What I Learned from Doing 30 Days of Reels

I’ve been doing Instagram Reels for…three years now? And every year, I write up a “state of Reels right now” to tell you what’s happening there and if you should be doing them. 

This year, I decided to give myself a challenge: 30 days of Reels to see what kind of patterns came up and if I can figure out this damn algorithm and what it wants.

Spoiler: I did not crack the algorithm.

I did do the 30 Reels, though, and I’ve got some insights to share with you!

Here's what I discovered doing 30 days of Reels

The Reels I did that were about writing or reading in general had the biggest views. (Examples: 1, 2, 3.) BUT this isn’t what I actually want. These attract writers of all genres; I want only the romance writers because they’re the ones who are ultimately going to buy from me. The lesson: Don’t go too broad. What do your ideal readers want to see?

You gotta be SUPER specific for your ideal audience. The ones that did well that were specifically targeted to romance writers hit on something that they want. E.g. Keeping readers buying through the series, what they need to be doing now, mistakes they’re making on Reels—these all had text in the video that got them to stop because it spoke to them, and then kept them reading through to the caption. The ones that were just mid and didn’t have enough of a hook ended up being the majority, getting around 400-600 views per Reel, instead of the 1000+ views.

I researched (*cough*scrolled Reels A LOT*cough*) and did EVERYTHING the social media “experts” tell you to do: use trending sounds, make your Reel dynamic with movement/transitions, have a hook in your video and in your caption, have a call to action in the caption. These were all hit-or-miss for me. To break it down:

• Trending sounds don’t seem to make much of a difference. IG may reward you with a slight boost in the algorithm for using it, but I don’t think it’s boosting your discoverability. I’m not going into a sound to find new people to follow; I’m just going in to see what kinds of Reels people are making with that sound.

• Movement is definitely important as a way to create anticipation and keep the viewer anticipating the next move. Movement combined with sound (a beat drop, usually) create great anticipation (example).

• Hooks, as above, have to be specific and scroll-stopping—if it’s not speaking directly to them, it’s not going to work. For romance authors, it might be a matter of grabbing the viewer’s attention with the first line of a quote from the book and keeping them watching by revealing the next line, then the next, etc. (For those of you writing spicy, this is where you bring out the sexiest moments in your book.)

• Call to actions are necessary to tell them what you want them to do: buy from you? follow you? leave a comment?

That said, even when doing all the things right, there were some that just did not pop off in the way I expected them to. And then there were ones that did really well even without all the things done right. Sometimes I genuinely think this whole thing is a crapshoot. So leave room for a margin of error for reasons no one knows.

Did doing Reels for 30 days help?

Kinda? It definitely boosted engagement and reach, though that did not translate to a ton of new followers or more comments than normal on individual Reels.

But the followers I got were good followers, i.e. romance writers and/or enthusiasts (I block anyone who doesn’t look like they’ll actually engage with my account—bye-bye, creepy dudes!), and that’s what I want. I don’t want to go viral and get a ton of followers that way because most of those followers likely aren’t romance people and will never engage again.

Was 30 days of Reels worth it?

Ehhhhh…I don’t know about that.

Coming up with 30 days of content on my own is a LOT of work. I had a lot of ideas and sounds and transitions banked in my Saved folders on IG and planned in advance (there was an epic spreadsheet), and filming part doesn’t actually take that long—I batched my content every Thursday, so I had the Reels with my face done for the week (I used stock photos/video from Canva for other days). But consistently creating hooks and captions that will hit right is HARD, and that’s where most of the time and work was every day. I was burnt out by the end of the month and so sick of my own damn face, and I definitely lost some momentum after that. (I’m still burnt out, honestly, so take this with a grain of salt, but I am continuing to post Reels two to three times a week instead of the one I was doing before the 30 days.)

However, these 30 days of Reels gave me a ton of data to pull from, and gave me a much better understanding of what I need to do to draw more of my ideal audience in. In that way, it was a good experiment.

Do I think YOU should do 30 days of Reels?

After doing it myself, I would say only if you have the bandwidth to do it. This is one of the reasons why I’ve been so resistant to TikTok—because it’s a platform that really seems to prioritize posting frequency and rewards users for posting multiple times a day. If you have the ability to post short-form video a couple time a day, amazing! If not, do what you can as consistently as possible.

(And by the way, don’t be afraid to reuse previous posts that did well, as a way to cut back on some of the work you have to do.)

Do I think you should be doing Reels in general?

Yes, if your primary platform (i.e. where the majority of your audience is) is Instagram. Reels reach is down in general, and carousel posts actually tend to be the highest-performing content on IG right now, but Reels are still a good way to reach new audiences, if that’s what your goal is. Also, I don’t think video content is going away any time soon, so you’ll need to know how to use this format to continue to grow and not fall behind.

Real talk

This marketing stuff, like Reels, is not the fun part of being an author, at least for most people. (It’s not the fun part for me, either—I would much rather be spending my time editing and coaching, but I feel that I need to do it in order to find people to edit and coach.) It is a necessary evil, though, and sadly most authors aren’t doing enough of it. You need to do more marketing than you think—not just Reels, but really be pushing your book often in every way you can, with social media posts, newsletters, podcasts, IG lives, blog tours, events, etc. (Yes, even if you are trad published. You’re still going to be the main marketing engine for your book, long after your publisher has moved on to marketing their next book.)

Take a look at Nikki Payne as a wonderful example of someone who does all the things for her book that came out in 2022 and for her latest that’s coming out in 2024. She’s a marketing machine and so good at applying trends to her books. I’m also watching Sarah Estep go hard promoting her upcoming book with clever memes and Reels and lives while also tying this marketing back to the previous book in the series. (Go give both of these brilliant authors a follow and check out their books!)

Please do not let the book you worked so hard on not find its audience because marketing feels scary and uncomfortable. Writing a book is scary and uncomfortable too, and you did that! This is just a new thing you’ll have to learn. It breaks my heart to see people make a couple of posts to promote their book around release day, and then nothing more. It’s gotta be way more than that.

Don’t worry about annoying people by posting about your book so often on social media—the algorithm is only showing it to a low, low percentage of your followers so they aren’t seeing your post all the time, and if they are, most won’t be bothered to unfollow you because of it. They follow you because they’re interested in your work and they care about you!

If you have any questions about Reels, I’m happy to answer them!

BONUS TIME!

If you’re ready to either get started on Reels or revive your Reels strategy, I have a brand-new resource for you: A Romance Author’s Guide to IG Reels!

Inside, I break down all the important parts of the Reel and how to use them to your best advantage, give you the dos and don’ts of Reels, tell you how often you should be posting, and present a bunch of prompts (including faceless ones!) to use when you’re trying to come up with ideas for your Reels.

Download it here!

Hazel and Elijah Get Mixed Up by Marty Vee

It’s release day for Hazel and Elijah Get Mixed Up by Marty Vee in the Fall into Love anthology. The anthology is all small-town romances with big fall vibes, and I got to edit Marty’s!

Hazel and Elijah had a one-night stand a while back, and it was unforgettable for both. So unforgettable for Elijah that he’s willing to go back to their hometown that he was essentially run out of when he was younger just so he can spend more time with Hazel.

But Hazel is a super-busy veterinarian who hates asking for help even when she needs it, and she needs to raise money for the animal society in town. When she puts together a bachelor auction, she comes under fire from the more conservative townspeople, led by Elijah’s estranged father, who wants to use her relationship with black sheep Elijah against her.

Who will prevail? Read and see! The Fall Into Love anthology is out in KU now!

All the Ways We're Wrong by Amelia Elliot

It’s release day for Amelia Elliot’s All the Ways We’re Wrong!

Movie star Ava Blum just wants to process turning 40 alone in the mountains—but when a mudslide washes away her cabin (with her inside!), she has to trek down the mountain with a hot, grumpy structural engineer who saves her life and luckily has more survivalist skills than she does.

Killian and Ava trauma-bond on their days-long hike, and even though they’re opposites in every way (he makes a list), they can’t stay away from each other. With totally incompatible lives, how are they supposed to be anything but wrong for each other?

It’s out now on Amazon and KU!

Stay by Tracy Ewens

Listen, Tracy and I talked about it, and we agree that this hero is just stop-and-double-take hot. He doesn’t know it, but he is.

World-renowned cellist Clara arrives in small-town Bodega Bay to claim her inheritance to a historic hotel owned by her late grandfather—who she never knew existed. Meanwhile, hometown boy Dylan is at a crossroads in his career when his mentor leaves him his hotel—yeah, the same hotel.

Under the terms of the will, they’ll have to live and work together for six months to renovate the place before they decide what to do with it.

Digging deep into both their pasts brings them together, but it’s the future that might push them apart.

Stay by Tracy Ewens is out now!

Does your romance writing process need a change?

One of the things I find myself talking about a lot with my Series Architecture clients is—perhaps unsurprisingly—their writing process.

Whether you identify as a planner, a pantser, a planster, or chaos demon, your writing process is your own. Whether you’ve been writing since you were a kid or you just decided to pick up writing a year ago, you probably have a good sense of what’s going to work for you and what’s not when you sit down to write.

My goal when I’m talking to clients is never to force them into a process that doesn’t work for them. If you’re a pantser, planning everything is going to drive you insane; likewise, if you’re a planner, me telling you to just make it up as you go will probably send you spiralling. And no matter how many craft books you read, following one system the way that author prescribes is likely not going to fully work for you because it’s going to feel too narrow and not aligned with your own process.

This is not to say that your writing process should never change! Sometimes you need to evolve, and you always want to be improving, right? So what are the things you tell yourself you have to do when you’re putting a story together and when you write, and what would happen if you just…didn’t do them? Or what would happen if you tried something different that you believed you could never do?

For example, you might think, “working under pressure is great for me—it focuses me and gets me out of my head so I can just channel all my thoughts into prose.”

Or is it that you're actually just worried that it has to be perfect so you’ve been procrastinating on it for a long time, and then when you finally have to start writing because of the deadline, you’re frustrated that it’s not coming out the perfect way you intended, and so you have to settle for whatever you end up writing because time’s up? (Not speaking from experience here at all.) That pressure is maybe anxiety you don’t actually need. So what if you started early and broke down your writing into manageable daily word counts (500 words? 1000?) rather than cramming writing the last 30K in a week?

Another example: I used to just think “okay, I’m gonna write, and my brain will just take me where I need to go.” This, it turns out, was putting way too much stock in what my brain could do while writing. What actually would happen would be that I would stall out, start panicking, and then spiral into thinking I sucked, procrastinate because it felt so hard, and then get behind on everything. But surprise! I’m actually a planner/planster, not a pantser. Once I realized I actually need to outline quite heavily before I even start writing, everything changed. (Something I would have really liked to know before quitting my PhD dissertation.) I need to do the big thinking first and work it all out in my head to know where I’m going, and after that, writing is a breeze.

That’s the process that I’ve discovered works for me, and it may not work for you. But take some time to evaluate what you’re doing now and maybe try changing some things up—if they don’t work, okay, just go back to what you were doing before. Read some craft books and implement some advice in there that could naturally slot into your current process. Talk with other writer friends to see how they write. Adapt and evolve to keep growing as a romance author.

So that’s your challenge for this month: take a long, hard look at how you write, and evaluate what’s serving you and what’s not.

How can I help you write better, faster, stronger, harder? Head over here and see how we can work together!

Birthdays and Bachelors by Elle Rush

Gloria only joked to her friends that she needed a boyfriend for her 30th birthday--but they made it happen, or at least set her up with some bachelors. Now she has more dates than she knows what to do with. Between her high school sweetheart, the billionaire, the town bad boy (there's a less polite word for him, but this is a sweet romance here!), PLUS the bonus new-in-town doctor, she's got more dates than she knows what to do with.

The new-in-town doctor, Daniel, is determined to win Gloria's heart. But with all this competition, how can he stand out? He's accidentally witnessed all of her dates be disasters, so he's gotta pull out all the stops to show her he's worth the risk.

This is such a great premise, and so much fun! It’s part of Elle Rush’s Holiday Beach series, in which each book is a novella based around a holiday. Birthdays and Bachelors is available now!

First Impressions of You by Gabriela Graciosa Guedes

Pride and Prejudice fans, get ready!

It's release day for Gabriela Graciosa Guedes’s P&P retelling, First Impressions of You!

Luiza is a struggling plus-size actress from Brazil who's desperate to stay in the US and make her dreams come true. She needs a job that will sponsor her for a visa, and the theme park she's been working at has a well-respected theater division that has sponsored visas in the past.

Against all odds, she gets the job, but she has to work with brooding Winter Davis, former child star and current snob, who seems to think the theater work--and everyone around him--is beneath him.

Their on-stage battles and explosive chemistry infuriate and intrigue Luiza. But even when she comes to understand him better, she can't let him stand in the way of her dreams for her future.

Tons of steam and banter in this modern take on P&P--it's available on Amazon and KU now!

Would you spend $35K to publish your book?

So, would you spend $35K to indie-publish your book? 

Listen, I know the answer to that question already.

But someone DID, and I nearly keeled over when I heard about it.

Here’s the video that breaks down how exactly this woman spent $35K (projected to eventually be more) on getting her book independently published.

My DMs exploded when I posted this on my Instagram a while back, so I thought it was worth talking about here.

So, let me say upfront, if you’ve published a book before and are thinking “but I didn’t spend that much!” or you’ve never published a book and are thinking “I don’t WANT to spend that much,” you should not be worrying—this is not a typical amount to spend on producing a book.

Chelsea has a much bigger platform than most debut writers start with—she has a built-in audience, albeit in a totally different field, but one that wants to support her, so she could aim high and know that her people are there for her. (I do wonder if this messed up her also-bought algorithm on Amazon, though, if her audience is not typically romance readers—the also-boughts are determined by what the people buying her book read, and you want those recommendations to be in the same genre so that they come up when people are looking for similar books.)

She also clearly has a lot of money to spend up front, which most new (or even established) romance writers don’t. It is normal to NOT spend $35K on a book—I would wager that most writers are putting in maybe a thousand or two TOTAL, and that’s still a lot of money to put into an investment that you might not recoup, especially for a debut book. But it’s an investment in future you and your ability to continue to write and get better and get more visibility that you hope will pay off in the future.

There are lots of things that she says in here that I agree with, specifically around genre fiction not getting its flowers—and its money—when it does keep the lights on in publishing, and her very healthy understanding of criticism, confidence, and fear.

Dos and Don’ts to Take Away from This Video

I agree with her spending the bulk of her money on editing and promotion. (I’m not sure what category her cover art ended up, but I’d also spend money on that.) Obviously, as an editor, I’m going to tell you to spend your money on editing, but OMG, $10K??? Like, I think I’m a great editor, but I’ve never approached anywhere near charging $10K for one book. All my romance editor friends were similarly befuddled. (There is something to say here one day about how romance as a genre devalues itself in so many ways, including how much money writers spend on producing their books and on pricing their books—a post for another time). If someone is trying to get you to pay that for a romance edit, something weird is going on there.

Do spend the money on getting your book into the hands of people who will talk about it. Organic discovery is great, but it’s incredibly hard when there are so many books vying for attention. You don’t have to necessarily send out physical copies if that’s not something you can afford, but you can send out eARCs to book influencers and on NetGalley or other ARC distribution platforms as a way to get your book out there.

And obviously don’t worry about physical book tours yet. Again, Chelsea has a substantial audience already—results not typical.

I’m very confused about the $6K she spent on production. It sounds like it was mostly labour, but most people order an author copy from Amazon before publishing, and that’s it. Don’t stress too much about paper thickness and ink colour and all of that.

I’m assuming Chelsea’s cover art cost a pretty penny because it was an oil painting she commissioned. Oil painting isn’t the typical style for romance novels right now, and I don’t see that changing any time soon. But we all know we judge a book by its cover and we've all bought books because of their covers, right? So it’s worth putting a sizeable amount of budget towards a beautiful cover that’s on-trend and designed by someone who knows what romance readers are looking for in order to attract the right kind of attention.

Be realistic in your goals. Chelsea said she needed 7000 books sold to break even on her 35K, but for most debuts, that’s probably not happening. Even with her huge platform, I don’t know if she will be able to meet her admittedly ambitious goal of 100K(!) books sold. Social media and viral sensations make it look easy—but the reality behind that is that it’s often not their first book by the time they go viral so they’ve got experience and a backlist helping them along, and you don’t know the kind of money they (or their publisher if they're trad) are putting into promotion. Some of them are genuinely organic word-of-mouth via TikTok or Insta, but many are manufactured and spending thousands of dollars to get there.

Spend within your means. Indie publishing is not a get-rich-quick scheme—it takes a lot of time and money and strategy to start earning out regularly on your books. Don’t spend all your money at once, hoping you’ll be able to earn it back and put it into the next book.

Moral of the story: you do not have to spend $35K to have a successful book (and please don't!)—but it is going to require a ton of hard work, no matter how much you do end up spending. Spend that money and time and effort wisely.

What was your reaction to this video (beyond “oh HELL no”)? Let me know!