Cara N. Delaney's Blog, page 3

Finding success, growing your audience, and accepting bad reviews

Image by Gerd Altmann via Pixabay

Getting a bad review sucks. I’ll say this right now, I get it. That’s why I don’t really read reviews anymore. I used to, over a decade ago, but not these days. Why? It’s no use. People will think what they think, they can review at their leisure, and there is nothing I can do to influence either their opinion or their review behaviour. Nor should I be trying to. The purpose of reviews is to present reader opinions across the whole spectrum, and that spectrum naturally has a lower end we shouldn’t pretend doesn’t exist. So unless I want to spend the rest of my career stressing over review scores and ratings, the only thing I can do is unplug and ignore them.

…what does this have to do with growing your audience as an author? A hell of a lot.

If you go out there and check any wildly successful book – indie or self-published or traditionally published doesn’t matter – you will see that it has low ratings and negative reviews. Usually more one-star reviews than the average indie author has total. And yet, these books thrive, and are commercially successful.

Conversely, an attitude that is prevalent among indies is that they don’t want negative reviews, ever. That they are a mark against the author, that they impact sales, that they are not deserved because by god, we worked so hard on this book, it’s not fair to give it two stars! On an emotional level, I understand this. On a practical and business level, this attitude is a hindrance more than anything. At the risk of sounding like some sort of guru: If you hold on to this mindset, you are preventing yourself from finding the success that you want.

You have, broadly speaking, two options to go about finding an audience for your book (or rather, have the audience find you). You can either try and match the perfect reader to your book – someone who you are 100% sure will love and appreciate every single aspect of your book, and thus have no reason to give it anything other than five stars. Or you can appeal to a much broader audience – trying to match individual aspects of the book with readers who are looking for romance, or dragons, or queer protagonists, but maybe not all three – and then hope that the rest of the book is not a barrier to them buying and enjoying it.
(To be clear, I am not talking about deceptive marketing here. Don’t lie about stuff. All I’m saying is that hyper-specificity is not the goal of this second approach, casting a wider net is.)

Many indie authors like the first approach more. They prefer readers who are into every single thing about their book. Which, on paper, sounds good. The problem is that, in that sense, most books are incredibly niche. Yes, even the ones that sell millions of copies. Why? Because there is no such thing as a perfect book. Every single one of those millions of readers will dislike something about the book (or at the very least feel very meh about it). It is impossible to have a near-perfect overlap between “things in the book” and “things the reader likes”. So in order for this to work, authors have to limit themselves to a tiny audience with the largest possible overlap.

Because in the second approach? The one that will allow you to reach more people, to find more readers, to grow a larger audience? You will receive negative reviews. That’s a given. There’s no avoiding it. Because once you grow past that tiny niche, once a larger audience engages with your work, you’re bound to have readers who pick up your book and end up disliking it. It’s really just a numbers game at this point. Ten hand-selected readers may universally love your book, but with ten-thousand readers, you’re going to get a few hundred at least who absolutely hate it. And that’s fine. That’s a part of this business that, if this kind of growth and success is your goal, you will need to accept. And yes, there will be mean reviews. There will be bad-faith criticism. There will even be personal attacks (there shouldn’t be, but that’s the world we live in). That is why you should not read the reviews. But you need to accept that, if you ever want to grow beyond your tiny niche, they will happen, and there is nothing you can do about it.

This is a large stress factor for many indie authors. It sucks. It’s draining. And it does not need to be this way. Accepting negative reviews as part of growing my career has been vital for preserving my sanity. I just can’t be arsed to constantly worry about this, to stress about the average score, about every one-star rating that pops up somewhere. There are so many other things to stress about, I needed to take this off my plate, and it was glorious! It takes so much energy to worry about this that I can now use to write more books. To do fun stuff for my socials. To read other people’s books without constantly comparing them to mine.

As per usual, none of this is one-size-fits-all advice. At the end of the day, you as the author have to decide what your career goals are. If you’re happy in your perfect niche, that’s great! More power to you! But if you want to step out of it, if you want to find that wider readership, you need to accept what comes with that – in this case, the bad reviews. Take steps to mitigate the stress if you have to, but know that the stressor itself will never not be there. You just have to manage it in a way that is healthy for you. Because I don’t want great indies to burn themselves out with stress over things that are, ultimately, largely meaningless.

– Cara

BLADE OF THE CROWN is available in paperback and through Kindle Unlimited! Get swept away with a princess and her royal guard as they find themselves stranded on a strange island, trying to find their way home – and into each other’s arms.

Publishing woes? Three ways to try and fix low book sales

This one’s gonna be uncomfortable. We’re wading back into the murky waters of not just writing, but actually selling books. I see a lot of indie authors talk about low – or no – sales and/or page reads (for us Kindle Unlimited folks). A lot of the time, when I check out the books in question, they’ll have a few things in common that can seriously hinder sales. Let’s talk about three of those things and how to fix them.

The first one is, unfortunately, both the hardest one to redo and the most important one to get right. Your cover. There is no way around that – your cover must both look professional and clearly signal the genre of the book. And here is where a large amount of indie authors stumble already. Maybe they made the cover themselves, and it shows. Maybe they paid for a professional design, but didn’t do their research, so the cover does not match the story or the genre. Whatever the case, if you want to have any chance at all at competing in the indie market, the cover needs to be near perfect. At the very least, you need to know the rules if you do decide to break them – and accept the risk that comes with that. So when it comes to covers, you need to do your research, and if your design skills are not up to par, save up and pay a pro. That’s it. That’s the secret. The cover is the first thing a reader will see, and you will lose a large chunk of people then and there. Don’t make that number higher than it needs to be.
And for the love of god, don’t use generative AI as a “cheap alternative”. Ethical issues aside, readers can tell, it’s uncanny, and you’ll end up on people’s “no buy” lists in no time. If you want to build a sustainable career, genAI is not the play.

The second thing that often needs fixing is the blurb. Yes, I know. Blurb writing is hell and we’re all in it. Doesn’t matter. If your cover is the bait that lures a potential reader to the book’s page, the blurb is the hook. Literally, actually – a blurb needs a strong hook, and many lack that. Sometimes just visually – format your blurbs, people, don’t just whack the raw text in there – but often in terms of content. A lot of authors err on the side of vagueness, out of a misguided fear of “spoiling the story”. Ignore that urge. The end of the first act is usually where your hook comes in, and that’s what’s going to make readers interested. So spoil that first act. Vague allusions to maybe cool things in the future won’t cut it here. Again, do your research. Look at what the bestsellers in your genre do, adapt it to your book, and emulate it. If you can’t do it yourself, there are professionals who will do it for you. Writing marketing copy is its own beast and, like graphic design, not everybody is good at it, so know your limits, and pay for professional assistance where you can’t deliver.

Lastly, and this is one that I don’t have direct access to, but know from talking to many an author – keywords and categories. In short, these are how you get the drive-by readers to see your book, so they get a chance to be seduced by the cover and blurb in the first place. If you do what most authors do, just pick some broad categories for mass appeal, add some single-word keywords, and think that’s it – you’ll be drowned out by the people who are better at this than you are.
Choose your categories with care, especially on platforms that don’t give you any keywords to work with. Don’t just put your book into the giant pool of “romance”. Put it in Romance->Fantasy->Bisexual (or applicable equivalent) to actually find your target audience, and not sink to the bottom in a sea of all romance. Depending on how many options you get, balance the broad and the specific.
The same rule applies to keywords. For KDP authors, check out this guide if you haven’t already. Here, too, you want to balance casting a broader net with honing in on your specific target audience. Specifically on Amazon, this is your bread and butter. On platforms that don’t allow keywords, you need to be more creative, but it’s generally possible to add a few to your blurb. Don’t overdo it – but if a platform only offers a “Romance” category with no sub-categories, feel free to add “A new bisexual fantasy romance from the author of [your previous work]!” to gain some visibility and hit those more specific searches. If you can work some of them into the actual blurb itself, all the better. So instead of “Once Carrie returns to Haddenfield…” make that “Once Carrie returns to the small town of Haddenfield…” to hit that small town romance trope. You’ve got options here, don’t waste them!

Bonus point: Check your book’s price. We’re free to charge whatever we want for our work, but there are certain price ranges which readers are comfortable with. I’m not saying you should start a price limbo – but when the vast majority of books in your genre cost between $3 and $5, charging $9.99 for an ebook will probably get you discarded by most readers immediately.

There you go, three (and a half) things to consider when you’re faced with a lull in sales. These are not silver bullets – you still need to have a good book to sell, and eventually, sales will taper off naturally for most books. That’s when you need to come out with your next book, and keep building that momentum. Remember, publishing is a marathon, not a sprint. But fixing those three aspects of your presentation and back-end will help more than you might realise, so get on it!

– Cara

BLADE OF THE CROWN is available in paperback and through Kindle Unlimited! Get swept away with a princess and her royal guard as they find themselves stranded on a strange island, trying to find their way home – and into each other’s arms.

🌈 HOLIDAY SALE! 📚

‘Tis the season, so here we go :>

From today until January 1st, you can snag three of my books at a huge discount!

Get A MELODY IN THE DEEP and DARK HEART OF ILMOURE for only $0.99 each, and TOMB OF HEART AND SHADOW for only $1.99!

If you’ve been eyeing one of these, now’s your chance!

– Cara

End of Year 2024 – This Year’s Favourites

There was another post I’ve been drafting, but I felt like it didn’t express properly what I was trying to say, so I think I’ll end the year on a more positive note. Let’s take a look at my favourite ~things~ from this year!

Books

Bury Your Gays – Chuck Tingle
Listen. I know what half of you are thinking. Yes, I also read Tingle’s erotica, and no, it is no less “valid” than this. But unlike a regular Tingler, Bury Your Gays arrived with a meteoric crash right on top of my TBR, and my god, it deserved that entrance. 10/10 read, and I can’t wait for Lucky Days.

Nettle & Bone – T. Kingfisher
There are so many self-proclaimed fairy tale retellings out there. This isn’t one of them. It’s still a better one than most. I love Marra. I love Bonedog. I love the curmudgeonly gravewitch. It’s an excellent story that treads the line between a modern novel and a classic fairy tale and has the best of both.

Dead Silence – S.A. Barnes
This one seems to be a bit controversial, usually with regards to its twist and ending. While I get that, I really liked both. I’m a sucker for the abandoned space ship trope, and boy, did Dead Silence deliver on that. Gonna pick up Ghost Station once the paperback is out in February, and I’m very excited for that.

Games

Destiny 2: The Final Shape
This is something you probably won’t appreciate unless you’ve been along for the ride so far, and even then, I know not everyone loved this expansion as much as I did. But man, it was good. Brutal and heart-wrenching and devastating, but so, so fucking amazing. Fantastic way to end the Light and Darkness saga, and while a lot of Guardians hung up their Gjallarhorns and retired after that final mission, I’m super excited to see where we’re going next.

Film/TV

Fallout TV show
Fucking fantastic. Best adaptation I’ve seen in a long time. Yes, I’ve played New Vegas, no, I do not care. Give me the second season like, today.

Dungeons & Dragons: Honour Among Thieves
It’s rare for a film to hold my attention for this long these days, but this one did. A fun romp that might remain a single film or kick off a series, either one would be fine by me. I had a great time and wouldn’t mind more like it at all.

Music

Dreams to Be Buried In – God Body Disconnect
Okay. My music taste these days is pretty much ‘I know, but hear me out…’. However. Hear me out. If you like ambient music. If you like experimental stuff. If you like narrative elements. If you like all of these together. You should go and check out God Body Disconnect.

Struggles of a King – Swordlender
This is much more traditionally music, but it has some of the slightly more out there elements I love so much these days. It’s a great album on its own, but also makes for great background music for writing, reading, tabletop games… Give it a listen!

There you go! Some cool new stuff for you to check out, if you haven’t already. If you’d like to share some of your favourites, put them in the comments here or on my socials.

And with that, I’ll be taking my leave for this year. Blogging will resume in January after my holiday break. Until then, happy holidays, and I hope you all make it safely to 2025! See you next year :>

– Cara

BLADE OF THE CROWN is available in paperback and through Kindle Unlimited! Get swept away with a princess and her royal guard as they find themselves stranded on a strange island, trying to find their way home – and into each other’s arms.

Project Sneak Peeks

If you’ve been following me for a while, you might dimly remember my very first post from waaay back in 2021. In that post, I talked a bit about stuff that I’d been working on back then. When I tried to think about a blog post to write for this month, I remembered that very first one, and thought it would be fun to do that again. Talk about some current projects, and see what became of the ones from 2021.

Right now, I have three things that I’m working on, though I’m using that definition loosely for at least one of these.

The first is The Warlord’s Healer, a planned romantasy trilogy. This will be the first serialised story I’ll be publishing. I’ve had my share of attempts before, I think every fantasy writer starts out with that one grandiose plan for a fifteen-book epic until they realise sooner or later how terrible an idea this is for an early project. So I worked my way through a few standalones before I decided to tackle this three-book story. We’ll be following Kisha, who gets sent to a warlord as a personal healer in exchange for protection; and Velika, the warlord in question, who is struggling with a curse that’s been put on her, and searching for a way to break it. There will be scheming, betrayals, battles, and of course romance.
I’ve been playing around with these characters for a bit before I started writing, and I think it’ll be a lot of fun to write and read. There are some dynamics outside of the romance that I enjoy a lot, specifically the way Ranik interacts with Velika, and later how he’ll grow to have this cautious alliance-friendship with Kisha. Before everything goes horribly wrong, that is :>

The second book is the space horror I’ve mentioned here and there before. It was supposed to come out this year, but then I had a period of being stuck in the muddy middle, followed by an exhausting summer due to personal reasons, and before I knew it it was the end of September, I’d released BLADE OF THE CROWN, and the horror was nowhere near finished. It’s still an active project though, albeit one that probably needs some bigger rewrites. I’ve recently started to think it might work better in the novella format, so that’s what I’ll be trying out over the winter.

The third one is relatively new. I say relatively because it’s been floating around my notes for quite some time, but mostly as a pile of disjointed character notes and plot points. Then, as you do, I had a Shower Thought, went ahead and picked it all apart, put the previous protagonist and her love interest into an entirely different story and pulled new ones from my general notes file. One of the supporting characters came from a different abandoned idea, and then the story sees the return of Roslyn, our trans lady knight from The Alchemy of Love, which I shelved a few years back. I think she’s a much better fit for her role in this story.
The overall vibe I’ll be going for with this one is, as I put it on Bluesky, what if the Elder Scrolls was really, really gay, and the people whose job it is to save the world were the world’s most chaotic bisexuals? Right now this thing is tentatively planned to be multiple books, not sure how many, and in the detailed notes stage. Meaning I’ll be developing characters, constructing the general plot, and working out the broad details of the world. So it’s still a few years away from seeing the light of day.

Well, now we know what happened to The Alchemy of Love. I plundered it for parts, essentially.

A Thousand Suns has been shelved for now. I still like the idea, but it never really felt quite right. It stalled out at around 25,000 words, and I never got back into it.

Infinite Empires, however, is still on the table. Still nowhere near “main project” status, and considering that it’s science-fantasy, as opposed to regular fantasy, I’m not sure what to do with it. It’s a candidate for a new pen name, but that’s not a priority right now.

As for Chasing Eden, this one… Okay, I strictly speaking can’t blame it for the three additional story ideas that have popped up since that all fit broadly into the same dystopia/post-apocalypse genre. But it did play a massive part. I’ve since put together a concept for a pen name in that genre, and Chasing Eden would definitely fit there much better than it would this name. But I wouldn’t want to launch a pen name with a single book to publish under it, so for now, all four of those books are on the back burner. Notes, yes – actively working on it, no.

And with that, I’ll leave you this gloomy November. As a parting gift, enjoy a little glimpse into the first draft of The Warlord’s Healer.

If Pjetra had been intimidating, Kisha needed a stronger word for Kholat’s warlord herself. Lady Velika wasn’t as tall, but she more than made up for that in bulk around her shoulders. She wore her dark blonde hair in a braid, parts woven back along the side of her head, exposing sharp cheekbones with a dusting of freckles, and a pair of piercing green eyes. When those eyes landed on her, Kisha felt a turmoil in her gut. That was Lady Velika, then. The woman who now held all their lives in her hands.

A formidable woman indeed, that Lady Velika.

See you in December!

– Cara

BLADE OF THE CROWN is available in paperback and through Kindle Unlimited! Get swept away with a princess and her royal guard as they find themselves stranded on a strange island, trying to find their way home – and into each other’s arms.

Cool Stuff I Found #2

Did I mean for this to be a series? I guess I did. Well, three years in, here’s episode two^^

For October, I’ve got some horror recs for you!

1) This Wretched Valley by Jenny Kiefer – A classic haunted woods story, with a tried and true slew of spooky apparitions and mysterious goings-on, This Wretched Valley is a solid read for anyone who is looking for some good old-fashioned “lost in the woods” horror.

2) Sundial by Catriona Ward – On its face a ghost story, but also a story about all the different ways we can be haunted without any supernatural interference. It expertly weaves its horror into a tale of a highly dysfunctional family, and it was one of the rare few twists of the past few years that I didn’t see coming for most of the book. If you like your horror to be more human than anything else, Sundial is the book for you.

3) Bury Your Gays by Chuck Tingle – A delightful romp through Hollywood’s seedy underbelly, the looming tech dystopia of generative AI, and some good, disgusting gore to top it off. The cast is beautifully diverse and so very human, which makes the book’s themes work all the better. Just be prepared to have Peter Gabriel’s Sledgehammer ruined for you for a while.

4) Bridgewater – One of two podcasts I’d like to recommend this time around. An all-star cast is breathing life into a great script, in a story about all things folklore, and how some of it may just be rooted in reality so much more than we could ever hope to understand. The personal drama weaves perfectly through the supernatural storyline, enhancing it rather than distracting the listener from it, which is exactly how I like it.

5) And last but most definitely not least: The White Vault – This one is just fantastic. The way it sets the scene, then slowly descends into a quagmire of supernatural happenings that unfold into a tapestry of secrets and power plays spanning the entire world. Its use of language to evoke scale is excellent, and the creeping dread as you start to understand just how large this web really is is done perfectly. The audio and soundscapes of The White Vault are superb and make the experience that much more immersive.

There you go, five fantastic things to read and listen to this spooky season. If you’re still looking for an atmospheric audio drama or that perfect Halloween read, maybe one of these will fit the bill.

If they’re not your cup of tea, you could always check out my Lovecraftian novella Dark Heart of Ilmoure, in which a young woman returns to her home town after years of absence, only to discover that things have changed in some unsettling ways…

And with that, I hope you have a great autumn and a delightfully scary Halloween! See you in BOOvember

– Cara

BLADE OF THE CROWN is available in paperback and through Kindle Unlimited! Get swept away with a princess and her royal guard as they find themselves stranded on a strange island, trying to find their way home – and into each other’s arms.

BLADE OF THE CROWN release day! ⚔️👑🌈

A princess without magic. A soldier without status. Only together do they stand a chance at survival.

BLADE OF THE CROWN, a new sapphic romantasy set on a magical island brimming with secrets old and new, is now available digitally on Amazon and Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback at your favourite book store!

Embark with Zhenya and Keryth on a fateful journey that will lead them to new discoveries, ancient mysteries, and perhaps even into each other’s arms…

The absolutely stunning cover has been designed by Covercreator.uk

I’m so excited for you all to finally meet Keryth and Zhenya. It’s been quite a journey, and I hope you enjoy your time with them as much as I enjoyed writing their story. All aboard, let’s set sail!

– Cara