Dominique Gibson

Hello all! Dominique Gibson is back with another post. I have been really busy when it comes to doing some promotions for the first book in the Truson S.E.T. series, An Orman’s Revenge. Since the ads on Instagram was starting to get a little bit on the high end (apparently, five dollars a day is not enough to keep the momentum going considering I am not making any sales off of it so far), I decided to see if I was going to find some success on the other end of the equation by using paid services to get more eyes on my book.

Even though I paid for at least three to four paid services to promote my book, I am just going to do a post on one of the paid services I used through Fiverr. As someone who used Fiverr in the past, I managed to make a few sales using some of their services. Even though I didn’t make enough money in order to earn back my investment for the first three books, I still have hope that I will write enough books and make enough money to earn back my investment. Today, I wanted to share with you one of the paid services I used to promote the first book in the Truson S.E.T. series, An Orman’s Revenge.

Search Bar on Fiverr: Book Promotion

Paid services: Annalise @annaliseclark

Services she offers (as of July 2024): Looked up her profile on Fiverr. She offers book promotions on her Tiktok account as well as writing short bios and reading and reviewing the book on her blog.

Price range: $35-85 dollars for the Tiktok promotion, $30-130 dollars for the reading and reviewing of your book, $15-$40 dollars for help on your author bio.

If you are interested in finding out more about her services, please be sure to check her out on Fiverr. If you are curious about what the video looks like on her Tiktok/booktok account, you can click on the link below to see the wonderful job she did on promoting book one of the Truson S.E.T. series.

Click on the link here to see the video.

That’s all for now. See you soon.

Dominique Gibson

Hello! I’m back with another post. I did announce online that I was going to do a character review of the now infamous book, The Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros. Usually, I would do a short summary of what the book is about in addition to my review of the book. But since a lot of people that have already read the book gave out a ton of information on what the book is about (All you have to do is look up Fourth Wing on TikTok and Instagram and you will eventually find out what it’s about), I decided that it would be best for me to try to do things a different way: Try to do a character review instead. This would be where I express how I feel about each character in the book (Well each character that I feel is significant in the book) and then gave my overall review of the book.

Title: Fourth Wing (The Empyrean, 1)

Author: Rebecca Yarros

Genre: New Adult Fantasy

Date of Publication: May 2023

My overall review of the characters:

Violet Sorrengail: She is the underdog. In the beginning, people thought that she was too frail to make it through The Fourth Wing. They thought she wasn’t going to make it but she proved all of them wrong throughout the book. That’s why I love her. Don’t we all love an underdog?

Xaden Riorson: Was very skeptical about him in the beginning. Seriously thought he was going to kill Violet but was proven wrong. I thought that when Violet confessed her love for him that he didn’t feel the same way in return. Showing his feelings from his point of view helped prove me wrong (Nice work Ms. Yarros 🙂

Dain Aetos: Seems to be cool at first but then he started to get annoying when he claimed to ‘protect’ Violet from her going to the Riders’ Quadrant in the beginning. Then, he kisses her and pretends like he doesn’t love her but it’s obvious that he does when he starts developing an attitude and becomes obsessed with his fake protection. His ‘fake protection’ ends up getting one of the main characters in this book killed which I will never forgive him for.

Rhiannon Matthias: Liked her. Think that she is good when it comes to being best friends with Violet. Hope the relationship continues until the very end. Wouldn’t want to see anything happen to her in the series that would cause them to lose their friendship.

Sawyer Henrick: Seemed like a good friend as well. Hope to see more of him in the future series.

Ridoc Gamlyn: Funny man. Loves his sense of humor. Had me cracking up a few times. Gotta have one of those friends in the book right?

Jack Barlowe: Couldn’t stand him. Glad that he died in Fourth Wing. Didn’t like his motivation for killing Violet.

Mira Sorrengail: Liked her. Loved the fact that she stood up to her mother about forcing her into the Riders’ Quadrant. Felt like she always had her back when it came to her surviving the Fourth Wing. Hope that the relationship grows with the rest of the books.

Liam Mairi: Was a very strong protector of Violet in addition to being a close friend of Xaden. Didn’t like it when he died. I blame Aetos for this. He should pay for the death of Liam with his life.

Tairneanach: Loved this dragon and the humor that comes with him. Had made laughing throughout the book.

Andarnaurram: Loved this dragon as well. Thought that this dragon was way younger than I have seen on Tiktok but still love her nonetheless.

Overall review of this book: I gave this book a five star review. I fell in love with the characters, and can’t wait to start reading Iron Flame (which will be closer to October of this year since Onyx Storm won’t be out until next year). In the meantime, I have other books I need to read.

Until next time everyone…

Dominique Gibson

Hello! I know it’s been a long time since I posted anything but I have been busy dealing with a few issues relating to my personal life in addition to working really hard on the fourth book in the Truson S.E.T. series (which feels like a broken record since I have been saying this for the last seven months!). I just recently got the huge announcement from Harlequin today that they have received over 150 submissions for this mentorship and became extremely grateful for all the submissions they have received. As I previously stated in my earlier posts, I decided to try again to submit a new story for the Romance Includes You Mentorship. Despite me submitting the first 5,000 words, the synopsis, the query letter and answering the questions on why I wanted to be a part of the mentorship, there is a real possibility that I could move forward and write more of the story I submitted after my self-publishing projects are completed.

If you want more information about their article on how successful the Romance Includes You Mentorship went, you can click on the link here for more information.

And if you want more information about why I decided to pursue this endeavor, you can click on the link here for more information on that.

That’s all for now. I will keep you posted when it comes to my book review on The Fourth Wing and the progress on my Instagram ad as well so much sure to click back on my website so you don’t miss it.

See you soon.

Dominique Gibson

Hello! Dominique Gibson is back with another post. On May 5th, 2024, I decided that I wanted to go back into doing Ads for the Truson S.E.T. Series. So, I decided to use one of the videos that I had previously promoted on TikTok on my Instagram page. It had officially been nine days since I had this last promotion and I was curious to see if I had had any results from my ad so far. So, here is the breakdown from my Ad insights on Instagram.

Before I move forward with this information, I just wanted to let people become aware that in order to run any ads’ on Instagram or Facebook, you have to have a professional account to make this happen. I will do a breakdown of this in a future post but for right now, here is a quick overview of my ad:

Overview:

Reach: 2,338 people

Reel Interactions: N/A

Profile Activity: N/A

Website visits: 114

Reach

Plays: 2,688

Initial Plays: 2,382

Replays: 306

Reel Interactions

Likes: 30

Saves: 2

Comments: 0

Shares: N/A

Ad

Website visits: 114

Initial Plays: 2,371

Profile Visits: N/A

Amount Spent: $43.48

Daily budget: $5.00

Cost per website visit: $0.38

Status: 9 days elasped – Runs into paused

Audience: Automatic

Please keep in mind that I decided to set my audience to automatic only because I wasn’t aware of who my audience is at the moment. Once this happens, I will eventually adjust the ad to cater to my audience and see if I was able to obtain better results when it goes from my automatic audience to my custom audience. Out of the 2,376 accounts reached on this ad, I had a total of 19 followers and 39 non-followers from this ad. I so far have 34 people engage with the ad but couldn’t get enough data since there are still fewer than 100 accounts that interacted with the page (which means I need people with at least 100 different accounts to get a more accurate picture of who accounts interacted with the ad itself).

Even though I didn’t see any results from this one ad yet, I’m still holding on to the hope that I will be able to beat my record that I made last year by selling twelve books on Amazon. Even though I haven’t made any sales yet, I am still not giving up on this right away since it’s still early in the game when it comes to this ad. I will be sure to keep you informed.

See you soon.

Dominique Gibson

It’s here. If you read my last post, I talked about the Romance Includes You contest where contestants who are interested in writing romance for their category romance imprints (Harlequin romance, Harlequin Presents, Harlequin Heartwarming, and even the infamous Afterglow books). The contest opened on May 1st, 2024 but will only remain open until May 31st, 2024.

Interested in learning more about this contest?

Make sure you check out their website here for more information about the contest. If you have always been wanting to pursue the dream of becoming a romance author, or even if you have been a fan of Harlequin novels for years and finally decided that this year will be the year to pursue your dreams of writing a Harlequin novel, then let me be the first to encourage you to pursue your dreams and give it a try! After all, you never know unless you try right?

Giving myself the chance despite my past rejections

If you need more encouragement, here it is: I will be entering the contest as well. I have entered the Romance Includes You contest since it started (which was in 2019 I think). Besides me entering into the contest, I have also entered manuscripts that were rejected by Harlequin throughout the years, including the first book of the now self-published book in the Truson S.E.T. series, An Orman’s Revenge. I knew that I had a story to tell when it came to the book and wanted both the literary agents and publishers to see it. .

Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Well, you guys should know the end of the story by now. I went on to self-publish two more books in the series and am working on the fourth one right now (Hoping that I will be finished within another month or so). In the meantime, I have been working hard on the first 5,000 words of my novel for the contest. I know that I need to get a move on when it comes to writing my synopsis and query letter of the submission as well.

So, don’t be surprised if you don’t see or hear from me for a little while. It’s me trying my best to get ready to send out my work out to Harlequin during the contest. I may continue to keep you guys updated on my overall progress of this contest so keep coming back here for more info!

Good luck to all the contestants entering the contest. See you soon.

Dominique Gibson