I've Got The Fire Back!

Since Nanowrimo, I've been on a little hiatus. I edited all through December, but when January hit, I was in a slump. February didn't see an end to it. But here we are in March, and suddenly I have found my fire again.


Firstly, I have been working hard to maintain my blogs and website. I'm tweeting like a madwoman and writing ficlatte's while looking up writing contests. I have found a few that strike my fancy.


While puttering around on my blogs, I found my niche! That's a good thing because now I can try to market myself. I've been trying hard to do that for a while.



The one glitch in the system is that MailChimp and I have been fighting each other. Apparently, I need to build an email list to work on promotion. MailChimp is free, but not the most user-friendly. I have been trying to give out a free PDF and people aren't biting. I realized that the links are not working and the free stuff does NOT integrate with MailChimp. I even tried avoiding the PDF file altogether and just linking to a view only version on Google Docs and when I clicked on it from my test email, it failed.

Anyway, I'm reading , writing, and pushing forward after a rough start to 2018. I expect more hiccups to come, but for now, I'm enjoying the escalating ride up the hill. I hope it leads to an exhilarating ride.

Thoughts on Book Covers

I was followed on Twitter by a book cover designer. I looked him up on his website. This guy does awesome work. He boasts of a 2 day turn-around, and his fans attest to it. He has to have a team working with him. There's no other way. Plus, his fee for the service of making a book cover for both a physical copy and an ebook cover is steep. It must include paying employees. $747 dollars is too much for this mi-western farm girl with a family to raise!

However, your book's cover is essential. It IS worth it to spend money on a good cover. Wherever this guy lives must have a high cost of living, much higher than the midwest, to justify getting paid that much.  I know it's about quality, and some of you might think it's perfectly fine to pay more than a month's rent or mortgage payment on a book cover illustrator. I would rather find cheaper ways to do it. (I'm currently attempting a cover change at Canva.com. It's free.)

Some of you might argue about VALUE and Return on Investment, or ROI. Yes, having a sharp cover helps it sell. Value to me is getting the most for my investment at the forefront. The outcome is uncertain. I guess I'm not a risk taker. Probably why I'm not rich.

In thinking about making that money back, one can only dream. Even if your goal was to pre-sell a book before launch and then launch it, you'd have to have already invested in a cover to show your potential buyers. I'm not that confident in my work at present, nor in my current fan base, to be able to make that money.

Maybe that's my goal; to be 747 dollars confident in my work and in my fans that I could count on selling for that much value. :)

Here's What This Writer's Brain Has Considered This Week

Writer-type things I've been looking at this week:

SERIALS
I'm thinking of taking Enmityville Chronicles, which I am co-authoring with my husband and publishing it to Channillo. They only publish serials. You have to make your own covers and do your own marketing to get people to read it. People pay a subscription fee per month to read a few series'. They make sure that what you have to write is worth reading. For authors, there is a short application process. What needs to be done is an edit of the first few chapters, a cover made, and then deadlines set for the rest of the series. Hubby and I can them write for these deadlines.

WRITER'S CONFERENCE
Checked out the webpage for my local Writer's Conference. For those of you who don't know, I live in Indiana. This conference offers networking, opportunities for professional ($$) headshots, tips, speakers, and chances to speak to the 'professionals' one-on-one. I'm not feeling ready for this, however. First, I feel like I need to have a query, an almost finished manuscript, and a direction. I need to have questions to ask. This is possibly untrue, but I prefer to be prepared.

EMAIL MARKETING
I'm finishing up a course on email marketing. I know this is the first big step from me talking talk, having a blog, and having a writing hobby. If I am to get serious, I need followers. Followers with emails. Followers with emails who will want to review and buy my books.

GOAL 2018
I started writing again in 2008. I met a lot of great writers, old and young. I learned that I had much more to learn. I'm thinking that by 2018 I want to have a book finished that I am proud of, that I can sell, and that I can market and maybe launch myself off from. I have a couple of ideas that are quite different, though. We'll see how it all works out.

Summer Writing To Do List

In order to get a jump start on my summer writing, I need to make myself a to do list. This list may help others get motivated, so I am sharing it!

1. First thing's first, whip out your planner or google calendar and mark down those writing days! If you have a J-O-B or career, or a family to take care of, you know your time is precious. Schedule time for writing. Maybe a few minutes or hours a day, or a couple days a week, whatever time you have, set it aside for writing.

2. Set up deadlines. Give yourself deadlines if you don't have someone pushing you forward, be your own motivator. Start at the end goal. I want to be published by X-date. Then work backwards from there. "I need to have this edited by such-and-such date, polished and ready to go. That means I need to be in final writing stage by this date, and writing these dates, and beginning to write... now!"

3. Begin marketing. Yeah, I know, your book isn't even written yet, but the best promoters start ASAP. Plus, it makes you stick to that deadline and makes it real. Set up a reveal date for your cover, and a pre-order date, if you can. Research your options for publishing; Createspace, Smashwords, Amazon, etc.

4. Write and Edit. Edit as you go, or write, then get a copy editor, then re-write, then have a beta reader read it or throw it (or chunks of it if it is too long) up on Critique Circle, then re-write, and then edit some more. Send it off to an editor, or get a good editor friend to give it fresh eyes.

5. Design that cover. While you wait for a beta reader or editor to get back with you, design that cover. Have a service design it, a friend, someone on Fiverr, or design it yourself.

6. Polish it one last time. Make sure you make those last edits, polish your cover or get the cover image in the correct format, and put it all together.

7. Publish! Put it out there for all the world to see. :)


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

A to Z - "N" is for Novel Publicity (more on marketing)

Continuing on the marketing theme, Novel Publicity is a great place to go to get your book some attention. They host Blog Tours for authors to showcase their books and get reviews.

A blog tour is an intensive online publicity period. During this period, a group of our host bloggers will feature you and your book in some capacity—this might be a book review, an author interview, or another promotional opportunity depending on the blog’s specialty. At Novel Publicity, we recognize the importance of reviews, which is why all our tours are review-only tours. We also encourage our bloggers to cross-post their reviews to Amazon and GoodReads, providing them with reminders before, during, and after the tour, along with a special random blogger prize to further incentivize cross-posting to Amazon.

This costs $1,000, but this service works.
If that is too steep for you, you can opt for a book discussion guide for $350, or a custom book-marketing campaign for $75 an hour. They also help with author bios and custom websites.

Emlyn and her husband are sweet people and know what they are doing. I was following her before her website became so huge. She has published her own children's books as well as others. If she can do it, you can do it. She can help you.

Or you can try to go it alone. Do you already have a long list of blogging friends who will help promote your book? Do you already have an email list to share your book with? Do you tweet it and share it on facebook and google plus? Have you run a 5 day free promotion with Kindle Select? Do you have your own domain?

These are a few questions to ask yourself. If you have more tips, advice, or questions, please leave a comment.

A to Z - "M" is for Marketing (my 16 steps of e-book publication)

I've been studying marketing your e-book.

It seems the progression of steps is:
1. write
2. edit/rewrite
3. design a cover/pay for a cover design/post the cover on your blogs and emails
4. blog about it/ build an email list/use a video trailer
5. edit/rewrite
6. blog about it
7. have beta readers give feedback
8. rewrite it
9. pay an editor to edit it
10. re-write based on their suggestions
11. select a date to publish/format to publish/cost of book
12. promote it/ give incentives for buyers/give incentives for reviewers
13. check it over one last time/upload content for publication
14. Fulfill your promises to incentivized buyers/reviewers
15. promote it
16. begin a new project

Here is another 10 steps to Kindle marketing.

Marketing takes up the second half of the work. You can be the best marketer and never sell a bunch of copies if your writing is not good. The first half of the steps are just as important. Besides, if you start marketing your book before it is finished, it gives you incentive and a deadline to finish it!

Also important is beginning a new project. Don't try to be a one-hit-wonder or ride out this book forever. People want to read many books by one person. People want to collect books by one author. Do a series and get them all out fast before anyone forgets your name. Soon you'll be big.



This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Writing Resolutions 2014

As far as my Writing Resolutions for this year, I have decided upon a few.

1. Finish what I start.

I have way too many little starts. Little starts are good. But finishing a story feels soooo good. I also have starts on editing multiple projects. Those need finished this year. I know this will take some more planning to be executed, however at this time, without knowing how demanding on my evening hours life and work will be, I feel good leaving this flexible.

2. Trade critiques with another writer.

I know how valuable this is. I won a writing competition because I had others critique my work and I listened to them to make it awesome. I am not ready to trade critiques this month, but I will do it when I feel ready. I will most likely go back to Critique Circle and begin working there.

3. Increase Marketing Platform

I'm not sure how or when I will work on this goal. I have to catch back up on the whole ebook market and look at my image (non-existant) and decide what I can do about it myself. Mostly, it is going to be to write and get things out there. Have things to promote.

NOTE:
I just updated my Sample Writing page here on the blog. Go ahead, click it. You will find the current project I am working on: expanding the ficly series based on a dream I had into something longer.

I am proud of what I have so far, but I am at a place where I need some outlining to flesh out my ideas into motives, morals, and the fibers that make up a good story. I don't even have many character names yet. They don't have past secrets, well, not that they have shown me yet. I have not yet fabricated the tangled webs that will piece together the story into an epic adventure.

They say if you can dream it...

Doing The Impossible: Defining Yourself

In doing some reading up on promotion in self-publishing (Novel Publicity is great!), I realized that I need a smattering of works for sale to give my readers a sense of who I am as a writer.

I need to do two things:

1. Complete multiple books, including covers.
2. Put them up for sale before I create a facebook page that promotes me and sums me up.

But before I can do that I need to figure out who I am!

I guess we are always searching for who we are, and we change as we grow up, so there really isn't a cut and dry answer to satisfy that question. Even if I narrow it down and say, "Who am I as a writer? What genre do I write best?" I cannot answer.

The only unifying aspect of my writing is my 'style'. I am barely able to recognize my own style because it is so close to me it IS me. It's like how you never think you look anything like your siblings, but everyone says you do. You can't see your style because it is how you think in your own head. It is you, whom you are most comfortable with (I hope!).

This means I am promoting myself in all my glory. You can look at a selection menu of styles and pick out what you think you are, but even then, you could be totally wrong. Who am I?

Figuring out who you are takes a lifetime. It really is nearly impossible. You can decide how you want to behave and what to associate yourself with at this given juncture in time in your life, but overall, you are the composition of your lifetime and you choose what legacy you want to leave behind.

Furthermore, people may say you are someone completely different from how you view yourself. Their opinions only matter as much as you make them matter. Impress the people you need to impress. Don't let unflattering behavior in the background spoil it. Find a platform and stand on it.

Which is what I have to do.


           ~*~*~*~*~
UPDATE
I am thinking about Pinterest, to visually see for myself what I like. Maybe that would give my fans a colorful inside look into my person. It might garner me a few new followers. I could learn from the boards how to mix my interests and tastes into a promotable package deal. Me Business. You'd get to see my book loves, my fashion tastes, the beautiful things I wish I could surround myself with, my teaching interests, my hobbies.

Any thoughts?