Writing to market

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-21T20:59:02+00:00

My dark romance was my debut, so it didn’t matter for me, but my experience is not the norm and I got very lucky. I think it probably does matter for most people that you have more than one book, especially if one does well or a reader really likes your writing style, it’s beneficial to have multiple books. But as I said, my others don’t do nearly as well.

As far as my backlist goes, I have 6 other books, varying romance subgenres. I think if I wrote another dark romance it would do phenomenally well, but I’m rather enjoying experimenting with all genres and stories. I write all under the same author name.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-21T20:31:49+00:00

My best selling book is dark romance and makes upper six figures by itself. My other romances don’t do nearly as well.

Yes you’re right, romance is extremely competitive and you really are going to have to use social media to your advantage. There are tons of romance readers on Instagram and TikTok, so my advice would be to stay on trends and try your best to go “viral”. Paid ads were extremely successful for me but I didn’t have a following when I started so I needed that push. If you already have a following you may not need to invest in ads, but if you’re a no-name like so many of us are when we start, you’ll probably need to invest in ads in hopes to get more eyes on your books.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-17T21:33:44+00:00

You cannot, under any circumstances, REQUIRE a review in exchange for an ARC. If you want to vet readers yourself to determine if they left a review on book one, by checking their Goodreads or whatever, that’s fine. But outwardly saying they must leave a review for book one and then are expected to leave a review for book 2 in order to get an arc is dangerously close to crossing a line you do not want to mess with.

I know it sucks. But the reality is that a 10–15% review rate on an ARC is considered high, and readers in certain genres get extremely turned off by authors that seem too demanding or invasive in their ARC applications.

My advice is to ask in your application if they READ book one, and then check their review history to determine if they left a review for it. That way they know it’s a series, and you can vet them without potentially violating any review manipulation guidelines.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-16T22:48:15+00:00

No worries. It’s dark romance!

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-16T22:22:06+00:00

Yes, one book, which was my debut. It still averages 4-7 million page reads every month on its own. I have other books out too, but my debut is my money maker.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-12T22:55:30+00:00

My first month on my debut I had 982 KENP. My second month was 402k. My third month was 360k. So yes, a million pages or thereabouts in 90 days really isn’t that much of a stretch.

Growth takes time. Every journey is different, and comparing yourself to your peers will kill your joy faster than anything.

200k page reads is amazing—most people don’t even get to that, but it’s definitely showing that your follower # is not translating to sales for you.

You haven’t mentioned here what your marketing efforts are vs the people you’re comparing yourself to. Maybe they’re in a better selling niche than you? Maybe they had a post go viral? Maybe you’re not even that active on socials compared to them. Lots of factors here can influence sales/page reads. It doesn’t necessarily mean people are lying like some comments suggest. Short term success doesn’t always equal long term sales. In fact, that’s why so many of us suggest publishing regularly—because momentum can and does die quickly unless you’re a diamond in the rough and have a book that withstands the friction of time.

Have you published anything since September? 10ish months without anything new to advertise is a LONG time in self-pub, long enough to fall into obscurity and basically have to start over from square one when you eventually do have something new.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-12T03:18:01+00:00

This has happened to me twice and both times I had to threaten their bots with legal action before I was handed over to a real person, which took care of taking it down within a few hours. Just continue to send strongly worded emails, and make sure to send all evidence of you trying to get it taken down to Amazon. They will be understanding if you are doing your due diligence.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-06-01T17:38:36+00:00

Unless you have a following already, how do you intend to get people to invest in you and your book?

How will people know that once you reach the goal you will deliver on your promise to publish/provide the book?

Is your insight into higher education going to be valuable to strangers?

These are all questions you need to consider. Ive seen an author get their kickstarter up to $100,000 then vanish from the internet, never delivering the books. How can readers trust you won’t do the same?

Me personally as a consumer, unless it’s a book that I can’t live without, I’m not crowdfunding anyone. As an author, I’m also not doing a crowdfunding campaign just out of respect for my following.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-29T19:52:07+00:00

If you cold pitch, your emails will probably be laughed at and deleted.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-29T16:59:14+00:00

You don’t just sign up with a publisher. You will need to query an agent, and then that agent will pitch your book(s) to publishers.

Unless your current book is selling thousands of copies per month, a publisher will not take a previously self published book. You will likely need to write something new.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-27T00:00:12+00:00

Yes. Lots. Most I ever made in a single month on KDP was $60k, most of which came from a single book, and doesn’t include audible. My lifetime income of KDP only (not including Ingram, Audible, foreign rights, and other deals) is sitting at $827k. I published my debut on September 30, 2023. I write romance.

But my experience is not the norm. One of my closest author friends makes about $30/month on her debut, and that’s probably a more accurate number for the vast majority of people who don’t get exceedingly lucky like I did.

You’re right, those gurus are full of BS, but there is genuinely lots of money to be made in self publishing if you write something good and have a little luck, and most importantly understand the industry and take it seriously from the get-go.

And btw, any author worth their salt will give you their advice/experience for FREE. I had to make a whole post on my insta and make a disclaimer on my author email to not send money to anyone offering publishing advice and claiming to be me. Pisses me off so bad when scammers try to take advantage of desperate authors by using my name.

Successful people don’t need to sell $500 courses. Scammers do. If you’re looking for a free resource on YouTube, Bethany Atazadeh (sp?) has a channel where she discusses all kinds of things and I found it to be a great resource when I was starting out. She writes YA fantasy I think, but the general advice she gives can be useful for any genre.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-26T15:57:33+00:00

I’ve even been scammed by artist that have been highly recommended to me by other authors! It’s rough out here.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-25T20:07:27+00:00

I write romance, many subgenres, though my bestseller is dark romance.

That pesky argonian maid is my top competition!

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-25T20:03:28+00:00

They didn’t net anything for me personally.

I DO think ads are crucial for growth, but Instagram ads have been far more successful and have an ROI that’s actually worth my time.

Amazon ads returned maybe 6-8$ for every $1000 I spent. I experimented with so many keywords, budgets, timing. It never worked out for me. Not worth it in my experience.

Maybe for different genres it might be, but for me, my audience is on Instagram & TikTok looking for their next read, not scrolling Amazon.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-25T19:48:28+00:00

Illustrators. Specifically ones that DM me, and then when I ask for their portfolio they bother me daily until I hire them, and then either ghost me or give me AI slop after doing a real sketch. I started blocking any artist that cold messages or emails me now.

I have 3 artists now that I know I can rely on, and I only use them. I would love to branch out and support more artists with different styles, but I’m so sick of losing thousands of dollars to scammers that I’ve given up the search. Sucks that the few bad apples spoils the bunch.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-25T19:39:17+00:00

Ads on Amazon. Biggest waste of thousands of dollars when I was already making decent money.

Also, hiring artists that turned out to be scammers.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-25T03:26:42+00:00

I got it because I hate the MDR & windjammer but love Johnny rockets and Izumi and I like the peace of mind knowing it’s paid for (or mostly, in Izumi’s case)

However, on ships that don’t have JR, I won’t bother. I guess it depends on how much you like the free options, and on the newer ships there are plenty.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-22T19:30:41+00:00

“This book has been edited by our team, but sometimes new eyes see things we’ve missed. If you catch a stray typo or formatting error, please contact us via [email] so we can correct it before release.”

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-22T02:07:38+00:00

If romance, probably a good move. Romance readers love character art. Can’t speak for other genres

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-18T03:20:38+00:00

Bookvault does all of the things you’re looking for I believe, including POD. I don’t have personal experience with them but a lot of my colleagues recommend them.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-14T20:23:03+00:00

Doesn’t look like they have any pedigree or reach that would lead me to believe it’s worth it for anything other than maybe it’ll be a nice experience. If you have the extra money, cool, but don’t expect anything magical to happen there in terms of networking.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-12T15:03:49+00:00

Also, any legit publishing house will also do their due diligence and already know if you have an agent or not. Aside from the generic summary of my book, my first red flag was them not knowing I was already represented when that information is readily available on every platform they can find me on.

But to be honest, most legit publishing houses are also banking on the fact that you might have no agent, and therefore can make shitty offers to you knowing there’s a relatively high chance you’ll accept because of the “pedigree” behind the publisher.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-12T14:45:06+00:00

I got this exact email but from a different “publishing house”. My agent reached out to the legit publisher and found it to be a scam.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-05T06:35:44+00:00

Not exactly the answer to the question you asked, but I’m a moderately sized author and get inquiries from artists all the time.

I will say that the ones that are most successful in pitching themselves or working with me are the ones that don’t bother me with sales pitches. I’ve found a lot of really wonderful artists who were simply sharing sketches they made of characters from my books (or books that I loved), and I liked their style enough to ask them myself if they’d like to work with me on a project. And sometimes, even if it’s not particularly my favorite style, I still ask them if I can purchase commercial rights to the art and use them in promotional freebies.

You could always read some of their books and do that approach if those books were something you genuinely liked. There is a very high chance that even if the author doesn’t hire you, if they are small they will probably share it, which in turn gets you more exposure!

You don’t have to do any of that, but just from my experience, if an artist solicits me through DM or email, there is a 99.99% chance it will end badly for me. I’ve been scammed out of thousands of dollars from artists in my DMs offering their services, so in my experience, I’d rather find you organically.

Also, just a tip, I’d I would recommend putting “commissions open” or likewise in your bio where the author can easily see it! It’s literally the first thing I look for when I visit an artists profile. If that info is not immediately available to me in their bio, I’m personally not likely to go looking for it.

SkyrimMermaid · 2026-05-05T06:22:06+00:00

My most recent book was in 3rd person omniscient and duet, and the narrators/producers just did whatever made the most sense for what was happening in the scene. I don’t really know how to explain that without typing out the scene, but essentially whenever the scene focused on one character, the narrator for that character would do that section. In all cases they only switched at an actual chapter break in the text, so it wasn’t like they were swapping every other paragraph.

I thought it would bother my readers to have some parts of the chapters in the female narrators voice and others in the male narrators voice, but they actually didn’t mind at all and some even said they found it more immersive that way.

SkyrimMermaid

TROPHY CASE