Tag Archives: year in review

My Year-End Recap and What’s Ahead in 2023

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I re-read the blog post I wrote at the end of 2021 to get a feel for what I accomplished this year, what I didn’t, and what I want to do for 2023. I have the post up now–let’s compare:

Books/Novels/WIPS

Number of books written: 3.5
In 2021, I wrote six and a half books. I only did half that this year, writing my Lost & Found Trilogy and 58k of Twisted Lies and Alibis for a total of about 286,000 words. I’m not sure why I was so slow this year, other than I must have gotten caught up editing and packaging other books.

Number of books published: 3
I didn’t publish anything last year, but it seems I was too busy writing to bother. I published my Cedar Hill Duet this year along with Rescue Me, a billionaire one-night stand standalone, which is probably why I didn’t write as much as last year. Editing, formatting, and doing covers can take a long time. Technically, My Biggest Mistake was completed and put out into the world as my newsletter reader magnet, but that’s not published, so I suppose we can’t count it, though it is accessible to readers when it wasn’t before.

Year-End Royalties: $670.55

Taken from Bookreport

Ignore the 43 books–Bookreport combines all the formats. At the time of writing this, I have 16 books published–13 under Vania Rheault and 3 under VM Rheault. Surprisingly, even with my new releases this year, I’m short $64.33. I can assume His Frozen Heart enjoyed a bump because of the promo I paid for in November, and I’m still getting read-through.

I’m disappointed my Cedar Hill Duet didn’t do better, but all I did was run some Amazon ads to it. I was on the fence on whether or not to put it up on Booksprout for reviews, and I never did, so that might be part of it. Books have a hard time selling without reviews, and I think even now, Addicted to Her doesn’t have any, even though it’s been out since August. I could still make up that $64 as the month isn’t over yet, but let’s just say, I hope in 2023 I can multiply that by ten.

I probably broke even with everything I pay for: Office 365, Canva Pro, Bookfunnel, website costs, promos and ads.

I spent $112.55 on Amazon ads, only five dollars more than I spent last year. It’s nice to see I’m not wasting money overall, though I would have dive deeper into if my ads are really cost-effective or if I’m losing money on a book-by-book basis. For the most part, I don’t care if I break even on ads, so long as I’m not wasting money, but that’s not a strategy everyone can agree with. If you’re running an ad to a book and it’s not a good return on investment, either you need to reconsider the ad (maybe your bidding is too high or your target audience is off) or figure out what’s wrong with your book (maybe the cover isn’t meeting reader expectations). Since I’m in KU, I look at the big picture. I’m always reluctant to pause an ad that’s doing well just in case I’m getting borrows (you can keep an eye on your rank if you really want to know). Page reads (and royalties) can come later, so it pays to have patience because reporting can lag and readers sometimes don’t read right away, either.

Health Update

I still feel like crap, and a friend of mine suggested maybe I always will due to hormones and the fact that I’m staring menopause right in the face, something I kind of forget because in my head I’m stuck at 45 years old when I actually turned 48 last month. Maybe my girlie parts will never feel normal again, and if I let myself, I can get pretty depressed over that. I try to take one day at a time, but I’ve been dealing with this for two years now and there’s no end in sight. It’s not even the physical part of it at this point, it’s just a mental drag I have to try to keep from interfering with my writing. But enough about that. I just included it since I did last year, but nothing, unfortunately, has changed.

Website/Blog Stats

I blog every Monday and some Thursdays. My visitors dropped off this year, I think because I didn’t blog as much as I did last year.

taken from my WordPress Stats

I’m 20k words shorter than I was last year, but I didn’t post on Thursdays as much. There were a few weeks I struggled to come up with anything at all, mostly because I didn’t have much to say, some because I was having my health issues and I had a hysterectomy in March that took up a lot of headspace. My fiancé and I also broke up, so if I didn’t give my blog as much love as I did last year, I’ll just blame it on some personal problems. My WordPress stats added a new statistic, and it shows me where people have shared my posts:

It’s fun that people are sharing my posts on LinkedIn and Pinterest. I have accounts at both of those places, but I don’t hang out there. That could explain some spikes in reads for some of my posts, but the most popular one of all time is still my instructions on how to do a full paperback cover wrap on Canva with 4,081 views.

home, 14,571 views paperback wrap in Canva 4,081 another case of plagiarism 3,329 where'd you go chance carter 2,524 booksprout review service 1,624 Coffee and kisses press 1,404

I’m only going to guess people are looking at the page for my imprint to see if I publish other authors. I don’t and don’t intend to. If you need help with anything, email me (I have my personal email listed in the contact me section of this website) and either I can help you or point you in the direction of someone who can.

I don’t intend to stop blogging, but looking back over my topics, there is only so much content I can share. I blog a lot about marketing, but if authors aren’t willing to change then there’s no point in beating a dead horse. Your book title is important (I’ve seen some weird ones over the years). Covers are important. Formatting is important. Being able to write a good blurb and come up with a catchy hook is important. Your marketing tactics won’t work if those aren’t good enough. There is so much pushback when it comes to finding your comp authors and doing even just a small amount of market research before you begin writing that sometimes I just feel like giving up. I know I’ve helped people with this blog, and sharing my experiences will help someone with their journey. WordPress recently congratulated me for blogging for 7 years and if you think writing a book to no audience is like screaming into the void, that’s nothing like blogging every week and hoping someone can take something away from your words, no matter how small.

What’s Next for 2023?

I’m not sure. More the of the same. 2023 will actually be a big publishing year for me, as I’m planning 5 releases right off the bat with my trilogy in January, and two standalones in March/April and July/August, depending on when I feel like putting them out. This is a tentative schedule, but I’m already tinkering with the release dates of my standalones because I want to have time in 2023 to write what I’ll publish in 2024. I put off the four books left in a series I started, and once Twisted Lies and Alibis is finished, I’m going to dive right in and make those books a huge release event for 2024.

I’ve done a lot of the hard work, and now I can sit back a tiny bit, drink some wine, and enjoy my releases in the coming year.

I always share this quote by Arnold Schwarzenegger. You have to stay hungry. You have to always think there is something better and never lose your drive to find it. Indie authors can make hundreds of thousands of dollars with their books. My $670.00 is only a very tiny drop of water compared to the potential of what can be. Keep going, or you’ll never find it, but in that, you have to, you have to be flexible. Find new ways of doing things, or you’ll be stuck with the same results. Not happy on Twitter, find a different way to market. Not finding the number of readers you want with what you’re writing? Write something else. You aren’t powerless, but hanging out on Twitter over the past five years, so many people act like they are. Your career is in your own hands, and the only thing that traps you are the choices you do or do not make. People blame summertime, Christmastime, the economy, Elon Musk, for their lack of sales, when really, it’s you. How will you make 2023 different for yourself and your business? Stay hungry. Try new things. You won’t regret it.

I will always stay hungry, never satisfied with current accomplishments.

End of the Year Wrap Up! Goodbye, 2021!

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I always look forward to the end of the year wrap up! I love looking back to all that I accomplished over the year and making a mental note of what I can do better during the next year.

Here’s a look at what I did during 2021:

Books/Novels/WIPS

Number of books published: 0
I didn’t publish anything this year. In fact, I haven’t published anything since February of 2020 when the last of my Rocky Point Wedding series released. And even as I was releasing those, I had been writing my first person books, so in my head, I had essentially already moved on. I am planning to release in the spring of 2022, but we’ll see how that goes. I had every intention of publishing this year, but I got too caught up in writing to take the time to do any production or marketing of anything I’ve done.

Number of books written: 6.5
I’m 57k into the second book of the duet I plan to release in the spring, so I can’t count it as a full book I’ve written this year. I won’t finish it before December is over, but that’s fine. I’ve written approximately 560,000 words this year (which is 30,000 less than last year, ha!) and here is the list of couples and the month I started their book:
Finn and Juliet (book two of a series I haven’t completed. I wrote Colton and Elayna, book one, in November/December of 2020) January 2021
Fox and Posey (Faking Forever, standalone) April 2021 This book is loaded into KDP and all I need to do is hit publish
Dominic and Jemma (standalone) May 2021
Brady and Allie (My Biggest Mistake, standalone) July 2021 This book is also complete and loaded into KDP
Sam and Lily (standalone) August 2021
Rick and Devyn (Book one of Cedar Hill Duet) October 2021
Beau and Talia (Book two of Cedar Hill Duet) November 2021; will finish January 2022

I have a small gap between Finn and Juliet and Fox and Posey because this year I had a health thing with my girly parts. I’ve blogged about that a little bit–no one wants to hear about my health issues–but I can’t believe I’ve been dealing with consequences from using the wrong dryer sheets for 12 months. I had a reaction to Snuggle (and I only realized that was what it was after hours of reading through women’s online health forums) which gave me Bacterial Vaginosis, and I am still dealing with unbalanced vaginal pH even though my infection is gone. Suffering from that, getting it diagnosed, and trying to figure out treatment and a cure took up a bit of time (and headspace), but, let me tell you, I am very proud of myself for writing through it and not giving in to the crappy mindset dealing with this has put me in. Am I feeling better now? Yes and no. I’m feeling better than I did at the beginning of the year but not completely. I am in a better place mentally because at least I know what I’m dealing with and doing what I can to get back to normal. For three months I didn’t understand what was going on because I had no idea dryer sheets could do that. I’m hoping my body can right itself, and that 2022 will be better for me than just selling books.

I haven’t stopped running ads to my backlist. Even though I won’t write 3rd person again in the foreseeable future, running low cost-per-click ads doesn’t hurt as long as I keep an eye on them and don’t lose money.

Here are my stats for ads and royalties:

I didn’t quite make $1,000 this year, but what I did make was a surprise considering I haven’t published anything for a while, and I don’t promote that often. Ignore the 34 books. I have 10, but I have a couple of boxed sets, too.

As for Amazon ads, this is my year to date, and I’m actually pretty impressed that I made more than I spent in ads.

I stopped babysitting them, mainly because for a little while, Amazon didn’t mind the covers to my Rocky Point Wedding Series, and later they deemed them against their guidelines and my ads were suspended. That, as you can imagine, was a big disappointment, but by then, I was writing my 1st person billionaire stuff and I didn’t bother changing the covers. It was a huge lesson to keep Amazon’s guidelines in the back of your mind when designing your cover or hiring out. I was looking at premades not long ago, and some of the “billionaire” stock photo models were holding alcoholic drinks. (Rich guys sure like their aged whiskey, haha!) But those covers would never pass Amazon’s restrictions and you end up paying for a cover you can’t use to run ads. Anyway, so I stopped running a lot of ads to my books, which, in turn, didn’t translate well into sales. But, you live and learn and change your covers.

I spent another $25.00 on a promo when I created a boxed set to my Rocky Point series and ran it at the beginning of November. I didn’t earn the fee back. I did, but not on the boxed set, only sales overall, so I considered it a fail.

I used three free days for my Rocky Point boxed set just last weekend and gave away 41 boxed sets. Nothing to write home about, but I didn’t buy a promo for them. I usually grab a spot in a Freebooksy newsletter to promote my freebies, but I didn’t care enough, and I’ll be looking forward to something new in 2022.

That’s it for my books (and my health).

Website/Blog Stats

I blog every Monday and most Thursdays and since I’ve fallen into a schedule, I’m seeing growth little by little every year.

taken from my WordPress stats

A few days ago, WordPress just congratulated me on 6 years of blogging, and I can’t believe so much time has gone by. I truly enjoy blogging about my writing, publishing, and marketing experiences.

As you can see, even staying on topic and blogging consistently my growth is slow. Right now, I think I get about 30-50 visitors a day, and gain 1-2 new blog followers every time I post.

One thing I have learned this year is to have a goal to work toward, or you’re just ambling through the brush. I don’t have a plan for this blog except that I’ll keep writing and trying to help you all through the weeds of publishing and marketing by writing about my mistakes and what has worked for me. I have no plans to try to monetize it with ads or affiliate links. Writing a non-fiction book about indie publishing doesn’t interest me, nor does starting a podcast. I like blogging because if i don’t feel like writing fiction, I can come here and blog about whatever, and I’m still writing and keeping my fingers in the pie.

Probably one of the strangest things I’ve come across since publishing is how little indies care about what’s happening in the industry. It’s difficult (and time-consuming) to listen to podcasts, read other blog posts, and join in webinars, but I don’t understand how authors expect to make it in this business if they don’t know what’s happening. Maybe I’m the only one who enjoys it? I have no idea, but you can be sure I’ll always keep you posted!

What are my 2022 plans?

I will release next year. I said it this year, but I have to get over my fear of releasing to no one. I’m going to move forward with the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the past few years, and even if it takes another five, I’ll be in a better place in 2027 than I am right now. Nothing is a waste. You can’t succeed unless you fail, but as Jo Lallo said in an episode of the Six Figure Authors podcast, there is no greater reason for burnout than working hard without achieving some success.

One of the best podcast episodes I heard this year was when they talked about what they would do starting fresh if they had the knowledge they have now. It was really eye-opening and helped me plan out the next two years of releases. You can listen to it here:

Maybe they’ll give you some tips on how you can run your book business in 2022.

I’m not going to go into what I’m planning for next year. I’ve blogged about it quite a bit, and things change. What I have in place now might not work, but I am trying to make a writing and publishing schedule I can stick to without sucking the joy out of what I like to do most: write.

Probably the biggest lesson I learned about myself this year is that while I want to write for readers and start making money, I am afraid of turning something I love into something I have to do to pay bills. That might not happen, and even if I found moderate success, I like my day job and probably would never quit. There’s no point in worrying about something like that, but as I read books about writing and publishing systems, schedules, and all the talk about planners (HB90 is a popular one this year, y’all), it’s a concern that’s in the back of my mind I can’t quite pry loose. I guess we’ll see where this crazy business takes me.

I hope you all have a wonderful New Year’s, and I’ll see you back here in 2022!

Until next time!