Write and Grow Rich: Secrets of Successful Authors and Publishers by Alinka Rutkowska My rating: 4 of 5 stars Solid advice from a variety of authors, including fiction, which is not exceptionally common. Slightly sales pitchy at times, but that is part of the performance of the book: this book and what people do in […]
“Of course,” Scott says. “Your life as performance art.” The night only gets worse. Sean walks out as soon as he closed up his bass’s case and picked up its stand. Marsha demands we drop of her drum kit at her house and won’t stay. Breaking down with only two of us is a […]
So far, this path to publication has relied mostly on an extended flashback, with occasional forays into general truths. Today will be a break into present time, with a quick step back a couple of weeks to prepare for what is happening now. Read More
All manner of plans still not enacted aside my site was live.
Further, I was trying out the ideas from the books I’d chosen as models albeit in a piecemeal, disorderly, catch-as-catch-can fashion.
One of my first active actions was to take every one of the early fans from the FB group and put them into the email list program, make a fancy-looking (imagine quite busy with far too many images) email announcing the book’s publication, which I then sent to all eleven of them. The results: One recipient confirmed buying my book because she got this email. That’s nearly 10% conversion, which is quite high I’ve read. More importantly, it’s proof of concept, suggesting that I’m NOT wasting my time.
Certainly, with such a tiny sample, this single email proves nothing, but it WORKED damn it!
Then, I emailed a few friends and much of my immediate family. Why not all my friends and family? Read More
To be fair to myself, I hadn’t been sitting around staring at my screen, clicking on everything else I could to avoid doing work, which would have been easy given that the 2016 presidential campaign was running parallel to the launch. Despite that distraction, I’d gotten things done, several actually, and had sold a handful of books. The blog was going, and it had gained followers not only on WordPress but also on Medium, and gathered a few readers, likes and other reactions on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. This blog lives on a website that wobbled, but held together and has been improving since, meaning my designing all of the artwork on Canva, and learning how to use WordPress better, creating and loading copy and adding links to capture emails for the mailing list: ‘Join the Adventure’ per the ideas from the books Platform and Your First 1000 Copies
Cohabitates with other websites is a better description for it, as A Perfect Blindness has its own URL and website, with its own big “join now” button in order to capture emails that live on the same WordPress site on its own page, just like the home page for them both, and actually the whole site: wlancehunt.com. Read More
So, what is social media good for an author if not selling books?
Reframe the approach, and put yourself in the position of the person cruising Face Book. Are you looking to spend money? Looking for a book to read, perhaps? Doubtful. If you wanted to buy, you’d be on the websites of Amazon or Barnes & Nobel or be walking to the local bookstore. Looking for reading recommendations? That’s imaginable, but most people looking for recommendations either ask someone they know, or they go to goodreads.com, Book Bub, Book Shout, or again Amazon, Barnes & Nobel or the local bookstore. If they’re just browsing, they’re looking for something interesting, something that will catch their attention, not something that will demand a credit card number. They want stuff. Good stuff. Free stuff. Twitter, same thing. Think of the platform, and most likely you won’t find people hungry to buy books, clicking away to find the right ad. Read More
Consider this foreshadowing, a bonus post giving away the endings of some early questions, regarding the book finally making it through design and proofreading, all the way to the printer. Plus, it’s still early, and complete strangers to me need to report their opinions on the book, but there are two of them, reviews, and they are unanimous. Read More
iUniverse and the publishing path of the novel A Perfect Blindness So, while self-publishers won’t publish anything, they will publish a book for whatever purpose the author wants. There are myriad reasons for publishing a book, from “sharing my story with family and friends”, and “expressing my deepest thoughts”, to “sharing information on a specialized topic”, […]
iUniverse and the publishing path of the novel A Perfect Blindness Part 2: Changing my mind about self-publishing Cover proofs went to production Tuesday as planned, but a new concern bubbled up—about lyrics and fair use. When going over the proofs, I realized I had misremembered the lyrics of a song that was playing on a dance floor […]
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