Bruce Blake's Blog, page 17
June 1, 2012
Vegas, Baby!
In case people have been wondering where I am, I thought I’d put together a quick update so no one would worry (probably not much danger…I don’t think my Mom reads my blog).
Currently, I am in Las Vegas. It is my wife’s profession which brought me here; she is a burlesque performer and this weekend is the annual Burlesque Hall of Fame weekend. I know, tough life, right? Not only am I in Vegas on ‘vacation’, but I’m surrounded by beautiful women all the time (it’s slow right now, but where I’m sitting in the cafe, I see no fewer than 5 drop dead gorgeous ladies. I think I’ll go to the pool next). Last night was opening night: “Movers, Shakers and Innovators”. It may have been the best night of burlesque I’ve ever seen with stunning costumes, fabulous props, show-stopping choreography and incredibly beautiful people (yes, ladies, there were a few boylesque acts, including a heroic fireman and a prancing unicorn).
The wife (Miss Rosie Bitts) and I during our last Vegas trip
While I’m on vacation, I remain working, but only on what I want, not that job I have to do to pay the bills. I’ve been writing a couple of hours each day as well as doing some promo and planning. I’m profiled today (June 1) over at Bunnys Review, will have an interview featured at Alan Dale’s Summer 150 Tour on June 5, and I’m also part of a virtual blog tour later in the month (watch this space for details). I’ll be sending the second Icarus Fell novel (“All Who Wander Are Lost”) off to the editor when I get home with the first two books in my “Khirro’s Journey” epic fantasy not far behind.
Enough about me; let’s talk burlesque for a minute, but not about the beauty of the performers and the form. One thing that strikes me most about every performer I’ve met is the absolute passion they have for what they do. For many people, the idea of getting on stage in front of a group of people is terrifying by itself. Now add in performing and stripping and you can understand how much each of those performers has to love what they do to put themselves so completely out there. It’s not so different from writing.
As writers, we are also laying ourselves bare for strangers to view and judge, to enjoy or criticize. The reaction isn’t as immediate, but it can be more brutal. There is a certain anonymity that a reader has in comparison to the member of an audience. In the audience, amongst others appreciative of what they are watching and the effort that went into it, a critic is probably less likely to voice their opinion. A reader, however, is hidden behind the mask of their computer when they post a review or send an email; this kind of criticism can feel like a victimless crime. Between that and the early morning writing sessions, long days and months of creating with little or no outside encouragement, and the sheer terror of releasing a novel into the world for everyone to see it, warts and all, it is only our passion that keeps us going.
Hold it close and know that it makes you special. It makes you beautiful.
May 27, 2012
**NEWSFLASH: Tour Extends to mid July, renamed 'Summer 150 Tour'
Reblogged from WERZOMBIES PRESS:
Submitted by
WERZOMBIES PRESS
SCRATVILLE, Planet Earth – Some have suggested that the June Inner Artists Interview Tour be stretched out a bit.
Well it will be and under a new name.
The Summer ’150′ Tour will now go on through July 21, with that being the last day of the interview/story articles. Three articles of these kinds will be printed every day starting June 1 at 12:01 EST, with the exception being July 4, which coincides with the release of Alan Dale’s…
Update to Alan Dale's Summer 150 Tour. Catch my interview on June 5. Follow everyday to learn about some great Indie authors!
May 26, 2012
The Second Sneak Peek at the June Inner Artists Interview Tour...Another Promo Blurb!
Reblogged from WERZOMBIES PRESS:
Here is the newest promotional blurb for the upcoming Tour. Say hello to Rachel Hunter of Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Here full story will be up on June 1, the first day of the Tour:
Hunter, a full-time student at the University of Oklahoma, is aiming to major in psychology and nursing. She comes from a family, and specifically a father, who encouraged her to pursue the best use of her skills and creativity.
Alan is taking on a huge task by doing 150 interviews. Follow along starting June 1 and join the fun!
May 20, 2012
Looking for Like-Minded Fantasy Authors
I’ve been spending a lot of time recently pondering my situation and reading the thoughts of others (like Russell Blake, for instance). What have I been pondering, you might ask? Well, the dilemma of getting exposure and selling more books.
Up until recently, one of the best ways was to sign up to KDP Select and run free promos. Some authors were wildly successful under this program (like my friend Martin Crosbie), experiencing tens of thousands of free downloads and thousands of sales. It seems to be general consensus, however, that, due to Amazon changing the way their algorithms determine popularity lists, the effect of free promos for the independent author has greatly diminished (this appear to have happened around mid-March, just before I did my first promo). While my sales have increased (I have sold as many by May 19th as I did for all of April), the big push is no longer there.
Another avenue I’ve pursued is requesting book-bloggers to review my book. This is apparently what catapulted Amanda Hocking to the best-sellers lists and a traditional publishing contract. So, I’ve sent out requests to nearly three dozen of bloggers. So far, I’ve received two reviews (thank you. Check them out here and here), one committment to review (though it could be as much as a year down the road), three who’ve replied saying they already have too much to read and review, and from the rest…nothing. It feels strangely like querying agents. One thing I can do to increase my chances of getting reviewed is to offer to swap reviews with other author/bloggers. If you’ve read my blog before, you’ll know the trouble there is that I read at the pace of a snail with a pronounced limp.
Which brings me to my last thought and reason for this post: cooperative promotion. I’ve come across a few sites (Crime Fiction Collective, for example) where multiple authors in a genre are collected together and share the task of blogging, promoting, sharing, etc.
I want to start a fantasy writers’ collective. My thought is to have between 7 and 10 authors who write fantasy (urban, epic, heroic, dystopian, magical-realism,etc.) come together on one site. Each author would have their own page on the site for bio, links, etc., and each would contribute a blog post at regular intervals (the exact interval would be up for discussion and dependant on the number of authors on the site). Posts could range from thoughts about writing to book reviews, excerpts, short stories or even guest posts and interviews, whatever turns your crank. Hopefully, several authors working together can drive more traffic and interest than each if us working alone.
Interested? Leave a comment or email me and we can exchange ideas and possibilities. I’d be willing to do the work of getting the site up and running, so I’m not looking for much more committment than writing a blog, contributing an author’s page, and sharing the product with your friends/followers etc.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you.
May 12, 2012
Six Years Later
It’s Satruday, May 12, 2012 as I write these words. Normally, when I sit down at the computer with the page titled ‘Add New Post’ open on my screen, I’m thinking about writing, or the business of writing, my experiences in writing, etc. Not today, though. Today I have something else on my mind.
We all have moments in time and events in our lives that stick with us. Some of them are good and we want to keep them close; some are bad and follow us like a hungry animal waiting to pounce; some just are. In any case, they are indelible happenings and experiences that, no matter how hard we try, don’t come off. Hopefully, the happy outweigh the others.
For me, there are so many snippets of conversations, small happenings and inblogpropriate intimate moments from the early days of my relationship with my wife. The day we got married; the time we sat in the hot tub of our first house looking up at the starry sky above our tree. I can relive every moment of my daughter’s birth from the moment my wife said “it’s time” to that first choked mewl. The happy moments I hold close like a security blanket on a stormy night are many.
But today, May 12, 2012, marks the sixth anniversary of my father’s death: he died nine months after he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer; one month and one day before his 65th birthday; two days before Mother’s Day.
Dad and I weren’t especially close. He was an armed forces guy, away from home a lot as I was growing up; I was a bit of a black sheep with my long hair and my heavy metal music. We didn’t always see eye-to-eye, to say the least, but he was my father. I never doubted that he loved me and wanted the best for me, even when he didn’t agree with what it was I wanted or my way of getting there. Despite the years that have passed, he surprises me quite often, showing up in a phrase I speak, a song on the radio, or popping up out of the blue for no apparent reason. And that last day, May 12, 2006, I remember as though it was yesterday.
It was a hectic week for me. I’d just started a new job in a new town and was in the process of buying a house when my mother called to say she thought we should come. We were all there: me, my wife and two children, my mother, my sister and my brother who had travelled from Ontario to B.C. to be there.
When it was apparent Dad didn’t have much time left, they brought an adjustable hospital bed into my parents’ house so he could die comfortably at home with his family instead of in the hospital. It was surreal seeing him in that bed with its white sheets and metal rails in the living room where he should have been sitting, feet up, in his recliner. There was no newspaper draped across his chest as he napped — mouth open and snoring — after a meal. Instead, there was pain and discomfort; a poorly drawn facsimile of the man who’d raised us and later spoiled his grandchildren with candy and treats.
We were all gathered around the bed as the end approached, except my daughter, who was only four at the time. Each of us had a hand on him, including my brave eleven-year-old son who I was as proud of then as I am now. I see it all clearly as I sit here in a coffee shop fighting to keep tears back (why do I have to be a cliché coffee-shop-writer?). But the moment that stands out most to me six years later is the last few minutes, as the clock crept toward 10:47pm. Dad’s eyes were open and, although we couldn’t be sure if he could still see, if he was still aware, he was looking into my mother’s eyes. She leaned forward, touched his face, and told him it was okay, that it was time for him to go. And he did.
In that gesture, in those words, I saw the love my parents had for one another, a love that wasn’t always so apparent after almost 43 years of marriage but, in the end, stood out above all else.
On the evening of May 12, 2006, my four-year-old daughter went to bed with a sick grandpa; when she woke up the next morning, he was gone. Six years later, she still remembers him and talks about him as though they shared a lifetime. Six years later, my wife is angry with him that he left before they could have more friendly debates. Six years later, I sit in a coffee shop typing, fighting back tears, doing my best to expose and vanquish that animal that stalks me, taking little bites out of me at the most unexpected times.
Six years later, we all miss you, Dad. Wish you’d hung around to read my novels and watch your grandchildren grow up.
In Loving Memory
William Frank Blake June 13, 1941 – May 12, 2006
April 30, 2012
The Finish Line
It’s been a couple of days since I finished my free promotion on Kindle for “On Unfaithful Wings”, so it’s time to round-up the results and see how everything came out. Let’s start with the numbers.
Total downloads: 9558 (9399US, 97UK, 61DE and 1IT). My highest overall ranking on Kindle’s free “Bestsellers” list was #23; I hit #1 in both fantasy and horror. Of course, this was over a two-day period (Thurs. and Fri., April 26 and 27), which works out to an average download rate of 199/hour. In comparison, my promo in March was three days (Fri-Sun., March 23-25) and I had a total of about 8400 downloaded for a rate of 117/hour on average.
What was different this time? Three things. On the plus side, I was listed on both ENT and POI this time while only ENT picked me up on the first free run. Also, I employed the services of Book Tweeting Service to tweet my promo to over 60000 twitter followers. On the negative side, I was working my day job through this promo, so didn’t have much time to concentrate on it (I was on holidays last time). Enough background; on to the questions I know all the authors reading want to know the answer to:
Did the tweeting service help? I know you’d all like a definitive ‘yes’ or ‘no’, but it’s not as easy as that. Here’s what I know: for $57, they tweeted about my promo a total of 60 times over 6 different twitter accounts, a cost of just shy of $1/tweet. It’s a very cheap rate if you think 60000 pairs of eyes saw it ($0.00095/view if everyone tuned in). I’m sure it wasn’t that many; in fact, I can’t say how many unique pairs of eyes there are between the accounts. I used 2 different bitly links for tweeting purposes (I intended one to be for my tweets and one for theirs, but there was crossover as I retweeted theirs and they retweeted mine). In total, the two links were followed 142 times during my promo days, equating to a rate of $0.40/click if you attribute all the clicks to them. Which leads to the big question:
Was it worth it? Again, this is a difficult one to answer. My post-promo sales haven’t seen the same boost as they did after my first promo, but my sales for Sat/Sun are considerably more than my average weekend. Because of Book Tweeting Service? To some degree, maybe, but impossible to say for sure. And there’s no way to know if all (or any) of those 142 clicks equated to downloads. Your decision as to whether that’s worth the $57 or not.
Would you use them again, Bruce? I think I probably would, but I’d do two things differently. First, I’d work a little harder at the wording of my tweets. Second, I’d run with the service the day before to build anticipation and perhaps capture a few more views, and I may also continue the day after to see if it captures additional paid sales.
Final observation. I am extremely happy with the results of both of my promotions. My book is now in the hands of around 18000 people in the space of a little over a month. Wow! And my paid sales in the month between promos are 13 times what they were the previous month (and 29 times greater than the month before that). The thing I’ve noticed, though, is that the real success experienced from a Kindle free promo comes to those who make the top 10 on the free chart. Reaching that height puts you onto some popularity lists and the movers and shakers list where people can find you. The book that hit number one while I was on my free promo (“No Turning Back”) is still on the movers and shakers list two days later and is currently #63 on Kindle’s overall paid bestsellers. As happy as I am with my results, that is more what I’m looking for, so next time I will probably use the tweeting service again and look at adding a couple of other avenues of promotion to my bag of tricks. I’ll let you know what and how it goes when the time comes.
All I want is for everyone to have a copy of my book. That’s not too much to ask, is it?
April 27, 2012
Observations on a Kindle Free Promo – Halfway
In my last post, I suggested there may be a link between Kindle free promo success and being listed in one or both of Pixel of Ink and eReader News Today. Now, halfway through my second free promotion, I have some proof.
During my last promotion for “On Unfaithful Wings” (a Fri-Sun run, March 23-25), eReader News Today (ENT from here on out) had me listed in the morning on Friday. By the end of the day, I had about 4200 downloads. I was ecstatic! Over the following two days, another 2000+ people took advantage of my generous nature and I ended my free run somewhere in the neighbourhood of 8400 downloads. I reached #1 in the fantasy category and peaked at #41 on the overall Kindle free list. Wow! Awesome! As I mentioned last post, I saw some residual sales from that. Couldn’t be happier.
This time, things started off slower. I kept track of how things progressed last time (ok, I was actually on vacation then and checked what was going on about every 15 minutes). At about 9am on the first day of my first promo, I’d had over 400 downloads. It was around then ENT listed me and by 10am, I was at over 850. This time? 119 at 10am.
Oh no. I ‘d heard about the ‘second kindle promo curse’, where so many authors on the Kindle Boards lamented how great their first run was and how much their second one sucked in comparison (I rarely go to Kindle Boards anymore — I found too many people were getting whiny). Surely I couldn’t be a victim of the curse, could I?
Nope. At 10:49am (I know the exact time because I texted my wife), I noticed that Pixel of Ink (POI from now on) had listed my novel. By 11:15, downloads were at 400. At 3:30 I hit 2100. At 4pm, I saw that ENT also had me listed. I finished the day with 6150 downloads. Last promo, it took me until the end of the second day to get to that number (and that was a Friday/Saturday, not a Thursday). The last time I looked, I was sitting at #1 in both fantasy and horror and #22 overall.
Very happy, and hoping for another rocking day (#1, here I come!)
So what is it that guarantees a successful Kindle free promo? Hammering your tweeps on twitter? Sharing with all your friends on Facebook? Paying a service to tweet for you? How about paying for advertising? I’m going to have a look at the results of a couple of those in my next blog, but from what I can see so far, it’s the listing on ENT and POI that really boosts the downloads. And how do you get there?
As far as I can tell, it’s about luck.
April 26, 2012
Watching…Waiting…Hoping
The debates have raged over whether giving books away through Amazon’s KDP Select program is a good idea or not. Some argue that giving away something you worked so hard at devalues the process. Others don’t like the idea of being exclusive to one platform. Still others swear by it. I can only give my opinion based on my own situation and experience. To recap: I did a three-day free promotion for my urban fantasy novel, “On Unfaithful Wings”, March 23-25 and gave away 8400 copies. My sales for the month of March prior to the giveaway totalled a world-toppling 11. Over the first week post-promo, I sold 77 books. Since then, I’ve sold another 53. Those aren’t the kind of numbers that will allow me to quit my day job and write full-time but, if my math is any good, I will have sold more than 5 times as many copies this month as I would have in March without the promo.
For me, that constitutes a success. So, I’m doing it again toady and tomorrow (April 26-27), which is where the title of this post comes in.
Watching… I will spend a great deal of my time (even though I’ll be at work – don’t tell my boss) keeping an eye on the number of freebies downloaded throughout the next two days. The key to success in a free promo is to have a high number of downloads so that you climb the popularity lists, thereby making your book easier to find. The hope is that, after the promo, it remains easier to find and generates more paid sales.
Waiting… My observations have shown that books listed in the free section of Pixel of Ink and/or eReader News Today have the best chance of climbing high on the Kindle charts. These two sites have hundreds of thousands of followers and, if you’re listed in both, it pretty much guarantees charting in the top 20. The problem? You don’t know if they will pick your book up or not. There are thousands free every day and both only list a handful. I don’t know how they choose and, to the best of my knowledge, there is no way to make sure you get on their listings (if anyone knows how,please let me in on it). So I’ll be waiting to see if they pick me.
Hoping… I’ve done one thing differently this time in that I’ve employed the services of a company called Book Tweeting Service. Guess what they do? For a fee ($57 for 2 days), they tweet your promo on their different twitter accounts (@TweetYourBooks, @WriteIntoPrint, @ukeditor, @TheAuthorsClub, @TheBookBuzzers, @PukkaEpub) with over 60000 followers. I don’t know if this will have much effect but, for $60, I thought it was worth a try. I’ll let you know how that goes.
So there, in a nutshell, is how I’ll live my next two days. Watching the downloads, waiting to see if I’ll be listed, hoping the things I’ve done will be effective.
What ever happened to writing?
April 23, 2012
A Secret
I want to tell you a secret. Don’t be afraid, it won’t hurt you. No one will be arrested, though I have broken a rule.
I’m a bad reader.
No, I don’t mean I can’t read, or that I get caught up by words I don’t understand, I mean I don’t read very much. See? I mean bad rather than poor — I do know a little something about the language. No, my self-commentary and resultant disappointment are purely based on the lack of time I spend with my nose in a book (or, more accurately, pressed against the screen of my eReader).
Why is that a big deal, you ask? How is that breaking the rules?
One of the basics you will read almost everywhere about being a writer is that a writer needs to read: experience what others are doing; sop up the good stuff like a soft dinner roll taking care of the last of the turkey gravy; learn from the mistakes of others. Shouldn’t be a big deal, right? As a writer, one of the reasons we’re drawn to our craft in the first place is because some author(s) transported us to another world, another time, some one else’s life. We were swept away by J.R.R. Tolkien to Middle Earth and Rivendell, by Stephen King to Derry and Castle Rock; we felt the struggle of Scout and Jem; we were practically on that island when Piggy died. Don’t get me wrong, I love to read, I’m just not good at it.
Well, Bruce, if it’s something you need to do, why don’t you just do it?
I’d love to, but my issues are twofold:
1. Time. Most days, the only time I find to read is when I climb into bed at the end of my day. By then, I often only make it through a few pages before the book is slipping from my hand and I’m drooling on myself. And to make things more difficult, my wife is beta reading my second Icarus novel (“All Who Wander Are Lost” — keep your eyes open for it late summer), which is loaded on my Kobo, so I’m faced with a decision: my reading or her reading for me.
2. I am a writer. I don’t know if this is true of all writers, but I think I read a little differently than your average reader. Many a novel has been launched against a wall simply because the word “was” was used too many times on one page, or the writer used an abundance of exclamation points!! Not to mention poor plotting, thin characters and clichés. If I find myself at any point asking “how did this get published?” I stop reading. I have too many books in both my physical and digital libraries to waste my time on something I don’t love. I am especially impatient with poorly written books traditionally published by one of the Big 6. When I read a book, I want to think to myself at some time during my journey “I wish I wrote that.”
I’m trying, I really am. I don’t want Writers Digest to send the writer police to take away my laptop because I’m not meeting my authorly quota of words read per day. And I want to get better at my craft, which reading does for a writer like me. And I want to support my fellow independant authors, not just by downloading their books, but by reading them and providing reviews. The desire is there, it really is.
Now to do something about that time thing. And I might have to get my wife a Kindle.
April 16, 2012
What Readers Want?
If you’ve been following, then you know for my last post I got a little behind schedule/disorganized/lazy and, instead of writing an entirely new post, I cobbled together a couple of lines and then added an excerpt from my novel, “On Unfaithful Wings”. Truthfully, there were two reasons why I chose this route: 1. I was a little behind — both on my blog and on my writing, and 2. I read someone else’s blog (about how to write a blog), and posting excerpts was one thing that was suggested there.
“That sounds good,” thinks Bruce. “Give ‘em a piece of the book and it doesn’t take much time.”
The result? My lowest number of blog views in a month. Hmm. Maybe an excerpt isn’t the best way to go, at least not an excerpt from an already-published book. Maybe I’ll try a preview of a coming work in the future, but for now I’m going to go back to more of the ‘what I’m up to’ type of post. These seem to be the ones people read.
So here it is: I’m preparing to do another free promo for “On Unfaithful Wings” on April 26 and 27.
“But Bruce, you’ve done that before. We can go to your older posts and find out all about it!”
While that’s true, I’m adding a few twists this time. First, I ran a free promo for my short story collection, “Backroads and Alleyways”, last week. My hope was to give away a bunch and create more visibility, thereby bumping sales of both it and my novel.
It didn’t work. When I did my first promo for ‘Unfaithful…’, I gave away over 8400 copies and sales have increased (not enough to retire yet, but I’m getting there). This time, only 320 people took advantage of my generosity and it’s had no affect on sales. I attribute this lack of downloads to two things: the fact it’s a collection of short stories and because it wasn’t promoted by any of the larger sites that do such things. One of them sent me a very polite and informative email explaining that there are over 2000 books free for Kindle on any given day, so they only consider listing ones with 10+ reviews and 4+stars. In fact, one day, they explained, there were so many to choose from, you didn’t get listed unless you had 15 reviews or more! My poor little collection of diversions has only one review (an enthusiastic 5 stars!) so, alas, it was overlooked.
“So what are you doing that’s different?”
More lead time, for one. As soon as I’m done this post, I’m going to send out all my notices to the free-ebook sites. That’s a full week before I did last time.
Also, I’m having the cover of the book professionally redesigned. While I think the current cover is OK, and I have had one or two compliments on it, I don’t feel it measures up to many of the others out there. I don’t want anything to identify me as anything other than professional — I invested $2000 in having the book edited (and I’m glad I did), the cover should reflect that. Keep your eyes open, I’m hoping to reveal the new cover later this week or early next.
The other thing I’m going to try is a little bit of new-age advertising. No, I don’t mean I’m hiring a medium, I mean I’m going to employ more social media rather than purchasing an ad somewhere. I’m going to try a company called Book Tweeting Service. For a reasonable fee (well, we’ll see if it’s reasonable once the results are in), they will tweet to their 60000 followers for you. I’m not sure if it will be worth it (for 2 days, it will cost a little less than $1/tweet), but I’m willing to risk the $56 to find out. Luckily, the internet is easily measured: I’m not sure if this is true of all the link shortening sites, but I’ve discovered that bitly keeps track of how many times the link they create for you is clicked, so I should be able to determine the effectiveness of their service. I’ll keep you posted.
So there you are…no excerpt, just the straight forward, down-and-dirty facts of my writing life. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to go write something I made up.
