This is a very simple post. Not because we are simple people, my writer friend (although there is an argument in my household about my side of that equation), but because what you and I do is NOT simple. Not by any stretch of the imagination. As they say in France, it’s very difficult.
Continue reading “No Errands for Fools”Tag: marketing your work
Five Years to Independence: Year Five – the Year of Independence
So, here we are at Year Five, the Year of Independence. This is the goal, the island to which we’ve charted our five year course, the one thing we’ve focused on and worked on and planned on.
So, like, what is year five?
Continue reading “Five Years to Independence: Year Five – the Year of Independence”Keeping Chin-ups
Remember when you were a kid, and you had to do chin-ups at school? OMG, that was the worst thing ever! I always cheated and took a little jump up, so I always got a count of at least one. That second one was murder. And the third? Forget it. Same with push-ups. To this day, when I think of push-ups, I see the unmoving gym floor swim before my eyes…
And so it is with marketing your own novel, as I am marketing mine. Which novel(s) do we speak of? Why, Droppington Place and Marigold’s End, of course. You’re a writer. You know how it goes.
Marketing is all about getting people to pay attention to you. You could make YouTube videos – tried that. You could make your own website – mine is right here: PhineasCaswell.com. You could make podcasts or something.
Whatever you do, you have to somehow drive traffic to it. That’s the key, the thing, the line over which you must cross to become the next Stephen King or J.K. Rowling.
So, I’ve been posting oodles of posts about the famous pirate Blackbeard on my site (see the shameless marketing plug above). In particular, I’ve focused on his most notorious ship, Queen Anne’s Revenge. Beyond that cool name, there’s just not much information available about her, which I take as a personal challenge. Why?
Okay, sit down – you’re not gonna believe this. My next novel deeply involves Blackbeard. Whoa! Huh? Did not see that coming, right? Blackbeard was born in 1680. My character Phineas Caswell, hero of Marigold’s End, a Phineas Caswell Adventure, was born in 1694. Both were sailing around the Caribbean at the same time, 1706… See? Those gears are a’turnin’,right? Blackbeard was 26 – in command of privateers or something, right? And Phineas… well, I leave it to your imagination to link those guys together. Or, actually, to MY imagination…
Anyway, I just ran a Google search on the phrase Queen Anne’s Revenge. My website didn’t show up on the first page, or the third, or the seventh. I gave up on Page 15, certain that I’m just not out there in the world. In fact, my site would appear, if I could find it, after “great snacks for the kiddos” and “cool dog names.”
Sigh.
Just like in middle school, in gym class, it’s all a question of keeping one’s chin up. Someday. Someday I’ll cross some magical line and come up on the first page of a Google search. And then the angels will sing, and the heavens will open up, and somebody will click through, visit my site, and buy my books.
Or, I could win the Powerball. The odds seem to be about the same.
Going Responsive
Responsive websites? I always thought your website was responsive if you just answered your emails.
You’re a writer – you know how it is. You toil and slave over your book, you publish it yourself, you get your website, your Facebook page, your logo… and then, who knew, it’s useless if your website isn’t responsive. Useless. Who knew?
While, the standard, desktop, not-so-responsive website still has value if you’re a corporation that sells oodles of things that deserve their own big pictures and stuff, the little screen, however, is clearly the road ahead.
So, what does it mean to “go responsive?” It simply means that you scale your website to look good on mobile devices. That’s it.
Sort of. Once you scale your whole website down to that itty-bitty size, you realize that your whole outlook about your website changes. Gone are the stacked images, the carefully layered pages that had a certain snap to them. Gone are the cool, zoomy galleries of your favorite pictures.
Those big, splashy pages have been replaced with simple, easy-to-read, direct-to-the-point, cell-phone sized articles and galleries and images.
It’s great news if you’re a writer, which you are. All you have to do is write! You don’t have to be a web designer? You just write – that’s really what you and I do best anyway!
PhineasCaswell.com has been a desktop site for quite a while. I built it with Open Element software – free!!! But, Open Element doesn’t support responsive websites yet. Rats.
For around $30 USD, I found Serif’s WebPlus – I’m running x7, whatever that means. It has a set of really simple templates for making a responsive website. It was seriously easy to make the conversion.
I’m trying to sell my novel, Droppington Place. It’s aimed at the young adult market, which is comprised mainly of mobile device users. Market? Meet website. Website. Market.
As you know, I’m a big proponent of Gorilla Marketing – do nothing and hope for the best. I did a little something by going responsive, and now I don’t have to do anything else. My site is ready for the world to beat a path to my door.
Ah, success.
Oh yeah, I forgot to mention my other Gorilla Marketing project – you’ll like this. It’s called Soon to be a Major Motion Picture. All you have to do is download Droppington Place – do it for free, if you’d like. Encourage your friends to do the same. If your friends tell their friends, who tell their friends, who tell…you get the idea… why, we’ll be way over a gazillion reads, which is more than enough for any savvy movie studio or book publisher to jump on the bandwagon and make Droppington Place into a major motion picture. Brilliant!
So, download Droppington Place, and go tell all your friends.
This is gonna be great!
Goodbye, Baby
Stand by to eject bathwater on my mark.
Standing by, sir.
And…mark.
The bathwater is terminated.
Nice shooting, Lieutenant.
Roger that. The baby is outta here. Repeat: the baby is out of here.
Big ten four. Stand by for towelage.
Uh, negatory. Sorry. No can do.
Disregard that. Stand by to commence towelage on my mark.
Uh, sorry, skipper. No can do.
All hands, stand by. What’s with this gloomy Gus guff, Lieutenant. I believe I gave you an order.
Ten four on that, skipper. But, we don’t have, a, well…
Don’t tell me you ran out of towels.
Negative, sir. It’s just that, well, we ejected the baby with the bathwater.
Mongo Santamaria! You’re telling me we tossed the kid out the window?
Like a bullet, sir.
Well, there goes the towelage. All hands, prepare for battle stations. Angry mom at eight o’clock!
It turns out, writing a book is great fun. And it is great fun. Even though your imaginary friends, all those little voices in your head, drag you through the very depths of despair and pain and agony, the fact that you share that with them, that you are a witness to their travails – is an honor and a delight.
Oh, sure. That’s the cat’s pajamas, that part. Like ice cream for dinner every night of the week. Best of all, you tell all your friends that writing is the pits, it’s the worst – you feel like a zombie…hour after hour, typing, thinking, scribbling, coffee, beer, whatever. While, actually, your inner you goes “teehee, this is the best!”
Welp. The party’s over. They ate the pretty balloons. It’s crying time again, and you’re gonna leave me – I can see that faraway look in your eyes. Why must we get offa this cloud?
BECAUSE I PUBLISHED MY BOOK!!!
Yes, there is one more moment of glee, and that is when you join the Club of Shakespeare. All the world is a willing audience, hungry for your written words, longing for your thoughts, your ideas… and, once the book is published… Yo, lookit me, feedin’ the masses!
It’s a cerebral joy, and stunningly short-lived. I found no Disney at my door. Discovered Dreamworks dreaming of someone else. Ran across Random House randomly choosing someone else’s house.
No, the party’s over. Now comes the drudgery, the mind-numbing torture, of figuring out how to market this darned thing for real. It’s no longer a game, or a funny idea. Now it’s work, work, work, to get this product sold and out, into the sunshine where it belongs.
What? What’s that? How can you find it? Well, bless your generous soul, you have come to the right place. Let me pull your chair closer to the fire. Move it, dog. Make way for this most spectacular person.
Because you are you, and you’re a friend, I’ll let you have the book…for free!
No strings attached. Freebie. You go. Although, if you found it in your heart to write a dazzling review, I’m sure no one would be opposed to that…
Find DROPPINGTON PLACE here: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/618049
Now, this is important: type in the coupon code NJ38D. When you do, the most wonderful book you’ll download with your free coupon will be yours – for free!!!
Of course, you could also visit the author’s site, PhineasCaswell.com.
Now, to find that baby…
Marketing with Castanets
Let’s be clear: I don’t like castanets. Those clickity-clackety chips of annoyance can only be played by Spanish ladies with fingers like hummingbirds. I can play a bunch of things: flute, guitar, piano, Pandora – but, those nasty little wooden clackers of doom must be powered by voodoo or something. Hate ‘em. Even that clattery little noise they make sets my nerves on edge… sounds like somebody playing a skeleton. However, they do pave the way for a lame pun. If you know me, you know I love those.
Anybody’ll tell you that it never all comes in one package. Instead of wishing for a ship to come in, wish for a procession of small boats… a flotilla of good-news-bearing yachts.
If a ship comes in, that’s only because you won the lotto, or Raspy Crackers won the third race at Del Mar. It doesn’t happen. If you think that your ship’s gonna come in… well, my friend, I hope it does.
In marketing, you don’t want your ship to come in. Stay out there, my seafaring friend, cruise around, spread the word.
Think of all the one-hit-wonders you’ve ever heard of – folks who made a killer splash all at once, but then were gone. Pet rocks. A dozen rock ’n’ roll bands that you can’t even name, but their song was pretty cool.
One ship. One big hit. A ton of cash today, but, tomorrow?
The fisherman that drops the hook is planning on bringing in a big fish. I’m gonna make a killer pile of dough on this baby. If the fish goes vegan, or saw what happened to cousin Wally in these very waters just yesterday, the line comes up empty.
The fisherman with the nets routinely feeds his family because he brings in many small fish over time. His plan is to score many, many small hits. The aggregate effect is the same, if not better, than his single-hit brother. Sure, the brother makes the occasional big buck, and laughs at the net-gathering sibling. But the folks at the bank smile at net boy, because he is constantly in there, making his deposits.
It’s not unknown for a tuna to wander into a small fishing net. At first the fisherman thinks it’s the score of a lifetime…we’ll eat for a year! But then the reality sets in: the net is torn, and the ability to gather tiny fish is lost.
You’ve read about those companies that make a nifty niche product, and one day find themselves approached by the likes of Costco or Walmart. Their production model changes, their business model changes, their focus changes, as they ramp up to meet the incredible demand of the super retailers. The dollars are nearly huge – our ship came in!
But next year, the big retailers turn away to another supplier, and the customer base, the loyalty, the little fish, are gone. Filing for Chapter 11 is seldom pleasant.
Your marketing, then, might do well if you consider casting nets… oh, there it is: castanets! My humble apologies.
You are the One – Bring Your Wallet
In the writing business… that is, the business end of the writer’s business, although the writer’s business isn’t business at all, but art – this gets so confusing – not the business of writing art, the business of selling the art, which is a business unto itself, but we’re not talking about that. Actually we are, sort of… you’re a writer, you know how it is…
Restart.
If you are a writer, and you don’t have an agent, you need one. Yes, you can self-publish your novel, but who is going to sell your book for you? You? You’re a writer. You need an agent.
Finding an agent, well that’s the business end of writing. But agents don’t seem to drop out of trees, even if you’re absolutely, fantastically talented. I know this from personal experience. That dog don’t hunt. That ship has sailed. You can’t handle the truth.
So, you advertise, in a million different ways. You blog. You join writer’s circles and clubs and chats, and comment your brains out on other people’s stuff. You work like a monkey to get your name at the top of an agent’s mystical list, the agent’s short list, the who’s who of writers in the agent’s Rolodex. Rolodex – boy, that’s a piece of history, huh? Raise your hand if you know what a Rolodex is… uh huh, as I thought. Paltry, paltry.
At the end of the day, you have to face it: you’re marketing – advertising – in the hopes of getting an agent to look at you and say “wow, now THERE’s a talent!”
In the world of Gorilla Marketing, all this effort, all this subtle, almost not work at all, is aimed at just one person. Millions of readers, or in my case, half-dozens of readers, see your blog and comments, read your name… and move on to something else.
It’s like being a daisy in the middle of the tall grass – oh please, Ms. Cow, pick me, pick me! You stand up tall, doing your flowery best to grab a little bit of bovine attention… oh, puleeze…. Of course, nobody wins in the cow analogy. Literary agents are insulted, and you get eaten if you win. But, you get the point.
The point is that if Toyota gets you to run down to your local dealership and buy a car because you saw a good ad on TV, it doesn’t matter if they wasted the time of 30 million other viewers, so long as you buy the car. No, you don’t suffer from incontinence, but some poor sap does, and those commercials might just be the ticket… say, I didn’t know they made underpants like that!
The point is this: you market your keester off, in the hope that one, just one, single set of eyeballs, sees your stuff and says a quiet “bingo.” And when that one sees your stuff and mutters and magic phrase, all your Gorilla Marketing effort pays off, and the future is yours to pave.
Well, here’s to you, my marketing friend. May you hear a whispered “bingo” soon!
Now, if you’re an agent, you can find the first two chapters of my book here: PhineasCaswell.com.
Thank you.
Gorilla Marketing – Again
If you’ve read earlier posts here, you’ll know I’m developing a theory called “gorilla marketing.”
It’s really quite simple: you don’t do anything, and people beat a path to your door. Usually they bring loads of cash, and things turn out great.
Well, you don’t do nothing, actually. You do some stuff – you know, little marketing things that get people reading you and believing in you and eventually giving you the oodles of cash.
So, here, without any ballyhoo or marketing phrasing, is my pitch: the second chapter of my novel, Droppington Place, is posted on the web, here. It’s totally free.
Read it now, as the price is sure to go up.
Take out your marketing pencils, kids, and let’s just do a little analysis.
Interesting proposal – check.
Product offering – check.
Call to action – check.
Free offer – check.
Dude, it’s all there, and we haven’t really done any work. See how easy this was?
Now, for you to do your part. This involves oodles of cash, so you might want to take some notes…
Just to recap: Chapter 2 of Droppington Place is now ready to read, and you got a nice, healthy sampling of Gorilla Marketing in action.
Wow. What a great day!
Pass me a banana, would you?
Old Friends and New Ideas: A Marketing Ploy
It’s not good to close doors. I mean, obviously, if there’s a bear out there in the backyard, you probably don’t want to leave the kitchen door hanging open. But, in general, a closed door means something’s wrong.
The gusty winds of life sometimes close doors you meant to leave open. You think things are swimming along fine, and everybody in your life is exactly where they’re supposed to be, but, whammo, out of nowhere, you find a door has been closed.
It could be the gusty winds of life, or the dusty gathering of old age. But, most likely, the doors swing shut through inattention. Yours. Yep. There it is. You have to look in the mirror for that one, and admit, uh oh, you fell asleep.
Uh oh, Mr. Van Winkle, the kids have grown up and moved to Barstow. How did this happen? Wasn’t it just yesterday we were all so chummy? Now you’re over there, and they’re way over here, and how did you grow so far apart?
It can take a lot of work to open an old door, but it will almost always be worth it. Unless that door leads to a cranky ex to whom you owe money, you’ll usually find a warm and welcome heart, one that is just as surprised as you that the door swung shut.
A door opening to a long-time-ago besty was the inspiration for this bit of news: DROPPINGTON PLACE, Chapter 1, has been rewritten, and is better than ever! Sadly, you won’t find it on this site. But you WILL find it over here, and you can have some fun while there.
The re-opening of a door that was never shut in anger, only through inattention, is a great cause for celebration, and you’re invited to celebrate, too. Enjoy Chapter 1 of Droppington Place.
Did you notice that clever piece of marketing work right there? Dang, that is some fancy voodoo. Your heartstrings are all tied up in little knots about that door thing, and, boom, your right into the novel. You have to admit, that’s the good stuff. Now, if there was just a way to make a nickel from that!
So, here’s your job for today: first, go read Chapter 1 of Droppington Place. It doesn’t have anything to do with opening doors, but will make me feel better. Next, think, think, think about a door you have let swing shut, and go open ‘er up. You’ll be glad you did!
Tales of Steel
It just can’t be that hard to be Superman. Yes, your home planet blew up. Yes, you have to hide behind those dorky Clark Kent glasses in a world that thinks you really can’t be recognized behind your Ray Bans. But you can knock the crackers out of anyone who disagrees with you.
More importantly, as a Super Person, you can approach every new situation with the knowledge that there is no one stronger, faster, smarter, yada-yada-yada. That must be a pretty cool something to have in your pocket. Say what you want, evil-doer, for I have all these nifty super powers.
But you and I, we’re writers. For us, publishing our work is like Superman going up against a bad guy. I don’t know about you, but when I look in my back pocket, I only see last week’s tissue and an empty wallet. Maybe a little lint.
Every piece we publish, even dopey pieces like this, put us out on that line of pass/fail, succeed/fail, survive/fail. Out here it’s just you and me, kid, and I’m not so sure about me.
With that cheerful thought, I formally announce to you, my writer friend, that Chapter 15 of MARIGOLD’S END is now on this site.
If you’ve been reading along, and I know you have, you’d know that Phineas, Louise, and Taylor have stowed away on the Marigold, only to find the ship in pursuit of their own Kathryn B. The weather has turned foul, and Captain Jaffrey’s a demon possessed, and things can’t possibly end well for the smaller ship. Phineas has to quickly piece together a very big, very serious puzzle, and despite a horrific loss, figure out what he’s made of.
I can’t give away the ending, but I can tell you that I recently read an account of an American frigate during the revolution that experienced almost exactly what happens in this story. It’s always nice to know I got the history right.
So, Super Person, dust off your cape, get out your Krypton Reading Glasses, and peruse Chapter 15 of MARIGOLD’S END. If you haven’t read the previous, that’s okay – you’ll enjoy this one. If you have, bless you child. Thank you for your generosity.
Is it paradoxical that the guys who started all those superheroes, back in the early days of the comics, took the same chances you and I, as writers, did? Edgar Rice Burroughs had paved the character road for them a little bit, and the newspapers carried comics, but you have to applaud the courage to publish an entire graphic magazine.
I wonder if those guys wore glasses…
John D Reinhart 