Melissa Cummins's Blog

Crowned In Blood is live!

“Let me tell you what’s going to happen, Catalina. I’m going to kiss you. I’m going to be gentle with you, to teach you what a kiss between us feels like. And then, when you’ve learned, I’m going to devour that sweet little mouth of yours like the starving man you’ve reduced me to.”

Crowned In Blood across all retailers!

Grab your copy here: https://melissacummins.com/go/crowned-in-blood-preorder

You’ll love Crowned In Blood if you enjoy:

Enemies-to-lovers
Age Gap
Slow Burn
Obsessed Stalker Mafia hero
He falls first and hard
Forced proximity
Mental health representation
Morally gray characters
Who did this to you?
Touch him or her and
Hurt/Care
Hilarious banter

The post Crowned In Blood is live! first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

Want a Foiled Edition of Crowned In Blood?

I love this book and I wanted to give it an extra touch. You can now pre-order your copy of Crowned In Blood from my store. This edition will have silver foiling and be digitally signed and include a handwritten thank you note in each copy. Grab your copy for 30% off from my store until October 7th. This edition will be gone after October 22nd.

Order your copy here: https://shop.melissacummins.com/products/crowned-in-blood-exclusive-foiled-paperback

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Check Out Crowned In Blood’s Cover and Blurb Reveal

This book means the absolute world to me. I’ve had so much fun writing it and I’m so excited to finally share the cover and blurb with you! This man is obsessed from the moment he lays eyes on her, a stalker, rich AF, and he 100% talks her through it. 

Are you ready to read the blurb?

BLURB

He’s determined to make me his. I’d prefer to shoot him instead.

Catalina

Life has never been easy for me. Now, the mafia empire I ripped from my dead husband’s hands has been destroyed from within. To survive, I must form new connections. But only one man has what I need: Marco.

A man as ruthless as the husband I killed. 

A man as handsome and seductive as the devil.

A man I can never trust. 

Marco

I see Catalina for exactly what she is: capable, merciless, deadly, and meant to be my queen. Entering into a bargain with her will give me exactly what I want most���access. I will test her, stalk and possess her, until she’s begging me for more. 

Because in this game of cat and mouse, there can only be one winner. And I will do anything to make sure she becomes mine���even if that means burning this entire world to ash.

PREORDER: https://melissacummins.com/go/crowned-in-blood-preorder

The post Check Out Crowned In Blood’s Cover and Blurb Reveal first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

Crowned In Blood’s Deluxe Edition Kickstarter has fully funded!

We did it again!!!!!

Crowned In Blood is my book baby. I cannot begin to even explain how much I love and adore this book. It’s one of those stories that has forever changed me as a person, how I approach work, writing, my author business, everything, and seeing your support is so beautiful that I can’t even put it into words.

Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

It’s hard to see the people who believe in you and support you sometimes, especially when you’re in the weeds of creating, because you can only share so much. But moments like this really bring it all home for me. That you, my lovely readers, love my words, my storytelling, and my books, and it fills me with so much joy.

Thank you again!

Check out the campaign here

The post Crowned In Blood’s Deluxe Edition Kickstarter has fully funded! first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

Crowned In Blood’s Deluxe Edition Kickstarter is live!

For the first 48 hours I’m running an Early Bird sale where both the paperback and hardcover are $10 dollars off!Click here to take advantage of the discount before it ends!

The post Crowned In Blood’s Deluxe Edition Kickstarter is live! first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

Debunking Facebook Ad Myths: What Really Works for Authors

I’m not an ad expert. There’s a lot I don’t know. But recently I’ve been sharing a lot of tips in groups that people had either not thought to use before, or hadn’t heard of. I figured that with my success, especially over last month, this might be a perfect time to share what I know here.

I’ve been publishing since 2021 and using ads since 2022. I started using them before people advised you should, when I only had one book out in my series. But I opted to do that to learn.

These are a few of the things I’ve heard in the industry and my experience and thoughts with them:

You’ll lose money on Facebook Ads if you only advertise to one book. No. My bestselling book for a while, and one of my best ads right now, is to a novella. It doesn’t connect to any series, and I earned money on it immediately. However, you will likely earn more on a series because of read-through.Running ads means losing money and that should be your mindset. No. My mindset is money resolves problems, not creates them. If I’m losing money on an ad, I turn it off, unless it’s serving another purpose (testing covers, pointing readers to subscribe to my newsletter where I plan to upsell them later on, etc.). But you should always be getting something out of your ads.You should only pay attention to your CPC or CTR. No. CPC and CTR are indications of an ad’s possible success. They are not definitive with an ad being more successful than another. I’ve seen, and spoken with authors who have a lower CPC and higher CTR on one ad, but lower conversion rate, then another with a higher CPC and lower CTR.You should never use Advantage+. No. Now, my thought process on Advantage Placement is entirely different then this, but I always recommend testing everything you can. Facebook is a business, and they want their latest products and features to succeed. Trying their Advantage+ for targeting might work better for you then a specifically detailed targeted audience. Test everything and make your decision from your conversions.You should never edit an ad when it’s active. Yes. Editing an ad is going to send it back into learning. Facebook is supposed to be shifting how they deal with the learning phase of ads, but if you have an ad you’re testing and want to test something else, duplicate it and make your changes there.You should do two images, two primary texts, some variation of the two, or Dynamic Creative in ads to test what works best. I have mixed thoughts on this. I used to use Dynamic Creative at the end of 2023 but stopped by 2024 because Facebook stopped showing the breakdown of my text. Additionally, if you’re looking for conversions, it’s hard to know exactly what’s working because you can only use one link. I prefer to let each ad run in its own ad set based on what I’m testing. That way each link has a UTM that helps me learn more.You shouldn’t run Sales/Conversion Ads to your website if you don’t have a store. I mostly agree with this. Sales ads will always cost a higher CPC because they’re more active and affected less by certain items that can shift your algorithm. If you’ve never run a Sales ad before, you need a pixel to do so unless you run it to Messenger and WhatsApp I believe. One of the best things about Sales Ads is the data you can get from them. Running one to your website when you’re going to pay a higher CPC, and the only data you’d get is clicks, not sales from a store, isn’t going to be advantageous. That being said, you can run them and use your pixel to test, for example if you’re doing something with a cover or blurb. But you could do the same with a Traffic ad for cheaper. Also, if you then later use that pixel on something else, for instance, when you make a store, your data is going to be off because Facebook previously targeted and marked a successful result for a click, not a purchase event.If you have a good image, you have a good ad. No, if you have a good image and ad copy, you have a good ad. I’ve run multiple tests with the same image on different ad copies and had wildly variable success. Both are important, just like your cover and blurb are important.You should make sure that readers know you’re an author. Yes. The absolute best advice I got was to add – Author to the end of your Facebook Page. That one tip boosted my sales tremendously.When should you decide to scale your ads? I scale when I get above 1.75 for the week. If there’s days when I hit something high like a 6, I’ll definitely add a couple more dollars than normal.

Now that I’ve finished the quick things, let’s get to the meat and potatoes, IE the reason why I said what I said.

Last year I did a massive rebrand. In September, I made a really good decision which netted me the highest pre-orders I’d ever had for my novella. Then I launched in October. Things were good. The majority of my sales were on Amazon, so about a week later I saw them start to fall down.

Based on reader excitement, and how well the pre-orders had done, I knew it made sense to take a chance running ads on it, despite the advice that ads don’t do well on one book/novella, and that I’d lose money. I started out with a single $5-dollar, Traffic, Dynamic Creative Ad. I earned the most I’d ever made from my books that month and had an incredible ROI.

That ad went to my landing page, and it was wild to see how many views and clicks my site received. There were almost 5k, just from my little ad. I knew that wouldn’t last too long though. After all, Thanksgiving was right around the corner, and with holiday sales, things always go a little awry, plus I wouldn’t have that same number of pre-orders contributing to my revenue for the month.

I was right, but honestly, it wasn’t too bad. But as December came around, I started having to do a lot more work. I was now running ads in the US and UK (which has always been a good market for me) and while I was making more, I was spending more. It also seemed like my Traffic Ads constantly got exhausted after about a month. I always needed to test something new, another audience, image, etc. and it was exhausting for me to do so.

In January I got the feeling that I really needed to switch to Conversion Ads. Since the majority of my income was still coming through Amazon, even though I was wide and had my direct store, I still hadn’t received my income from October (my highest month), which meant I couldn’t scale. And I wouldn’t be able to truly scale after that either if I was going to keep having to recreate new ads, test new things, figure out more stuff, etc. It felt like if I took that chance, I’d fall into that losing money rhetoric and I absolutely refused to do that.

The problem was I’d tried a couple of Conversion Ads in December and they hadn’t really done that well. They cost a lot, were an entirely other ballgame I’d never tested, and I wasn’t sure how to optimize for them as a lot of people weren’t talking about them. So instead, I kept an eye out for advice, and continued to try my best with Traffic Ads, while still testing Conversion Ads in small amounts through February, March, and April.

At the end of April, I was pretty fed up with Traffic Ads. Like many people, my income went down around the last week of that month, for seemingly no reason. I hated that if a popular author in my genre or a genre adjacent to mine released a book, I’d basically have to either decrease my already low ads, or turn them off altogether (this is of no fault to the author, it’s amazing that they’ve created such a beautiful and incredible reading base, and I’m happy for them), and the same if there was a massive sales event (again, of no fault to the organizer, I’m happy for those involved in the event, and that’s just how business goes).

In my testing, I found that it seemed like Facebook had changed Broad Targeting ads, which is what I had mostly run and had a lot of success in. Between that, my fatigue with Traffic Ads, and my hatred that all of my revenue was tied up for two months on Amazon I decided to stop them completely.

I redid my store’s landing pages based on a bunch of shops I analyzed. I made sure to optimize my images. I joined new groups (resources will be below), agreed to spend money on a newsletter (mine was free before) for abandoned cart and abandoned checkout emails and went to work.

But then I found something interesting. There was a store which buried deep in the images, had Popular Highlights from Amazon. That felt like a huge lightbulb moment. I haven’t had betas in years and I’ve never hired someone for content/hook pulling. The only way I knew how to find a hook was after testing…a lot.

When I’m writing I know what hits me well and what I think will hook a reader, but once I get into editing, I struggle to connect. It’s like my analytical brain turns on and that emotional, feeling, connection part shuts off, and it isn’t until the book has been out for months that I’m able to somewhat get back into it. So having Popular Highlights for marketing made sense, and I realized I could try using it for my ad copy too.

It worked, extremely well. So much so that for the first time in my career, I was able to scale my ads. Which was one of the things directly hindering my success. Without my direct store, I wouldn’t have been able to afford spending on the ads and taking that leap of faith.

And this month was even better. I made the most I’ve made from books alone. My net revenue is higher than it’s ever been, and I haven’t seen an ROAS like this since January. That is absolutely incredible when summer is normally my worst season and I haven’t released anything since November of last year.

Sales/Conversion Ads are easier for me, but they are still work.

I’ve found that while I can keep the same ad running for months at a time, I need to be careful of the CPR (Cost Per Result incase you’ve never run one before). The more you scale, the higher a CPR goes, and the older the ad, the more Facebook is going to push to it due to its data and success. Naturally, it’s going to go up, and sometimes that means I need to turn off a successful ad for a couple of weeks or a month, to let it rest.However, I love that I don’t mess with my ads every day. I don’t touch them unless something is clearly off (like I’m not getting those Shopify sales). And even then, I don’t touch them except once a week, I just check to make sure my CPR, CPM, and Frequency are within the parameters I want them to be.With Sales/Conversion Ads some of your stats and the things you’ve heard about the range to keep them in for Traffic ads, aren’t going to apply. For instance, your Frequency on a Conversion Ad can be higher and it can still be a good ad. But if that was a Traffic ad, you’d want to turn it off at those levels.Sometimes I leave ads on which are recording more checkouts than they are add to carts, because that means those people bought through my automation. However, in some of those cases, Facebook might miss a result or two which can skew your CPR and make it higher than it really is. You just have to use your best judgment.When I do my weekly ad reviews, I check my stats, then decide if I want to make a new ad, or test a new audience. I then copy and paste everything over and let her do her thing for the next week.One thing that is consistent, is the ads that work in the US won’t always work in the UK and vice versa. Advantage+ works better for me in the UK then my detail targeted audiences, where in the US it doesn’t work as well.While large sales or releases don’t skew your ads too badly, they will mess with the algorithm a little bit. It takes Facebook about three to four days to pull back from something like that, and in those cases, you may not make any sales on Shopify that day. That’s perhaps the scariest part of this is if you’re spending a high budget and all of a sudden don’t make a sale through your store. However, that is actually normal and it will be fixed. If you want to push it to happen faster, make a new ad, even in that same campaign, and Facebook will often start pulling better results. But it won’t completely go back to how it was until the three- or four-days pass.If you spend enough money to get, I believe it’s 50, results in a week, you’re likely not to have the issue above. However, that costs a lot of money to do, and I haven’t gotten there yet.If you have bonus scenes on your website where a reader or newsletter subscriber has to “purchase” the book, that can skew your pixel data and mess with your algorithm. There’s some confusing information on this, but it either has to do with the list price being free on Shopify or if the newsletter subscriber just searches out for freebies. I’ve found getting around this by adding a list price with a discount at checkout, but it may also be more advantageous for you to keep newsletter subscribers getting bonus content through Bookfunnel, then trying to get them familiar with checking out and viewing your store.While Amazon pisses me off frequently, there’s a lot of readers there. I don’t think it’s worth it to try to compete with Amazon through your Direct Store. For instance, I don’t have my retailer links on my store. I did that once and had more people buying from my retailers because they’re used to buying there. That’s not what I want. But I do have an auto-responder in my Inbox Chat for those who specifically want to buy from there.

Lastly, even though I’m not running Traffic Ads right now, I definitely might in the future when my typically good months are and around my new release. They’re not bad in any case, they just for me are too finicky and often affected by things completely outside of my control. And I want my money now or within a week, not months.

I think ads often get a bad rap because they cost and they’re like gambling. I’m not a gambler. And if you treat decisions based on the results they give you, it’s often going to make you feel like you made a bad choice when you’re not earning as much as you want to or think you should.

However, ads have made me feel confident in my books again. By getting a good ad for my series, it made me remember that my writing was never the issue. Even if I could make it better today, I did the best I could at that time, and I wouldn’t be who I am now if I hadn’t made that choice in the past. Additionally, if I earn just a little bit next month, I’ll hit my yearly earning goal five months early. I wouldn’t have been able to do that without ads.

Ads simply give you a way to reach readers, that’s all. If you’re able to cover that through social media or some other modality, then honestly, ads might not work for you or align with your process. But if you’re an introvert who hates social media and mostly just wants to focus on writing the next book, it can be a really good.

 Resources:

Building a Book Empire (B.A.B.E.) with Anne-Marie (this group is phenomenal, and I learned a lot about stats to watch for optimizing and inspiration for my own store changes)Authors Direct Sales on YouTube and Cameron Snow’s free courses (tons of great advice here including his spreadsheet)Author Ads & Marketing Mastery with Melissa Storm (lots of amazing audiences and strategy advice here)Facebook Ad Library (I got a lot of inspiration for how to word my bundle here)

The post Debunking Facebook Ad Myths: What Really Works for Authors first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

Breaking Through Writer’s Block: The Power of Self-Care and Emotional Awareness

I don’t believe in writer’s block. Yes, I said it. I think we simply call it that because it’s blocking our writing and well, we want to write. We believe the want to write should be strong enough to overcome the block and when it isn’t, we don’t know what to do. But it’s been in my experience and the dozens of people I’ve advised that it’s rarely ever that simple. Every time someone has told me they have writer’s block, I’ve always asked them how they’re doing in their life right now, and every single time something has been wrong.

I’ll use myself as the perfect example.

I’ve been thinking of my current WIP for over a year (and yes, thinking is part of writing and planning). Normally, that would mean I would have all the pieces together for the book so it would flow easily. I’m an intuitive discovery writer. I know the plot’s beginning, middle, and end, but I don’t often have the full intricate details and tend to learn them as I go. But this book is so different than my others and that’s been tripping me up from the moment I started.

I’ve repeatedly written Paranormal Romance, specifically Fated Mates. In my books, Fated Mates is not what makes the characters fall in love, it’s what helps them to allow the idea of falling in love. It’s like if you could look at someone and know that’s your person. You’re not in love with them yet, but you know that’s who you’re supposed to be with. It’s a way to create acceptance and familiarity with the relationship while working toward a relationship. However, this WIP is a Mafia Romance. That acceptance and acknowledgment is not there. That means I have to work���what I believed was harder���at creating those reasons. Especially with the heroine’s attitude toward the hero.

This concern has made my overall workflow slower. I’ve tackled it wonderfully thus far. I’m around the 50% mark of the book and honestly, I really love what I’ve written. But the next group of chapters just haven’t been sorting themselves out for me.

Whenever this happens, I can normally think about the problem I’m having with figuring out a scene, go to sleep, and when I wake up, I’ll have the answer. This has worked every single time, and I did have an answer but it wasn’t syncing correctly. It felt off and if you’re an intuitive writer you know that’s the worst feeling you can have when writing because you likely won’t be able to let it go until you figure out the issue.

I kept wracking my brain for ways to solve this. I went to the inspiration section of my writing hub for the story and found I had a lot there that could help me. Going through it made me feel better and more confident. But then I found myself losing the words when I’d sit down to write and the more I tried, the more nervous I got, and the more nervous I got the harder everything was. It was a vicious cycle and I knew I had to stop before it got worse.

Anyone would call this writer’s block. I wanted to write so badly. I wanted to see my characters move forward to their happy ending but it just wasn’t working. So I took a day off and felt a little better. When I came back I ended up having to do some admin work which took about three days to complete and through each of those days, I just kept getting more frustrated that I wasn’t writing and wasn’t figuring out the answer to my issue.

Then last night, while I lay in bed awake at 4 AM and listened to the birds starting to chirp, it hit me. I didn’t have writer’s block. What I had was issues in my life where I did not feel settled which is one of the things I need to write optimally.

My husband is Muslim and I live in a Muslim country. From March till April is Ramadan which means he’s been fasting and to help make things easier, I’ve been waking up at 3 AM or staying up till 3 AM to make sure he eats before the fasting starts again. When I do this and eat with him I don’t end up going to bed until 5 – 7 AM. This is not like me and is not optimal for my sleep much less my work. When I go to bed at 3 AM or later I often have more body aches because I wake up early and don’t sleep enough. Additionally, my whole schedule was off. I was working much later than normal because I’d need an additional nap or to sleep longer to try and make up for going to bed so late.

Pair that with hormones, other big life changes that have caused me to get anxious, and the fact that from the start of this book, I was nervous about writing it and it makes sense that I’m having a hard time right now. That’s the thing that bothers me about how we’ve been taught to deal with emotional health because the truth is we haven’t been taught how to deal with it. It’s often treated that because it’s not visually in front of us, the pain, discomfort, or the negative things we’re feeling aren’t there. They don’t matter so they shouldn’t affect us. Right?

Wrong. Emotional health has such a monumental effect on so many things we do and being able to be creative is one of them.

So how do we fix it?

Well for me, the first step was being honest. By saying, “I acknowledge I’m having a block right now,” I accepted what was going on. If that statement has any negative feelings for you, which it still does for me, acknowledge those. The feelings I feel when I say that statement are frustration at it being true, anger at it being a situation I’m going through right now, confusion about what is happening, and determination to figure out how to resolve it.

Now that I know that, I can ask myself, “Why?” Why is this going on? What lead to this? Can I remember the first time I felt nervous, concerned, insecure, stressed, anxious, or anything that seemed connected to my writing or my life over the last few weeks?

When I did that I discovered everything I just told you. I realized that I was the most frustrated over three specific things. First, that I was so concerned about my novel when I’ve written dozens of stories and published six books. I know what I’m doing and while yes my writing process has changed and that in itself is scary, that’s not where my concern was coming from. Second, I was frustrated about the things that were frustrating me in my life and that I wouldn’t be able to change them for a month. Knowing the end goal is good, but knowing how far away it is can be frustrating when you want it to be done and over already. Lastly, I was frustrated that I couldn’t prioritize my writing again even though I wanted to.

Acknowledgment of your emotions is important for your emotional and mental health. Sitting with and feeling them is part of how you work through them. As I often tell someone, when you’re feeling an emotion is not the time to try to judge or shame yourself about whether you should be feeling that emotion. You’re feeling that emotion and you are right to feel what you feel. Only after you’re done can you begin to process and reflect.

I was right to feel everything I was feeling. And once I finished feeling it at that time (because emotions can come back around and they often do), I could begin to work on a solution. I realized that while I knew I could figure everything out, I wasn’t figuring everything out and that bothered me. I felt I should be smart enough to, that I should be experienced enough to. And sure I am or I will be. It’s good to know that but it isn’t good to judge myself or get frustrated because I couldn’t.

I needed to give myself grace and permission to take a second. Then I needed to remind myself of a truth: it’s completely okay to struggle with the how, when, where, and why, but everything will always work out the way it’s supposed to and in my best interest.

I don’t need to know everything and I was trying to. I can’t look around a corner when I’m nowhere near it. The truth is I’d already figured out the very next chapter. I didn’t know the next three after that. But, why would I need to right now? I’m not writing those now. I’m writing the next chapter. And if I decide later it should be moved around or deleted I can keep it as a deleted scene. There are no mistakes in my manuscript. By that, I mean, that whatever I’ve written whether it’s usable right now or not serves a purpose. It may teach me or it may assist me now or later on down the line. So why would I be so focused on getting everything right at this exact moment? That’s not how I work. That’s not how my brain works, and to be honest that’s way too much pressure.

When I woke up this morning, I promised myself I’d start with self-care. I stood out in the sunlight and sang songs I enjoyed that made me feel good and boosted my mood. Then, I squeezed about ten oranges so any frustration or anger would get worked out into something productive. I made myself a cup of OJ and then wrote this post. My mind is still saying, “Hey, let’s write today,” but the voice is a little calmer, a little less flight-or-fight, and a little more, this is something you love so let’s do a little bit of it and make it a priority. I’m still nervous and I think I will be until I officially write that halfway point chapter, but I also remembered that plenty of authors get stuck at the 50% point of their books. In fact, that’s what made me let go of creating hard outlines and allow for more flow because the story would always shift slightly at this point.

I hope this post helps you, if in no other way to let you know you’re not alone. It’s hard to be kind to yourself, especially when you think you should be able to control an outcome and it’s simply slipping out of your grasp. But even if it does, that doesn’t mean that you did something wrong or that you will. It doesn’t mean that you should criticize yourself or try to push yourself harder. It just means you’re human and shit happens, so let it happen.

The post Breaking Through Writer’s Block: The Power of Self-Care and Emotional Awareness first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

Facing the Fear of Failure: How Kickstarter Helped Me Overcome Self-Doubt

The Vampire War Special Edition Kickstarter Omnibus ended almost a week ago. There are still a few things that need to be done on the backend, such as fixing any open errored pledges and receiving payment, but I now have some time to sit back, think about everything, and really process my emotions.

At the start of this year, I said that I wanted to assess things, especially related to my fears. I knew I had a few things that I battled with when it came to business and writing. It wasn’t necessarily about money or success, but the things that had been drilled into my head since I was a child. I always believed I wasn’t creative and that I could never run a business because that’s what I’d always been told. I was consistently reminded that I didn’t have the smarts, skills, or perfection for it. Yet, here I am, day after day, running my business. But just because I have that consistent proof, doesn’t mean those internalized negative thoughts have gone away. So, I wanted to make a change.

I wanted 2024 to be a year where I focused on my growth and where I pushed myself. I wanted it to be a year where I went fully into things which made me feel scared when I thought of money, success, and my future business and financial goals. Kickstarter was the first thing on that list.

I’d wanted to run a Kickstarter for months. If I didn’t have any fear and fully believed in myself, I would have done it last year. But I was scared. I was scared of how long it would take, the work involved, and how active or always “on” I’d need to be when I knew that was something I struggled with. I was scared of my graphics not being good enough for this series which has both been incredibly rewarding and due to external forces, devastatingly heartbreaking and eye-opening.

But the thought wouldn’t leave me alone. I found myself going back to it, over and over again, until I finally said, “What’s the worst that can happen if I try?” The answer, of course, was that I could fail. If the Kickstarter failed, I’d find out in a very blunt way that what I’d made wasn’t good enough. That would mean those fears, those words that had been drilled into my head, were right. But the alternative would be bringing new life into the series, finding people who love it as much as I had when I first published it, before all the challenges and the discrimination my characters and I faced.

If I could just gather the courage to try and believe in myself a little bit more, I could have something beautiful. I could get something I needed—acceptance. And that’s exactly what happened.

This Kickstarter made almost $3500. That was the most money I’d made in one month in my entire working career. Before that, the most I’d made in a month was back in 2022 when I was working at a corporate job. And yet, this little thing that ran for seventeen days surpassed everything I’ve ever done.

I broke myself working in the corporate field. I’m still suffering from what I’ve come to realize is almost a decade’s worth of burnout. I worked so hard living month to month, and yet, by simply taking a chance and believing in myself, I made more than I ever have for a fraction of the stress.

Making a Kickstarter wasn’t easy. It took a lot of research, testing, learning, and understanding, And even with all that, when I felt the most confident about what I’d done, I had an expert tell me I wouldn’t fund the campaign twice.

Those words sent me into a spiral. They brought about every terrible fear I had, especially because she told me I wasn’t offering enough, doing enough, and that my books were overpriced. In a matter of a few sentences, she pulled out every single thing I was scared of, especially the fact that I was scared of assigning value to my work.

If you’re an author, you know how frequently people will tell you to price lower. You see it across the entire industry. There are full marketing plans made on pricing things at a discount or free, and they work. But so does asking for what you believe your work is worth. For every person who sells a book at $.99, there’s another who sells a book at $9.99. Are the strategies different? Yes. But can they both be successful? Yes. In fact, the book I read that helped me the most when it came to understanding Kickstarter as well as the shift in mentality, Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter by Russell P. Nohelty and Monica Leonelle also mentioned this.

“That is why I love Kickstarter. It allows you to reasonably make a living on a reasonable number of fans, and not having to rely on chasing the lowest cost to get by on quality, because very few can play that game, and even fewer can win.”

Get Your Book Selling on Kickstarter by Russell P. Nohelty and Monica Leonelle

Truthfully, I’ll probably recommend that book until I’m blue in the face. It reminded me of why I’m wide, why I made that choice, and why I believed I could become an author in the first place. It’s because I believe in myself and my work, no matter the fear I may face or the changes in mindset I have to make, that is always there under all of it. It’s my little light in the vast array of my dark tunnel. It’s okay if I make mistakes. It’s okay if things don’t work out. It’s okay if what I’ve done doesn’t meet my expectations or the expectations of others. But, that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to celebrate that I did it.

That’s what I learned after I got out of my spiral. One person’s opinion shouldn’t rival my own. I sat back, made sure my calculations were correct, and ended up amazed.

One of the things that I’ve seen happening now as I keep taking these chances is that the hardest part is getting out of my way. The second I can say, “Okay, I’ll try this,” and it feels easy, that’s when I have my greatest success. I saw it with My Brutal Beast, my best-selling book to date, and with this Kickstarter Campaign as well.

In the future, I plan to have Kickstarter as part of my launch plan. It not only did well for me financially, but it was fun! Books will appear there first, then my store, then on retailers, and I’m excited to see where that takes me.

The post Facing the Fear of Failure: How Kickstarter Helped Me Overcome Self-Doubt first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

The Vampire War Special Edition Kickstarter has fully funded!

I didn’t even get to finish posting before the Kickstarter became fully funded. If you don’t know what Kickstarter is or how it works, you build a campaign to promote a creative project, then you assign a certain amount of days (mine is 17) and do your best to get the project funded in that time. If you succeed, the campaign is a success and you’re able to get paid for the campaign and issue out the rewards, but if you don’t fund then it’s unsuccessful and you will not be able to fulfill the campaign (at least for that specific campaign).

It’s a huge risk from me, as the person making the campaign and doing all the work behind the scenes, and a huge amount of trust and belief by the person willing to pledge to you. To say I’m honored and overjoyed, doesn’t even begin to describe how I feel right now.

What you guys don’t know is right before I launched this, I had an expert come and tell me I likely wouldn’t be funded based on my campaign. She said this not once, but twice, and it sent me into a spiraling tailspin. I had put so much work and research into this, time that could have gone into writing instead if I wasn’t going to make it. Due to the help of my incredible husband, PA, and some other Kickstarter authors I was able to refortify my confidence with a game plan for whether this did succeed or not. And so the taste of that fully funded amount showing on my screen was better than I could have ever imagined.

If you’d like to check out the campaign, I’ve included the link below. If you’re one of those that already pledge to bring this campaign to light, thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Check out the campaign here

The post The Vampire War Special Edition Kickstarter has fully funded! first appeared on Melissa Cummins.

The Vampire War Special Edition Kickstarter is live!

For the first 48 hours I’m running an Early Bird sale where both the paperback and hardcover are $10 dollars off!Click here to take advantage of the discount before it ends!

The post The Vampire War Special Edition Kickstarter is live! first appeared on Melissa Cummins.