2024 Year-End Message

​Well, the time has come. One last day of 2024. This has been such a mixed year for me… so many ups and downs, but in the wake of them, my professional accomplishments have been more than any other year, so I am filled with gratitude for that.

Many of the things that, just one year ago, would only have been dreams have been achieved. Without the support of my fellow writers, readers, family, and friends, I never would have been able to take these steps – and I hope to achieve even more in 2025.

Some of 2024’s highlights and corresponding goals for 2025 include:

1) Publishing my first book, Dirty Hoe - A Gardening Romance, book 1 in the Small Town Dirt series. Then, diving straight into book 2, publishing Dirty Latte - A Coffee Shop Romance later in the year. Dirty Laundry - A Laundromat & Dogwash Romance and Dirty Martini - A Bartending Romance are scheduled for release in 2025.

2) Finding the courage to open myself up by publishing poetry I write daily, but once held very privately - Amidst Fading Blooms, Secrets Unearthed, Petals Unfurled, and within a few weeks, The Venom & The Rose. Upon the release of my 4th poetry book in 2025, I hope to create a Kickstarter for a stunning, art-filled special edition incorporating all four volumes.

3) Publishing Paisley, Untethered, a jump from my ‘typical’ books in that it was written as a work of middle-grade fiction—but it is probably my favorite story. It gives a nod to the love and devotion rescue dogs can provide to the humans who give them a second chance and the power to overcome past trauma to live a better life.

4) Releasing five books altogether over the past year. I didn’t keep track of how many I sold through my signing events, vendor fairs, online direct sales (I could easily calculate this, but I don’t think it’s all that important for this purpose), etc. However, including my free promotions, my books and ebooks have been put into the hands of 13,270 readers. 35,736 pages were read on Kindle Unlimited. I’m proud of these numbers and hope I can surpass them next year.

5) Attending over a dozen signing events last year, including four at Barnes & Noble locations, several local pop-ups, and more. For 2025, I am confirmed to attend and sign at four large, out-of-state author signing events and waitlisted for several others. I plan to do additional Barnes & Noble signings and have several local pop-up signings in the works with local coffee shops, cafes, and other small businesses in the area. I am also hoping to work with other authors to organize a larger signing event with local authors at a small business in my area. There are more indie authors around here than most people realize, and I think we should network and embrace that!

6) Launching my website, event pre-order, and direct sales pages, and creating my newsletter mailing list. My website launched this fall at www.reginabergen.com. I have over 50 names on my newsletter list, which is available on the website above, and the first will deploy in January 2025.

7) Planning my Kickstarter for special edition copies of the two existing Small Town Dirt stories:
https://www.kickstarter.com/.../small-town-dirt-the...
While the bulk of the concept is complete and I had planned to launch this on January 1st, I’ve decided to give it until February 1st to give myself more time to finalize the tiers and logistics. I will do a second Kickstarter in the second half of 2025 for a multi-volume combined poetry book with stunning interior art, and all the bells and whistles.

8) Increasing my social media presence. I have grown my audiences across several platforms, including Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and Goodreads. I hope to continue this growth and focus more on establishing a more effective TikTok Shop with the completion of my Kickstarter campaigns and the new, edged versions of my retail books.

9) Finalizing my edged book designs. The first two books in the Small Town Dirt series will now be sold on all platforms with an edge design and additional interior illustrations. I aim to release all subsequent Small Town Dirt books with edges from the jump, beginning in 2025.

10) Pivoting away from Vella. With the collapse of the Vella serial platform, I feel fortunate that I began my pivot before the end. I am not even close to making up the difference in bonus income, but I’m working to get there, and thankfully, I had a head start.

11) Jumping genres. I have had a decent amount of success with my genre-jumping tendencies. I know I should probably either do pen names or stick to one niche, but that will never be me. From adult contemporary rom-com to poetry to middle-grade fiction, I want to do it all. It challenges me, keeps me interested, and gives me a way to keep growing within my craft.

Stay tuned because 2025 will have some very interesting new genre jumps into dystopian adult fiction, anthology participation with a charity project to benefit Wounded Warriors, and… novellas.

STAY TUNED!

There are so many more things I could mention here (and some I probably forgot that I wanted to include!), not to mention a massive list of people to thank for how far I’ve come as an author over the past year–but, for now, I offer a blanket thank you to everyone who believed in me and got me this far.

With love and appreciation,
Regina Bergen,
Author