Nerdology 101: Bound & Bottled

Hiiii! Welcome back to Nerdology 101. I’m Maria Levato—indie romantasy author, anime nerd, kinda gamer, mythology and history freak, and all around menace. We’re here today with our 32nd post to discuss my recent exploits (Nope! Not that kind. These ones are more author-y, lmao). Yesterday, I attended Bound & Bottled, a bookish event in Vienna, Maryland, as an author. Copies of my newest book, The Fate of Angels and Demons, filled my table at this fabulous affair and I’m here to give you all the elicit details of how it did at it’s first live event. So, let’s get into some Nerdology.

The Stakes

First, I want to talk a little about what live events like these can mean to an indie author. Selling at events is often more effective than social media marketing for those of us that are masters of the algorithms—not that live pitching your book to readers is easier, but it is a face-to-face interaction that gives you opportunities to connect that may not work as well on socials. So, these live events can be a source of income and outreach that helps us build community more effectively. For that reason, I’m grateful to everyone who came out last night. Whether you bought my book or not, you’re awesome! I’m sure your support made a huge difference to any authors or vendors you did buy from.

The Outcomes

For me, last night was great. I brought 4 special editions and 19 paperbacks with me to the events for a total of 23 copies. One of the special editions I had already planned to give to an influencer who was attending the event at no cost because she had filled out my Influencer Request Form. It’s a type of ongoing marketing program I have for The Fate of Angels and Demons where each month I give out 2-3 free copies of my special edition to influencers so they can read, post, review, and so on (that has had a wonderfully high return so far, an overwhelming majority of the influencers who have requested have also followed through on posting about the book). So, that brings out total to 22 copies, 19 paperback and 3 special editions. Of those 3 special editions, none of them went. For the paperbacks, 4 did, which means about 21% of my paperback stock sold and 18% of my total stock did. Those aren’t bad numbers. It’s enough that it covered my registration for the event, gas, the food I had while I was there, and left me a few dollars—so I’m not complaining.

Here’s the AWESOME part, though. One of those 4 paperbacks I sold was bought by a bookstore owner who also attended the event as a vendor. She wanted to consider it for the shelves at her store. She has placed an order for her store, adding another 5 sales to the overall number of sales related to this event (if not actually at it) and making the total 9 sales and about 40% of my stock. Needless to say, that alone makes this event a huge success for me because that one sale may now have created a long-term partnership that leads to more sales in the future.

Another really cool thing that happened was that the author whose booth was next to mine, Sill Bihagia (you should def check out her book, Red Demon), also added sprayed edges to some of my paperbacks that match the pink ones from my special edition. While, of course, the special edition has other features like character art and a playlist, the sprayed edges are the most eye catching part of it’s external features. Having some paperbacks with them is nice. I posted that the next few paperback sales from my website (this website, STORE page) are going to come with the sprayed edges at no additional cost (Only 2 left now because some of them went to the bookstore order since the copy I originally sold her had them).

All in all, I think Bound & Bottled was well worth attending. If you’re a reader, indie author, or other human on the Eastern Shore, I definitely recommend checking out Ashley, the host of this event, and keeping an eye on her page for future ones.

Conclusion

So, that’s about that for this weeks segment of Nerdology 101. I hope you all enjoyed my little update. I’ll be sure to drop some more as things continue to progress. My next live appearance (currently scheduled, who knows if more will come up before then) is at The New Romantics Bookstore in Orlando, FL on August 29th from 12-2PM. Can’t wait to meet some readers in the area! This will be my first Flordia signing.

Of course, until then, people from anywhere in the world are welcome to stop back in. As always, the Nerdology 101 will have new segments every Friday at 3PM EST. Until then, have a nerdy week!

Nerdology 101: Writing & Social Media

Hi, loves. Welcome back to Nerdology 101. I’m Maria Levato, indie author, hostess of this here blog, anime nerd, part-time gamer, cat lady, kink guru, and all around queen of the Nerdom. This week I’m going to talk about about the ups and downs of being a writer on social media. To keep it nice and neat, I’ll just go platform by platform. So, lets get into some Nerdologyyy!

Instagram & Other Meta Socials (My Worst)

My author Instagram, @malevato6, is my oldest account. In part, I attribute that fact to why I have such a hard time growing it now. When I started it, I didn’t know much about social media marketing, so I made a few mistakes that made effective use of the platform difficult for me. For the sake of transparency, I’ll start by telling you what those mistakes were.

1. I used my personal account that I barely ever posted on prior to starting my publishing journey instead of creating a new one.

2. I didn’t change my original username to something that indicated what the page was about.

3. I didn’t post regularly when my first book, The Islands of Rune, came out. In fact, I didn’t start posting regularly until my second book, Journey to Rallem, came out. Then, of course, by the time The Fate of Angels and Demons, my most recent book came out, I had become a lot better at making quality posts and I had experimented with making talking reels.

So, obviously, there was a lot I could have done better early on that would have made growth a lot easier, but that didn’t happen so I can only talk about my experience as it is. Right now, I have 445 followers on Instagram. In the past few months, I’ve definitely seen it start to do better. It’s exciting, but nevertheless, the platform is not making it easy to recover. In fact, my average posts only reaches 20-100 people. That makes it pretty difficult to get more substantial growth. As a result, my IG is mostly stagnant and I have to fight for every follower/engagement I get much harder than should be necessary. This sort of unforgiving algorithm makes things extremely difficult for indie authors, who typically learn as they go since most of us don’t start out with a team to help us.

Just this year, I was able to hire a PA, @jazzys_books/@apenandapromise, for the first time. She focused a lot on my IG during my launch for The Fate of Angels and Demons. It was definitely a big help and got me through a barrier I’d been stuck at for a few months. If you can afford it, I definitely recommend hiring someone to help you through moments where you get stuck like that. IG, at several points, has taken up so much of my time and energy that it made it difficult for me to keep up with writing. I’ve heard other authors say the same. Hiring a PA is probably more affordable than you think and having that support there is a pretty big deal. For IG, I think it’s one of the best strategies, especially for those busy periods. A PA can do most anything for your socials except for the reels that require you to be on camera. Even for those, though, you might ask your PA to help you with editing the reel, writing a script, or finding a caption that will help it get seen.

I did also meet the cover and character artist, @sincerrio, I used for The Fate of Angels and Demons via IG. They did great work and I loved working with them. So, IG is good for finding artists if you’re looking for them, but I also feel like there’s a slew of artists on any platform that are easy enough to find if you’re looking for them.

Ultimately, I think IG is a great tool for creating community with readers, but it is also kind of set it its ways and not the most writer friendly social media platform, especially not for indies or people who tend toward the nervous side when it comes to posting reels of themselves. As always though, the readers make it worth while. I love meeting them, seeing what they’re enjoying, and having the connection I do with the few of them that do seem to be deeply engaged with my work. The same applies to other Meta-owned social media platforms.

Biggest IG Pro: Getting to vibe with readers, no matter how many or how few.

Biggest IG Con: Unforgiving of early mistakes.

Bluesky (My Best)

Bluesky has been my largest following for a while now. I started the account about a year and a half ago. My profile, @marialevato.com, has 924 followers at the moment and is the only platform on which I have more followers than following. It gets regular engagement and is overall the platform I’m doing the best on. From my experience though, it’s not a place to make sales. Regardless of the struggles I’ve had with IG, the platform is responsible for more of my sales than Bluesky, where I have more engagement and a larger following.

In my experience, Bluesky is better for connecting with other industry professionals than it is for finding readers. My editor, Robyn, is someone I connected with via Bluesky. Bluesky is also where I connected with Ann Rose, an agent from Tobias Literary Agency, and Despina Karras, the author who hosts PitchDis, both of whom I worked with on an event I put together for Authors Guild as one of the ambassadors for the Washington, D.C. chapter. So, yes, Bluesky is great for me in that aspect. Connecting with other members of the writing and publishing communities is a huge help for me and has led to some pretty awesome things.

Biggest Bluesky Pro: Meeting other industry professionals.

Biggest Bluesky Con: More difficult to connect with readers on the platform.

TikTok (My I don’t know yet cause it’s new to me)

TikTok is my newest social media account. I’ve been on it for less the 2 months. My profile, @authormarialevato, is currently sitting at 53 followers and 56 following, so I’m not off to a bad start. At least, I don’t think I am. I already have at least a handful of followers I’d consider deeply engaged. They engage with more of my content then they don’t. They’re readers too. I won’t judge how TikTok does on actually getting me sales yet since it is still so new, but I will say that I’m hopeful on that front. A already have a fair number of influencers posting about my book on the platform and tagging me. That type of early engagement might make both growth and conversion a lot higher. I can definitely say I get more reach and engagements on my posts than I do on IG. For now, that’s all I can really say about being on the platform as a writer. Hopefully, I’ll have more updates on the TikTok front soon!

Biggest Pro: More reach and engagement, more influencer collaboration.

Biggest Con: Very aggressive about pushing AI features and I’m not a fan of that, but that can be said of pretty much any major social media platform right now. I think TikTok is maybe just a tad more annoying about it than Meta or Bluesky.

Anyway, these are my thoughts on using various social media platforms as a writer. That’s about it for this weeks segment of Nerdology 101. Come back next Friday for another. Until then, have a nerdy week!

Nerdology 101: What’s Next?

Nerdy people! Welcome back to Nerdology 101. I’m Maria Levato, your hostess that LOVES to do the mostest. Quick briefing: I’m an indie author and this is my blog. I just released my 3rd book, The Fate of Angels and Demons, on April 1st. It’s part of a series of interconnected standalones. You can find the paperback and ebook at a bunch of major retailers, check linktr.ee/marialevato for that. Or go to the store page of this website for the special edition hardcover. This week, I want to talk a bit about works yet to be released so you know what’s coming next.

The Next Book in this Series

The next book in this series is called The Depths of Bloodshed and Purgatory. It will follow Lilly’s younger brother, Callian, as he faces trials all his own and finds love along the way. I’m planning to self-publish this one like I have the other books in the series. It’ll be the forth book in The Islands of Rune Universe and there’s only one more book in it after it, though there’s some spin-offs of it I could write eventually. I’ll actually be finishing the first draft the same day you read this. After that, I’ll give it a thorough once over on my own before I send it to my editor, Robyn. I am planning to do another special edition of this one with BookVault, which will also be available in the store once it’s released. The paperback will, as always, be available at major retailers through IngramSpark. However, I do plan to switch things up with the ebook a little. I’m not a fan of Amazon, the way they treat authors, or their consistently problematic owner. Thus, it’s unlikely I’ll use KU. There are similar platforms, though. Kobo in particular comes to mind. Is that something you’d like to see, readers? If so, just drop me a comment, DM, or whatever so I know that’s the right direction. If not, tell me what your preferred alternative is. I’m likely to go with whatever is best for readers already engaged with my content.

A New Series

For months now, I’ve been hinting that I’m planning to start another series up. The title of that is going to be The Harem of the Heavens (HOTH). I don’t want to go into too much detail about the plot of it yet, but the title should give you some insights on it. This, I plan to query with, though. The draft is currently in developmental editing with the same editor I mentioned before. I’ll polish it out as much as possible and hopefully start querying it in Fall/Winter. I’m still working on my final comp titles, but think Record of Ragnarok x The Bachelorette for this one. Yes, I know neither of those are books, but they are what I was thinking of when I came up with this idea and they paint a VERY clear picture if I do say so myself.

Conclusion

Plenty of more awesome stuff is on the way. While you wait for it, go ahead and give The Fate of Angels and Demons a read. I’ll see you back next week for another segment of Nerdology 101 too. Until then, have a nerdy week!

Nerdology 101: Author Transparency Post

Intro

Hey readers, writers, and bookish people of all kinds! Welcome back to Nerdology 101. Today is now our 23rd post and the 1st one to happen after my new dark romantasy book, The Fate of Angels and Demons came out. I’m going to take a moment here to just say YAYYYYYYY! I’ve been so excited about this book release for so long. I’m overjoyed to see it on the market finally! Everything about TFOAAD has been emotional for me, from writing and editing, to design, launch, and release. My body, heart, mind, and soul have been poured into this wonderful story and no matter what these insights look like, I have no regrets about that.

Perspective

For point of reference, I’m going into writing this blog post just as blind as you’re going into reading it. Usually, I write my blog posts the Saturday before they post. This time, however, the topic makes that impossible to do. Instead, I’m writing the intro, perspective, and what to expect sections that I don’t need the actual insights for on Saturday and the insights won’t actually be plugged into it until the day of the post so I can provide you with the most up-to-date, vital information about how my new release is actually doing. This post will go up at the normal time, Friday at 3PM EST, just like every other Nerdology post, but I won’t know what it’s going to say until the morning of. I might be getting on here to tell you all that I’m totally flopping, that I’ve managed the ever-elusive miracle of viral success as an indie, or anything in-between, but I’ve already announced my topic on IG and Bluesky (my two largest followings) so there’s no backing out now. I’m not one to back down from a challenge.

What to Expect

In this section, I’ll go over the catagories of the insights I’ll be sharing:

1. Sales, broken down by edition (ebook not included. I’m unlikely to be able to see ebook sales on the IngramSpark dashboard that soon after release since they take roughly 2-3 weeks to appear in my sales reports).

2. Engagement, how the posts about the book are doing on IG, Bluesky, and TikTok.

3. Reviews, reviews are always available on the reviews page of this website, but I’ll talk about how many I have, the books current ratings, and what that might mean for the books long-term success.

4. Stock, are there any brick-and-mortar stores that have the book or have ordered it to my knowledge?

5. Events, the amount of interest I have from stores/conventions/etc. (This is the only section I know a little bit about ahead of time, obviously, since it requires me to schedule said events. Be ready for a huge announcement in this section).

6. Marketing, what’s working for me and what isn’t?

7. Places where I could use additional support from people who want to help me reach more readers.

8. Conclusion, an overall assessment of how the book is doing.

* Exact place I stopped writing pre-release.

Sales

Okay! Here we are. It’s Friday morning about 10AM now. So far, 4 special editions have sold at $30 each ($120). I haven’t seen any paperback sales come in on Ingram yet, but that’s not entirely surprising for me. The special edition exists as an alternative for people who want a physical copy and I see why most people would opt for it because it’s freakin’ gorgeous. I do know of two ebook sales even though, as I stated in my explanation of this I can’t seem them quite yet. They came who people who tagged me or showed me their orders. At $6 each, that’s an additional $12 . Thus, I’ve made $132 in sales so far. I’d say that’s pretty good. I paid $150 for my cover, so I’ve almost made that back in just a few days. Of course, there’s still a long way to go before I actually make my money back, but we’re off to a great start, in my opinion.

Engagement

Engagement is up! In part, this is due to the fact that I finally got up the nerve to make some reels with me in them. My reach and engagement have gone up since. I still solidly suck at social media, but again, I think we’re moving in the right direction. In the last 30 days, I’m reach 3.3k views on IG with 224 interactions. On TT I’ve at 2k views and 102 engagements, which is awesome since I just started using the platform a week and a half ago. On Bluesky, it’s hard to say what my views or interactions are since they don’t have analytics insights like IG or TT. I can say that it remains my largest following at 912 followers.

Reviews

I sent out 25 ARCs for this book and 6 reviews have gone up on Goodreads, giving me about a 24% rate there (which is normal for an author in similar positioning to myself, from what I can tell). Of those reviews, 2 have rated the book 5 stars, 2 have rated it 4 stars, 1 has rated it 3 stars, and 1 has rated it 1 star. Overall, that’s a 3.67 rating so far for this book. Across all of my books, though, I have 25 ratings and reviews that average to 4.12 stars. This is one of the areas where I can say I’m definitely still struggling a lot. For those who don’t know, Goodreads doesn’t really recommend a book to people until it has 25 reviews (title specific, not overall for the author). Getting more reviews would go a long way toward increasing my natural reach.

Stock

There are no brick and mortar bookstores I know of that have stocked The Fate of Angels and Demons at this time, though this is something my PA and I have recently turned our attention to.

Events

So far, I have two conventions on the books for this year. One is Smoke and Embers in Thunder Bay, ON this October from the 23rd to 25th. The other has yet to announce my attendance officially yet, so I’ll refrain from doing that so we can announce it at the same time. It is a pretty major con, though, so I’m excited about it.

Marketing

I’ve tested a few strategies so far. IngramSpark’s email promotions, BookBub Ads, IG ads, and free marketing opportunities. Of them, not only is the free stuff free, it works better than any of the paid advestising FOR ME. Instead, the highest impact form of marketing that I’ve seen is actually not coming from me at all. As they say, word-of-mouth is the best type of marketing. Posts from platforms like the Indie Author Collective and Little Lost Bookshoppe & Beyond, as well as from individuals, have done me a great deal of good. You can see a lot of the posts others have made about me and my book here in my media and mentions corner where I’ve collected and embedded the posts I’ve seen.

Support

If you’re a reader looking to support me, here's the key takeaways (in order of importance) of how you can best do that.

1. Order the book, in any format.

2. Review the book, whether you loved it or hated it, leave your honest review.

3. Post about the book online. Even if you don’t have a large following, this acts as a vital form of social proof that tells the alghorithms people are talking about the book.

Conclusion

The Fate of Angels and Demons is doing good for a newly released, self-published novel, but there’s still so much room for improvement. I plan to continue working on things from my end, and I hope, dear reader, that you will continue supporting me from yours. Thank you. Hope to see you back next week for another segment of Nerdology 101. Until then, have a nerdy week!

Nerdology 101: Rabbit Holes

There you are! Here to hear me rant about some Nerdology? Of course you are because you’re a good little nerd. Yes, you are. Such a good nerd.

Welcome back to Nerdology 101, I’m your host, Maria Levato, and this week I wanna talk about my beloved rabbit holes (they are sacred and necessary. Do not come for them or I will hiss at you). Rabbit holes are the centerpiece of all my best writing, so today I’m going to tell you about a few of my recent favs. Whaddya say? Wanna get into some Nerdology? Let’s gooo!

1. How I Define the Difference between Rabbit Hole and Regular Research

   Could I have effectively written what I was trying to write without knowing this? If yes, it’s probably a rabbit hole. I do note, though, that the fact that I could write something without the information doesn’t necessarily mean there’s no benefit to writing it with it. Oftentimes, I find that writing with the additional information is the difference between producing something that sounds right to someone with no familiarity and producing something that sounds right to someone who knows. For example, geography. I once wrote a short story where a majority of the events took place in Dublin, Ireland. I could have convincingly wrote some version of “We ate at a restaurant by the River Liffey.” and most American’s likely would have accepted that as enough detail. Instead, I wrote that the characters ate at PHX Bistro, a small restaurant by the River Liffey. That’s a detail that would help the story feel more like its truly happening in Dublin to someone from Dublin, or to others that have been there. It wouldn’t necessarily have been bad writing if I didn’t name a specific restaurant, but that little bit of detail made it a bit more tangible. Of course, that’s not a rabbit hole in and of itself because I didn’t research that so much as I just knew it from travelling, but it’s a great example of how a detail might make a big difference in how convincing the writing is. Thus, my argument that rabbit hole as sacred stands.

2. Recent Rabbit Hole - Demons

   (Note: For context, it’s useful to know that I write romantasy. Romance that is central to the plot based in a completely fictional world of my own making. However, there’s a paranormal and mythological element in the sense that my characters are often angels, demons, gods, priestesses, etc.. My magic systems and set ups are often based in a slew of different beliefs, taking elements from them to create something original. So, my research is often in finding those puzzle pieces from various belief systems, cultures, and periods of history to build it).

   For reasons I can’t explain without spoiling future releases, this one was extremely useful. So, did you know that the modern word demon comes the Greek word Daimon, which just meant deity? There was no evil connotation on the word until the Catholic Church came into the picture. Presumably, the word Daimon being used to refer to deities that weren’t their preferred deity and therefore it picked up a negative/evil connotation as they gained more power throughout Europe since they were monotheistic and viewed the worship of other deities as an evil act. But yeah, demons are pretty much just deities and whether they are a threat or not depends mostly on who you are and what demon you’re interacting with. Not every demon we see discussed in texts about them is necessarily hostile towards humans. The Lemegeton, for example, talks about demons, but it also goes into detail when classifying them. It speaks about their personalities, the danger or lackthereof in interacting with them, and more. This sort of implies that there was an understanding in medieval Europe, at least among those who sought out this type of knowledge, that demons weren’t necessarily evil. That understanding prevails today in some ways, though its became increasingly less prevailing for a few decades because of media portrayals, then took a turn in more recent years where that understanding started to revitalize itself. Needless to say, there are plenty of people who still cling to the evil connotation of the word, but it only really holds up when held under the lens of a monotheistic theology.

   Point being that etymology proves quite useful in writing fantasy. Knowing this helped me lead a character to a huge moment of self-discovery that I was able to write extremely well because I had gone down the rabbit hole to get the right information to make it work. It was also just fun because it set off a slew of personal research that really doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m writing, but I’m enjoying it quite a bit. I like learning about these things, and who knows? Info that isn’t relevant to my writing can occassionally resurface later as being exactly what I need. It’s sort of unpredictable that way.

3. Recent Rabbit Hole - Mesopotamia

   Another topic I recently had to do some digging on was Mesopotamia, the gods of the culture and time, and it’s geographic placement compared to modern maps. My findings were prettty cool. I hadn’t looked into Mesopotamia too much before this so I went in with very little background knowledge to base my research on, which is rare because usually these types of things are matters I’m led to write about because of an interest I already have. In this case, though, it was a bit more random. I liked that because it left so much room for inspiration since everything I was getting was new to me. It also gave me a path to learning about Iran a little more (when looking into museums and historic sites) and develop an interest in the culture.

   Because what I was looking into was so broad, I can’t go into all of it here, but I will talk about a point that I found particularly useful. Separating dynasties is an important point when discussing Mesopotamia. Mesopotamia was a region more than it was a reference to a specific civilization. Most information is a bit more specific to the empire that was ruling it at the time. There were quite a few changes in power, but for my purposes, I was focused on periods of Sumerian and Akkadian rules (probably what most people are thinking of when they say Mesopotamia. About 3,200B.C. to 2154B.C. for both dynasties). In the dates is a fact that took me a while to wrap my head around. The Old Kingdom era of Ancient Egypt was roughly from 2686-2181B.C. Which means there was a fairly decent overlap in dates where the Akkadian empire and the Old Kingdom of Ancient Egypt existed at the same time. The Great Pyramids of Giza were constucted a few centuries prior to the fall of the Akkadian dynasty. I’m sure you can imagine all the ways a fantasy writer could utilize that bit of information. Oh yeah… That alone was gold to me. Not to mention all the other great stuff I found while researching. I’m so excited with how its turning out on the page too!

   I hope you all enjoyed hearing about some of my recent rabbit holes. Have you had any of your own of late? Let me know. I’ll see you back next week for another segment of Nerdology 101. Until then, have a nerdy week!

   Sources

   https://www.history.com/articles/mesopotamia

   https://egymonuments.gov.eg/en/monuments/the-great-pyramid

   https://www.britishmuseum.org/learn/schools/ages-7-11/ancient-egypt/timeline-ancient-egypt

   https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/demon#word-history