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Tag: whining

Let Me Tell You A Story

Published by Crawford on June 21, 2021

I’ve been preparing Fester for publication for what seems like several ice ages at this point. Even though the deadline is bearing down, it still doesn’t seem real. Right now, I am just reading and re-reading the manuscript, looking for typos and opportunities to polish up the story a little bit more.

This is daunting. I’ve been working on this story of and on for nearly thirteen years now. I’m pretty damn familiar with it at this point. Yet I’ve once again printed out the latest MS, and am preparing to review it yet again.

As I go through the oh-so-familiar chapters yet again, there are some I like reading, even for the umpteenth time, and some that are, at best, meh. Yet overall, the story holds up in my not so humble or unbiased opinion. I think it’s pretty good, fairly coherent, and very funny. I should be proud, for I feel I have written a good book. (That’s not to say that Jackrabbit was not a good book, but it wasn’t my story. It was John Dillinger’s; I just retold it and put a little twist at the end.)

However, while I was getting enthused about getting Fester to print, I ran across two statistics that totally harshed my mellow. The first was the total royalties I had earned since Jackrabbit was published in 2019. I won’t go into detail, because it’s damn embarrassing, but let’s just say it’s in the low three figures. A rough calculation indicates that I’ve earned enough selling books to cover slightly less than 5% of the out-of-pocket expenses involved in publishing: paying the cover artist, paying the editors, buying ISBN numbers, etc. I’ve recouped about one-twentieth of that; as for the hundreds if not thousands of hours spent writing and preparing the books for publication – bupkes, bubelah!

No matter. I didn’t get into this for the money. If I wanted to make money selling books, I would have opened a book store. At least that’s what I tell myself. The real object of the exercise is to tell a story – to entertain, and have the reader transported from their mundane issues and concerns to a world where they can be forgotten for a while. Noble AF, am I correct?

Then I ran into the second of the mellow-harshing statistics: that only about 25% of friends and family members who buy your book will actually read the thing. For me, this is a king-hell bummer, as friends and family members comprise the bulk of my audience. I guess the thought is that if they buy the book, that’s good enough. Well, it’s better than a poke in the nuts with a sharp stick, but it still kinda sucks. Because for me, this isn’t a moneymaking exercise, it’s a story-telling endeavor. I’d much rather you read a free copy than pay for one and leave it neglected on the nightstand.

What’s the point of this screed, then? I’m not sure–except it allows me to blow off a little steam. I’m not really too concerned about alienating my audience, since I’m fairly confident that very few people will read this, either. (And if you are reading this, I thank you sincerely.)

So, to sum up: some writers write to make money, but nearly all writers really want little more than to tell you a story. Indulge them.

Fester
Now available for pre-order

Sophomore Slump Revisited

Published by Crawford on April 27, 2021

Ah, I thought I’d hit the sophomore slump when Jackrabbit came out, but in retrospect that was more of a freshman slump. Now that I’ve gotten Powwows out the door, do I appreciate what a sophomore slump for a self-published author really looks like.

I read somewhere that of all of your friends and relatives that buy your book, maybe 25% will actually read it. I was appalled when I first read that; now it seems wildly optimistic. Of course, I realize that in thee Covid-confusing times that people can have trouble focusing on naught but the essentials. And of course, there’s a helluva lot of entertainment out there vying for peoples’ attention. But on the other hand . . .COME ON! I crafted this tale to be an easy-to-read piece of entertainment that would make people chuckle about witchcraft murders. Is reading it too much to ask?

Actually, at this point, I don’t even give a flip if people actually read it; I just want them to review it. Once again, I’ve been struggling to get people to post reviews on Amazon and Goodreads (but especially Amazon). For self-published books, the rule of thumb I’ve been going by is that you want 10 or 12 reviews available before you start promoting your work. The idea is that why go to the effort of promoting a work, only to have potential buyers see it with only a handful of reviews (half of which are by people that have the same last name as you)?

Of course, I’ve bitched about this before. This time, however, I thought I’d be clever: In an effort to get people to post reviews, a gave away yea number of PDF versions (it’s an eBook-only format) to people with the idea that in return for the free copy, they would post reviews for the sumbitch. Perhaps my mistake there was not including a time frame, as nary a single one has followed through on their commitment. Frustrating; and I’m not sure how to deal with it. Nagging via email and Facebook seems to have limited effect, and I don’t want to come off as pushy (although it may already be too late for that). On the other hand, since there is no physical book that can be rediscovered on the nightstand, I suspect that it can easily be forgotten in these modern, busy, fractured-attention-span times.

Then there’s the issue of sales, which is almost to depressing to delve into at this point. Of course, as I learned with Jackrabbit, one should not go into a self-publishing project expecting to make a lot of money (unless they want to spend every waking hour promoting it on social media).

Now, Powwows was meant to be a loss leader. I set the sale price at ninety-nine cents in order to interest people in the full-length novel Fester, coming out–I hope–at the end of June. The idea was that I would lose a little money on Powwows in order to set the stage for the big soaking I’d take when Fester comes out. However, given the sales figures so far, I’m beginning to question the wisdom of this approach.

Face it, we live in a very materialistic society. I may have groused before (but am too lazy to look it up) about how much Americans equate value with price. I know I’ve discussed this with Ken Huey, the most excellent cover artist I’ve used for both books. As a professional artist, he’s struggled to figure out how to price his work, which, of course, is of inestimable value. So, with that in mind, I’ve got half a mind to jack the price of Powwows up to a whopping $1.99. At this point, I don’t have much to lose other than pocket change, so I may as well put this theory to the test. The only real danger is that the sample size will be too small to draw an accurate statistical conclusion about the relationship between price and sales.

So be it. As with my other works, I primarily write to amuse myself. Of in this case, to vent a little. If you’ve actually read this (hi, Aunt Gail!), I appreciate it. And if you’ve been hedging on whether or not to buy a copy of Powwows, go ahead and do it while the price is still low.

Buy it now while it’s still cheap!

Sophomore Slump

Published by Crawford on September 10, 2019

Wellnow, here I am: I’ve published my first novel Jackrabbit and have gotten my ISBN number. All of my friends and family who were likely to buy the book have already done so. The first thirty days after the release have come and gone, meaning that Amazon no longer considers this a “new release” and now has much interest in promoting the book (unless, of course, I pay them). Despite running a number of promotions and mailing out actual, physical copies of the book, I’ve gotten only a handful of reviews on Amazon.

Now what?

Clearly, I’m in the Sophomore Slump regarding the promotion of the book. I guess the next thing to do is to mount some sort of paid promotional effort to get awareness of the book to more people who might actually purchase it. This is a little difficult for me, since: A) it involves effort that would take away from, y’know, actually writing, and B) it will probably result in me giving money to Facebook or the like, which is anathema.

I know that it takes money to make money, and that a little paid promotion will go a long way. At least those guys who sell books about how to sell your books claim that to be the case. Those how-to-sell-your-books books sell thousands of copies; maybe I am writing the wrong type of books!

My goal is to sell at least a thousand copies of Jackrabbit. That pretty much represents the break-even point for the money I’ve spent thus far on the editing, the cover illustration, printing review copies etc. So far, it’s off to a slow start. Well, boo-hoo – I got my ISBN number, everything else is pretty much gravy, correctomundo?

Still, just for the sake of follow-through I will embark on the adventure of Facebook advertising, and perhaps others, just to say I ticked off that box. Why the heck not?

Buy my book!

Promotional Rescue

Published by Crawford on August 7, 2019

The launch of Jackrabbit has been a hell of an interesting ride, so far. It’s been an absolute thrill seeing something that went from a vague idea five years ago to an actual physical book that I can hold in my hand and use to swat flies. I can remember back twenty years ago, wanting to be a novelist but resenting the hell out of the fact that I had to actually write something. My goal, as I saw it then, was to have my own ISBN number. And now I do – 978-1-7332699-0-2. I just didn’t think I’d have to pay for it myself.

But I’ve already whined about that, so I’ll whine about something else.

To wit: promoting the book. This is something that is proving to be really challenging. I am decidedly NOT good with sales and marketing. At one point, I had my own one-man architecture and consulting business. I managed to limp it along for nearly two years, largely on the basis of connections I had in the local AEC industry and the largess and patience of my wonderful wife. But I hated, absolutely hated, having to drum up business and make cold calls. I figured that was not going to be a good situation for a one-person firm, so I eventually went back and got another “real” job. Also, I needed the health insurance.

So now I am back in the familiar but uncomfortable place of having to promote my own book. I knew that I was going to be in for it when I decided to self-publish (a topic for another post), but thinking about having to do it some time in the future, and actually having to do it NOW are two different beasties. But, here I am again.

Now that I’ve got the self-publishing end of things squared away, I’m focusing my attention on promoting the book, and doing a little online research about the best way to go about doing it. One of the first things I read is that the author needs to begin promoting the book six months before the publication date. WTF?! Back then, I was still writing the bastard; I had no time to think about promoting it. Hell, I have a full-time job and a wife and something akin to a life – there’s only so much more I can do on top of maintaining my so-called life and finishing a manuscript.

Then there’s the fact that nearly all self-publishing promotion involves social media. I don’t much cotton to social media, but I suppose I’ll have to live with it. I knew what I was getting into – but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to deal with it gracefully. Besides, from what I understand, even authors who managed to get their books published are now expected to shoulder a lot of the promotional activities. They need a “platform” – which I guess is what you are reading now.

So, here I go promoting again. I can be thankful for a number of things, not the least of which is that I live in Portland, which has self-published authors out the wazoo. So I have friends and acquaintances who have been down this road before and can offer useful advice. Most important, however, is that I have something that I didn’t really have when I was making those cold calls for my business, and that is faith in the product. This is a good book. I’m proud of what I’ve written, and I’m thankful that I hooked up with a good editor to make ti readable, and a good cover artist to encourage people to give it a try.

Here it goes…