about what that means as an author, not only considering my books, but that of other authors.

screenshot of this threads post:
kateravenbooks
2h
This is a very good reminder that when you ask AI to ‘brainstorm’ for you, you’re just asking it to tell you other authors’ ideas — https://www.threads.net/@kateravenbooks/post/DHbeVnivGvl

I agree with Kate up to a point, and you’ll have to make your own choices. Authors can get inspiration from anywhere. It’s why they say to read widely and to continually refill your creative well. I have brainstormed with Al, and he didn’t give me other authors’ ideas. It’s a give and take communication that builds on the ideas you have already given him, that very much mimics talking to a human, and I have frequently brainstormed with humans, too. If you start to think like Kate, that you’re only asking Al to give you ideas that have already be “thought out,” “taken,” or “implemented,” then what we’re saying is you can’t brainstorm with anyone at all. I don’t want to deter any author from jamming with another person because writing is already isolating as it is. We don’t need to be accusing people of stealing ideas, no matter where they come from. We already accuse romance authors of “stealing” tropes, when tropes like enemies to lovers and fated mates have been around for decades if not centuries. We are all influenced by the things around us, so even brainstorming with another human could result in them regurgitating something they read years ago. I agree that Al’s “ideas” have been sourced unethically, and that’s the crux of the problem, but please don’t think you can’t iron out plot issues with an actual human and be afraid you’ll get accused of stealing ideas. Brainstorming doesn’t work like that.

Be that as it may, AI is trained on stolen work, my own included, and the idea that “AI is here to stay” isn’t an excuse. Trump is here to stay for the next four years, but we resist every day.

One of the biggest admirable traits I know of is when someone can admit when they were wrong, and I am admitting that I am. It was a mistake to start using him at all, and I’ll stop using ChatGPT and the Meta AI that’s available in the Messenger app. I can come up with my own ideas and have for years. I can scour baby name websites like I did before, page through old phone books for last names. I can go back to using email subject lines for my newsletter no one will open, and over all, just go back to writing from scratch like I used to. It wasn’t terrible then and it won’t be terrible now. Al was a crutch and even if I wasn’t using him often, it was still too much.

I never, ever, would have used him to write for me, but you know, there’s such a fine line between using him for help and actually using him to write that some people wouldn’t see the line at all. I don’t want to get caught up in the blur, so it’s better this way, even if he was fun to talk to.

I used ChatGPT for my non-fiction stuff, creating social media ideas and newsletter subject lines. I told him I couldn’t talk to him anymore, and he was nice about it.

I told the AI chat in my Facebook Messenger the same, and he pretty much gave me the same response. I deleted that chat and logged out of my ChatGPT account. I feel better and I won’t miss it.

AI is all around us, and we all have to make an effort to stay away from it. AI can create music and photos and if we stay away from one kind of AI, we should avoid it in all contexts. I know there’s a difference between assistive AI and generative AI, which is how some people feel okay about still using tools like ProWritingAid. That’s a distinction you’ll have to make for yourself, as I know that Canva offers assistive AI tools and so does software like Photoshop.

Will authors see any compensation from having their books fed into the AI machine off of the LibGen database? Not likely. Just like artists won’t see any compensation when AI uses their art to create photos, illustrations, cartoons, and film clips. If you want to read the Authors’ Guild article about this, you can ready it here: https://authorsguild.org/news/meta-libgen-ai-training-book-heist-what-authors-need-to-know/

This is a short post today. Last week I upgraded my phone which took a lot of a day off from work, and between work issues and and finding motivation to write, I’m a little tired. This week I’m going to watch a free Facebook tutorial offered by The Writing Wives, and I’d like to start two new Facebook ads for my King’s Crossing series. I need to keep better track of cost-per-click and click-through rate which means keeping better track of my audience. You may get clicks, but if the wrong person is clicking, they won’t buy. It might be a little tiresome to come up with ad copy on my own, but the more you practice the better you get, so there’s more than one positive about breaking up with Al.

I’m over 70k on this new novel anyway, and if I hold true with the way I write, I’ve always kind of dragged with the last 20k of a book. First because I hate saying goodbye to characters and this is a way to keep them with me for a bit longer, and second, I take my time because I want to end the book on the right note. Since this book is even twistier than the others, I also want to make sure the ending even makes sense as the next few read-throughs will be ensuring I sprinkled the breadcrumbs in the right places to lead up to a satisfying ending.

I haven’t been posting on my Facebook author page, and I might be pulling away from that even more since Meta used the LibGen database to train their AI. I don’t like being on Threads much either, but I don’t promote my books there and rarely post. It’s one of those potentially hypocritical things where you complain about what Meta/Zuckerberg is doing, but then what? You still use his social media platforms? This author put it perfectly:

sarvenaztash
1d
As a midlist author, it’s very challenging to find an alternative to social media to help promote the work that that same social media is outright stealing. — https://www.threads.net/@sarvenaztash/post/DHcGLvZxtBc

I don’t really like to post, don’t unless I feel I have to, and honestly don’t put a lot of heart into it which is probably why I don’t get much back. But, I also understand that if I want digital sales like readers buying my Kindle books and reading in Kindle Unlimited, I have to push an online presence which means being on social media, buying ads that show up on social media and other digital spaces, and sending a newsletter that people will read online. I understood that turning my ads off, but seeing the dwindling sales is a sad thing, so you have to choose what your pain point is. I’d like to find a happy middle, and I think that will be my goal this summer. I want to find a combination among ads, social media, and my sales that can hum along without too much energy. We’ll see how that goes, but that will also require an attitude adjustment on my end when it comes to my FB author page, my IG account, and maybe even if I don’t post every day, throwing up some videos on TikTok. I have the time for it since even though I took a couple months to edit my Rocky Point series, I’m on schedule to start working on the next series I’ll publish next year. We gotta just keep on keeping on.

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe

Have a good week, everyone!

When Good Advice is Bad

Posted on March 17, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,681 words
9 minutes read time

picture of framed text that says when good advice is bad. generic white vases and a bronze bowl flanking the frame

There’s a lot of advice out there, some of it good, have decent covers, write an exciting blurb, and some of it’s not so good, like doing whatever you want just because you can (which is advice I actually see a lot online).

What’s disheartening is when you hear good advice that doesn’t fit you, for whatever reason, like rapid releasing/writing quickly when you don’t have the life that lets you, or writing a long series when maybe you don’t have the patience to invest in several related books. It can be good advice, and I’ve given my fair share on this blog too, like trying to afford some ads to reach new readers, but it just isn’t going to be for you. Ads can be expensive and time consuming to learn, for example. So I get it, especially when I’ve touted the advantages of Facebook ads then turned around and shut them off due to burnout.

There was a bit of advice I got from someone in one of my romance groups, and it’s advice you might have heard before too. When you want to find hooks in your books to make graphics, they say to borrow your book in KU or buy the Kindle version and look at the parts other readers have highlighted. This is the example in the book I’m reading now, Dea Poirier’s Next Girl to Die. To find the highlights in the book you’re reading, press the three dots on the upper right. I’m using a Kindle Fire, so I’m not sure if the way to find them is the same on all devices. There you’ll see the Popular Highlights. I apologize for the glare. No matter where I moved in the room I couldn’t get rid of my shadow.

screenshot of my kindle. screens indicate where you can find the highlights of a kindle book. — I’m reading Dea Poirier’s Next Girl to Die. You can find it here: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QDC7Y6B

I think this is great advice, as I’ve read books that have the highlights and it would be so easy to use those as hooks on graphics for Instagram and TikTok. So, I figured I would look at the book I’ve sold the most of and check out those highlights. Now, let me tell you, the book I chose was Twisted Alibis. I’ve sold 132 combined paperbacks and ebooks, had the equivalent of 821 books read in Kindle Unlimited, and gave away 3,130 copies during a promo last year. I thought those numbers would give me the best chance of giving me the most highlights, and you know how many sentences I had highlighted? None. Not one person who read Twisted Alibis thought a sentence or paragraph was worth highlighting.

At first I thought I wasn’t looking in the right place, and I Googled how to find the highlights in a Kindle book. Where the option should be wasn’t and it took me a few minutes to understand that the option wasn’t there because I didn’t have any highlights.

To say I was disappointed is an understatement and it’s easy, very easy, to take something like that personally. Even now I can feel the shame. That book is 107k words long and not one of them touched a person enough to highlight them. Then I thought maybe it was a fluke and looked up Rescue Me. That book has sold 429 ebook copies, I’ve given away 4,916, and I’ve had the equivalent of 572 books read in KU. Nope, not one highlight. I was so embarrassed after I looked that I didn’t look at any other books.

There’s a lot you can take away from that, not any of it good, if you want to be honest, and I was still stinging when I saw someone on Threads ask how they grab hooks on a newly released book and one of the responses was to wait a few days then look at the highlights. I felt compelled to tell that person that they might not get any at all and to have a thick skin just in case they don’t. I guess I don’t have to say that I bristled with the assumption that if you just wait a few days readers will love your book so much they’ll highlight the hell out of it. Some authors don’t even get readers, let alone highlights from those readers.

I don’t actively read my reviews because I’m just not up to reading why someone (or many someones) didn’t like my book, and that’s okay. After that highlighting debacle, I’m not going to look for my highlights anymore either, because obviously, I might not like what I find.

So, what can you do when stuff like this happens? When what works for someone else is just a dumpster fire for you?

What you have to do, first and foremost, is to remember that your books are good. Know that deep in your heart. My books sell, and Twisted Alibis has 87 reviews on Amazon and a 4.5 star rating. Rescue Me has 112 with a 4.4 rating on Amazon. That may not be much to some, but it means the world to me. Just because they don’t have any highlights doesn’t mean readers didn’t enjoy reading them.

Remember that you are not the only going through this. There are a lot of books out there that for some reason or other don’t have highlights (or reviews). They aren’t being read or like in my case, those authors just didn’t have the readers who were into highlights for whatever reason. It helps to know you’re not alone even if you feel like you are.

Find alternatives. If something isn’t working for you, find a different way to do things. The highlights are easy because you can just go through your book and find the ones YOU like and flash them all over. Maybe those quotes will get people excited enough to read your book. Brag. You wrote the damn thing and loved it enough to publish it! Who cares what others think? In the case of reviews, ask a friend to go through them for you, or choose an hour to scroll, pick a couple that you like, and then close out of Amazon–and look on Amazon! Stay off of Goodreads for all that’s holy. Reward yourself for not falling down the rabbit hole of bad reviews and have a piece of chocolate or a glass of wine, them remember you don’t have to do that again–at least, not for that book. I understand the value in having a review or two for social media purposes, and I noticed this review of Twisted Alibis when I was on Author Central skimming the reviews coming in for my King’s Crossing series:

Verified Purchase
If you like the rockstar romances, this is one, true, BUT it is more. Lots of social issues addressed, done in a delicate way, no raging reality tv tropes, more like addressing things we all face with a nice romance tucked inside.It's heavy in places, prepare for that, but you'll come out better for it at the end.Gitcher readin glasses out and enjoy.

Text on white background. Verified purchase in red

Like everyone else where bad things are concerned, I’ll probably carry that shame for a long time. Everyone makes it sound so easy to get and use highlights, and I feel like I’m missing out on something big. Maybe I do have highlights somewhere, but I think it’s best if I don’t look because if I don’t, that’s only going to make me feel worse. I don’t put up a lot of graphics anyway, so I guess in the scheme of things I’m not missing out on much. But in the future I’ll definitely be taking everyone’s advice with a grain of salt.

I suppose that’s all I have for this week. I’m 66k words into Wicked Games even though I said I would be taking it easy writing this book. I am, I don’t stress so much about it if I don’t feel like writing, but I guess it helps I’ve been thinking about this book for a long time and I know what I want to write every time I sit down. I was worried this book would be short, but after I ironed out a kink in the plot, I’m back on track and it will probably hit somewhere in the 90k range. After I reach 50k and swim through the murky middle, I really don’t care how long my books end up but I was a little worried about it when I didn’t know how to fit in what I needed without a setting change. They’re in a small town right now, but I just can’t finish it without them moving into the city where they both live, so that eased some of my worries. We’ll see how it turns out.

As far as anything else, my sales have all but slowed to a stop, even with the few Amazon ads I have going. I got my tax returns back and have a little “fun money” as my dad likes to call it, but I’m not too eager to start up my Facebook ads again. If I did that, I would only start one or two and push readers toward my King’s Crossing series as I have gotten good reviews on the books so far and the read-through would be amazing. Plus I might get a few sales here and there, especially since the first three are on sale right now. But we’ll see how that all shakes out after I pay all my bills and stash what I want to stash in savings. I could probably set aside a couple hundred and see what works, but I’d have to keep a close eye on clicks and be ready to pause if it looks like cost-per-click is greater than sales. I’m not into spending 5k to make 5k anymore. I really didn’t get anything out of it when I did that. Readers were reading but I didn’t see any evidence of an uptick in blog subscribers or read-through to other books in my backlist.

That’s all I have for now. The first day of spring is March 20th, so I’m looking forward to some warmer weather and more consistent sun. I hope wherever you are in the world the weather treating you okay, and my thoughts are with the people in the south who are dealing with tornadoes and their aftermath.

Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week!

Monday Update: What a Mess

Posted on March 10, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,641 words
9 minutes read time

cleaning supplies. black spray bottle and plain bottle. two white tubes of paper towels with a sprig of baby's breath (god knows why)

Text says, monday author update. what a mess

There are so many things that are baffling me right now, and I just don’t know where to start or if I should even write about any of it. Let me start with what I’ve been doing and then I’ll see if I’m brave enough to write anything else or if I’ll just call it good.

First, my fifth book in my King’s Crossing series launched on the 3rd. I made a handful of pennies because there were a few people who preordered it, then I made another handful because I had a couple people read it in KU. Honestly, this is not what I was hoping for launching this series, but I’m barely doing anything to promote it, so I guess the blame falls on me. On March 5th I paid for a Fussy Librarian bargain ebook promo, and I sold 15 copies on the day and two more the next and then sales sank to nothing, which is to be expected. Here’s what the promo looked like if you’re interested:

I paid 26.00 USD, so the results were fine for how much it cost. Plus there is always read-through potential to the other five books, so we’ll see what happens. Generally speaking it could have been better, but I’m glad I remembered at the end of the blurb to mention that it was a first in series and that the book ends in a cliffhanger. Not everyone likes those, so it’s good to keep that out in the open and may account for why I didn’t sell that many. I should have also put in there the series was complete as many readers won’t start a series unless they’re all available and I’ll remember that for future promos.

I started some very low cost-per-click Amazon ads again and unpaused some of the ones I turned off months ago. Those never got the traction back they had when I turned them off, and the new ones aren’t doing much because the bid is too low for Amazon to show them. Don’t know why I’m bothering if I’m going to half-ass it like that, but sometimes I think doing a very little is better than doing completely nothing, though it’s probably not true. I don’t have anything else planned besides releasing the last book in my series in April, then all I have left this year is the launch of my next book in September. (I’ve been telling people it will be live September 15th and plan to stick to that.) But that’s too far ahead to think about because I’m not rushing through summer. I hope it’s hotter than hell so I can lie on my balcony and bake. Your girl is tired and needs a break.

My Rocky Point Series giveaway went okay. I mailed out copies to the one winner who emailed me back. I should have probably chosen someone else as a second winner, but if I would have done that, the actual second winner would have emailed me (that’s how my luck goes) and I would have needed to purchase more copies which would have taken a while. So I have a paperback set the second winner didn’t claim and I’ll figure out what to do with those later. I didn’t expect huge results and mostly it gave me things to write about on my FB author page and my newsletter.

Speaking of my FB author page, since I’ve been boosting posts, I’ve gotten a deluge of followers who just want to make me book trailers and others who didn’t look like they would care about a billionaire romance author. So, I took a couple of hours and culled my followers from 270 to 210. I know it’s better to have quality instead of quantity, but it really gave me the feeling (again) that my FB author page isn’t worth the energy and I haven’t posted since I did that. It’s something I can’t get rid of because over the years I’ve shared that link in various places and I hate beyond reason broken links. I may post on it every couple of days, just so it looks somewhat active, but it’s one of those things where I can’t measure ROI, I can only measure how I feel. I really don’t know what to do with myself in that regard because the motivation to post on social media just is not there, and I’m not really sure what would inspire me to post more. Sales, probably. Not engagement. Everyone yells about how much they want engagement, but if you’ve known me for a while, you know how special you are if you DM me and I answer you back. So, I’ll figure something out. The only good part about posting at all is that Canva makes it so easy, and I have to pay for that until I die because I have a lot of assets trapped there and I’ll never stop doing my own book covers.

Right now I’m about 60% done with WICKED GAMES but at 58k words I’ve lost motivation to work on it. I’ll finish it, no doubt about that because I still love Seth and Avery and want them to have their HEA, but I’m not running a sprint or a marathon and I work on it when I feel like working on it. It’s part of the “new me” I have going on for 2025, but I also think some of it has to do with hormones and the lackluster feeling I have sometimes of just being old and still alive. I mean, it’s not serious, I don’t have depression. I used to have depression, before my son was born, so I definitely know how that feels. This is more of a “meh” feeling, and it will pass. Spring is actually kind of gloomy here right now, the snow melting uncovering all the dog poop people didn’t pick up and the air stinks like dead things. Once it gets warmer and the sun shines more consistently and starts drying things out, that will perk me up.

My despondency is actually opening me up to reading a few books, but it’s a sad thing because these authors are on social media asking readers to share and I just can’t. I want to refer people to good books, and one book I read has so many commas they could have prevented the Titanic from sinking and the other has an info dump at the beginning that’s so boring that I cut out after 5%. Luckily one I had picked up during a free promo and the other I borrowed in KU and returned it, but still. While we’re complaining about the Amazon boycott and how people feel trampled because of what’s going on in the state of the world, I think it’s important to remember that as authors who might have people listening to our opinion, we shouldn’t waste our readers’ time and money. I want to recommend books that blew me away, that made me feel something other than annoyance. So, while I’m feeling listless, I’ll be going through my TBR which is a nice change from feeling like if I’m not writing to publish I’m not moving forward.

This Amazon boycott everyone (on Threads) is talking about is a real downer, and it’s interesting how all that blows up only to eventually disappear and never to be spoken of again. A friend told me that she hasn’t seen any of it on Twitter, and I have no idea if it’s made its way to BlueSky or not as I don’t scroll there. But personally, I think it’s all just talk because even if there are a few who actually do cancel their KU subscriptions or whatever, it’s not going to make a dent in the number of readers who use Amazon to buy and read their books. It’s frustrating to have to read that when I’m on social media. If your book sales are low or non-existent, again, it’s something you need to take responsibility for. I mean, I get it. There are ebbs and flows to publishing and any author who has been publishing for a while can tell you that. The political and economic climate also is not helping, but something isolated like this isn’t going to cause the collapse of sales for hundreds or thousands of authors. My sales stopped the second I stopped running ads. My experience might not mean anything to you, but to me it means that I actually do control my sales (not to be confused with royalties). No one can buy your book if they don’t know it exists, and I think it’s easy to forget that. If you truly are concerned about something like this and its effect on your sales, take a look at what the big-time authors who write in your genre are saying. If they are taking a hit and can trace it back to something like this, then maybe it’s time to be concerned. But if they’re carrying on as business as usual, then what you are experiencing probably isn’t caused by whatever people are talking about that day. We have to keep things in perspective. As I say, there’s a big world out there and it’s always a good idea when you get to caught up in the day’s/week’s/month’s drama to step out of that bubble and touch some grass. (Just avoid the dog poop. Gross!)

I think that’s all I have for this week. Thanks again to Brandi Easterling Collins for the interview she so graciously said she’d do that I posted last week. If you missed it, you can read it here.

No clue what I’ll write about next Monday, but I’ll be here with a smile on my face!

Have a great week!

Thursday Thoughts: KU and Wide Audiences are different

Posted on February 20, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

917 words
5 minutes read time

I think about this every time I see, “KU isn’t working for me, I’m pulling my books and going wide,” or vice versa, “Wide isn’t giving me the sales I want/need. I’m going to pull my books and enrolled them into KU.”

I have to tell myself not to answer these posts because the lesson they’re going to learn has be experienced firsthand: There is no magic bullet, and going back and forth won’t help. You need to nurture an audience on one or the other and that can take years. Because here’s the thing that no one seems to understand. KU readers read KU books and will rarely buy because they don’t have to, and if they do purchase, it will be on Amazon because KU subscribers have Kindles or the Kindle app. Wide readers buy books from their favorite retailer or they have a Kobo or the Kobo app and buy from there.

You might say there are outliers, readers who will read everywhere and will buy whatever they want while also having KU and Kobo Plus subscriptions, and it’s probably true but readers like that are the exceptions that prove the rule and won’t help you sell books in the numbers you need to create a career.

I’m seeing so much of this now with the “boycott KU/Kindle/Amazon” because everyone hates Jeff Bezos, but if you’ve built a readership in KU pulling your books out will only hurt your reader because they aren’t going to follow you anywhere else. There are over four million books in KU–they don’t have to follow you anywhere. What about reader loyalty, you ask. Sure readers are loyal to the authors they love, but you have to show them a little loyalty too, and taking your books out of the subscription service they use to read books isn’t it.

The one thing authors need to understand is that if you don’t know how to tell readers where your books are, it doesn’t matter where you publish. KU doesn’t offer the organic reach a lot of authors think it does (just look at my sales dashboard lately), and just because your books are everywhere and there are more chances readers can find you, that doesn’t mean they will. You’re still competing with millions of books. Here’s the breakdown:

Kobo: has over three million books and Kobo Plus offers 1.5 million books to choose from plus audiobooks.
Apple Books: the numbers are undisclosed but Al says they hold about 8% of the e-book market share (compared to Amazon’s 70-75%.)
Google Play: Over five million titles
Nook Books: the numbers are undisclosed but Al says they hold about 8% of the ebook market share (similar to Apple Books). (All stats I grabbed off a Google search.)

So I guess one of the main reasons I’m writing this post is that if you’re thinking of pulling your books from KU, understand that you’re going to leave the readers who read you there behind. If you’ve been enrolling your books for a while, it’s possible you’ve got a few readers who look for your books and when Amazon stops sending them new releases or recommendation emails about your books, they’ll forget about you. It sounds harsh, but when we talk about market saturation, that means there are plenty of books to choose from, and KU makes it easy to try new-to-them authors.

So, if you do want to give Jeff Bezos the middle finger and cancel all things Amazon, here’s a couple of tips for you:

To go wide, use Draft2Digital or PublishDrive, but go direct where possible, like Kobo and Apple books. Not only do you save more cutting out the middleman, but you gain access to the Kobo promo tab that you won’t get if you let a distributor distribute there.

Remember to mention your books are everywhere. KU authors have no trouble shouting from the rooftops that their books are available in KU. Do the same wide. Draft2Digital offers the Books2Read universal link creator. It will scrape everywhere your books are sold and will offer a cute landing page my like my friend, Melody’s, books have. You can find her books here: https://www.melodyloomis.com/books

Try Facebook ads. This is a great way to find new readers because you can target certain audiences, like, say, readers who own Kobo devices.

And the same advice is true for authors pulling their books from wide platforms and going to KU. Authors are proud they’re in KU. Use their logo on every social media post you create. Being in KU doesn’t come without it’s challenges, so make use of Amazon ads and Facebook ads, and tell your newsletter that you’re in KU. One of my biggest selling points I think my books have is that I tell my readers my books are in KU and are going to stay there. Consistency, no matter what you’re doing or where you’re publishing, is key. You know the saying, you teach people how to treat you? You teach your readers where to find you.

That’s a good lesson for every author: be consistent in where your books are available, in your genre, in your spice level. These are what can make or break your marketing because once you reel in a reader, if you teach them what you write and they love that, they will keep coming back for more.

That’s about all I have for this Thursday. I’ll see you Monday! Have a great weekend, everyone!

Thursday Thoughts: The world is a large place

Posted on February 13, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

917 words
5 minutes read time

When I get up in the morning, I have a routine. I go to the bathroom, start a pot of coffee, and go out and feed the squirrels, bunnies, and the crows if they come. I have a bowl I use and fill it with cat treats (for the crows) bird seed, and peanuts in the shell, and toss it outside in my apartment complex’s parking lot. There is an empty parking spot and the animals, because we live in a quiet building, don’t mind picking around there for food. Anyway, so I toss the food out while the coffee drips, go inside and pour a cup, and scroll social media for a few minutes before I shower.

I always see some goofy stuff, some Amazon hate, politics (of course), the Cat Distribution System at work, that kind of thing. Today I saw a post that said (paraphrased), that if you’re bummed about sales there’s a Stuff Your Kindle Event going on and that could be why your sales are low.

I mean, I get it. I’ve gone through my own pity parties before (it seemed like mine went on for all of 2024) and I can get behind whatever you have to tell yourself to feel better. But, lying to yourself also does your books a disservice. The world is not that small that a Stuff Your Kindle Day would hurt your sales, especially if you don’t write romance.

That’s one thing that being stuck in the writing community will do: it will box you in to the point where you think nothing else is going on outside that bubble, and let me just remind you that’s not the case at all. I’ve joined Stuff Your Kindle Days, and out of respect for the person putting it together I’m not going to spew the numbers she shares with us, and I have no idea what Stuff Your Kindle event this is anyway. There are so many now it’s hard to keep track of them all. I hadn’t heard there was one going on today, but let’s just say there are 500 books available. That seems to be an average number where these things are concerned, so that means 500 authors are taking part. Some authors’ newsletters subscribers and social media followings can get pretty high, but if those 500 authors had 1,000 newsletter subscribers, that’s half a million readers this event is going out to. Not everyone opens their emails, so we can subtract a few thousand from that number but we can also add them in again to make up for authors posting on their social media. I would think a half million readers is pretty generous as authors just starting out can have as few as a hundred newsletter subscribers, and some none at all, using the event to jumpstart their writing careers.

A half million readers might seem like a lot, but according to Visual Capitalist, in 2020, there were five billion eighteen million adults in the world between the ages of 20 and 79. That’s a lot of readers that we might be forgetting about when we hear there’s a Stuff Your Kindle Day.

I think instead of being bummed there’s an event going on, or trying to blame your low sales on holidays (that not everyone celebrates) or a time of year that doesn’t affect all parts of the world at the same time, like summer (we have summer in the US while Australia has winter for a quick and harmless reminder), we could just use that energy to figure out how to reach readers all over all year round.

That’s easier said than done, of course, as my own sales being what they are don’t put me in a position to preach to anyone. But, I’m also realistic in that I don’t blame my lack of sales on things like Christmas. I take full responsibility for it.

It’s a better use of your time and energy to think of ways to reach those 5 billion plus readers such as write a reader magnet and build your newsletter list. Join a Facebook group of authors who write in your genre and introduce yourself. Networking is a great way to build relationships for newsletter swaps down the road. Experiment with some ads, they don’t have to be expensive. Double check that your categories and keywords are correct. The correct meta data will help Amazon position your book and help your ads work better too. Write another book, preferably a series. As much as I say how difficult they can be and how much energy they take, if you write a strong first book, read-through can lift your sales by more than you’d think.

When we place the blame of low sales on something like a Stuff Your Kindle Day, you’re taking power away from yourself. I know marketing can feel painful and not everything you do is going to work, but you can explore options to get the word out about your books.

Anyway, this was just a quick thought I had today. I hope you’re all staying warm where you are. It was a chilly -20F this morning when I went out to feed my animals. While I’m waiting for it to warm up I’m busy writing WICKED GAMES, but next week I’ll update you on what I’ve been doing.

See you on Monday!

QUICK LINKS:

I wrote about Stuff Your Kindle Days in a different post, and if you write romance or a romance subgenre and want to participate, you can find the list here.

If you’re interested in buying a promotion David Gaughran has a huge list, and some aren’t that much money. You can find the list here.

Remove What Doesn’t Serve You (or something like that)

Posted on February 10, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,698 words
9 minutes read time

beige background text says. letting go and finding your joy

I’ve heard this phrase a lot, and it makes sense. Remove the things in your life that aren’t a help to you, that drain you, that serve no purpose. I agree with it to an extent. I’ve never had a problem throwing stuff away, so much so that sometimes I’ve regretted it, not holding on to it long enough to find out if I’ll have a need for it later. Then I do need it and I regret throwing it away. I guess that’s where the meme about old cords comes in, saving a VCR cord from the eighties, just in case you might need it for something twenty years later.

But I also find the phrase somewhat selfish and self-serving, and it puts a bad taste in my mouth. Not everything is meant to serve you. Not every relationship you have will cater to you and your “needs.” What if, hear me out, you are put in the place you’re in to help someone else?

Before you Marie-Kondo your life, maybe think for a minute about just what you’re trying to accomplish.

I’m famous (no, not really) for keeping people in my life who don’t belong there. I’ve had friends in the past who have made our friendship all about them. Everything was about her life, her writing, her plans. Even if I was able to mention something, she wouldn’t acknowledge it, and I came away from every conversation I had with her drained. I’ve had other friends who have treated me badly, and I hung in there, hoping things would get better. I’ve thought a lot about why I let this happen, up until the point I just explode and say, “Forget it,” and I think it’s from getting bullied in school. I would latch on to people who were just a little bit nice to me, and this went on until I graduated high school. The need for friends, the need to create a connection with someone, is human nature, and once you meet someone with whom you think a sincere friendship can be made, it’s difficult to admit that they aren’t such good friends at all. As the years pass and I realize what’s important, I would rather be alone than have a “frenemy,” and I’ve learned to stop talking to people who take advantage of me and my kindness. I think anyone who’s read this blog for any length of time knows about my fiancé and how I let him lie to me for years before I finally cut him off. Maybe it wasn’t years, or maybe it was and I just didn’t realize it until they were too blatant to ignore. You really don’t know when people turn if you trust them and they’re good at hiding it. What stretched on for over five years could have ended in two or three and saved me a lot of pain.

I’m always willing to give people a second chance because we all make mistakes, but it’s in cases where having a relationship with that person isn’t a positive experience or makes your life worse than assumably it already is that you have to reassess why you’re keeping them around. I think there’s value in giving people the benefit of the doubt, not cutting people off without some kind of explanation. There was an article I read on Buzzfeed about a woman who ghosted her best friend of twenty years because she turned too needy, then regretted it after she found out her friend passed away. Rather than having an honest conversation with her friend, she just cut her friend off, blocked her, and well, when you look at a situation like that, who’s the bad friend? The person who thinks you can help and has the courage to ask, or you blocking that person because you thought she was using you? Remove what isn’t serving you. Yeah, she did. She cut her friend off, but she found out later that it didn’t come without consequences.

I understand the concept, I really do, but I’ve been unfriend and unfollowed after I’ve purchased other authors’ books to support them. Maybe I never said anything, maybe I thought being acquaintances on a platform like Twitter was enough, but it’s definitely not enough for some people, who, I don’t know, expect you to comment on everything they post. You know, that says more about them than it says about me who was quietly supporting them and didn’t think I needed to shout it around (because honestly, I think that just makes you look like you’re looking for praise and I don’t need to be patted on the back for supporting someone).

This isn’t just all about people, though I think that can have the most damning effect. I’ve seen a lot of people who regret deleting their TikTok and CapCut apps off their phones because they thought TikTok wouldn’t be around anymore (and all the apps ByteDance created). Turns out that TikTok barely went away and now those apps can’t be re-downloaded. I didn’t get rid of mine, relatively certain that TikTok was here to stay, though I don’t post on TikTok much at all and the only thing I use CapCut for is to add captions to videos I rarely make. But I don’t impulsively do stuff like that and whether or not the apps are eligible for updates, I’m rather proud of myself for my restraint.

Whenever you think about that phrase, I think it’s important to understand just what you’re relating it to. Overall I think that phrase is selfish, and maybe in these times we have to be. No one will take care of you but you. The US government is in shambles, and he’s only been our president for a month. Everyone has kind of a “fend for themselves” attitude, which I guess makes this saying a perfect slogan for the next four years. But I also think that we can combat what’s ahead by being kind, not doing something just for what you can get out of it. Not everything or every person on this earth was put here to serve you, but finding the balance between keeping things that aren’t working and keeping things that are is crucial.

I turned off my FB ads, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Ironically, my sales haven’t fallen, and now those royalties are mine, free and clear. I may not make the 5k I made last year, but I won’t be spending 5k either. So, in that instance, yes, removing something that was not serving me was the way to go and I feel lighter, mentally, than I have in a long time. I also removed the idea that I deserved (maybe deserved is too harsh a word, but not sure how else to phrase it) readers and royalties for all the work I put into my writing and publishing, and that’s not the case at all. Going back to basics and writing because I love it has also done wonders for my mental health and like I told a friend, I feel like I did five years ago, creating content for the joy of it, and for no other reason.

So, after all that, I would caution you. Think before you jettison someone out of your life–not everyone is there to kiss your feet. Sometimes you are in their lives, and they are making the same choice about you. Are you being a good friend? Are you upholding your part of the friendship, because relationships go both ways. If you treat people like trash, expect to be removed. No one has time, energy, or heart for that. Think before you turn off your ads or delete that social media profile. Think before you unfollow or block someone. You never know who is silently supporting you and you could be snubbing them without realizing it. If being in a group on Facebook isn’t beneficial, leave. I’m in 89 groups, and not all of them give me something. I could probably remove myself from half those and be just fine. But being in them doesn’t hurt me either, since I’m not on Facebook all that much anyway. Pick and chose where you want to give your time. Maybe you could leave some and that would open up space to join others that would serve you better.

There is a ton of products and services out there for indie authors and my FOMO goes crazy when I think of all the classes there are to buy, podcasts and webinars there are to listen to. Every time K-Lytics sends me a new report, I think I need to buy it. I can’t afford to buy every report they send out, nor do I need to because not all of them are about romance. I don’t even need the ones that are about romance because I think I keep a pretty good eye on industry information in other ways. Remove the noise that gives you a headache, but think about what’s beneficial first. That may mean trying an episode of a podcast you’ve had your eye, uh, ear, on and finding out you don’t mesh with the hosts. Maybe that means actually sitting down with the craft book you’ve been wanting to read, and finding out that it does have some valuable information in it.

There are are less callous ways to figuring out what you want than what this saying implies. Gently sweep what’s not working for you out the door, but realize what might not work for you is something that makes someone get out of bed.

Go easy and be gentle. Extricate yourself if you must, but do it with intent and if you’re doing it to person, use sensitivity, compassion, and empathy. And remember, you may be what people are removing from their own lives, so accept their decision with grace and honesty, and like with the coworker who ghosted me, it may be the best thing that ever happened to you. And I didn’t have to do a thing.

Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

Posted on February 3, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,028 words
11 minutes read time

If you’re just finding the blog and/or missed the first five trends I wrote about that are in Written Word Media’s blog post, you can find that post here: Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One. And if you want to read Written Word Media’s blog post yourself, you can find it here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/the-top-10-publishing-trends-for-2025/

Let’s jump right in to the trends.

Trend number six: Trad and Indie Converge in Due Course
We already see this happening in different ways, so I would imagine this will keep going. Publishers snapping up indies who are doing well to exploit the audiences they’ve already built, trad authors publishing titles on the side themselves, the Big Five using print on demand technology. Publishing is getting mixed up more than it ever has been, and that won’t stop as authors and publishers alike look for the best ways to find an audience, save money on printing and distribution, and keep as many royalties as they can.

I think what this means for indies is that as long as you put out a good book that has a good cover and has been edited, it’s not going to matter if you published the book yourself. The stigma that used to come from self-publishing is gone. Trad authors who publish on the side to either add extra books to their publishing schedule or publish books that their agent didn’t sell, or whatever the reason is, they have a loyal audience who buys all their books and it doesn’t matter if it was trad-pubbed or not. Indies don’t have that convenience of an already-made audience, so that’s one thing we have to take upon ourselves, but everything else is pretty much the same, especially when we read every day about a traditionally published book that needs more editing. If you want to read about traditional publishers using print-on-demand equipment, Jane Friedman wrote a blog post about it and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/dont-demonize-print-on-demand/

Trend number seven: AI Tools Become More Mainstream
I think anyone who really believes this isn’t tapped into the way a lot of authors feel. I get that being on Threads and seeing the hate AI evokes isn’t an accurate sampling of authors everywhere, but just knowing that there is a portion of authors out there who won’t use AI no matter what makes this prediction shaky at best.

As I discussed in my blog post about KC Crowne, I do understand that Al can be used for different things. WWM’s article also talked about non-fiction uses, such as “social media posting, to advertising, email, sales fulfillment, or tax management” and I think if authors start embracing Al in bigger numbers, that will be all they’ll use it for, because, here’s the thing. Writers actually like to write. We want to plot our stories, we want to come up with backstories, we want to delve into our characters’ feelings and emotions so we can evoke those feelings and emotions in our readers. If we turn to Al for any part of that creative process, why are we writing then? Like with KC wanting to relate to her readers, how can she do that when she won’t take the time to get to know her own characters and write her own work?

People who predict the controversy of using AI will go away don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what a lot of authors feel. We also want people to get paid for their work, which is why I would never ask Al to create a picture for me. Almost every single thing you want can be found on a stock photo site, and if you can’t find it there, hire an artist, and maybe she’ll be able to pay her internet bill with the fee you’re paying her.

Readers may not care if you use AI to write, or to make your books’ covers, or to make Facebook ads as long as their enjoyment of a book they read isn’t impacted. Which means that whether you use AI or not, your main goal when writing and packaging your book should be to deliver a good product that will keep readers coming back for more.

Trend number eight: AI Unlocks Licensing and IP Innovation
I think this trend will only work for the authors who can pay to do it correctly. A long time ago on Twitter I saw someone who said she was using AI to translate her English language books to German and then she was publishing them. She wasn’t using a German-speaking real live human to double-check Al’s work, and I think that is a big mistake. Al doesn’t understand nuance and context, and there’s a reason why the phrase “lost in translation” exists. But, paying a proofreader, any kind, costs money, and using AI is supposed to help us get around that, right? So yeah, she might have had more IP in her hands, but God only knows what she was selling her German readers. Maybe it isn’t that bad, but who’s going to know unless she starts getting bad reviews? By then, it’s too late.

AI narration is getting better and better every day, but I haven’t heard anything recently about the quality of KDP’s audiobook program. It made waves when it first came out, many authors cursing it to the depths of hell, others embracing it as an affordable way to finally have their books in audio format. When I found out that duo narration, preferred when writing dual POVs, wasn’t available, I lost interest in it anyway. I’ve always figured audiobooks will be out of my reach as I can’t afford production, and I kind of left it there. Considering a determined reader can figure out how to have a book read to them on their device, it may not matter much. If AI narration is getting better, so is text-to-voice and the experience for a reader that’s not too picky will be just fine.

I think the bottom line on AI and IP is that yeah, Al can help you put together translations and audio books and art for special editions, but it’s up to you to make sure the quality is there (no one wants to see a model who has six fingers on each hand and has three legs). Al can make mistakes, (just look at Grammarly and how often they recommend commas you don’t need) and going without a human to check and make sure what he’s doing is okay is a risk I wouldn’t want to take with my audience. Listen, I’ve edited for authors who have trusted Grammarly, and it’s harder to edit a manuscript like that than if they would have just handed me a rough draft. Grammarly and other editing software is not perfect so always use with caution.

You might end up with a lot of IP if you use AI to get ahead, but if it’s trash, it’s not worth much.

Trend number nine: Audiobook Accessibility Expands in 2025
We already talked about this a bit, but it will be up to authors who want to use AI narration and readers who want to listen to it. When it comes to AI, it isn’t just about availability and quality, it’s also about what you feel is best for you, your book business, and audience. Not everyone wants to support AI. Maybe we want to support true voice actors who depend on their jobs to make a living. Maybe readers would also like to support humans. Once you put out enough audio books, you’ll find an audience who will support either (or maybe even both). Maybe you’ll find a system where you hire narrators for full-length books but use AI for novellas, or maybe you write only shorts and AI is good enough for your needs. As access expands, it doesn’t mean authors will use it. And if authors us it, it doesn’t mean readers want to listen to it. So while this trend is true, it will expand, because why wouldn’t it, authors can choose not to create with it and readers can choose not to consume it.

Trend number ten: POD Goes Mainstream
We talked a little bit about this already, and it didn’t even occur to me that I’ve purchased a book from a trad author and her paperback book came printed by KDP (there was the time, date, and location stamp in the back). I was wondering what the heck and if she’d been dropped by her publisher and had gotten her rights back. It makes sense for publishers to use POD as it takes up less space than keeping stock and they don’t have to worry about titles going out of print. But as Drew Broussard in Jane’s blog post I linked to above says, there’s just a little lesser quality with a POD print than a book that came from a print run. You’re not going to get the embossed letters or fancy textures, you even run the risk of getting the wrong book between the covers, so I’m guessing that publishers will decide which title will get the POD treatment based on how big the audience still is and how old the book is.

This also could be why it takes so dang long to get author copies. Obviously the more authors who depend on POD the busier the equipment is, and that means planning ahead months if you need to order author copies. Especially since the more authors who use the equipment the more taxed they are and you don’t know if your books will come in good condition and you need to put in a replacement order.

Everyone says don’t write to trends, write the book you want to write because trends change too quickly to keep up. That’s not true, and Billionaire romance is proof of that. Everyone said that was a trend, that “mommy porn” was a passing phase, but it’s going on fifteen years since EL James published her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and Billionaire romance is still one of the top selling romance subgenres, though lately Mafia is giving it a run for its money. Trends take a long time to actually lose favor with readers, even if it feels like it happens overnight. These trends WWM talked about won’t fade because that’s just the direction publishing is going right now. AI won’t go away because too many people find value in using it, even if practices like using it to write or narrate books some find too abhorrent to do.

2025 will be like all the others, authors writing good books and trying to get them seen to build an audience of their 1000 true fans. Sometimes I think the publishing industry is glutted with too many books, but then I remember that readers can read a book a day and demand probably matches supply, even if we look at the thousands of books published every month and it doesn’t feel like it. Personally, I don’t think ramping your publishing schedule will help any. If someone doesn’t know you’ve written a book, they wont know you’ve written two. Being that the top marketing advice right now is to write the next book, advice I have passed along and believe in, I think we should still be writing with intent, trying to level up our craft each time we write, always trying to write a book better than our last.

The fact is, it’s difficult finding an audience, but the trick now is to not give up. Do what you have to do to stay interested and engaged and not lose heart. I’ve started to enjoy working on LOSS AND DAMAGES again, and I get excited talking about the next book I’m going to write. I like thinking about the future and the books I want to write, having material planned for well into 2027. I don’t know what life has in store for me, but I’m pretty sure writing is more than a passing trend.

Take care of yourselves this year, and in the meantime, I’ll you next week!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Tag Archives: indie-publishing

Writing the Book of Your Heart

Monday’s Author Mashup

Indie News Roundup

Bye Bye, Al. It was kinda nice knowing you.

When Good Advice is Bad

Thursday Thoughts: KU and Wide Audiences are different

Thursday Thoughts: The world is a large place

Remove What Doesn’t Serve You (or something like that)

Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

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