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!

Five Reasons Why You Should Proof your Proofs!

Posted on January 30, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

1,080 words
6 minutes read time

picture of four book covers. they have the not for resale stripe in the middle. a rocky point wedding series — I still love the way those covers turned out!

Back in the day, I used to be excited to order my proof from KDP. It was fun to see my book look like a book, and I’d take pictures of it, proud I was a published author. That was when we published through CreateSpace and they didn’t have that ugly stripe in the middle. When Amazon merged CreateSpace and the ebook part of KDP, I didn’t mind. I liked having my book versions together on one dashboard, and when they added the NOT FOR RESALE stripe, I was okay with it. A lot of physical ARCs have some kind of warning that it’s not the finished product, and these are no different.

But, there is also other value in ordering a proof (if you can) and as the years went on, I started going over my proofs. Now I’m always shocked to learn not everyone proofs their proofs, and they are missing out on a great opportunity.

A last editing sweep, of course.
Editors and other authors say to change your font in your Word document to make typos stand out or use the read aloud feature (listening to the voice read a word that’s not spelled correctly is funny), and those are both great ways to find typos that would normally slip by. But, also reading your proof is a good way to see run-on sentences, punctuation errors like broken ellipses, spelling mistakes, and more. One of the things I have noticed is that reading your proof can actually help you see where scenes could be plumped up or if it drags. Reading your book, flipping the pages, and seeing the words on a printed page allows you to feel how your book moves, and when I was proofing my King’s Crossing series, I made a lot of scene changes right at the last minute. There’s something real about holding your book in your hands and reading it, and if you don’t proof your proof, you’re missing out on that experience.

Check your formatting.
Sometimes things look okay on your screen but not in print. When I was proofing books 4-6 of my King’s Crossing novels, there are a lot of journal entries. Max left Gage his journal that described a lot of what happened in books 1-3 and played a huge part in Gage figuring out Zarah’s past. But I wanted to format those journal entries in a way that didn’t distract the reader from the story. I finally ended up just using italics, though I tried other things like setting them in in a block quotation or an alignment block. Then, once I decided on how I wanted them formatted, I had to go through all the books and make sure I changed them all and didn’t miss any for consistency. Sometimes you’ll end up with just a word or two on a separate page that you need to fix, sometimes the pictures in your back matter need to be adjusted. You won’t know those things if you don’t proof your proof.

Check the cover.
Print on demand isn’t always accurate, and KDP is notorious for printing dark. Sometimes you might decide to go with a matte cover instead of glossy. You are never going to get the colors you see on the screen, so it’s best to order a poof copy and make sure the colors are how you want them, that your spine looks good, and the back over looks professional. A lot of times I don’t get the gradients lined up to the spine just right and I have to move it over. You won’t be able to tell that looking at a PDF of your cover. One of the last-second catches I saw when I was proofing my Rocky Point Wedding series was that I still had A Rocky Point Wedding Book One on book four. KDP might have caught it when I published, but it was better that I saw it and fixed it myself.

Look for lines and scenes that you can use in graphics and reels.
This will probably be one of the last times you read your book, and you can use this read-through to highlight hooky lines, dialogue, and scenes you can use in social media graphics and TikTok videos. One of the most time-consuming things is to page through your book, looking for lines you can use, and if you do this during your last edit, you’re saving yourself time in the long run. I wish I would have thought of this a long time ago, but social media isn’t my strong suit. You can be sure that I’ll be doing it from now on.

Peace of mind.
I see so many people who want their books in bookstores and libraries, yet they never order a proof to see exactly what their readers are getting when they pay 10-20 dollars to buy a paperback. I want to see exactly what my readers are going to get. I want the cover to look good, I want my formatting to look like a traditionally published book. I want to be able to catch all the typos I can (humanly) catch. I know that cost can be a barrier for some, the cost of the book and shipping might be too much after spending on editing and cover design, but as long as you are able, I would always recommend proofing your proof.

You probably don’t want to know how many proofs I ordered of my King’s Crossing series. That series is over four years in the making, and I changed the covers, too. I spent a lot on books I ended up throwing away, not needing them after fixing what I needed to fix. I throw away a lot of proofs, actually, because I don’t need them anymore. I only have room for so many, and prefer to keep a few author copies on hand instead. If you have the space, you might keep them for nostalgic purposes, but I don’t have much room, and I don’t see the sense in keeping them. The finished product is enough for me.

Ordering a proof is exciting, but it’s also a chance for one last read, no matter how sick you are of the story by now. Enjoy the last time you’ll read it, and quietly say goodbye to characters that you worked so hard on.

Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One

Posted on January 27, 2025 by Vania Margene Rheault

2,449 words
13 minutes read time

illustrated picture of brunette woman holding cell phone with a stack of books behind her

The first month of the year is almost over, but I’ve been promising this blog post for a while now, and I think Written Word Media’s 2025 predictions are still worth exploring. I need to break this post into two parts, five trends in each, or this blog post will get so long no one will want to read it, and honestly, I don’t have time to do all ten at once (still gotta get some editing in today). I linked to the article if you want to read the original first or as you go along. Some of them you might have seen before, here on this blog, or theirs. Sometimes it feel like publishing, especially indie publishing, can move quite fast, but in reality, publishing, both trad and indie, moves at a snail’s pace, and turning in any other direction than the one in which you are going is slower than the Titanic trying to avoid that iceberg.

Let’s begin:

Trend number one: Authors Focus on Building Loyal Audiences
I feel like this might be a given, and no offense to WWM or the author of the article, but I don’t see the point of adding it. Authors have always been focused on building a loyal audience, finding their true 1,000 fans. I’m not sure why it was included, except maybe to accentuate the fact that building a loyal audience is hard work. First you have to actually find your readers, then offer them enough books to either look forward to everything you write, or self-select out of your books because they don’t like your style or voice or whatever reason they have. How you go about doing this will be different for everyone, not to mention if you can only write and publish one book a year, it will take a long time. The authors who are making a living wage and who do have their 1,000+ fans have managed to accomplish this, so we know it can be done. But given the number of books out there, finding, and keeping, your readers is just a given of being an author. Write your books because without them, you won’t need an audience.

Tread number two: Authors Invest in Email Marketing
It’s always been known that if you’re an author, you should be building a newsletter, and if you’re not, that’s a personal choice that may come back and bite you in the butt. After the TikTok fiasco, I saw a lot of authors on Threads saying they might start one or start a blog so they have something that’s not social media. It’s probably the smart thing to do, since we saw a lot of desperation when TikTok almost went away, and even some now, because if you deleted TikTok off your phone or other device, you can’t get it back. The app store doesn’t allow you to download it anymore (and if you do still have it, there won’t be any new updates).

About availability of TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps in the United States
TikTok and ByteDance Ltd. apps are no longer available in the United States, and visitors to the United States might have limited access to features.
Apple is obligated to follow the laws in the jurisdictions where it operates. Pursuant to the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, apps developed by ByteDance Ltd. and its subsidiaries — including TikTok, CapCut, Lemon8, and others — will no longer be available for download or updates on the App Store for users in the United States starting January 19, 2025.

That’s not say you can’t use TikTok in your browser, but who knows what kind of reach it has. We’ll talk more about Meta in the next trend, but if you don’t like good old Zuck (for political reasons or other), you might not want to be dependent on Facebook, Threads, and Instagram, either. They say you can’t be everywhere at once, but maybe be on a place that you control first and foremost, and then use social media as a backup or Plan B. Evergreen content can be used over and over again, and all content can be repurposed. A blog post on your author site can be chopped into chunks to use on your FB author page or IG. I think the main thing here though, is to train your readers to look for you on your website. If you have an active FB page, make sure they know you have a website too. Turn your website and your newsletter into your primary source of news for your reader. Billionaires don’t care about you–we see this over and over again. Stop thinking they do and take care of yourself. Jane Friedman has a get-started-guide to newsletters, and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/email-newsletters-for-authors/

Trend number three: Meta Continues to Dominate
Unfortunately, because he owns Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, there’s not a lot of places for authors to go if you want to avoid Mark Zuckerberg. Personally, I think he’s an idiot for licking Trump’s feet. Be that as it may, he owns a lot of social media now, and if you have a large following on your Facebook author page or your Instagram page, you probably don’t want to leave. I think if anyone was still hanging around Twitter, they left after Musk’s Nazi salute. Finding anywhere else to go is difficult, Bluesky’s founder Jack Dorsey (that is such a good name though) not without his share of problematic activity. I don’t use social media a lot, though I’ve been posting more this month because I joined a challenge. Once the challenge is over at the end of the month, I’ll probably just go back to not posting at all. Being accountable to someone helps, but I should be feeling accountable to my readers and so far, that has only extended to my blog and my books. If I say I’m going to have a book out at a certain time, I do and that’s about as far as my accountability goes.

As far as ads, Facebook ads probably are the best ad platform an author is going to get, Instagram, Bookbub, and Amazon coming in close second, third, and fourth, though hard to tell which order. They all have their attributes and setbacks, and though I’ve struggled in the past, I would lean toward Facebook ads if I ever wanted to run more ads in the future.

I think the thing to remember about any social media, not just what Zuckerberg owns, is that if you’re trying to reach readers, that’s different than being part of the writing community. Approach each platform with the goal you have in mind. If you want to post graphics and reels all day that feature your books, Instagram seems to be the place for that. If you want to connect with other authors, Threads and Bluesky seem like the better choice. Facebook acts as a one-stop-shop, and you can join author groups for publishing and marketing information and networking with other authors to join newsletter swaps and author-driven promos, start an Author page for your readers, and run ads. Each platform does have different purposes, and while above I suggested you reuse content, not all content will be fit for all platforms. For an example, I’ve been posting a lot on my FB author page, but that’s kind of an anything goes platform, whereas, if you’re trying to create an aesthetically pleasing grid on Instagram, everything has to be in line with your theme which means you’ll be planning your posts. Choose your goal and have your plan. I post on FB and Instagram to promote my books to my readers, joined FB groups for publishing industry news and networking, and I joined Threads (though I said I wasn’t going to) to get book news and just post random crap that’s not fit for anywhere else. (How many people care I had to buy a new coffeemaker?)

It seems like Meta will be around for a bit, but always have a backup plan. When Meta servers go down, Facebook, Instagram, and Threads go down at the same time. That’s a lot of social media blackout. Know why you’re posting and what you want to get out of your social media use. If something isn’t working, move on. Algorithms are heartless animals, don’t let them beat you down.

Trend number four: Direct Sales Continue to Grow
I think this is really true. Authors are seeing the benefit of cutting out the middleman and earning more for themselves. But, on the flip side, if you don’t have the technical savvy (or patience) to pull it off, don’t have the space to store physical books, don’t have the spoons to think about any of it much less the ability to get to the post office two or three times a week, I wouldn’t worry about it. For as many authors who do sell direct, there are just as many or more who do not. Because my ebooks are in KU, I couldn’t sell those directly, but I could sell my paperbacks if I wanted. I don’t have the space to store stock, and though I know a couple people who could probably help me get some kind of system set up on my website, it just sounds like too much work.

Honestly, anything more than what I’m doing sounds like too much work. Direct sales doesn’t necessarily mean setting up Stripe on your website and shipping physical books out of your home. It could mean setting up a Patreon and asking readers to pay for exclusive content. It could mean setting up a paid newsletter. Anything where you are engaging with readers directly, where they pay you (minus the fees of whatever platform or system you’re using) directly for content they want. If I ever had a book take off, maybe I would create a special edition to sell directly to readers somehow, but all that seems so up in the air and you have to consider ROI. Are you getting enough from the time and stress it takes to put all that together? I sound like I’m against direct sales, but I’m not. If you have the energy, resources, and your books are available to be sold elsewhere other than Amazon, then you should do it. What I’m trying to do is tell authors who don’t want to or can’t do this right now, or ever, that it’s okay. Not everyone does it or wants to do it. With my luck, I would put paperbacks on my website and sales would explode. I don’t have a team to handle that. Amazon is okay for what I want it to do. They take care of taxes, distribution, and shipping, and royalties land in my account.

I don’t know what’s in store when it comes to a trend like this. More authors doing it? Maybe, as Amazon’s reputation gets worse and worse and Draft2Digital and IngramSpark get increasingly harder to work with. Indies go indie to be in control, after all, and there’s no greater control than selling your own books.

Trend number five: Authors Experiment with Pricing
I think all authors experiment to some extent, though from the small sampling I’ve seen on Threads, authors could be a bit more flexible. Amazon doesn’t make this easy, only giving us 35% if our prices are 1.99 and below, and we’re reluctant to price at .99 only to receive 34 cents per sale. This is where having a series can come in handy, putting your first book for .99 (or free if you’re wide) as a loss leader and recouping that loss when a reader reads all the books in the series. There are a lot of arguments as to what book blasts like SYKD do for anyone, though no one can truly know since evidence for or against is so elusive.

When I price my books, I think of two things: I’m in KU so price doesn’t mean that much, but I also want to be price-friendly for readers who do not have KU and have to pay out of pocket. Right now my six-book series is priced like this: Book One, .99; Book Two, 1.99; Book Three, 2.99; Books 4-6, 4.99 (USD). That’s still over twenty dollars if someone wants to read all six. That sounds crazy to me considering they could pay for a month of Kindle Unlimited for 11.99 USD plus tax. They could read mine and as many other books as they could for the month. I understand not every country has access to Kindle Unlimited but my audience is 75% US, so I always keep that in mind when I make decisions for my book business.

I gave away almost 15,000 books in 2024, and I see the benefit in giving away a first in series or even just a standalone to let readers get a free taste of what you offer, but as the article states, we have to price in a way that we still make money. That’s been something I haven’t quite figured out, and we all have to find that delicate balance among ad spend, giving away our books, and pricing low to keep readers happy but also to reach whatever monetary goals we have. I’ve decided making money isn’t going to be my focus in 2025, stopping all my ads and just letting the chips fall where they may. I’m focusing on enjoying the writing process and not thinking so much of how many books I’ll publish every year.

The more books you have, the more choices you have. You don’t have to think so much of price if you have only one book out or if your series isn’t complete. Look at the bigger picture when pricing your books, not just what you’ll get when one person buys one book. (I also touched on this in a different blog post and you can read it here: https://vaniamargene.com/2024/07/29/every-time-someone-reads-your-book/) Pricing your books is a sales and marketing strategy, so try to know what kind of outcome you want when figuring out what to price your books. You can’t measure return on investment if you don’t know what kind of return you want. Sometimes it’s not all about sales, it’s about exposure or read-through.

Experiment and see what works for you. The first three books in my series won’t be low forever, but I can’t guarantee when I’ll get around to changing them to 4.99 like the rest. It is smart though, to mix it up every now and then, even if it’s just so you have something to write about in your newsletter.

That’s about all I have for the first five of Written Word Media’s 2025 trends. I’ll do the other five next week. Here are some quick links if you’re looking for resources about what we talked about. I hope 2025 is treating you well. I can’t believe how fast time is flying by.

Until next time!

Links:

Bookbub also did a predictions list that focus more on AI: https://insights.bookbub.com/publishing-leaders-share-predictions-2025/

Jane Friedman and newsletters for authors: https://janefriedman.com/email-newsletters-for-authors/

How to do a Kindle Countdown Sale: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/kindle-countdown-deals-explained/

TikTok Uncertainty Prompts the Book Business to Envision an Even Better Future: https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/publisher-news/article/96889-tiktok-uncertainty-prompts-the-book-business-to-envision-an-even-better-future.html (You might hit a paywall if you’ve read all your allotted free articles)

Monday Author Update

Posted on December 23, 2024 by Vania Margene Rheault

I haven’t done one of these for a while, but there’s nothing to update you on, either. I finished book three of my Rocky Point series, and since I dated the most recent edits, I was dismayed to find that it will have taken me four months (or more as I’m not done with book four yet) to get through these. Not that I should be bothered, these books are a strong series and a solid part of my 3rd person backlist, but I had planned to use this time to get ahead. It doesn’t matter. The longer I’m writing and publishing, the less I think there are repercussions to having long wait times between books. You’ll need to push your back list and communicate with your readers through your newsletter and/or social media, but we think too much about readers forgetting about us, and that’s really not the case.

We can burn ourselves out thinking about FOMO and drive ourselves mad thinking that readers will move on to other favorite authors. It’s true, some readers may be one and done, but any author has to face that possibility, not just slow writers. There are millions of readers out there and when you do get around to releasing that next book, you’ll find new readers and the readers who have enjoyed your books before will come back.

I’m not even looking at a long gap between releases, I don’t think, despite the four months I used to polish my old series. I have no idea how long it will take me to get Loss and Damages edited and packaged (I have the cover done, so we’re just talking writing the blurb and shoving my Word document through Vellum), but if I can do that by the end of March for a September release, I’m not going to need something new until January of 2026 . . . if I keep Amazon’s cliffs in mind, and at this point, I don’t know if I care. It seems silly to freak out over something that really doesn’t warrant it, but man, it’s difficult to let go of the RIGHT NOW mentality so many authors face every day.

Anyway, so how do I plan to to keep my readers interested in me and my books while they have to wait? What can you do if you have long gaps between releases? Here are a few things I plan to do next year.

Keep going with my newsletter. I’m a proud cheerleader of newsletters, but if I have to push myself to write them at times. I almost didn’t even send one out when my third book in my King’s Crossing series released, but people wanted to know as I had the highest open rate since I started my newsletter back in, I have no idea now, 2022 maybe. I was shocked and really pleased, so you might think no one wants to hear from you but just the fact they signed up says they do.

Do better with social media. I know (I use the word loosely because we don’t talk anymore) someone who would constantly take down her social media profiles. She’d have them up for a bit, post, gain a following, then take them down. I still check in with what she does (stalking sounds so nasty, doesn’t it? LOL) only because she does social media so well. She’s got almost as many followers on her new FB page as I do after having my author page up for six years. It’s not that I don’t have things to talk about. I have plenty of books and stuff going on in my life that having a blank author page really isn’t necessary and makes me look lazy and like I don’t care. I care, but I have a terrible time showing it.

Put my book(s) on sale. This is something else that I have a problem with. I don’t remember to use my free days very often, and I can’t remember the last time I even tried to do a Kindle Countdown Deal. Sales are also a good way to keep in touch with your readers so you have something to tell them, and obviously, sales are a great way to find new readers. A while back I heard Zoe York say you should plan a promo every quarter, so four times year. I’d like to do that, especially since I have more than enough product to rotate and there are newsletter promo sites like E-Reader News Today and Robin Reads that I haven’t tried yet.

Keep doing ARCs. There’s been some talk on Threads about authors not doing ARCs anymore, due to lots of reasons like piracy and reviewers not pulling through. If just for the sake of something to talk about, I will keep doing ARCs of my books, and you can probably look forward to ARCs of Loss and Damages sometime in June or July. I’d like to have all my ARC links taken down by the time I put my book on preorder, even if it is just a short one. Admittedly, this option is only good if you write ahead. Some people put their ARCs up just weeks after the book is complete, but Loss and Damages will be finished months before I need reviews. I even hope that by the time I put ARCs up, I’ll have the next standalone I want to write done and edited and almost ready to go.

The main thing is to communicate with your readers, and I’m terrible at it. I love talking writing and publishing with other authors, but I need to get used to talking about my books in a different way. I have dreams of being an obscure bestseller, but that’s an oxymoron at best. Even if I have never heard of a romance author who is making a living wage, that doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a huge fanbase she talks to on a regular basis. I need to start putting myself out there, and that’s really difficult for me. Not like, personally. I can talk about my health issues all day long (and have) or marketing or publishing, but talking about my books, hyping them up, is odd somehow. I’m proud of my books and I think I’m a good writer, even if I have to go back occasionally and do the extra editing sweep from time to time. I don’t know. Being proud of myself and my accomplishments is just different, but in 2025 I’m going to try to be better.

I’m not going to stress about my publishing schedule next year. I need to control my FOMO and just write and publish at my own pace and not think I’m going to fade off into the void if I don’t have books ready all the way until 2027. It’s ridiculous the pressure we put on ourselves, and no one is keeping score except us.

Write for the love of it, and publish because you want to share your stories. I’m excited for the books I’m going to be editing and writing next year. I want to change my perspective and talk about my books in a way that readers will want to read them.

Next week is my usual year-end summary, and after that we’ll see what the new year brings. I’m sure there will be the usual publishing predictions and I haven’t weighed in on them for a while. Mostly because it seems all the predictions are the same year after year (publishing moves slowly after all), but I haven’t really paid attention either, because of how I’ve felt, so this will just be another change in a long line of things.

I hope you have a happy week if you celebrate!

Until next time!

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Vania Margene Rheault

Independent Contemporary Romance Author & Blogger

Tag Archives: indie-publishing

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Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

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Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One

Monday Author Update

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