Proofing

The proofs arrived late yesterday afternoon for Next Time. I have to admit it was a bit of a different experience than with First. Nothing bad, mind you, but my reaction was less of anticipation and more of curiosity. I suppose that’s because this is not a new experience, plus I was also working and didn’t peek for a while after seeing the email come in.

Anyway, the big reveal is always the cover. WIth First, I was blown away when I saw the artwork and instantly knew they’d nailed it. What did they come up with? Will I like it? Was my idea stupid? My reaction on seeing the cover for Next Time was more restrained, but I quickly realized they did it again. It contains details I’m still finding. Looking back, I think my reaction was somewhat different because Next Time is a different genre than First, and let’s be honest here, not a genre I normally read. Therefore the design has to fit within what’s normal and what sells within that genre. The Wife really liked it and that’s a good sign. I’ll spend the next several days reading through the manuscript proof and providing my feedback, likely by the weekend.

Quantity

One of the questions my friends ask me the most about First is, “How many books have you sold?” I wish I had a good answer. What I’ve found is that the reporting of sales lags quite far behind the actual sales themselves. This in turn makes it difficult to see how effective (or not) an ad campaign turns out to be. For example, the release date for First was October 10th. I didn’t start seeing sales data until late December, about two-and-a-half months after that. I know that bestseller lists are tabulated weekly and Amazon sales ranks are updated hourly or so, but the actual sales should be quicker to put together than ten weeks after the fact. Granted, this is a minor complaint, but we do live in a world of computers where data can be processed in near-realtime.

Purchase

The other day I scrolled through my Facebook feed and ran into an ad that I actually clicked on. It was for a kit about publishing and becoming a bestseller even when you don’t have a massive mailing list or connections to do a ton of interviews. So, I purchased it. The cost was low and I thought, hey, why not see what they have to say. The delivery was quick, via email. I won’t say it solved all the world’s problems, but it did point me in the right direction for some additional advertising. It also suggested that you publish your book on a certain date (always a Tuesday) and launch your book two weeks later with announcements and ads and such. I’ll have to think about that part some more, since it seems to me you want people excited about the actual publishing date and pre-ordering your book. And activities will continue in the weeks after that. Anyway, just like most other writers, I’m still open to learning what works for some people and improving my sales.

Premise

Yesterday I was talking with someone who’s reading First and he asked if was writing something new. I told him yes, I am, and I also have a book at the publisher to come out within the next few months. He asked what it was about and so I gave him the premise of Next TIme. I haven’t really told a whole lot of people about it yet, so it was interesting to gauge his reaction. It was positive, by the way. We talked about other time-traveling books and movies for a bit. My summary of the story intrigued another person nearby, another positive sign. It’s interesting to tell people about it since it’s lived in my head and on virtual paper for the last 18 months or so. Based on my conversation yesterday, I think the book has cross-sectional appeal and I need to make sure it’s not pigeonholed as a romance. Not that that category’s bad, but it does narrow the audience. Things to think about…

Didn’t Work

How about those ads that didn’t work? I played around with colors on a couple of them, especially on one idea I had when a cold snap hit the U.S. I tried an ad that said, “Want to get away from the cold? Try Proxima Centauri. It’s nice this time of year.” I thought it was humorous and relevant, but apparently not a lot of the people who saw the ad thought so. Plus, I used a light blue-ish background, which was far different than what I used on successful ads.

The other ad that surprised me a little was the one where I displayed the 5-Star medallion from Readers’ Favorite. Maybe it was a little overbearing. Maybe the accompanying text didn’t hit the right note. Looking back, it wasn’t my best ad design. Lesson learned. When I got the 5-star rating from Reader Views, I pulled a quote and kept the ad simple instead of putting in the new medallion. That ad seems to be working much better as far as exposures and CTR.

Ads Update

You’re probably wondering to yourself: Self, how are the advertisements for First doing? Glad you asked. It’s been an interesting experience. I’ve learned a few things along the way with some ads that worked and others that didn’t at all. I’ve done around ten different ad campaigns, two of which are live now. The ad producing the most click-throughs has been running since the day after Christmas. I keep thinking about pausing that one, but it continues to produce a decent CTR (click-through rate). Plus, and this is what I think works for it, is that the ad shows the book cover and all the text says is, “Second is not an option.” See what I did there? That seems to work.

The newest ad has a blurb from that awesome review I got last week. I also changed the background image to zoom in on our hapless little astronaut floating in space, and the book title and my name are nowhere in sight. Just the text and button for clicking to buy First. It’s only been a week but the CTR is pretty good so far. I had another that featured another plan on the title which said, “Sometimes being first isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” I let that one run for a few weeks but the number of impressions dropped and I moved on to a different approach.

Does all that mean I’m a marketing genius? Not even close. At least with the BookBub platform I can experiment and quickly pull an ad if it’s not doing well and try something else. And if something works, I can ride it for a while. Like almost two months in the case of the first one I talked about.

What about the ones that clearly didn’t work? We’ll talk about those next time.

Details

I got an email from the publisher on Monday that I needed to take care of a couple of things. The first was that they determined the page count of Next Time would be slightly higher than originally estimated. That’s probably because I had put in a blurbs page and another one listing my other books, neither of which was in my original word count. That incurred a bump to the cost of about 4%. I can live with that.

The other issue was my author’s photo for the back cover, a small profile pic that I’ve used for years on the web. For print, it needs to be 300 dpi, whereas the original is only 96 dpi. How did I fix that? I used Canva to size the picture and export it as a PDF, but at Print Quality, not just any regular PDF. Then I searched online for a converter and 30 seconds later had a 300 dpi picture. Overall, it took longer than a few minutes as I figured out how to do it all since Canva doesn’t natively support 300 dpi. In the end, it worked and I took care of business.

Dang!

Friday I received an email that a review was posted for First on a website where I’d entered a contest. The entry fee also included a review. To say I was blown away is an understatement. Dang! It was a detailed review of plot and characters, which was nice to see. I mean, after all, I want people to really get into the book. It looks like the book connected with the reviewer in every way I’d intended, which really made my author’s ego feel good. As I joked to my wife, I think the reviewer liked the book even more than I did! Anway, the outstanding review is featured on the Book Review Blog at Reader Views. Many thanks to them for the outstanding 5-star review.

Submitted

I submitted the manuscript to the publishing company yesterday. Now begins the process of approving proofs and gearing up for a release date. Time to figure out how to publicize and market Next Time.

A funny thing happened yesterday morning that saved me from embarrassment at the hands of reviewers. This thought came to me while I was showering - as you know, random thoughts usually hit me when I’m running or in the shower. My brain pondered a concept for the cover of the book and the random realization hit me that I’d made an error in the last few pages of the book. One of my later edits had the characters returning to a certain location. No problem, right? Except they’d moved from that location earlier in the book, about 180 miles of movement, to be exact. I couldn’t exactly have them walk out the door and within minutes be someplace far away. This is what happens when you make late additions to your story. Anyway, it was easily fixable. Just glad I had that random thought.

No Jury

I wasn’t selected for the jury on Monday, which meant I had time later that day to kick off the publishing of Next Time. I talked with a publishing specialist and started the process. I spent time yesterday formatting the manuscript to meet the requirements, although I realized I need to include some blurbs from First, either on the back cover or the very first page. I also came up with a concept for a cover, but I’m not sure if it’s a good one. I might get rid of my thoughts and let the artist have free reign. My plan is to have everything ready to submit by the end of the week, if not before. Then comes the proofs and cover, and once all those are finalized we can set a publishing date. Exciting stuff.

Editing Done

That went quicker than I thought. I finished the final edit of Next Time yesterday afternoon. I guess that’s the difference between editing a book that’s 125k words (First) vs. 86k (Next Time). At the risk of too much self-congratulation, I have to say the story propelled me along. I haven’t read the book in a few months and it didn’t disappoint this time around. I’m curious as to how it’ll be received once it’s released. Hopefully, this week I can kick off that process and get it in the pipeline for this Spring. I’d like to say I’d start today, but I have to do my civic duty and report for a jury summons. At the least, it’ll give me a new experience. Those sometimes pay off down the road in a story.

Editing Time

As planned, I started editing Next Time yesterday. This is the final edit before I put it into print. It’s not the last time I’ll read it, though, since I’ll go through it closely when I get the proofs. I know I’m biased when I say this, but dang, it’s a good book. As I’ve said before, I’m not exactly sure where the inspiration came from for this book. All I know is that I woke up in the early morning hours while recovering from jet lag after our trip to Ireland in October 2022. The concept for Miriam’s odd time travel popped into my head and a book was born. It certainly doesn’t happen that way with every book. It’ll probably take the better part of next week to finish my final pass and start getting the publishing process started. I’m excited for this one to get out into the world.

Library

Back in October I took a couple of copies of First to the local library. They have a form on their website for local authors to complete and donate books. We have two branches in our library system, so I took one for each. When I dropped them off, the lady at the reception desk didn’t seem overly enthused. Maybe “enthusiasm” isn’t a requirement in the job description. Well, lo and behold, I received an email last week that my books have been added to the local authors section and are available for check-out. I’ve loved going to the library since I was a wee lad and having one of my books actually in a library is amazingly cool. My plan is to stop by and get a picture to share on social media.

Almost

It’s almost that time. The time where I make one more pass through Next Time in final preparation for publishing. I've been thinking February 1st is the time to kick off that effort, which means putting on hold the current novel I’m writing. The timing kind of stinks since I’ve been getting into a rhythm with the story, but in order for the new book to come out this spring I need to get it in the pipeline. That means an 8-10 week lead time once I start the publishing process. So, if I set the wheels in motion by mid-February, that puts the release date in late April or early May, depending on how much back-and-forth there is with the proofs. One thing I’m curious about: the cover. With First I had a concept for the book cover and gave prompts to the publisher, and they came through with an awesome rendering. With Next Time I have no idea what the cover should look like. I guess I’ll know it when I see it.

Would Of

This is one of those posts lamenting the state of language usage, in this case English. I don’t know why this popped into my head the other night, but it bothered me enough to write about it. Look, I don’t claim to be perfect in grammar, word usage, or even spelling. I do, however, have plenty of pet peeves. Welcome to my world.

One that bothers me more than it should is when people use the phrase “would of.” This shows up in memes where the author maybe doesn’t know any better. For example, “If I would of known then what I know now…” No, what you meant to say was, “If I would’ve known then…” Would’ve is a contraction for “would have” and whoever uses the phrase “would of” is guilty of translating the spoken word incorrectly into the written form. People should know better, dammit.

Still Writing

How’s that new book going that I’ve been writing and hope to make into a series? Great question and I’m glad you asked. With vacation and book promotion for First it’s been somewhat slow going. I’m well over 20k words now, though, and that’s a good sign. I’m still hoping for that extra dash of seasoning to make it special, but at this point I’ve decided to write out the basic story of the book and see what happens in the end. I already know there are some things I’ll need to add in, such as arcs and hints of arcs, that’ll play out over the course of the series. I have some of those elements started but there’s more to be done. I have a feeling the book is still going to come to be in fits and starts, especially since I want to publish Next Time this spring and that will distract me from writing. Nevertheless, it’s coming along and I’ll keep you updated on progress.

Clicks to Sales

I wrote a couple of posts ago about CTR, or Click-through Rate. Since clicks don’t necessarily equate to sales, I’m now trying to figure out the reporting of sales and correlating that to the ads I’ve been running. The report I can view on the publisher’s web site shows ‘Reported Sales Date’, which I take to be the sales for a particular week on a particular platform. Makes sense. If that’s the case then the clicks to sales ratio over the last several weeks is pretty low. Not really a surprise, since the CTR itself is low. It does make me wonder, though, about whether I need to change some things on the descriptions that people see on the pages where they can purchase it (Amazon, Apple, etc.) or if it’s a price thing. Right now the eBook is $1.99 USD. Sometimes people don’t want to spend the extra dollar for an unknown book and author. Heck, I’ve done that before. In which case maybe next month I lower the price to 99 cents USD and see how things go.

Ad Changes

One of the nice things I’ve found about advertising through BookBub is the ability to change ads quickly. For example, I created an ad for First a couple of days ago about getting out of the cold and going to Proxima Centauri to warm up. Seems timely since most of North America is in a cold snap. The background was kind of white-ish, like snow or ice. After a couple of days I thought I’d try a variation, so I updated the background to a very light blue with a left-to-right gradient where it fades to white. Again, a nod toward cold and frost. I paused the previous ad and went live with the new one in about two minutes. This way I can see which ad is more effective at getting clicks. Sometimes technology is actually pretty cool.

CTR

CTR in the online advertising business means Click-Through Rate. That’s what I’ve been tracking with the ads I set up on BookBub and it’s also how they charge you. As an advertiser I set a daily budget and bid on how much I’m willing to pay for each click the ad receives. It’s interesting to track the life of an ad. I came up with a pretty good one that I’ve been running for a few weeks now. The impressions (or views) of the ad have gone down over time, but the CTR has trended higher. Compared to some days earlier in the campaign, I’m getting the same number of clicks on a quarter of the impressions. And as I think I’ve mentioned before, I’m getting hits from platforms and countries outside the US Amazon bubble, which is pretty cool to see. Canada seems to be enamored of clicking on the ad this week, so let’s see how much of that translates into sales.

EMD

One of the things I did intentionally in First was to focus on the characters and not the science. As I mentioned in the afterword to the book, I’m not a scientist. The electromagnetic drive, or EMD, used by SpaceFirst was purposefully crafted by me to get a person from one point to another almost instantaneously. This negated the need to rocket out of Earth’s gravity well, endure a journey of unknown duration, and supply the spaceship with the necessary fuel and supplies for said journey.

I realize that approach might rub some people the wrong way. One of the reviews I received knocked the story for using such a concept, likening it to the transporter from Star Trek. The EMD and how it functions in the book does seem a tad too easy. But I didn’t completely make it up…

I read an article before I wrote First that triggered my imagination. It’s titled, “Electromagentism is a property of spacetime itself, study finds.” To be fair, I don’t understand more than half of what the authors say. But I did catch enough to give me some ideas on how an EMD could fit its way into my story. Did I overly simplify things? You bet I did. Would the bits and pieces I took from that study cause a scientist to sneer at me in derision? More than likely.

That said, it’s called science fiction for a reason. I know there are purists who want everything to fit within the laws of physics and reality as we understand them. That’s fine. Those people probably won’t like my concept of the EMD and how I cherry-picked things out of that study. But if you’re okay with my approach then please enjoy.