Mary Sisson's Blog, page 48

Progress report

I came home to...discover that CreateSpace had sent my proof to my old address (boy, it HAS been a long time since I've done a book, hasn't it!). I have now updated my shipping address with them, and hopefully it will come before long.

Tax stuff is pretty much wrapped up, with some exceptions that I'm sure will blow up in my face with delightful unpredictability over the next two months. In any case, it looks like I should be able to start working on the e-book fairly soon.

Thoughts on the road

I'm a-wandering in search of...everyone's damned 2017 tax forms! In the meantime, I've been thinking about the release of The Weirld as an e-book. (And I'm feeling quite thankful that I'm not using Word and not having to worry about all kinds of random extra coding getting shoved into the book for no reason. It's so much easier!)

I saw that Amazon has really upgraded their tools for authors! What they've got looks like something (assuming it's not buggy) that will very quickly turn out an especially nice e-book. I'm genuinely looking forward to playing with that when I get home.

It doesn't look like much has changed with Smashwords, which is also nice--they've always been easy to use.

Buuuut...because I don't intend to do the long marketing push I did with Trang, I'm eyeing going exclusive with KDP, albeit just for the first 90 days since I don't like relying on a single retailer. Exclusivity would give me access to some promotional tools that are very easy to use and hopefully would get me reviews so that I don't feel like I'm completely neglecting this book. Plus I like the idea of offering the people who follow me (especially those who have stuck out this long dry period) an early-bird special price, and with exclusivity I can just make the book free for five days. So I think that's where I'm headed.

Whoot!

I ordered proofs! It will take a couple of weeks, and if history is any guide, I'll have to do fixes, but! An Important Milestone has! been! achieved!

And you'll notice that I've put up sample chapters and prettied up my home page--oooh la la! I even posted to Facebook and Twitter...trying not to notice that the last time I've put anything up on either was 2016. Yoikes.

The reality is that I'm quite a bit busier now than I was. Like, obviously the next step is to format the e-book and release it, but...that's going to have to wait a couple of weeks as well because I've got to go focus on the family business for a bit. I'm actually really happy that production fell as it did, because tax time is usually a bit too distracting to get much writing done, but I can do things like formatting or inputting copy edits between putting out the inevitable fires. It's nice to feel like I'm making meaningful headway even though I'm not writing.

And I'm thinking about what's going to happen after the book comes out. I still want to do a large-print edition--that actually should be much easier to do now because I'm using real layout software. (And I should note that at this point, I have actually sold a few!) But I'm just not going to have the time to experiment with lots of different kinds of marketing like I did in the past. Maybe I'll run some Facebook ads and branch out to Google or Amazon, or maybe not.

The more I think about audiobooks, the more I think that's just never going to happen, especially not me doing them myself. Maybe one fine day I'll hire somebody.

Hm, better start gearing up....

Seeing that I'll probably have an actual book out fairly soon (!!! It's been so long!!), I decided to finally, you know, act like a real writer and get Mail Chimp going. I've been collecting e-mail addresses and names from people who want to know when the next book is coming out (OK, so they really want to know when the next Trang book is coming out, but no harm in letting them know about this one), but I haven't really done anything with that information, because you know, no book was coming out.

So I signed on to Mail Chimp and put those names and e-mails onto a list, which was easy enough to do. Then I realized that I could have a direct-to-Mail-Chimp sign-up form on the Web site (much more easily done through the Web hosting service than through Mail Chimp). Its over there to the left now. I'll just keep the all-purpose Contact form the same--if people want alerts and use that form, they can just tell me that's what they want, and I'll add their information to the list by hand.

Today's lesson

It will save you a lot of time & tedium if you make all your text boxes fall just inside the margins--so, like, if you've got quarter-inch margins, just set all the boxes to be 0.27 inches from the edges.

The Bing ring

So, the Bing campaign just really isn't going anywhere, in large part, I suspect, because very few people actually use Bing.

[image error]

That's from my Block B Web site. It's illuminating to have different window onto the Web, isn't it?

Of course Bing's solution to this is for me to not use so many "low volume search terms," but hey, I went down that road once before, and it was really expensive. So, I'm glad I did this, especially since it let me try out search-engine advertising for free, but I'm going to conclude that Bing is not an effective marketing avenue.

But I may look into Google....

Arrrarrrarrrarrrrarrrgh

OK--I thought I would be able to start writing again sooner rather than later, but it turns out that The Bank of Slowness and Non-Communication actually got something done (as a matter of fact, they did it A FUCKING MONTH AGO and didn't see fit to tell us), which means that I've got to focus on settling everything out from that.

I guess I should be happy that they managed to get anything done at all (you might think that your money belongs to you, but The Bank of Slowness and Non-Communication knows otherwise), but yeah--I really would have appreciated a heads-up. A MONTH AGO.

The Bank of Slowness and Non-Communication: We're on our own schedule, because Fuck You.

ETA: I should note that, despite the fact that the bank could have handled things better, I'm really happy with the change that was made--this is one of those things that is going to require a lot of attention from me in the short term but should make things LOADS easier in the long term.

 

A little bit more

Just 620 words, basically expanding on what was written before, plus setting up some of the upcoming action. Good, but starting tomorrow my schedule is going to be REALLY screwed, so don't expect much until January.

Psych!

Don't ask me how--and no promises of other productive days anytime soon--but I had a little extra time today so I did 1,200 words! Whoo!

Apologies, apologies

The holidays + the severe weather are kicking my ass these days. I may not be active again until January, sorry.