Plan

Just over three weeks to the official release date of First and I need to solidify some plans. Last week I spend time listening to podcasts but looking back feel like my mornings were unstructured. This week I want to set some clear goals and make sure I’m using my time to the best.

Looks like I have two book signings set up, one on the 10th and I think the other will be the 17th. I need to confirm the latter. Before the release date I should have a couple of reviews coming in that I can publicize. By far the most effective thing I’ve done was my post on LinkedIn and although I don’t want to be a pest there, I should probably do a few more. Maybe a couple of weeks out and another on the release date.

I have four short stories written in the same world as First and I think I’ll do another social media post, this time offering people four weeks of stories if they subscribe to this web site. I offered one story and got a few sign-ups, but that’s another area I can improve. Time to get to work.

Results

The ad campaign commenced on Monday (this is Friday) and it’s interesting to look at the stats. The publisher provides daily results in graph form of impressions, results, and cost per result.

As I understand it, impressions are where the ad was displayed on a web page someone accessed. It doesn’t measure whether the person actually saw it or their reaction. It’s like scrolling through X, formerly Twitter. If you scroll past a Tweet on your app, that’s an impression. It’s not able to tell if you read it or not. Impressions number in the thousands daily on this report I’m looking at, which is exciting but could also be misleading.

The important number is under results, which is the number of people who clicked on the ad. That number is a miniscule percentage of the number of impressions. And it doesn’t necessarily translate to an actual sale. It just means someone took a look at my Amazon page. That’s helpful in some regards since every page view shows interest, and Amazon uses their algorithms to determine how many copies of a book to keep in stock based on the accumulated interest. In other words, they’re trying to figure out the demand. Every hit on my book page counts. If that hit translates into an order, so much the better.

Cost per result in the graph translates the money paid for the ad campaign into a daily cost that’s then divided by the number of results. On some days that looks pretty good, while on others it’s kind of depressing. Such is the life of an ad campaign.

Podcasts

My research over the past week has been on podcasts. Specifically, those that interview authors. Not much luck so far, but that’s my fault for not front-loading the research and getting on the schedule. Lesson learned. To be fair, this is my first time publishing a book professionally and I had no idea when it would hit the streets, but still I could have done better.

The fringe benefit from this research is that I’m learning some things along the way and found some podcasts worthy of subscription. For example, I’ve listened to several episodes of “WIsh I’d known then…for writers.” The hosts interviewed A.G. Riddle recently, whose books I’ve read and enjoyed, and I found his discussion on ads and focus very interesting. Right now I’m listening to one where they’re interviewing Erin Wright, who’s giving the lowdown on getting books into libraries. I had no idea how that worked.

Another I enjoyed was “Inside the Minds of Authors” with D.C. Gomez. She’s full of energy and I appreciate that she has the author read a selection from their book to start off the episode. I’m hoping to be on her podcast after the first of the year.

Meanwhile, the search goes on while I continue to accrue fringe benefits.

Waiting

For the moment I’ve decided to wait on publishing Next Time until the new year. My first inclination was to get it out before Christmas, but with all the work I’m doing on marketing First I feel like releasing another book right away would dilute those efforts.

On one hand, it kind of stinks because I think it’s a great book and want to get it out as soon as possible. But on the other hand, this gives me the chance to learn from the rollout of First and course correct in certain areas. It’s a good problem to have. For example, one thing I’m interested in analyzing is the eBook decision I made. I could’ve released the eBook exclusively on Amazon and included it in Kindle Unlimited, but to do so means it’s exclusive and you can’t publish the digital version elsewhere. So I chose for widespread distribution. Was that the right choice? We’re about to find out.

Another benefit of delaying is that I get to spread out the expenses. In other words, my publishing expenses for First will be in 2023, and those for Next Time in 2024. I know, that’s accounting and tax stuff but as my dad and I spoke about yesterday, I haven’t really put that accounting degree to use in years. So useful.

One other benefit is it keeps First from being eclipsed by efforts for a newer book. My promotion efforts don’t stop with the release of the book and I hope they pick up even more in subsequent months. One mistake I want to avoid is putting out books too closely together, especially since I have two more books ready to go after First.

Ads

Advertisements. A necessary evil. Part of the journey of writing is advertising your book. I do that on this site and on social media, and now it’s about to happen in real-life ads.

Part of the book package I purchased includes ad generation and then you can pay a certain amount per week to have it pop up all over the web. Meaning that over the next eight weeks an ad for First will be on book selling websites as well as other high-traffic sites, like WSJ and Forbes, among others.

Do I expect it to help sell the book? Yes, but to a very small degree. It’s a good-looking ad and people usually have to see an ad like this several times before clicking on it. I often read from my Kindle Paperwhite, which displays ads on the lock screen. I can testify it takes multiple times of my seeing a book before I click to check it out. A few clicks and orders from the ad for First would be nice. Since the cover of the book and colors of the ad are so striking I’m hoping it will get a decent amount of attention.

Sunday Book Review

The world-famous Ace of Spades HQ Sunday Morning Book Review came out yesterday and I’m grateful to Perfessor Squirrel for including First. Nice to see my little book in line with several other releases by Moron authors. If you don’t know what that means, you should follow Ace.

During the week AoS HQ is devoted to current events, culture, and politics, and I check it several times a day. Ace and the co-bloggers put out a lot of good stuff, and many times the posts crack me up. On weekends, the site shifts to guest posts for everything from food to hobbies to movies to guns to books. All very entertaining and the overnight threads and comments are epic. Getting my book into the Sunday morning thread was easy enough, but still very cool to be included.

It’s Labor Day and I finished the final run-through of Next Time. IMHO I think it turned out fantastic. Now I have to decide when to publish it. More on that in the next post.

Reviews

This week I’ve been working on finding reviewers for First, especially before it comes out. I found a list of sites that review SF books and will take submissions from indie authors. So far, I’ve submitted to about a half-dozen.

What’s interesting is that several of the sites on the list require payment for reviews. I guess I’d never really thought about it that much, but in some cases I guess it makes sense. Reading someone else’s book is an investment of time, and then to write a review about it’s another chunk of time. To their credit, the sites I looked at all specified they would write an honest review and wouldn’t guarantee a good one. I’m sure there are review sites that take money and guarantee good reviews, but I didn’t run across any.

My next area of focus is going to be on podcast interviewers. I’ll take a look at those and see if I can get on the schedule for a few.

Linking

First is now live on bookseller websites. I updated the landing page for this site to include links to the ones I’m aware of. Gotta admit, it’s pretty cool seeing it everywhere. Yesterday was six weeks to the release date.

The other link I wanted to mention in this post is about LinkedIn. I posted a picture Monday morning showing me with an author’s copy of the book. In 48 hours that post has received over 5500 impressions, meaning that many people have seen it. A bunch of people graciously commented and liked the post. TBH, that’s kind of a surprise. I didn’t realize it would reach as far as it has or spark conversations with co-workers who’ve known me for years. I’ll take it, though, and am grateful to the people who pre-ordered the book.

Out There

On Saturday I found that First is now available on Amazon for pre-order. That’s pretty cool. It means now I have another link to point people toward.

I spent the last several days doing various things to get the book out there. I finished my media kit on Saturday and sent my book to a couple of book review sites. I’ll be doing more of that over the coming days. I’ve had people ask about it at various places over the weekend since they saw my social media posts. I need those bookmarks to get here so I can hand them to people who ask and that way they will follow up with an actual order. The other thing I’m going to do this week is post about it on LinkedIn and hopefully that gets a good reaction.

Real Books

My author’s copies arrived on Wednesday! I know this has probably been said thousands of times, but it was so incredibly humbling to hold the real, printed book in my hands. The cover is fantastic and I don’t think the book could look any better.

The delivery timing was interesting. I’d seen the UPS truck pull up but thought they were delivering something next door. I finished a work call, loaded up my stuff, and opened the front door to find two boxes on the front step. Since I was on my way to a dentist appointment, all I had time for was to move the boxes inside, cut one open real quick, and take a fast look at the real book. Would’ve been nice to bask in the moment a little more, but oh well, the dentist’s chair was calling.

I’ll send some of these to family and sell most of the others, maybe at a book signing, maybe if someone wants to buy a copy. And keep one for myself, of course.

Etc.

As part of my marketing efforts, I added a subscription option to this website, right on the front page. I hate pop-ups so the fields are embedded on the site instead of annoying people with a form in the face I tested it out by signing up myself and receiving a confirmation email. This will be important so I can send out discount codes, updates about releases, and so on. Seems like I’ll need to pay extra per month to have the ability to send email campaigns, but I’ll wait until I get some subscribers before I whip out the wallet.

I spoke with the publisher on Monday afternoon and learned a few things. One, I ordered bookmarks but had to pay a design fee. If I’d know I could include those in my original order I would’ve done so. Lesson learned. Second, the quote for my second book is good for 60 days, which means I get their promotional discount even though it expires at the end of this month. Third, with the new quote all I have to pay for regarding the bookmarks is the bookmarks themselves, since the design work will be done along with the cover and such. And finally, it’s better to run ads before the release date to build up views and pre-orders on a big site like Amazon. Once the book is listed there I’ll start pushing it and trying to get people to go there.

More Editing

I got on a roll this weekend and finished editing Next Time. This was my cleanup run to get rid of all the was’s. Or wases. Was I successful? (see what I did there?) I think so. I tried to keep from torturing sentences just to get rid of a “was.” In some cases it’s unavoidable. Along the way I found a few typos. I’ll be going through it one more time and the plan is to get it into the publisher quickly so I can get it out by the end of the year.

I know I said my plan for the weekend included research about marketing ideas. That’s what I’m starting today while Next Time sits in the virtual drawer for a few days. Some of them are easy to do, like printing bookmarks so I can hand them out. Others are a reach, like podcast interviews. Let’s see what I can do with these ideas.

Marketing

It’s time to start really thinking about marketing First. The self-publisher creates an ad campaign based on my inputs and budget and pumps them out to targeted sites or social media. Yes, I know ads are not the same as marketing. I at least caught that in Marketing 101 all those years ago.

Beyond the ads, I need to determine what else I can and should do. I’ve got one book signing already lined up at a local pub, which is definitely my target market. I started looking into virtual book tours, email marketing lists, and all the other stuff that comes up when you Google how to market your self-published book.

I’m like a lot of novelists in that I’d much rather write than spend emotional energy on something I’m not good at and lies outside my comfort zone. On the other hand, I want as many people as possible to read First and my other books. I’ll do more research this weekend to start figuring out my options. I’ll get back with you on my progress.

And She Was

This is a post about the word “was” and I couldn’t resist getting a Talking Heads reference into the post title.

I finished editing Next Time yesterday, and now I’m going back through one more time. The main reason is to identify every time I use the word “was" in a sentence and replace it with action words. “Was” is generic and I find I tend to overuse it in writing. I’ve already replaced a lot, but not all, of the instances. While it might not make the book sizzle, it does make it crackle a little bit more.

My feeling is that “was” is a lazy way of writing. No action, generic, passive, whatever you want to call it. It’s unavoidable overall, but I’m finding I can do better 80-90% of the times I use it. I know, it’s a lot of work to go through the manuscript again, but I think it’ll be worth it. Plus, I found another typo I didn’t notice before. After this pass I’ll still need to do one more just to make sure it’s ready for the publisher. Especially with all the changes I made in the last chapter. That’s where I tend to create problems.

At least I avoided using “was” as a verb in this post. No promises for subsequent entries.

The Date

On Friday I confirmed the release date for First: October 10th. That’s about two months away and for good reason. It allows me time to do pre-release marketing and gin up interest before the actual publication. It also gives the publisher time to get the book across all the networks and sellers. In that way, they can gauge interest, seeing how many people visit the book’s page on their site. For example, I’m sure Amazon has an algorithm to calculate how many print copies to keep in stock based on how the view count for a page.

It’s pretty exciting. If I read the email correctly last Friday, I should have my own print copies in hand soon. It’s been a long road to get here, but we’re almost to the big day.

Rewrite

I received an email yesterday that the eBook proofs for First are ready for review. That’s pretty exciting. It’s going to take a little effort on my part, so I’m going to stop my review of Next Time, where I’m rewriting the last chapter. When I was out for a walk on Tuesday I pondered weak points in the book, or parts where I still felt uncomfortable with the scene. Since I’m not paying an editor for this one I went through the mental exercise of identifying those nagging thoughts in my brain that kept telling me something could be better. I had those thoughts with First and when I spoke with my editor she put clarity to those thoughts. I learned from that experience and hope it will help make the book better.

Bookmarks

One of the things I’ll need to be able to market First is bookmarks. They’re easy to hand out wherever you are, like a book fair or at a restaurant where you meet someone you know. The self-publishing site I used has a template for bookmarks, but it appears they don’t print or sell them. I’ll have to find a printer who’ll do it for me.

I just did a 30-second search and I can get them online or from someone local. I guess once I get printable files for the artwork I can move forward with formatting and ordering. That should be a nifty way to get out the word on the new book.

Concert

Went to a concert this weekend. It was a solo act, the lead singer from my favorite band, and it’s amazing to hear the lines he’s written over the years. The flow, the creativity, and the sheer genius. It’s a talent very few people possess. To me, at least, it’s harder to write a song than a novel. Yeah, I know a song is much shorter, but wow, every single word has to count.

Speaking of that, I started watching a new show last week. Well, new to me. It’s one of those shows “everybody” is talking about. Maybe it’s all the hype, but I wasn’t that impressed by the first episode. Or the second. Or the third. I felt like the writers were trying to be make it so every word of dialogue was deep and impactful. You know, like Breaking Bad, where by the end of the series you hung on every single word and the tension made you sweat. Except in this case the attempt feel short. Characters would say something that felt like it should be riveting and dramatic, but instead it made me cringe.

It wasn’t until the fifth episode that I felt as if the writers really nailed a scene, where I smiled and nodded because they got it. Look, I know I’m not some best-selling author with a rap sheet to lend credibility to my criticisms. I’m just a guy with enough background to know when something’s a little off. It’s not so bad that I quit watching before I got to that scene in the fifth episode. But it could certainly be better.

Cover

I posted the cover for First on this site and social media a couple of days ago and the response has been very positive. More people followed me on my Facebook Author’s Page, which will be useful in promoting the book when it releases. The eBook conversion is in process right now and once that’s done it’ll be released out in the wild. I’m still okay if someone wants to buy movie rights, btw.

I should probably change the top photon on that fb page, but I really like it. Sometimes you luck into good photos even when you’re not a great photographer. For context, I took that picture in Killarney, Ireland. It’s a one-way street where the traffic lights alternate traffic flow. We spent two nights in Killarney last year (hope that doesn’t sound pretentious since that’s the only trip like that we’ve ever taken) and Killarney is a beautiful city. Why wouldn’t it be? It’s right by the National Forest and the Ring of Kerry, some of the most scenic places on the island.

Anyway, I lucked into that picture since it had rained off and on all day, making the pavement reflective at night. I like the golds and blues of the lights. It’s not the greatest picture in the world but it reminds of a fun vacation. It has nothing to do with books so maybe I really do need to figure out something different.

Another

Another month is over. Seven months complete in 2023. Another chance to look back at what’s happened so far and see what else needs to be done.

No books published yet is probably the big one at the top of the list. However, that should change in short order as FIrst is in process. Once I receive corrected proofs it should be a quick road to the finish line. At least, I hope it will be. This goal should be reached in short order.

I spent a good chunk of time and queried independent publishers with no success. Which led me down the self-publishing path. I’m excited to see how it goes and what I can do to get my books in the hands of readers. Publishing is an interesting industry. At some point I should expound on that. Agents are gatekeepers to the publishers, but they operate completely on their own when it comes to what they allow through the gate. These days if you’re not an author who checks off certain boxes or your book doesn’t mesh with certain political beliefs, you’re not getting anywhere. Look, I know this isn’t a surprise to anyone. My thoughts just strayed down this path when I should be looking back at what else has happened this year.

I edited Assignment Day and Next Time, and re-read First several times through. I started writing a new book, still in progress.

What’s ahead in the final five months of the year?

Publish one more book after First, and market them both. I’m thinking this will take some effort. Duh. Finish writing the new book. What’s a stretch goal? How about getting a royalty check that’s four figures? That’d be nice. Let’s charge forward and see where the rest of 2023 takes us.