Macy Babineaux's Blog, page 8

Back in the Saddle

So I had a nice weekend away in Dallas. Went to the relatively new Natural History Museum. It was nice. Not enough dinosaurs for my taste, but a few.

I was a little worried because the first exhibit wasn’t very interactive or interesting, but they got better as we went along.

I also got to eat Korean food, which is one of the few cuisines in short supply around Acadiana, and that was awesome as well. We also went to Torchy’s Tacos, which is usually amazing. But this time I was very underwhelmed. All I can say is I think it’s best to stick to flour tortillas there. The corn ones were not very good.

Anyway, I’m back home and still planning what to work on next. I do feel like it’s probably worthwhile to try to knock out a nice 20K novella as a giveaway incentive for the mailing list, something I can just perpetually offer. Though I would also like to get started on the next book in the Xandakar series. Initial feedback is trickling in from some of my advance reviewers, and so far everyone loves it, which is a relief. I wonder if, no matter how much you write or how successful you are, you always worry whether they’re going to like the next thing you put out. At least this time it seems like they do. So I think I just need to stick with a similar approach to the next four books.

Dragon Blue ended with an introduction of a new character who will play a lead role in the next book. No matter what I start working on next, I’m going to at least start doing some preliminary outlining of Dragon Red this week.

 

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Launches Are Hard

Whew! Okay, so I’ve sent out review copies to everyone on my list. If you read this blog and I missed you, or you’re not on my list of advance reviewers and would like to be, shoot me an email at: macybabineaux@gmail.com.

I’m going out of town this weekend, but hopefully I’ll be able to keep up with messages and emails. I’m trying to line up promos for the week of launch, and then Monday I’ll start planning my next project. Like I said in an earlier post, I think it might be worthwhile to hammer out a nice novella as a permanent giveaway bonus for the newsletter sign-ups, though I would like to get started on the next book in the series. Putting that off just a week to write a novella seems like a decent plan. We’ll see how I feel Monday morning.

I ended up with about 35 advance readers this time around. I was sending links and files via email, Facebook, and Goodreads, but I really just need to try to get everyone’s email address and consolidate the list and just use Mailchimp to send out advance copies. If the list keeps growing it’s going to be a massive headache. I listened to a recent podcast where the author had about 300 ARC readers, which is great, but if I happen to get that high I don’t need to be sending files and links several different ways.

I’m going to take it a little easy today. I think I generally like the schedule of about three weeks to write a ~50K novel, then about a week to edit and handle the marketing/ARC side. But I do feel pretty tired right now. I’m going to hit the ground running on Monday, though. Have a good weekend, y’all!

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Dragon Blue (Shifter Romance) Now Available for Pre-order!

Like the title says. You can now pre-order Dragon Blue: A Lie That’s True.

The book goes on sale Tuesday, August 30th. So I’m doing a 12-day pre-order period. From the podcasts I’ve been listening to, that sounds like the sweet spot, between 1 and 2 weeks. I think the idea is that preorders drive also-boughts, making them available the day the book is actually released.

Anyway, I’ll be sending out advance copies to my ARC team soon (tonight or tomorrow). In conjunction with the ARC service I’m using, I’m hoping on having 30+ reviews the week of release. I’m also going to be more strategic about running promos to coincide with release day. I plan to send a newsletter out the day of release as well. I’m hoping to drive sales up from the day of release through that weekend and push the book up into the top 100 of its category.

Of course, I’m also hoping the ARC readers like the book! Stay tuned.

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How Original is Original?

I’m currently finishing up edits of Dragon Blue and should be done in the next day or two. I felt like I had a much better plan this time. I have about 30 ARC readers of my own lined up to read the book. I’m going to schedule promos for the first few days of actual release. And I’m going to put the book on preorder for a longer period this time.

But one thing kind of has me worried and/or bummed out. As I write this, the top three books in Romance>Werewolves & Shifters are dragon shifter books, and they’re all different colored dragons. Now, I had seen one of these books lower in the rankings before I started my book. But I didn’t know it was part of a series that would follow the [COLOR] Dragon template. The thing is, the actual content of the books sound very different. Those are set in a present-day city setting. Mine have a link to Earth, but mostly take place in the fantasy world of Xandakar. There are a number of other differences, but suffice it to say the actual stories are quite different.

So I’m plunging ahead. I can’t really change the templating of my naming scheme, because it’s important to the way the series unfolds. I’m just hoping readers don’t go “Oh, jeez, Macy just copied those other books.” But then, there’s the whole issue of copying anyway. Where is the line between writing a genre book that’s heavily defined by tropes and forging your own path? With this series, I was trying to satisfy what looked like a strong demand. Given that the top three shifter books are dragon-based, I’d say I was probably right. But a lot of the books in that category look very similar. It seems there’s a fine line between producing more of what people want and producing something original.

I’ve heard advocates of writing to market basically say that it’s almost impossible not to write something original, that it’s going to come from you as a unique story with whatever you bring to it. And I guess I’m not really worried about the story as being perceived as original, but the concept and marketing. I’m going to hope that readers of this genre are particularly forgiving when it comes to similarities in the looks of covers and titles, and that through reading the blurb and maybe some sample text they’ll be happy to read something that’s similar, but original.

I felt like The Time-Traveling Outlaw was an attempt to genre-bend and make something original. And that hasn’t done all that well. Reviews/ratings are strong, but sales are not.

I’m also nervous about how Dragon Blue is going to be received by my ARC readers. It’s got more sex than my last book, but it’s basically a fantasy adventure. It’ll probably be fine. At least I hope so.

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