Writing

February 2024 Update

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Staying Informed

I haven’t been able to keep up with my weekly posts for quite a while, so I think I’m going to officially do just one post a month for now, with updates. I’m not even going to commit to a particular day, just once per calendar month

I also do have a newsletter now that is also monthly, so if you’re interested in staying informed, that’s a great way, too. You can subscribe here. It goes out the first Tuesday of every month.

Ugliest

I’m still actively working on Ugliest, book 3 in The Art of Being Ugly, and making good progress. But it’s a tough book to work on, because it has such high stakes—and they’re real, not just in the book. The kids become activists for LGBTQ+ rights, fighting against the anti-LGBTQ+ laws that are sweeping red America. This is really happening, and it’s turning much of this country into a near-dystopia, when time will take it the rest of the way. We already are seeing red state refugees—families who are fleeing states to keep their trans kids safe. A few weeks ago, I met a family from Oklahoma that had just moved to Washington for their kid. This is no joke. If you are in a position to fight these laws with your votes, please do. It’s so important.

Other Book News

I’m planning to hire a publicist to really try to get Ugly and Uglier some attention before the release of Ugliest, which I’m targeting for early September this year, even though I don’t know if that’s possible because I’m still writing the first draft.

I’m also planning to redo the covers for all of the books. I actually do like the covers I have now, but I feel like new covers could take them to the next level. But I don’t know what to do yet, so I’m hoping for help from the publicist.

Ugly book cover
Uglier book cover

Sales

Ugly and Uglier are both only 99 cents all month, so check them out if you haven’t read them yet. You can find them at all the major ebook retailers (and some of the smaller ones, too).

My Writing Year, 2023 Edition

Posted on by kellyvincent

I had a decent year with my writing, wining some awards and releasing the second book in The Art of Being Ugly Series.

Awards

I found out in January that Ugly was an SCBWI Honor Book for the older readers category, which basically is second place. The SPARK Award is for self-published books, but SCBWI is an international organization that a good number of people who write or illustrate for children, from board books through YA, belong to, so the contest is competitive.

In June, I learned that Always the New Girl won first place in the YA category of the National Excellence in Story Telling (NEST) Contest. It was also a finalist in two other contests, the Next Generation Indie Book Award and Book Excellence Award.

Binding Off also finaled in the Next Generation Indie Book Award contest.

Ugly book cover
Binding Off book cover
Always the New Girl book cover

Release and Good Review

I released Uglier, book two in The Art of Being Ugly series, on August 1 and received a starred review from Kirkus Reviews soon afterward.

Uglier book cover

And Finally, Some Special Things for Readers

I should also mention that Ugly and Uglier are both on sale for 99 cents through the end of December.

Also, Uglier is part of a giveaway of 20 YA books where you can win all of them and also a Kindle simply for signing up for author newsletters. It’s open to enter through the end of January, and you can enter here.

Uglier also will be available for free for a few days at the very end of January.

October 2023 Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

It feels a little like things are paused right now, because I’ve been focused on two other projects, and I was working extra for my day job, too. I’ve just started querying on my nonfiction project related to my day job, so it’s sort of “done”. The third romance I’m writing under a pen name is also wrapping up, but there are still several chapters left to write. I’m just feeling a little wrung out and stretched thin. And on top of that, since July I’ve lost two cats and had another diagnosed with cancer, so it’s been a rough ride. But a friend convinced me to start going to yoga, and I figure I’ll give that a shot, so hopefully I’ll be back to normal soon—which will mean posting here more regularly. It will also mean making much more progress on Ugliest, which is moving along, but slowly.

In the realm of good news, Uglier has gotten some recognition lately, which is really cool. It got a starred review from Kirkus Reviews a bit ago, and the made it an editor’s pick for their most recent issue of the magazine, out today. I also got some other good news about it, but I can’t share that for a bit. Watch this space.

I’ve made some decisions about social media. Partially because I was feeling overwhelmed and busy, I’ve not been active. But I have finally decided to officially give up on BookTok. My account is clearly marked, and no matter what I do, I can’t get past the about-250-views mark. Sometimes I’ll post it and get there in a couple hours, but other times it might take me a day or two, but whatever the timing, as soon as I hit 250, TikTok stops showing it. I also have an account for my romance pen name, and although I don’t get a lot of views, it’s not blocked like @kv_books is. And on my account related to my day job (@kelly_datascientist), I occasionally get 1000+ views (I’ve had one go over 8000, too). So it’s obviously @kv_books that’s blacklisted or whatever. But anyway, I’m trying to get back on Instagram. I took a bunch of pictures of books I’ve read in the last few months (fortunately, I am still reading a lot) and will be posting those soon, a few at a time. Maybe I’ll even make some videos.

In other news, I have some sales on my ebooks coming up. Always the New Girl and Binding Off are on sale for the first half of November, both for 99 cents (and 79 cents for Binding Off where possible). Ugly and Uglier are also going to be 99 cents for the entire month of December. I will be sending reminders about these out in my newsletter, so subscribe if you’re interested.

And just for posterity, here are a couple pictures of my old lady cats who are no longer with us. They’re both still so cute in these, even though they were difficult to take care of at the end.

Chloe the cat
Chloe
Zmije the cat in her cage
Zmije

August 2023 Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

I can’t believe it’s already almost September. But since it is, I’d thought I’d give an update on what’s been going on writing-wise, because there is stuff.

Good News

I got some good news a couple weeks ago—Uglier got a starred review from Kirkus Reviews. It’s such a nice review, and you can see it here. I’m pretty proud of this book and although it’s slow going right now, Ugliest is coming along.

A List

There’s a somewhat new book site that’s kind of an alternative to Goodreads called Shepherd, which also works with authors more closely than Goodreads. They have lots of book-related content and invite authors to create lists on a theme where they recommend a handful of books. You can also browse books based on various filters and see what authors have said when they’ve recommended a book. It’s actually a pretty cool site and it’s growing. I created a list called “The best books that remind us that nonbinary people are human, too.”

Podcasts

A few weeks back, I was on the podcast Beyond the Pen with Maccabee Griffin. He was really nice to talk to and also very understanding when I missed the first recording we had scheduled because I got the time zone wrong (something I rarely do, fortunately). He rescheduled and we talked. You can find the podcast here.

I was also on another podcast called The Bookshelf Odyssey with Art a few months ago, which can be found here. Art is also nice and it was a good conversation.

These were both fun to do, even though it should have been a little intimidating, but talking about my books is not too difficult.

Also, also, I should mention that both these podcasts are really interesting if you like digging into writers’ thoughts about their books, themselves, the world around them, and on an on. So definitely check out their other episodes.

A Final Thought

I should hopefully be able to get back to posting reviews here like I used to, since I’m reading more now. We’ll see if it happens, but I hope so.

Small Celebrations

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Writing

I should have posted about this earlier, but I clearly didn’t. I’ve just been feeling a little overly busy lately. Uglier was released into the world on August 1st. Ra ra. I’m excited to have it out there and I’m proud of how far Nic comes in this book. I’ll be doing a book tour with it soon, so you might see it on social media. I’m actively working on the next book in the series, and this is going to be quite a story.

Find purchase options for Uglier here. It and my other books (except Finding Frances) are on sale for 99 cents through August.

Reading

The other thing I’m celebrating is the apparent end of that horrible reading slump I’d been in for like two years. I’ve been reading a lot lately and finally genuinely enjoying reading lots of pages in one sitting. During the slump, I’d be done after a chapter. But now I’m reading again, and it feels great.

In the YA space, I just finished Pet (by Akwaeke Emezi) Friday night and recently finished The Brilliant Death by Amy Rose Capetta and Lizard Radio by Pat Schmitz. Maybe I’ll start making real progress on my TBR shelves. I’ve also been reading a lot of nonfiction, which I’m enjoying, too. It’s just so nice for the thing that brought me joy for so long and then just stopped, is back to making me happy.

June 2023 Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

The last few weeks have been good for me as both a writer and a reader.

Uglier

I sent my final draft of Uglier to my line editor. She won’t start working on it for a couple weeks, but I’m still on track to release it August 1.

A Reading Slump

This of course makes me happy, but one other things has happened that makes me even happier: my reading slump seems to have ended. For those of you who know me at all, you know I’ve always been a big reader. Easily 100 books a year, basically two books a week. I’ve always been a mostly fiction reader, but usually I’m reading a couple of other nonfiction books, just more slowly. But mid-2021, I fell into a reading slump. It was awful—I’d want to read, but then I’d read about 10 pages, and feel overwhelmed. So I did still read, but not every night and obviously not very much at a time. It’s just terrible to not be able to enjoy something you know you should enjoy.

The End of a Reading Slump

But lately, I’ve started tracking what I am reading as part of my efforts to find content for BookTok, and after reading This Poison Heart and This Wicked Fate a few weeks back, my reading has picked up again. I am reading a lot of books at once, and some I’m just reading slowly and I’ll finish eventually. But as a point of reference, last week I read from 16 books and finished 6 and the week before, I read from 14 and finished 4. To be fair, some of the books I’m reading are short Spanish beginner readers, but still. Some of them were full-length books.

A Chart!

As you might have just gathered, if you didn’t already know, I’m a data nerd. I have kept a spreadsheet of all the books I’ve purchased and read since 2011. So I’m going to share a chart I made of my reading over the last ten years.

Although there have been a few months with an unusual number read, it’s pretty obvious that my numbers fell dramatically in 2021 and only really picked up in the last month. The more recent high values have been on the graphic novels I’ve gone on binges with. That’s what happened in October 2022. And then in December, I spent half the month traveling, so I read a lot on the bus. Basically I didn’t consider the slump over—I was getting better, but not all the way there. I was still struggling to enjoy reading. But now, it’s different. I’m only one week into June, so I’m sure I’ll get through a lot.

And Bringing It All Back

So it’s nice to be enjoying reading again. Now I just need to get other people reading my books so they can enjoy reading them.

April 2023 Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

I’ve been really busy and struggling to keep up with everything, so it’s been a while since I posted. But everything’s moving along nicely right now.

Uglier will be released August 1st. I have lined up several beta readers for it, and it’s out for round one right now. I’ll be sending out round two in early May, hopefully with changes based on feedback from some of the round one readers. I’m getting this to my editor in mid-June. I’ve got the cover ready, and I’m including it at the bottom of the post. I’m also planning to do some art to include in the book, which is a little intimidating because in the book, Nic is a very skilled artist, and I’m … not (yet). So hopefully mine will be good enough to include.

I’m also happy to report that I am in the planning stages of Ugliest, and I’ve mapped out the first half of the book already, in the last week or so. I can promise this one will be exciting and it deals with some real world problems and I think you will like it.

Here’s the Uglier cover:

Uglier book cover

The Spark Award and a Personal Announcement

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I had a pretty exciting thing happen this past week. I actually found out on Friday the 13th, which was a good day also because I finally mapped out the rest of UGLIER, something I had been struggling with for months. But the best part was the email I got from SCBWI saying Ugly was the Honor book for the Spark Award in the Books for Older Readers category. They announced it this past Wednesday.

!!!!

For your edification, here is the Ugly cover:

Ugly book cover

SCBWI is the Society for Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, and most people in the world of children’s publishing are members or interact with it to some degree. They give the annual Spark Award for non-traditionally published books, for either younger readers (board books through chapter books) and older readers (middle grade and young adult). There is always a winner, who receives $1000, but they also have the option of also naming an Honor book (optional in that they don’t always do this), so it’s basically second place or runner-up. No money for that one, but it’s still an amazing honor given that there are hundreds of entries of middle grade and YA books (fiction and nonfiction).

Those of you who know me will not be surprised that my brain went, “Well, you know they only picked it is because it’s LGBTQ-themed.” Fortunately, my brain then went, “You idiot, there’s no way yours was the only LGBTQ-themed book entered.” So then I felt good again.

Validated and Feelings

One side effect of this win is that it made me feel validated. I’ve felt like a fraud since writing Ugly because I know people would look at me and say that it couldn’t be authentic because I am not personally nonbinary, or out as gender nonconforming, or using they/them pronouns. Of course, I’ve been thinking about all that since writing it—in fact, when I applied for my MFA, I put my gender as gender nonconforming. Ugly was such a personal story and I really felt the process that Nic went through in exploring her gender because in writing the book, I went through the exact same exploration she did.

I’ve said since then that if I were young, like a teen or in my twenties, it would be a no-brainer—I’d come out as nonbinary. But as someone in my forties, it wasn’t so obvious. There are a lot of considerations and it would impact a lot of areas of my life. It would be difficult for my family and friends (even though I knew they would all be supportive). I’d have to decide if I should come out at work, and that would likely be awkward. It just sounded sort of exhausting—I’d be constantly correcting people. And one thing I’ve learned from reading LGBTQ books is that I would also be constantly coming out, basically every time I met new people and groups. This made me feel tired. So I never did anything about it.

A Real Fraud

But that made me feel like a fraud. One time, an agent responded to a query on Ugly with the question, “Is this Own Voices?” I answered that it was complicated, and I explained that I was not out as gender nonconforming or nonbinary because of my age, but that Ugly was still as authentic as a story could be. She didn’t respond. So I knew for sure that my book would not be respected in the publishing world or the LGBTQ community. And it was frustrating because Ugly was straight from the heart and incredibly realistic. Also, the Own Voices idea always frustrated me because it was itself a binary concept (which I think is one of the reasons many have moved away from using it). Real life is much more gray.

Back to the present. Even though the Spark judges didn’t know how I identified, they obviously felt like the story was authentic and believable, and that felt good to me. For some reason, this recognition emboldened me to finally make the leap.

Coming Out

I have decided that I am gender nonconforming and have started using they/them pronouns. I’ve already come out in some spaces and will be continuing to do that. I’m honestly not entirely sure exactly what this means. Although the terms ”nonbinary” and ”gender nonconforming“ are often used interchangeably, to me they are two different things, and I am still trying to figure out which term best fits me.

But however that ends up shaking out, they/them pronouns feel the most accurate. So I will be using these going forward.

PNWA Conference 2022

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I’d been looking forward to the first in-person writing conference since 2019, which finally happened last weekend. I’ve been going to PNWA’s conference for years and during the pandemic they and everyone else switched to online. Although that is very logical, I have gotten to the point where I am so, so sick of online conferences. I went to eight or so. So it was great to be back and to see people I hadn’t seen in a while, and just generally be amongst writers. My friends and I hung out and compared sessions like we used to do.

New People

I also met a few new people, including some agents I was able to spend a bit of time talking to. One of them even encouraged me to reach out about Ugly and my nonfiction project. I’ve emailed her but haven’t heard back yet, but I know she’s incredibly busy, so it probably doesn’t mean anything after just a week. Anyone who’s followed my blog will know I’m not holding my breath at this point, but I am not an idiot and am not going to pass up a possible opportunity. I have no idea what might come of it. 

Writing Conference Fatigue

One additional thing I realized while I was at the conference was that I am also really burnt out on workshops. I napped through several (in my room, don't worry) and went to a few that underwhelmed me, and I don’t think the problem was the sessions—I think I may have just hit my limit of writing workshops needed in my lifetime. 

A Win (for Someone Else, But Still)

One cool that happened is that my fellow YA-writer and friend Stacia Leigh won first place in the contest’s short story category. This was a(n adult) story she wrote about her father’s death, where he experienced some dementia at the end and she imagined what that might be like. I critiqued it I think twice and I already knew it was good, but it was cool that it won. She’s finaled I think seven other times and never made it in the top three before, so this was cool. 

Book Signing Event

Stacia and I also had a table at the book signing they had Friday night. There weren’t that many indie authors—I heard there were about twenty, but it didn’t look like that in the room to me, so I don’t know. But we had the best table by far:

PNWA 2022 full table

Stacia’s is on the left side and her setup is definitely better than mine, but I think mine looks good, too. (Stacia’s also an artist and is way more into crafts than me, so this is more in her wheelhouse than mine.) Here’s a closeup of my side:

PNWA 2022 my side of the table

I recently bought a new display for the books that staggers them vertically, so that will look better. It’s from Clear Solutions. I'm considering painting the wood parts blue or a bluish green, since that's sort of the theme of my display. But here's what it looks like: 

Book display shelf

Anyway, things went pretty much like I expected—virtually no sales for me (two to friends). No one signed up for my mailing list or entered my giveaway. Some people did take candy. Stacia did run into someone she knows from her daughters’ school who she didn’t know was also a writer, and this person bought all five of her books, so that was nice. My own book-purchasing friends paid in cash, but Stacia’s used my Square reader (we had set this up in advance) so now I know this works. 

More Events?

One other thing that came of the weekend is that I met a guy who runs a group called the Author Event Network, which I ended up joining. He works with local events to get tables/tents for the members of the group. The idea is that it’s better for each author when there are other authors around, and I think he can also get better rates since he’s representing multiple people (I’m not sure about this, however).

The annual fee is relatively low, and then you just pay a relatively small fee for any events you actually attend. He only started this in December 2021, and he’s planning on keeping the number of members limited to make sure there are good opportunities for everyone. The remaining events this year are all pretty far from me (out on the Olympic peninsula), but I think I’m still going to try to make at least one to try things out. He says he really does well at these events. I haven’t really tried this, but I know other authors find events worth going to, so I figure I should give it a try. Even if I did decide to quiet quit. 🤷

Kirkus Round 2

Unrelated to PNWA, I also broke my quiet quitting decision by paying for an Kirkus author profile on their website (where it will remain permanently so I can always point to it). They said I could talk about more than Finding Frances (the starred review for that is what inspired them to contact me because there’s a list of recommendations you can be added to if you buy some type of ad), so I also mentioned Ugly.

A journalist interviewed me this past Thursday for it, which was kind of an odd experience. I was reminded of how weird and awkward I am. The profile is going to run in November, and I paid for a package that includes ads in the print magazine on November 1st and 15th, as well. Hopefully this will do better than my last ads did. This one has both Finding Frances and Ugly in the ad. 

In Summary

That’s pretty much where things are right now. Full steam ahead, also known as puttering along. 

 

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Quiet Quitting

Posted on by kellyvincent

I’ve decided to change things a bit with my fiction writing. It doesn’t make sense to keep putting my heart, soul, and pocket book so energetically into my fiction writing. So I’m quiet quitting. 

That doesn’t mean I’m not writing anymore, but it does means things are going to be different. 

A Great Idea

Thursday I went to office hours for a BookTok class, and they gave me some great ideas to try on TikTok. One of them was to look in the Kindle version of my books and find all the text that had been highlighted by readers in order to quote them in videos (overlayed over flipping pages). This is really a good idea, because while some of what gets highlighted is mundane, I also see stuff that is more interesting and profound show up. So I went and bought all of my YA books on Kindle. And I soon discovered that not a single person has highlighted anything in any of my books, including the one that came out in 2020.

This just says FAIL. It doesn’t matter that my first book won some small awards and the next two also did well in a national contest. It doesn’t matter that there are a handful of people who really believe in my work and me as a writer. Ten people does not make a writing career. Virtually no one reads my books, no one follows me or interacts with my posts on social media, and no one reads my blog posts. It’s hard to deny that I have completely failed as a writer. 

The Effort

At the beginning of my journey, I took lots of classes on writing as a craft, and even went and got the MFA. All that was great, and I improved dramatically. I know I am a good writer. But I’m not quite good enough for the publishing industry, and there is no way for me to get there without help from someone in that industry, but I have been denied access to those people (300 agent and editor rejections sends a clear message). I’m simply not good enough for real traditional publishing, despite having done everything you’re supposed to do to get there, and promises that if I just “keep trying” it’ll definitely happen. This from people who write “inspirational” posts about how they queried 35 agents before FINALLY landing one. Puke. 

Trying to Not Feel Sorry for Myself

Faced with this rejection reality last year, and a comment from my book coach that my work wasn’t quite publishable (this was a surprise to me—I thought what we’d been doing the whole time was making my work publishable, not just throwing my money away), I got depressed and even somewhat lost the ability to enjoy reading (which was probably the worst part). So earlier this year, I decided that instead of feeling sorry for myself, I’d just go ahead and put my work out there rather than sit on it forever, even though I knew they weren’t going to be the best books they could be if I’d been able to find a major publisher. I thought that I’d just need to focus on marketing. Self-published authors obviously have full responsibility for their own sales. 

Social Media

I threw myself into learning about marketing and especially learning how to step out of my comfort zone, as self-promotion is very unnatural for me. I did everything I could, even going all-in on TikTok/BookTok, which in retrospect is kind of crazy—I’m someone who generally won’t even have my picture taken, and here I am getting on camera several times a week. But I didn’t take off on TikTok, where I cap out at about 230 views on every video, with very little interaction, despite several months of posting nearly daily and interacting with other BookTokers (again, way outside my comfort zone, but I did it anyway).

On Twitter, I’ve been trying to post regular content three times a week, and there is literally only one person who ever likes my tweets (an old friend). On Instagram, where I also try to post three times a week, I usually get five to fifteen likes, mostly from people I know in real life. So my social media "strategy" is obviously not working. 

Blogging

My blogs are even worse. I made my first post on this blog in January of 2017 because I knew you were supposed to have a platform to be taken seriously by the industry, especially agents, and blogging seemed the least intimidating way to start. “Platform” was the buzzword. Even though my post views have always been in the low doubt digits (sometimes in the single digits, actually), I kept going because I believed that eventually I could turn the tide, and then I’d have all this content. For many of those years, I managed to post something every single week.

I’ve tried different things to pull in readers, with no success. I also have a blog for my romance pen name, and I actually get more views on there even though I almost never post. I have another blog about my art that I get similarly low views on. My blog efforts are obviously not working either. 

Forging Ahead

With all this mounting evidence that for whatever reason, I can’t make myself a successful writer (the most obvious reason is that maybe I’m just a bad writer, but I really don’t think that’s it), I thought I would give it one more full-effort shot and actually pay an expensive publicist for help with my release of Ugly in June. Although it’s hard to definitively quantify the results of that because a lot of it involves longer-term impact, it seems to have been a total bust (especially considering how much I spent—many thousands of dollars). I’ve made about twice as much on Always the New Girl, released four weeks before, than I have on Ugly. But the money is laughably low so it doesn’t really matter much, anyway. 

Income

Since my first book was released 2.5 years ago, I have made less than $550 on book royalties. Contrast this with how much I’ve spent on writing, and it’s clear that this is an irrational pursuit. Since 2018 alone, I’ve spent nearly $89,000 on writing related expenses, from tuition, to editors, to software. Last month I sold a total of ten copies of my five self-published books, totalling $19.80 in royalties. Here’s a chart showing lifetime cumulative sales for all my books:

Chart showing cumulative royalties

Clearly, staying the course is completely insane. 

The Change

Last year, with all the agent rejections, I went through a bit of an existential crisis with my writing and thought I might give it up. But I didn’t seem to be able to stop. Then, when I hired the publicist this year, I decided that if this doesn’t work, I should seriously evaluate whether I should keep going. It didn’t work. So as I concluded above, I shouldn’t keep going as is, but as I learned last year, I probably can’t just quit. So I am going to keep writing fiction, just at a much lower energy level. 

I am continuing to work on Uglier, and I also have a romance I’ve just sent to my editor and will do final edits on it, but that’s all I’m going to do. I’m considering submitting the romance to a publisher that does offer an advance, but I’m not decided on that. If not, I’ll publish in November. When Uglier is ready, I’ll send it to the line editor and then publish it, and then I’ll figure out if I should work on the third book in that series or the third romance, or something else. I still have a draft of Sadie Speaks floating around somewhere. It needs a full rewrite, but the story is pretty solid. 

What’s Different

But I’m not going to keep making pointless social media and blog posts, I’m not going to constantly look for small and cheap promotional opportunities, I’m not going to enter any more contests, I’m not going to do any more freebies, and I’m not going to check my sales every day. I’m basically dialing back the energy. I’ll stop setting myself up for failure after failure, and just deal with the one long-term failure of low sales. 

For now, I’ll be giving more attention to the nonfiction and the picture book writing and illustration. I think both may be a direction I could still have some success with. I don’t “believe it with all my heart” or anything stupidly naive again, but there is a nonnegative chance. The only way I can find out is by trying. I have a great idea for a nonfiction book for teen and college students that I’ve started working on (plus I’m working on short nonfiction for adults for real magazines). I’m also working more on my art (I actually decided to withdraw from the degree program I was in, so I have more time to focus on what I want) and will soon be starting to work on sketches for the two picture book manuscripts I have ready. 

Future State

So I don’t know where things will end up, but I do know I will never be a YA novelist published by a major publisher. I’ll keep putting my work out there, but I’ll always know it isn’t as good as it could be. And that is still hard for me to accept, but there you go. 

So if you are one of the handful of people who really like my work, thank you and don’t worry—there will still be more of it. Uglier is actually coming along quite nicely right now. You will love what Nic has done with herself and a new character just barged into the story, and she’s going to be fun.

Meet Fea!

Image posted on by kellyvincent

New Book Release

I’ve just released another book this past Wednesday: Fea, the Spanish translation of Ugly. Here’s the cover:

Fea book cover

Obviously it’s just the Ugly cover with the carving swapped out and the tagline at the bottom translated (and way longer than the English version). 

The book is available pretty much everywhere, like my others (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Apple, Google Play, and Kobo, and you can order it at your local indie shop). See my landing page for links to all the places you can buy it and the book page here for more details.

Translation Experiment

This translation thing is kind of an experiment. Several writers I know do get translations of their books and they actually seem reasonably well with no marketing. (Nobody knows how to market in a foreign language they don’t speak.) One writer said people just find them. I think this makes sense because the problem of discoverability that I’ve been dealing with is partially a result of the explosion in self-publishing—which while not exclusively in English books, is predominantly English work. Other languages aren’t overloaded with so many books to choose from.

So the chance of coming up in a search that someone is making on Amazon or wherever is simply much higher. I decided to start with Ugly because of the timeliness of the subject matter. Although it’s probably much more of a current event in the U.S., I am sure that some of the other progressive places in Latin America (plus Spain) have people questioning their gender identities and exploring those ideas. I suspect there aren’t very many such books out there, so I’m curious to see what happens. 

Finding a Spanish Translator

Finding a translator was interesting. First, I needed a literary translator, not someone used to doing marketing copy. When I started searching for translators, most do business work and the first literary ones were so expensive—like in the range of $7000 for my 90,000 word (about 400 page) book. I could not justify that kind of expense. After some more searching, I decided to try Upwork. I put together a project and a max budget and got a lot of bids right at my max budget, naturally. But then I got one from a translator living in Bolivia that was hugely lower than my max.

Too Good to Be True

At first I thought a couple things: this was probably too good to be true, and if it is legit it might not even be ethical. I thought about the ethical aspect and decided that because cost of living is much lower in Bolivia, it makes sense that she doesn’t need as much money to make the project worth her time, which is obviously different for people living in the U.S. or other expensive countries. She set her rate. So I think it’s okay. 

Too Good to Be True?

But I still wondered if it was too good to be true. So I asked her to translate the first few chapters, slightly less than 10% of the book, and I’d pay her 10% of the fee and then have a couple people look at it to make sure it’s a good translation of the book in terms of accuracy and tone. My friend Gwen was willing to read it. And in a stroke of luck for me, my house cleaner had once seen some of my books lying around and asked if I was a writer. It turns out that her son is a writer too, and by chance he also is transgender, which made my book an even better fit. She asked him if he’d be willing to read the sample, and he agreed. So that was great. 

It's All Good

Both of them said it was a good translation. They noted that it was a little more formal in Spanish, but that that was probably just the nature of the language, which makes sense to me. Like there’s a point where someone calls Nic a “lesbo” and that was simply translated as “lesbiana,” which is the same as “lesbian” would be translated. This formality is also a result of the fact that she translated into what is called Neutral Latin American Spanish, so we avoided country-specific words (which of course also means there’s less slang, because so much of slang is country-specific, in any language). But anyway, she ended up doing the whole book and now it’s out in the world. 

What About Italian?

Another possibility is Italian. Supposedly that market is desperate for more books. I have a good Italian friend from my grad school days who works as an English to Italian translator, so I asked her if she’d be interested in translating my book. She doesn’t do literary translation, but has a friend who does. So we’re going back and forth about that. Her rate is much higher (it’s actually in line with what my original budget was for the Upwork project), but this is obviously to be expected because Italy’s much more expensive than Bolivia. But it’s still a decent rate that is be worth trying. I’ve told her I can’t do it now but if she’s still willing to do it in January, I’d be able to do it then. This isn’t finalized, but I’m guessing it will go ahead, so I’m really curious to see how this goes. 

Uglier

And during all of this, I’m working on the sequel to Ugly, which is tentatively called Uglier. If the translations do well, I’ll need to get Uglier done, as well. So I’m really curious how all this is going to go. 

June 2022 Royalties Update

Posted on by kellyvincent

So in the past six weeks, I’ve released three self-published books and it’s been really interesting. I know a lot of people really don’t have any idea how many books writers really sell. It’s kind of like money and some people are probably reticent to speak about it. But I don’t really care, so I’m going to talk numbers a bit, because things have been really interesting with these releases (also the numbers are so low it doesn’t matter). 

First, for a reference point: Finding Frances. This book was published by The Wild Rose Press so my numbers come from them. They don’t get instantaneous records of sales and instead they come in in batches. With the exception of copies I bought directly from my publisher, I’ve made just under $100 in royalties over the lifetime of the book (over two years). Note that that does include royalties on copies of the books that I’ve purchased on Amazon myself (I’ve done this a few times, maybe 10-15 copies). In contrast, I made close to $150 in May alone from sales of Always the New Girl (Kindle and paperback). 

Charts

Because I am a nerd, I made a chart showing total royalties over time and another one just showing individual book royalties over time. The first is going to be far more interesting after another couple months go by because right now you can only see Finding Frances royalties. (Though it’s somewhat interesting since you can see how flat it is—they’re coming in pennies at a time.) This is through May, so it technically includes Always the New Girl numbers but not Ugly numbers. 

chart showing total royalties over time

There seems to be a tiny uptick in Finding Frances sales in April and May—this is just coincidence because of the delay in reporting, so it can’t be related to my new releases coming out. But if I see growth over the next few months, I may be able to attribute it to the exposure with the new ones. This next chart shows monthly royalties over time. 

Chart showing royalties over time

You can see quite a gap between July and December of last year—I literally did not sell a single copy of Finding Frances between August and November 2021. Fun times. You can also kind of see Always the New Girl and Ugly presale numbers on the far right of the chart—that blue dot in the upper right is Always the New Girl, and the green dot just above the yellow line is the the 2 copies of Ugly I sold in May. 

Ongoing Sales

Sales have continued on Always the New Girl in June and sales for Ugly have also been surprisingly good (again, for me). As of June 17th, I’ve sold 13 ebooks of Always the New Girl, 4 of Ugly, and 1 of Binding Off, and in paperback I’ve sold 4 of Always the New Girl and 23 of Ugly. These are not numbers that “real” authors would feel anything about (except shame), but for me they are amazing. Going four months without selling a single copy sets your standards pretty low, but I’m actually selling books. More than one a day. Of course I am curious what will happen over the long term, but I’m feeling good that at least I’m off to a good start. 

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Some Early Writing

Posted on by kellyvincent

I didn’t really start taking writing seriously until 2013, but I’ve always enjoyed writing and would often do writing projects, all the way back to elementary school. My mom’s cleaning out her closet and stumbling across stuff from when my brother and I were kids, including some of my old writing. Middle school was a really terrible time for me, with friends betraying me and other crap, and one of the things I did to cope was to write for the school’s monthly newsletter. The way we worked back then (it was still the 1980s, after all), was I would handwrite it and turn it in so someone could type it up in newsletter format, and then they’d photocopy it and distribute. 

The Horoscope Debacle

I wrote a horoscope column every month and occasionally did other things. I did the horoscope because I thought astrology was stupid and illogical and I was actually mocking it by making crap up rather than pretending to consult the charts. Things like “Your parents have a party and Aerosmith plays at it.” Not super clever. But whatever. Being me and 13, I wasn’t always exactly on time with my column. One month I was a little late, but got it submitted at the last minute.

The next week, the woman who ran the newsletter was stressed out when she saw me, and I learned that the minister at the church across from the school had complained about my horoscope column so they decided to stop running it. But because I was late, they thought I wasn’t going to submit it at all, so it ran that month even though the asshole church dude told them not to. It still annoys the crap out of me. I was mocking it, you dipshit. It reminds me of when people get upset about articles from The Onion because they think they’re real. Idiots. 

I was so annoyed back then, but I was determined to figure something out. I knew I just needed something that split students up into a reasonable number of groups, 10-ish or so. We all had a homeroom, and while I don’t remember at all how those worked, I do remember I convinced the newsletter lady to let me run forecasts based on your homeroom. So that’s what I did. If you were in Mrs. Smith’s homeroom, you were going to have a surprise visit from a long-lost relative, for instance. So I got to stick it to the minister guy. Stay in your lane, jerk.

But anyway.

Unintentional Subversion

My favorite thing that came out of that body of writing is a memorable article called “Dogs of All Kinds.” Remember that somebody else typed this up. This is important, as even then I was pretty good with language and was careful. I’m just going to share an image of the article. Check out the first sentence of the third paragraph.

Dogs of All Kinds article
Some early subversive writing

Why yes, I suppose some people do. My friend concluded that I was subversive even back then. I think it’s so funny. 

But you can also see that I hadn’t yet been converted into a cat person at that point. Things have changed.

When Lightning Strikes Twice, and It’s the Good Kind

Posted on by kellyvincent

I am not sure how this happened, but I finally had a stroke of luck this past month not once, but twice. If you are familiar with BookBub, you will know it’s popular among ebook lovers. It features books that are on sale (or normally priced low) in a daily email. Writers don’t sell through them, as they just link to the various stores where readers can download their books, but these emails go out to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. You can pay for ads with them, but the dream is to get a Featured Deal or one of their other features. I’ve applied for a Featured Deal for Finding Frances about six times and been turned down each time. 

BookBub also has a feature called New Release for Less, which obviously applies to new releases only, and the max price is $4.99. I applied for Finding Frances back in the day, and it didn’t get selected. I dutifully applied for one with both Always the New Girl and Ugly. To my amazement, they actually selected Always the New Girl for one. I was shocked. It goes out to 810,000 subscribers and only costs $110. I was obviously really happy about this, and mine is scheduled for this coming Tuesday, May 24th, two weeks after release. So I thought that was my good luck for the moment, and I was happy that one had been selected since I had hired the publicist for Ugly, so both books would be getting a boost. Then a couple weeks later I was even more shocked when BookBub also selected Ugly for the new release feature. I mean, this kind of massive good luck hardly ever happens to me. Ugly releases on June 7th and the BookBub feature is running on June 21st. So I’m really curious to see what kind of impact this has on my sales. And of course I’m also excited for the upcoming Ugly release because I have the publicist. 

So I had been not really working on any YA fiction at the moment, and focusing on trying to get these two adult romances out that I’ve had on my computer for a while and work on the YA nonfiction book. But my friend pointed out that with the issues dealt with in Ugly and all the awful anti-transgender/anti-queer laws horrible states are passing right now, it might make sense to start working on the sequel to Ugly. I have the basic story for that one, as well as ideas for two more after, so I think she is right. I’m finishing the first romance first (I’m a couple weeks away from having that ready for my editor), but then I’m diving into the sequel for Ugly. It will be the first new writing I’ve done in YA for a while, so it’s going to be a bumpy ride in the beginning. But I'm sure I'll get into the swing of things quickly enough. 

 

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Thick Skin Needed: Book Reviews and the Author

Posted on by kellyvincent

A lot of writers, when they’re first starting out, are really sensitive and often afraid for anyone to read their work at all. They eventually get braver, and anyone serious about it will develop thick skin, because you pretty much have to if you want to improve as a writer. I think critique is probably the most important thing for a writer to develop their skills. You have to learn how to convey what’s actually in your head, and only other people can tell you if you’ve accomplished that. The quality of the critique definitely matters, so it’s important to find people that are roughly at your level (or a little better), so you can all grow together while giving each other relevant and not-too-advanced critique (which isn’t helpful). The thing about critique is that you always submit your work hoping that they’re going to turn around and say, “This is perfect. Don’t change anything.” This never happens with a good critique group (if it does, find a new group, because they’re not doing their job). So you have to get used to people telling you things you’re doing that don’t work, and so on. The only caveat is they’re not allowed to be mean about it. Most of the critique partners I have been with for years can take virtually anything at this point. But we’re all also nice to each other and we all know the critique is truly just trying to help. So you get that thick skin.

But reviews are another matter. It’s one thing to have your work read by a few people who know you and your work, and a totally different thing to have strangers read the work you poured your heart into. Because here’s the thing about strangers: some of them are mean. Some people actually feel obligated to “tell the world” about a book they don’t like. Which is stupid because the fact that you, just one person, didn’t like a book says nothing about that book. It’s all about the numbers. Any book that has a lot of ratings is going to have a handful of ones and twos even if the average is over four. Conventional author wisdom is that you shouldn’t read your reviews, especially those by randos on Amazon and Goodreads. If you do decide to do this, you’d better have that thick skin in place because there’s going to be some pain. Reviews by the major review sites like Kirkus and Publishers Weekly are kind of another matter since these are by professional reviewers, so we sort of value their opinions more. However, it is still true that one person’s reaction to your book does not indicate how everyone else’s reactions will go. 

As a case in point, I’m going to talk about my experience with my book Always the New Girl, releasing on Tuesday. I entered this book as an unpublished manuscript in the 2021 BookLife Prize (BookLife is an arm of Publishers Weekly focused on indie books). They take self and unpublished books. It ended up being a quarter-finalist in that contest, getting a perfect 10/10 score. I’m going to share the review here, as it’s really good. 

But first I’m going to explain a little about the book in case you don’t know it. It’s a little odd, and I always planned to self-publish it and never even tried to sell it because of its oddness. The book came about only because of something one of my writing instructors told me. I had written this short story based on a scene I had removed from Finding Frances when a critique partner (wisely) posed the question of whether it was really needed in that book. It definitely was not. So I created a new character and put her in the situation I’d originally had Retta in, and ran with it. It turned into a revenge story and I liked it a lot. My instructor casually suggested I write several more stories about this character. At first I didn’t think much about it, but then I thought of several other stories I could tell about Sarah. So there were seven stories I ended up with, one while she’s in eighth grade, the others in her last two years of high school. The stories were all pretty long (the eighth grade book is 20,000 words, or over 70 pages). I struggled with how to present this. A collection of short stories? A novel? I decided to do it as a novel in parts. So I assumed the reader read them all in order (short stories would ideally fully stand on their own) and structured it that way. My goal was that each part would stand on its own plot-wise, but that the overall book would have a clear character arc. Because of the nature of it, not all the characters were there throughout. Some important characters disappear and others don’t show up until later, which is a no-no in a typical novel. There are varying time jumps between the parts, and the eighth grade story was pulled out as a prequel. So the book I submitted to the contest and Kirkus started with the original story, the revenge one. And I think it works. And it clearly did for the BookLife Prize reviewer. Here’s what they said (this also published on their site here):

Plot: This plot delves into serious bullying and other grave social issues that can impact teens, and it accurately portrays the extraordinary importance of social media in kids’ lives.

Prose/Style: Vincent writes convincing teenage dialogue with all of the meanness and profanity that can surface at that age. Vincent’s style is spare and to the point, giving just enough detail for to engage the reader’s interest and imagination.

Originality: Vincent’s second YA novel, Always the New Girl, started out as a series of short stories, each of which is well thought out and fully developed. Vincent has woven them together masterfully.

Character Development/Execution: With parents who can be described as negligent at best, Sarah is out of necessity a fiercely independent young woman trying to find her way in the world with very little adult support, but she is able to make good choices for herself and forge a future that should turn out well. Vincent depicts Sarah as an utterly believable character whom one cannot help but respect.

Blurb: Always the New Girl is a carefully considered and executed coming-of-age story about a resourceful young woman who matures from a somewhat rebellious high school junior into a successful senior on her way to college, all with very little help from the adults in her life, but a lot of help from her friends.

So that made me feel great, when I got that back and then found out it was a quarter-finalist. It stalled out there, as the reader for those books probably just didn’t feel the same about it. Perhaps they felt like the Kirkus reviewer did, like it was a hot mess. I can’t directly quote the Kirkus review here because I opted to not publish it. But I can summarize their main issues, which I do here:

Unsatisfactory resolution: There wasn’t a good resolution at the end

Fractured time

Rushed pacing: Pacing feels rushed in each of the parts, like they were written separately and just crammed together

A disjointed story: The various threads never come together 

Unnatural character change: Sarah’s changes in her interests seem to be because of the narrative, not a natural thing

Incomplete and weak characterization: Characters are interesting when first introduced, but are gone before they’re developed enough

Inauthentic teen culture

Some of these really do surprise me, like the resolution issue. I really disagree—I think the resolution is solid. There is a storyline with her mom that isn’t resolved, but it’s intentional because that’s life—it’s not always neat and tidy. But Sarah herself is on a clear path at the very end, which came across in the BookLife Prize review. The next two are clearly related to the structure. The BookLife reader totally got it—they went along with the short story concept—but the Kirkus reviewer didn’t seem to find this acceptable in a “novel.”  It cracks me up that the BookLife reader said I’d woven them together “masterfully” and the Kirkus reviewer thought they were thrown together haphazardly. I mean, man, is this subjective. It’s also funny that the BookLife reader specifically called out Sarah’s authenticity and the Kirkus reviewer thought her growth was unnatural. I also am surprised at the fact that the Kirkus reviews thought the teen culture I wrote about was unrealistic. It is true that I don’t have a lot of experience with actual teens today. But I read tons of YA, so I know teen culture as it’s represented in YA fiction, which is what I’m writing. So yeah. I think I’m good. But I wondered if the reviewer isn’t widely read in YA. I have no idea how they assign books. 

So that was an unfortunate waste of $375. Oh, well. At least it was on sale. Doesn’t mean I won’t try again. Finding Frances got a star, after all (I think only about 10% get them) and the Ugly one was mostly positive. Even my romance got an overall decent review. I just have to move on and do whatever I am going to be doing (once I figure that out).