Christopher Spencer's Blog: C. Lee Spencer's Blog, page 2
September 11, 2015
Marketing Blues
Marketing doesn't work unless you are either independently wealthy or already have a large reader base.
I've been reading more and more articles about marketing your Kindle book. The ones that are backed up by solid marketing data are also the authors who ALREADY have thousands of sales. In other words, marketing for them is about increasing their audience or more effectively selling to an existing one.
For people who start from an audience of a handful of friends? There are no effective marketing strategies. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Fuck all.
Yes, you can "buy" a marketing campaign, but there are authors who spend up to $60,000 a year to rise above the chaff to get noticed. Sixty THOUSAND DOLLARS. That's a "six" with FOUR zeroes after it. And that's just to rise above the chaff.
You look at Hugh Howey, who wrote "Wool" and went on to a huge career in writing fiction. He basically got lucky. He was discovered without any real marketing on his part and suddenly he got a reader base that spiraled upward (which goes to show that EVERYTHING you publish better sparkle, because you don't know when it's gonna fall into the hands of a completely random blogger with an audience).
And Andy Weir, who did "The Martian"? NO one can explain how his book exploded in popularity. It was an oddball story posted in segments in an out-of-the-way blog. He posted it on Amazon so he could distribute it more easily. It was basically abandon-ware. He did nothing to market it. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. It just kind of randomly exploded on Amazon.
Time and again I see that the largest discoveries of the indie author world are made with the author doing little to absolutely no marketing whatsoever. The only thing that they share is a high quality to their writing, so when the magical luck fairy comes for them, they actually have books worth reading.
There's nothing I can do short of robbing a bank to pay for tens of thousands of dollars of marketing to increase the visibility of Love/Kroft. I wish I could come to another conclusion. So, if it's a matter of writing the best fucking stories I can and hoping for lady luck to give me a French kiss? Then I'll write the best fucking stories I can and live on that hope.
I've been reading more and more articles about marketing your Kindle book. The ones that are backed up by solid marketing data are also the authors who ALREADY have thousands of sales. In other words, marketing for them is about increasing their audience or more effectively selling to an existing one.
For people who start from an audience of a handful of friends? There are no effective marketing strategies. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Fuck all.
Yes, you can "buy" a marketing campaign, but there are authors who spend up to $60,000 a year to rise above the chaff to get noticed. Sixty THOUSAND DOLLARS. That's a "six" with FOUR zeroes after it. And that's just to rise above the chaff.
You look at Hugh Howey, who wrote "Wool" and went on to a huge career in writing fiction. He basically got lucky. He was discovered without any real marketing on his part and suddenly he got a reader base that spiraled upward (which goes to show that EVERYTHING you publish better sparkle, because you don't know when it's gonna fall into the hands of a completely random blogger with an audience).
And Andy Weir, who did "The Martian"? NO one can explain how his book exploded in popularity. It was an oddball story posted in segments in an out-of-the-way blog. He posted it on Amazon so he could distribute it more easily. It was basically abandon-ware. He did nothing to market it. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. It just kind of randomly exploded on Amazon.
Time and again I see that the largest discoveries of the indie author world are made with the author doing little to absolutely no marketing whatsoever. The only thing that they share is a high quality to their writing, so when the magical luck fairy comes for them, they actually have books worth reading.
There's nothing I can do short of robbing a bank to pay for tens of thousands of dollars of marketing to increase the visibility of Love/Kroft. I wish I could come to another conclusion. So, if it's a matter of writing the best fucking stories I can and hoping for lady luck to give me a French kiss? Then I'll write the best fucking stories I can and live on that hope.
September 7, 2015
2015 October Frights
I'm excited to do this "blog hop". I'll be doing blog posts from October 1st to October 10th. Hopefully, I'll say something interesting at some point.
September 5, 2015
The Author is a Motley Fool
For the past week I've been investigating marketing my books to get a wider audience. I've created a twitter account. I've made this facebook page. I've started a blog. The advice I've gotten is that you should spend two hours a day creating content for social spaces. All successful self-published authors on Kindle are also successful bloggers. This is backed up by a pretty solid basis in evidence.
Yet I always come away from those articles with a queasy feeling in my gut. It's not the work involved. I don't mind working hard for results that can be measured (like increase in book sales). I'm not against success. Yet doing a tweet or opening an account on LinkedIn felt like walking across broken glass to me.
Then, a few minutes ago, I was "tricked" into watching a motleyfool video about cable companies and their problems with cord cutters. The video kept doing the, "I'm going to present an interesting bit of fact. The interesting fact is... coming up in just a minute, but first..."
I put up with it for a while, kept on the hook by the information I was REALLY interested in, which was ALWAYS two fucking minutes away. They had me on the hook. I was ready to be landed...
Four minutes of promised, but delayed facts later, the video went into "sales pitch" mode. The hard sell started...
I turned the video off in disgust. I found the topic interesting. I wanted to hear facts about cord cutting. And I might've been "sold" on whatever they were peddling. But I needed to get the bloody FACTS, and come to my OWN conclusions as to what actions were desired. This is the essence of the "Socratic Method".
I am very interested in having people read my work. I am very interested in getting the word out that my work exists. And I wouldn't mind getting compensated for not just the tens of hours it took to write "Event Day", but the HUNDREDS of hours I spent world building and researching. Even if it just translates to below minimum wage earnings, some return on that investment would be nice.
But it's a slippery, SLIMY step between getting the word out and becoming a salesman. My instincts are to just give the facts and hope everyone will come to their own conclusions. I have no idea how to be a Howard Hill in "The Music Man", hawking a bunch of band equipment.
My terrible, terrible fear is that one of two fates waits for me. I'll either write in total obscurity, undiscovered. Or I will become a salesman doing book equivalents of that motleyfool video.
Yet I always come away from those articles with a queasy feeling in my gut. It's not the work involved. I don't mind working hard for results that can be measured (like increase in book sales). I'm not against success. Yet doing a tweet or opening an account on LinkedIn felt like walking across broken glass to me.
Then, a few minutes ago, I was "tricked" into watching a motleyfool video about cable companies and their problems with cord cutters. The video kept doing the, "I'm going to present an interesting bit of fact. The interesting fact is... coming up in just a minute, but first..."
I put up with it for a while, kept on the hook by the information I was REALLY interested in, which was ALWAYS two fucking minutes away. They had me on the hook. I was ready to be landed...
Four minutes of promised, but delayed facts later, the video went into "sales pitch" mode. The hard sell started...
I turned the video off in disgust. I found the topic interesting. I wanted to hear facts about cord cutting. And I might've been "sold" on whatever they were peddling. But I needed to get the bloody FACTS, and come to my OWN conclusions as to what actions were desired. This is the essence of the "Socratic Method".
I am very interested in having people read my work. I am very interested in getting the word out that my work exists. And I wouldn't mind getting compensated for not just the tens of hours it took to write "Event Day", but the HUNDREDS of hours I spent world building and researching. Even if it just translates to below minimum wage earnings, some return on that investment would be nice.
But it's a slippery, SLIMY step between getting the word out and becoming a salesman. My instincts are to just give the facts and hope everyone will come to their own conclusions. I have no idea how to be a Howard Hill in "The Music Man", hawking a bunch of band equipment.
My terrible, terrible fear is that one of two fates waits for me. I'll either write in total obscurity, undiscovered. Or I will become a salesman doing book equivalents of that motleyfool video.
September 4, 2015
Detroit Destroyed
I chatted yesterday with my Course Mentor at the college I'm attending about "Event Day". She's been slowly making her way through the book on Kindle. Slow because she gets a headache trying to read fiction on a computer screen. I offered to mail her a copy of the paperback, which she accepted only after she insisted on paying for the postage.
She grew up in Detroit. Her father worked for Ford. She now lives in a suburb of Detroit. She admitted to having mixed feelings about reading of its destruction. I apologized for killing her dad, then went on to explain why any apocalypse that occurred in 1972 HAD to be centered on Detroit.
First off, why did I choose 1972? The first and foremost reason is the true story of a meteorite that flew over the Midwest on August 10th. (Great Midwest Fireball). I was fascinated with the fact that it traveled from south to north. The only way it could do that is if it came from outside the solar system.
But after I chose that very specific date, I started noticing other interesting associations. Roe V. Wade was decided in 1973, but was argued in October 1972, thus around 3 months AFTER I dated "The Event". While feminism got a good running start in the 1960's, it hadn't become the political movement it became post-RvW. I very much wanted to explore the idea of powerful women in an essentially pre-feminist society.
The last Apollo mission happened in December of 1972. After this mission, Nixon and congress gutted NASA's manned program. This is a major transition point, one where American exceptionalism was deemed irrelevant.
Porn went mainstream in 1972 with "Deep Throat". While there'd been plenty of filmed pornography before this, "Deep Throat" made it okay to view. Major entertainment figures sung its praises and were proudly photographed attending screenings. This started an explosion of pornography and is in many ways the true start of the sexual revolution in America. What if that revolution never happened? Again, like feminism, I wanted to explore a microcosm of the sexual revolution.
In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the "manual" for American psychiatry). How would homosexuality be perceived if this change never happened?
1972 was also, in many ways, the top of the peak before the fall of American manufactured goods. It's a fall no one saw coming. (Of course, as I write this, someone is going to prove me wrong.) But the age of American industry, unarguably, was about to meet Japan's meat grinder.
The biggest symbol of American industry was, without a doubt, Detroit. Detroit, and the cars it made, reshaped America at its very roots. People started moving to the suburbs and commuting to work in the 50's. People weren't stuck shopping at local stores. They could drive some distance to get to a mall. Their entertainment options moved from a locality to a municipality. It can be successfully argued that the fast food industry would never exist without cars. The interstate highway system spelled the doom of the rail lines. Offered a wider range of job choices, the concept of "upward mobility" entered the lexicon. Jobs slowly changed from a lifelong career to a temporary step on the way to a higher wage.
The typical household car, manufactured in Detroit, was not just "one of" the influences of modern America. It can be argued that the car was THE influence that created modern America. And that car was built in Detroit.
I wanted to destroy America in an apocalypse. There's no better way of doing that than wiping Detroit off the face of the Earth. And there's no more pivotal time to do it than in 1972.
Sorry, Detroit. You had to go.
She grew up in Detroit. Her father worked for Ford. She now lives in a suburb of Detroit. She admitted to having mixed feelings about reading of its destruction. I apologized for killing her dad, then went on to explain why any apocalypse that occurred in 1972 HAD to be centered on Detroit.
First off, why did I choose 1972? The first and foremost reason is the true story of a meteorite that flew over the Midwest on August 10th. (Great Midwest Fireball). I was fascinated with the fact that it traveled from south to north. The only way it could do that is if it came from outside the solar system.
But after I chose that very specific date, I started noticing other interesting associations. Roe V. Wade was decided in 1973, but was argued in October 1972, thus around 3 months AFTER I dated "The Event". While feminism got a good running start in the 1960's, it hadn't become the political movement it became post-RvW. I very much wanted to explore the idea of powerful women in an essentially pre-feminist society.
The last Apollo mission happened in December of 1972. After this mission, Nixon and congress gutted NASA's manned program. This is a major transition point, one where American exceptionalism was deemed irrelevant.
Porn went mainstream in 1972 with "Deep Throat". While there'd been plenty of filmed pornography before this, "Deep Throat" made it okay to view. Major entertainment figures sung its praises and were proudly photographed attending screenings. This started an explosion of pornography and is in many ways the true start of the sexual revolution in America. What if that revolution never happened? Again, like feminism, I wanted to explore a microcosm of the sexual revolution.
In 1973, homosexuality was removed from the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, the "manual" for American psychiatry). How would homosexuality be perceived if this change never happened?
1972 was also, in many ways, the top of the peak before the fall of American manufactured goods. It's a fall no one saw coming. (Of course, as I write this, someone is going to prove me wrong.) But the age of American industry, unarguably, was about to meet Japan's meat grinder.
The biggest symbol of American industry was, without a doubt, Detroit. Detroit, and the cars it made, reshaped America at its very roots. People started moving to the suburbs and commuting to work in the 50's. People weren't stuck shopping at local stores. They could drive some distance to get to a mall. Their entertainment options moved from a locality to a municipality. It can be successfully argued that the fast food industry would never exist without cars. The interstate highway system spelled the doom of the rail lines. Offered a wider range of job choices, the concept of "upward mobility" entered the lexicon. Jobs slowly changed from a lifelong career to a temporary step on the way to a higher wage.
The typical household car, manufactured in Detroit, was not just "one of" the influences of modern America. It can be argued that the car was THE influence that created modern America. And that car was built in Detroit.
I wanted to destroy America in an apocalypse. There's no better way of doing that than wiping Detroit off the face of the Earth. And there's no more pivotal time to do it than in 1972.
Sorry, Detroit. You had to go.
August 28, 2015
First Post and Hello
Just last week I published my first work on Amazon.
Love/Kroft S01/E01: Event Day
. As the "S01/E01" in the title indicates, this is the first in a line of many stories set in the Love/Kroft universe. This world has lived in my head for the past six years.
I decided to self-publish rather than trying to find an agent or a publishing house due to the intended length of this series of books. You see, I'm afflicted by length in two opposite scopes. Each "episode" is novella length. That's about 45,000 words. I constrained myself to this length as a discipline to keep each episode moving and to discourage myself from writing "fluff" that might be interesting, but doesn't advance the plot.
On the other side of the spectrum, I intend to write many of these episodes in a serialized format. Much like a modern (i.e. 2015) TV show, each episode is a short(-ish) story that is self contained and complete, yet it contains the continuation of plot lines, character arcs, and seeds of future developments within that story. Anyone who has watched Buffy, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica (the Ronald D. Moore version), Mad Men, Hannibal, etc knows this format well.
Traditional publishers would not commit at the start to a large number of volumes, nor would they commit to each volume containing 45,000 words. They'd want to reduce the number of volumes, and make each one, um, "puffier".
Amazon is tailor made for this kind of storytelling. It is the successor to the grand pulp magazine traditions. Even "Dune" was serialized in a magazine before it was published as a single tome.
In that spirit, I intend to concatenate all of the episodes in each "series" into a consolidated book that can be read like a single novel.
Barring incident, I plan on publishing one novella-length episode every two months. According to my calculations, I will finish the "Love/Kroft" story in ten years of consistent writing. Yes, it's all planned out. So don't worry about it being another "Lost". While I won't deny it'll evolve in the process of writing, it has a definite end that has been envisioned since the start.
I want to state another thing up front. The name "Love/Kroft" should (and does) imply a certain subject matter. H.P. Lovecraft's view of the universe and our place in it is very much present in "Love/Kroft". His kind of existential horror is even more appropriate today than it was in 1937. We live in a world today where the individual human keeps shrinking in scale compared to the vast ocean of information we swim in. Where in 1937 we might have considered ourselves minnows in the scale of existence, we now know that we are but single celled organisms, or smaller. Perhaps viruses. Perhaps smaller.
A wise man once said that childhood is over the moment you know you're going to die. In 1937, the Manhattan Project was spiraling toward detonation, but we hadn't seen Hiroshima or Nagasaki yet. H.P. Lovecraft existed in a world where humans, however evil, could not wipe the entire species off the planet. Yet his fears thrust him beyond the atomic event horizon, beyond fears of a planet killing asteroid hitting the Earth, beyond a ravaging disease emerging from Africa to turn living men into the very visions of the rotting undead.
I hope I prove worthy to extract from H.P. Lovecraft that holistic, secular, and existential fear and place it into the stories that describe my particular vision. I will not, however, ape his style. I will tip my hat to it once in a while, but I need to follow my own inner voice.
One thing I will try to lace into my narratives is humor. Broad humor. Black humor. I'm not above fart jokes. It can be the most highbrow cerebral humor, or the lowest five year old playground humor. I'm fine with either. I'm not an elitist. And I'm thankful every day that I don't turn down chances to laugh because, "I am too mature for that..."
The mood I'm going for is a bit like the movie "Tremors". In fact, if you become a fan of Love/Kroft and want to tell your friends to read it, if they enjoyed "Tremors", they should enjoy Love/Kroft.
Also, unlike Mr. Lovecraft, I believe that sexuality is a core part of human nature. I will not shy away from sex. This series may get NC-17 at times. This isn't a "Young Adult" series. If I feel it advances the plot, I will describe sex in, ahem, intimate detail. I will treat violence the same way.
I think I will end my little mission statement here. I hope I haven't scared anyone off, yet. I hope I haven't bored anyone, either. I thought that, as an unproven author who has never been traditionally published, I should give some indication of what people should expect from me.
Thanks for reading. Have a good day!
I decided to self-publish rather than trying to find an agent or a publishing house due to the intended length of this series of books. You see, I'm afflicted by length in two opposite scopes. Each "episode" is novella length. That's about 45,000 words. I constrained myself to this length as a discipline to keep each episode moving and to discourage myself from writing "fluff" that might be interesting, but doesn't advance the plot.
On the other side of the spectrum, I intend to write many of these episodes in a serialized format. Much like a modern (i.e. 2015) TV show, each episode is a short(-ish) story that is self contained and complete, yet it contains the continuation of plot lines, character arcs, and seeds of future developments within that story. Anyone who has watched Buffy, Breaking Bad, Battlestar Galactica (the Ronald D. Moore version), Mad Men, Hannibal, etc knows this format well.
Traditional publishers would not commit at the start to a large number of volumes, nor would they commit to each volume containing 45,000 words. They'd want to reduce the number of volumes, and make each one, um, "puffier".
Amazon is tailor made for this kind of storytelling. It is the successor to the grand pulp magazine traditions. Even "Dune" was serialized in a magazine before it was published as a single tome.
In that spirit, I intend to concatenate all of the episodes in each "series" into a consolidated book that can be read like a single novel.
Barring incident, I plan on publishing one novella-length episode every two months. According to my calculations, I will finish the "Love/Kroft" story in ten years of consistent writing. Yes, it's all planned out. So don't worry about it being another "Lost". While I won't deny it'll evolve in the process of writing, it has a definite end that has been envisioned since the start.
I want to state another thing up front. The name "Love/Kroft" should (and does) imply a certain subject matter. H.P. Lovecraft's view of the universe and our place in it is very much present in "Love/Kroft". His kind of existential horror is even more appropriate today than it was in 1937. We live in a world today where the individual human keeps shrinking in scale compared to the vast ocean of information we swim in. Where in 1937 we might have considered ourselves minnows in the scale of existence, we now know that we are but single celled organisms, or smaller. Perhaps viruses. Perhaps smaller.
A wise man once said that childhood is over the moment you know you're going to die. In 1937, the Manhattan Project was spiraling toward detonation, but we hadn't seen Hiroshima or Nagasaki yet. H.P. Lovecraft existed in a world where humans, however evil, could not wipe the entire species off the planet. Yet his fears thrust him beyond the atomic event horizon, beyond fears of a planet killing asteroid hitting the Earth, beyond a ravaging disease emerging from Africa to turn living men into the very visions of the rotting undead.
I hope I prove worthy to extract from H.P. Lovecraft that holistic, secular, and existential fear and place it into the stories that describe my particular vision. I will not, however, ape his style. I will tip my hat to it once in a while, but I need to follow my own inner voice.
One thing I will try to lace into my narratives is humor. Broad humor. Black humor. I'm not above fart jokes. It can be the most highbrow cerebral humor, or the lowest five year old playground humor. I'm fine with either. I'm not an elitist. And I'm thankful every day that I don't turn down chances to laugh because, "I am too mature for that..."
The mood I'm going for is a bit like the movie "Tremors". In fact, if you become a fan of Love/Kroft and want to tell your friends to read it, if they enjoyed "Tremors", they should enjoy Love/Kroft.
Also, unlike Mr. Lovecraft, I believe that sexuality is a core part of human nature. I will not shy away from sex. This series may get NC-17 at times. This isn't a "Young Adult" series. If I feel it advances the plot, I will describe sex in, ahem, intimate detail. I will treat violence the same way.
I think I will end my little mission statement here. I hope I haven't scared anyone off, yet. I hope I haven't bored anyone, either. I thought that, as an unproven author who has never been traditionally published, I should give some indication of what people should expect from me.
Thanks for reading. Have a good day!
C. Lee Spencer's Blog
Random utterances, musings, vague thoughts, complete ramblings, and entertaining prancing can be found here.
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