Podcast

I’m doing a podcast interview later this morning and looking forward to it. This’ll be my first and my biggest worry is setting up video and audio. I have a microphone I bought several years ago when a friend and I talked about doing our own podcast. That hasn’t really panned out and the mike sat in its box until yesterday. It should have good sound quality. Video? Well, that’s going to be the ol’ laptop camera. Nobody really needs to see my mug in detail anyway so no reason to go into bankruptcy for a top-end camera. The chance to talk about my books and the writing process for an hour should be fun.

Zing Zang

For those who don’t know, Zing Zang is a tomato-type juice, mainly used for Bloody Mary cocktails. I have some friends who occasionally like to add it to their beer. Personally, I’m not a big fan of that mix. I think beer tastes just fine on its own, and if you have to add some Zing Zang to it then you’re probably drinking crappy beer.

Why am I spending time talking about jazzing up a beer with a spicy jolt of Zing Zang? Because even after figuring out the chaos thing (see previous entry), I still feel like the overall concept is good but it needs some Zing Zang. If you’re following along with the analogies, yes, I just said the story is like crappy beer. It needs a jolt. I still don’t know what that is and yesterday afternoon’s run didn’t provide any epiphanies. Time for more brainstorming.

Chaos

I did some more thinking about the new stories/series I’ve been brainstorming. I thought some ideas would come to mind when I went out for a run Tuesday, but instead hit me as I was going to bed that night. You can never tell when the muse will visit. The thought I had was this: chaos. As in the way I envisioned the start of events was too smooth, too…expected. I realized I need to throw in a lot of the unexpected. And what’s weird is that my original intent was to put characters into random settings, to let some element of chance prescribe how their initial scenes will unfold. Instead, the chaos needs to be less random, something planned out by a person behind the scenes. I know that sounds odd, to invoke chaos by plan instead of chance, but the more I think about it, the more I like it. I’d avoided the idea because I thought it would be more chaotic to have people encounter random conflicts, but the real conflict will be that it was all planned. That should cause plenty of chaos.

Gifts

One of the things I’m thinking of doing for the holidays is signed books. Not a novel idea (see what I did there?) but a good one, I think. I have a few dozen author copies and this’ll help me reduce the inventory while hopefully making some people happy. One question that popped into mind is how that’ll work if I discount the paperback and eBook for the holidays. I’ll have to put some thought into that. My intent is to offer a signed book, wrap it in Christmas paper, and mail it. How the order would work also needs to be worked out. I don’t have a store on my web page and my publisher doesn’t offer it either. I think this will be through a direct contact with a bit of manual work. In future years I’ll have to figure out a better way to do this.

Gel

Some thoughts are starting to gel on the new book I’m brainstorming. I’ve written a few chapters to test out ideas and format. This one is vastly different in narration and perspective than anything I’ve written so far. If it ever sees the light of day you’ll understand. I’m still mulling over the storyline as well as how best to organize the telling of that story. Overall, I think it’s a good idea that would be a great series, but I feel like I’m missing that little spark that’ll take it from good to fantastic. As I continue turning ideas over in my brain I’m hoping for that flash of insight. Hmm, maybe I need to go on a run since that’s where I routinely experience inspiration.

Accounting

Bet you didn’t know I have an accounting degree. Okay, some of you probably did. But wait, you say, isn’t this a site about writing? Yes, it is. And all things related to writing, including keeping track of writing income and expenses. Sad to say it’s necessary and a part of the writing life.

How do I keep track of those things? In a spreadsheet. It’s not glamorous, but it serves its purpose. And that purpose is to keep info about what income I get from my books and what expenses I’ve paid. At the end of the year I can total those and plop them right into my tax return. What about stuff like expense categories, e.g., editing services vs. marketing? Indeed, when I enter a new item into my list on the spreadsheet I give it a category. When the time comes, I can sort them or even get real fancy and create a pivot table.

Do I need a juiced-up, expensive accounting program or a real bookkeeping service to take care of this? Not in my current state of publishing. When I sell a LOT more books then hopefully the answer will be yes. I can see how people who make a living off their writing wouldn’t want the distraction of doing their own accounting work. I get it. I studied it for four years. For now, a simple spreadsheet will do.

Waiting

Another thing I’m coming to realize four weeks after publishing First is how much waiting there is. Duh, say experienced writers. The flurry before the release date is real, and immediately thereafter. Beyond that, it turns into somewhat of a waiting game. For example, I’m waiting on a review to hit a site so I can link it and share with the world. I’m waiting on later this month to do a podcast interview. I’m waiting on actual sales statistics to flow back to the publisher so I can see number of books sold as opposed to trends. I’m waiting for several months before I start the process of publishing my next book. Like I said last week, this is a marathon. I’m sure there will be segments where I pick up the pace, including the next few months where I work on holiday sales. In the meantime, as TP said, the waiting is the hardest part.

Scattered

One thing that’s struck me over the past few months is how easily scattered marketing can be if I let it, especially when it comes to ads. I see a strong temptation to try Google ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, Instagram ads, Amazon ads, and on and on. The thing about ads in all those places is that they take a little something I like to call “money.” I’ve seen a couple of columns on advertising for books and they tend to say something similar: target your audience. Yes, I know that’s Marketing 101. But the pull is strong to spend money several different ways without really figuring out who uses those social media platforms and who will see your ad and hopefully click through. It all sounds good when they say your ad will reach ten thousand people, but how many will actually take action? A depressingly small number. Sorry to say it, but it’s true. I don’t know what the real industry average is, but from what I’ve seen so far with Google ads is if you get five people out of a thousand to click on your ad, that’s actually pretty good. Next time around I’m not sure I’ll do Google ads again, but I sure won’t scatter ads all over cyberspace. I’ll have to think about it.

The Long Game

With all the hubbub of the book launch behind me, I’m now in the long game. I read a story yesterday, albeit in a marketing email, about an author whose book sales took off more than two years after release. I think First has done reasonably well for an independently published book and hope it continues to do so. If it’s still selling well in two years, I’d be okay with that. Which means I will continue promoting it and trying to stay consistent, even after publishing more books that will take away my time from this one. I guess what I’m trying to say is that marketing doesn’t end a few weeks after the book comes out. It’s a marathon, not a sprint. And as a runner, I definitely know how to run a marathon.

Holidays

Time to start planning for some holiday promotions. I’ve been reading and watching various sources, and what I need to do is map out how it’s going to look and the timing. Apparently, it doesn’t stop the day of Christmas since people have new devices and plenty of gift cards. The holidays actually extend into January.

Another thought I read that I found interesting was how book sales in summer actually eclipse the holiday sales. Both are huge, but that means I shouldn’t put all my eggs in the holiday basket. Regardless, the time for the pending holidays is fast approaching.

Reporting

It’s interesting to me that I can’t yet see how many copies of First have been sold. Or maybe I just don’t know how to see it. There are three things I’ve been able to find out thus far: 1) The company that published my book reports on eBook sales weekly, apparently. That must be the frequency they get their reporting from Amazon and other partners; 2) on Amazon I see graphs showing trends, which are the separate rankings of the paperback and eBooks against all other books. It’s interesting but doesn’t actually say how many copies you sold. and 3) on the Amazon pages, again separate for the two versions, I can see the category ranking, which is how your book fares against others in the same genre.

All pieces of the puzzle that provide very little actual information. I understand it takes longer to report back to the publisher on paperback copies, although in this connected world you’d think data flow would be much faster. The rankings are interesting from a comparative standpoint but it seems they’re a nice way to distract you without telling you anything concrete.

Signing

Held another book signing last night and it went well. Nice to see friends come out and support my new book. I even wore a sweater vest and smoked a pipe. Now I need to find ways to get some additional book signings and outreaches since the effort will continue for several more months, at least.

In the meantime, yesterday morning I worked on some lists for the series I’m considering. I have the basic concept down but I’m trying to come up with a twist to the big idea. My thought is that the concept is entertaining enough on its own, but adding that little extra is what makes it worth reading. I already have some wrinkles for subsequent books in the series, which is a good sign, I think.

Series

I’ve been pondering an idea for a series again. I had a conversation last week about Kindle Unlimited that made me think. When I published First, I did so by casting a wide net with the eBook version. The deal is that you kind of have only two choices: 1) Place your book on Kindle Unlimited, which allows people to check it out like a library and you, as the author, get paid by number of pages read. The downside is that it’s exclusive. You can’t sell your eBook anywhere else; or 2) Sell your eBook everywhere, in which case it’s not available on KU. To be clear, it’s still available on Kindle as an eBook purchase, but not for check-out.

The reason I bring this up is because in last week’s conversation we talked about how a series is better for KU than one-off books. In the universe of KU, the author gets paid by how many pages a reader reads. It doesn’t really pay off, at least as I understand it, unless the book is part of a series where the reader can keep going and going and going. That makes sense to me and actually matches my own reading experience with KU. I’ve talked about it here before to some degree. In the couple of years I’ve had KU, I’ve read series of 20, 15, and now reading one where I”m on book nine. The series model makes sense. I put some brainstorming ideas in a document on Saturday and will be working on hashing those out.

Fun

It’s been kind of fun to get back to writing this week. I’m working on the sequel to First and as I mentioned previously, I didn’t like how some of it was going. so I drastically altered part of the storyline. That resulted in a loss of 3-4,000 words from the count, but that’s okay, it’s about the story, not the word count. I like the revisions better but I still feel like I need to spark the fire earlier in the story, but I don’t know what that is yet. If you’ve been reading this blog at all, you know that means I probably need to go for a run to clear my mind and let the good ideas hit me in a moment of inspiration.

TIming

I believe I’ve written previously, at least a little, about the timing of the next book. I’d originally wanted to get it out before the end of the year but now I think it’s best to wait until 2024. That gives First some time to breathe, to gain traction, to get some reviews, etc. If I immediately put out another book two months after First’s release date, well, that kind of stomps on it and the attention focuses to the new one. I never knew I’d have to think through all these marketing options.

So, what am I thinking about the timing for the next release? Originally, I was going to shoot for right after the first of the year, then thought about moving it to Valentine’s Day. After all, Next Time is a love story. Now I’m more inclined to go for April or early summer. That allows me to enter First in some award competitions and with any luck, collect some hardware I could use to continue building sales for it. Will this timing change? Likely. Will it be to an earlier date, or later? Only time will tell.

More

After a little more reflection over the weekend, I think some overhaul is necessary with the new book. I didn’t go into detail in the last post, so let me do that in this one. Several chapters involve the kidnapping of a major character followed by a quick return, creating a mystery as to who would want to kidnap this person, and why? Intriguing, but I don’t think it works.

This is some of what I learned from having another person edit First. Specifically, if part of the story gives me an unsettled feeling then there’s likely something amiss. I don’t buy this particular plot point. It has its moments, but that’s not what I want a reviewer to say about the book. If I feel uneasy about it then so will a reader. What does this mean? Figure out a better storyline, trash several thousand words, and write something better. Simple, right?

Ongoing

The effort for marketing First will be ongoing. In other words, it didn’t stop with the book launch. I have a podcast interview scheduled for late November and hopefully I can snag a few more. I’m thinking about what to do with the holidays approaching and maybe combining some sort of promotion with Amazon ads.

While I’m thinking through some of these ideas, I read through what I’ve written in the sequel to First. I didn’t realize I’d already written about 18k words and forgotten some of the details. Not writing on it for a few months will do that. I like it so far although I think it needs more of a bite to the conflicts I’ve set up. Yes, that’s incredibly vague of me to say but I don’t want to get too deep into it here. Just some random thoughts, like most of what I post on this blog.

Book Launch

I told my sister yesterday that “release day” sounded like I was getting out of prison. So, I’m going to go with “book launch” instead. I’m glad I took off work since there was a lot going on behind the scenes. From the initial posting of info across social media to the book signing at night, a lot happened. I don’t know how successful it all was yet, but I do have a funny story about the evening event.

Hopefully this is one we can all laugh about later on. Let’s start by saying it was nice of my friends to have me at their pub to kick off the book. I’ve known these guys for about eight years and am grateful for the opportunity to launch the book there. I stayed for a couple of hours and sold all of two books: one to a family member who I’d originally planned on giving a free one to, and another copy to a person who wasn’t even there. My daughter had told her friend she’d get her a signed book. Other than that, we hung with our kids and enjoyed some dessert. It was good exposure but as we all know, people don’t go to the local pub to buy a book. Oh well, it was a fun day.

Release Eve

Tomorrow is the official release date for First, which makes today Release Day Eve. It’s a big day, but like I’ve said before, the marketing and work will continue. I have several things planned tomorrow and I took the day off work so I’m not distracted from the job that pays the bills. I have a book signing in the evening, among other events. It promises to be a busy day.

First Review

This week I received the first review of First and I couldn’t be happier. The reviewer did a nice tour of the book and pointed out lots of goodness. Once it’s available online I’ll link it. They also provided two pieces of artwork I can use with blurbs from the review. I’ll probably go ahead and add those to the main page of the site.

On the same day I received the review I also received a good review from someone who bought a copy from me last week. When I saw him on Wednesday he went on and on about how much he liked it and read it in two days. I should have recorded him so I could use his feedback in my marketing materials. It helped pump up my writer’s ego just a bit. Four days until release date!