David R. Michael's Blog, page 48

Why I Don't Worry About Confusing The Market

 
So far, I"ve released 3 ebooks:

Nostalgia – contemporary fiction with slipstream elements
The Summoning Fire – horror, modern fantasy
Nasty, Brutish & Short Short – horror stories in a variety of milieus

 
And now I'm working on Serene Mornings & Other Tales of a Little Girl, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a small collection of contemporary stories (with one science fiction story).
 
Notice a theme?
 
Notice a lack of a theme?
 
It'll get worse (or better). After Serene Mornings, I'm planning a collection of stories with the name Demon Candy. And then I expect to release The Girl Who Ran With Horses, a contemporary young adult novel about (you guessed it) a girl and her horse(s) which has some slipstream/magical realism elements. After that, I have another slipstream-bizarro novel I expect to release (I plan to start editing it in the next week or so).
 
I'm all over the map with my offered genres: horror, contemporary, slipstream, and who knows what else I'll end up doing?
 
If I had a traditional publisher, they would be seriously pissed at me about now. At best, they would insist that I use a pseudonym so that they can focus their marketing on a per name (per brand) basis. This name for horror, this other name for the young adult, and maybe a third name for the contemporary pieces. That might be a good idea…
 
But I don't have a traditional publisher. And I don't want to bother with pseudonyms. I have a generic name–possibly the most generic name in the English language (don't believe me? go to Amazon and search for "David Michael", watch the endless list go on and on)–but it's my name. And these are all my stories.
 
Finally, I'm not worried about confusing the market one big reason: I don't have a market yet.
 
I'm working on one, though.
 
-David
 

Posting Stories for a New Collection

 
Today's story, The Puppets Take a Bath, is the first in a small collection of stories that I will release in a few weeks: Serene Morning & Other Tales of a Little Girl.
 
These are very personal stories for me. They are remembrances and homages from one special year.
 
In 2006 I started a project I called "A Short Story a Day". This project was my first real attempt to improve my writing through intense practice. What could be better practice, I thought, than writing a short story every day? Ultimately, I wrote 202 stories that year. Not quite one a day, but a good effort, I think. I learned more about writing in those 10 months than at any other time in my life.
 
In 2006 my daughter, Serene, was 5 years old.
 
A writer needs a muse, especially when he's writing a story every day. These are the stories from the days when Serene was my muse.
 
Some of the stories are biographical-ish (like "The Puppets…"), my attempts to remember-with-prose her earliest years. Others are pure whimsy, though inspired by the antics of my baby girl. And one, oddly enough, is science fiction.
 

Serene, April 2006, 5 years old
 
-David
 

The Puppets Take a Bath

 
by David Michael
 
Three year old Serene put down her spoon and her right hand became a puppet. With her fingers together and her thumb working as the lower jaw and tongue, the puppet could talk.
 
"I want oatmeal," the puppet said in his squeaky voice. "I'm hungry."
 
"Me too!" said the puppet her left hand had become. Her voice was squeaky too.
 
"Try to be neat," Serene told them, as Mom had told her a few minutes earlier when putting the bowl of oatmeal on the table in front of her. Mom wasn't in the kitchen now.
 
The puppets dived into the bowl and began eating the oatmeal. They weren't at all neat, and the puppets got oatmeal all over their faces. Then the food fight started and Serene burst out laughing.
 
Mom walked in. "Serene!" Mom said. "What are you doing?"
 
"It's the puppets," Serene replied. The puppets pulled their faces out of the bowl and faced Mom. "They were hungry." The puppets nodded. A bit of oatmeal dripped from the left hand puppet's face onto the table.
 
Mom's face struggled, resisting a smile, then she saw that oatmeal had been splattered all over the table and onto the floor. "Serene," Mom said again, less surprised and more irritated, no hint of a smile. Mom sighed. "Come on. You have to take a bath now."
 
Serene and the puppets exchanged looks of dismay. "You mean the puppets," Serene said. "They need the bath." The puppets opened their mouths in shocked betrayal.
 
"No," Mom said. "I mean you, Serene. And the puppets," she added. She pointed to the bathroom. "Go get undressed."
 
"But I took a bath last morning," Serene protested.
 
"And you're taking one today too," Mom replied. "Come on."
 
Serene pouted, but she slipped out of the chair and she and the puppets followed Mom to the bathroom.
 
"Take your clothes off," Mom said and turned on the water in the tub.
 
The puppets helped Serene undress. At first. Then the right puppet nibbled on her shirt when he found some oatmeal stuck on it. The left puppet became jealous and she tried to get a bite too. They struggled to pull the shirt from each other.
 
"You're not undressed yet?" Mom asked.
 
"The puppets were helping me."
 
"They don't seem to have to been much help," Mom said. She leaned over Serene, pulled the shirt up and off and tossed it into a corner. Then she helped Serene take off the rest of her clothes.
 
"Cold cold coooold," Serene said. The puppets snuggled against her body to keep warm while she hopped from foot to foot.
 
Mom picked up Serene and placed her in the water.
 
"Ahhhh! It's too hot."
 
"No, it's not too hot," Mom said, but checked it again with one hand to be sure. "You just need to get used to it."
 
Serene wasn't convinced, but after a few seconds the water did seem to cool a bit, so she sat down. The right puppet, always the braver of the two, dove into the water to test it for himself.
 
The right puppet poked his head out of the water. "It's not too hot," he said.
 
The left puppet looked at him dubiously. She made no move to get into the water. The right puppet splashed her with water, and Serene laughed. "You got me wet," the left puppet said. The right puppet splashed her again.
 
Mom slid the shower door closed as the left puppet dived into the water and began splashing back. Serene laughed some more.
 
The puppets had stopped splashing each other a few minutes later, and were re-enacting the most recent episode of The Fairly Odd Parents when Mom opened the shower door again. The right puppet played the role of Timmy Turner. "I wish I had a new babysitter," he said.
 
"Ha ha ha," said the left puppet, acting as Vicki, the evil babysitter. "Your Mom and Dad left me in charge."
 
"Noooo," said right hand-Timmy.
 
The rest of the episode played out while Mom used a washcloth on Serene's face (the dialogue got a little muffled), arms and hands (the puppets nipped at the washcloth until Mom told them to stop), body, legs and feet.
 
"OK," Mom said. "You need to lie back so I can wash your hair."
 
"The puppets don't want you to wash my hair," Serene said. "The shampoo stings their eyes."
 
"The puppets don't have eyes," Mom said.
 
"Yes we do," the puppets said, and posed so Mom could see their eyes.
 
"If you lie back and keep your face still," Mom said, "you won't get any shampoo in your eyes."
 
"No," said the right puppet, looking firm.
 
"The puppets are about to get Serene in a lot of trouble," Mom said.
 
Serene and the puppets made noises of dissent in their throats.
 
"Lie back," Mom said, putting her hand on Serene's shoulder. "Now."
 
Serene laid back, but the puppets kept their heads above the water, burbling along with her as Mom washed her hair. She sat up as quick as Mom would let her.
 
Mom flipped the lever that controlled the drain. With a loud cha-chunk, bubbles came out of the drain and the water started out of the tub.
 
"Stand up," Mom said, holding a towel.
 
"It'll be too cold," Serene said. The puppets nodded their agreement.
 
"Stand up," Mom said again, "and I'll wrap your towel around you. You won't be cold that way."
 
Serene stood and Mom wrapped her in the towel. As Mom picked her up, the puppets became hands again, and Serene hugged Mom around the neck.
 

Writing Progress Report

 
Writing progress report for the week starting Monday, September 27, 2010.
 








Writing Project


Words




Monday


"Insanity" brainstorming.







Tuesday


"Insanity" brainstorming.
Edited "Baptism".







Wednesday


"Insanity"


1555




Thursday


"Insanity"


394




Friday


"Insanity" (first draft completed)


1207




Saturday


Edited "The Puppets Take a Bath".
Edited "Serene Morning".
Edited "Like a Ghost".
Edited "A Bedtime Story".
Edited "The Dragon Hunts".
Edited "Trikes and Aliens".







Sunday


Edited "The Puppets Take a Bath".

















Total








 








Marketing/Submission




Monday


Posted "Nostalgia Part 2″ to Guns & Magic.




Tuesday


Announced the release of The Summoning Fire on Guns & Magic, Facebook, and Kindle Boards.
Posted Nasty, Brutish & Short Short to Amazon DTP.
Posted Nasty, Brutish & Short Short to Smashwords.
Sent "Baptism" to first readers.




Wednesday


Sent a review copy (.mobi) of The Summoning Fire to candysraves.com (accepted for review).
Sent a review copy (.pdf) of The Summoning Fire to redadeptreviews.com.




Thursday


Announced the release of Nasty, Brutish & Short Short to Guns & Magic, Facebook, and Kindle Boards.




Friday


Sent a review request for The Summoning Fire to E-Finds.
Sent a review request for The Summoning Fire to Motherload (Gracekrispy) (accepted for review).
Announced The Summoning Fire and Nasty, Brutish & Short Short on mobilereads.




Saturday





Sunday





 
Reading List

The Translated Man by Chris Braak.
Wizard in Waiting by Mark Fassett.

 

For Those of You New to Indie Web-Based Retail…

 
…I would like to share a few bits of my experience. I've learned these lessons from 14 years of selling indie software and video games. From what I've seen, so far, they apply to indie fiction, as well.
 
1. Outdoor Holidays are Not Your Friend – "Outdoor Holidays" is my name for such (USA) holidays as the 4th of July, Memorial Day and Labor Day. These are holidays where people are much more likely to be outside having fun than they are to be inside browsing the Web or checking FB or anything else that requires more thought than a beer and a burger.
 
2. Conversely, Indoor Holidays are Your BFF's – "Indoor Holidays", however, are the best thing since…well…the Web. On holidays like New Years Day (not New Years Eve, that qualifies as an Outdoor Holiday), Xmas, and most of the summer vacation, though, people are indoors. And usually bored and looking for something to entertain them.
 
3. Welcome to the Fall Meltdown – The Fall Meltdown starts with the opening of public schools in mid- to late-August and runs through the end of September. A lot of retail businesses suffer in this stretch between "Back to School" and "Oh, look, the Xmas decorations are out already."
 
4. Every Day Starts from $0 – No matter how good yesterday was, today starts from $0. And today can, and will, take all 24 hours to go from $0 to some other, more useful number. Some days, you see great sales right at the starting gun on midnight–and then nothing the rest of the day. Some days are the polar opposite. Some days will be incredible. Some days will send you into fits of depression. The best way around the manic-depressive emotional swings is to limit how often you check. And keep a larger perspective, like the sales for the last 7 days or the last 30 days. There's less extreme variation in those figures.
 
Have one of your own? Does it have a pithy, slogan-like sound to it? Feel free to share it in the comments.
 
-David
 

Yeah, What She Said…

 
Fellow indie Mark Fassett pointed me to Zoe Winter's latest blog post:
I Want to Read a Zoe Winters Book
 
Ms. Winter's post is somewhat complementary to my post from yesterday:
What I Need are … Readers
 
From her post:
 
Indie authors have to learn to build demand and interest in their name and the books they specifically are offering. We would do well to figure out ways to reach our intended demographic without relying solely on price. Price is a crutch, and it's becoming less effective. So if you don't figure out how to get your NAME to be what's in demand with readers, it won't matter what you price it. You're screwed. There are just too many other people doing this shit now. You have to differentiate yourself somehow to rise above the noise. 99 cents has become "just more noise."
 
Click here to read the whole post. (If you didn't do that earlier, above.)
 
-David
 

I Think Too Much…

 
…about what kind of fiction I write. Do I write horror? Do I write slipstream or magical realism? Do I write contemporary fantasy? Do I write science fiction? To which the answer is… Yes. All of those.
 
…about whether I write "enough".
 
…about marketing and sales. Is the cover good (so far, the answer has always been "Yes"; my covers aren't my problem)? Are the short descriptions compelling? Why aren't I selling more? Should I concentrate on only writing in one genre or style? To which the answer is… Take a deep breath and calm down. I've only been in the ebook market for not even 2 weeks now.
 
…about whether I will have time to do what I need to do each day: writing, marketing, customer support for The Journal, new development for The Journal, family time. How many hours are there in the day?
 
…about almost everything else. I can and will chase a thought round and round in my brain.
 
OK. Calming down now. Some.
 
-David
 

What I Need are … Readers

 
WARNING: This post contains crass commercial stream-of-consciousness and cynical profiteering ponderings. And some strong language. I leave it to you to decide which is more offensive.
 
What I need are … readers.
 
Which has a certain Duh Factor to it.
 
Without readers, this whole blog and ebook thing is largely wasted. Sure, I get some benefit (kinda like masturbation), but it's a hollow, limited benefit (kinda like masturbation).
 
Readers should be the focus of my marketing efforts.
 
A question I face, though, is do I focus on Readers Uber Alles? That is, do I focus on the acquisition of eyeballs first and foremost, and let the revenue take care of itself?
 
There's a temptation to do exactly that. Give away the ebooks. Do lots of deep discount sales. Do whatever it takes to create a volume of sales–even if the "sales" aren't really, you know, sales because you gave the product away or took a loss getting the ebook to the reader.
 
But that flies in the face of the Lessons of the Dot Com Bust:

Eyeballs are important, but …
Revenue is more important than eyeballs, but even then …
Profit is more important than revenue.

 
Which means I need to find ways to turn a profit from revenue generated by attracting readers. By which I mean: a profit for me and not Google Ad Sense. I hate ads.
 
Unless … and this is a thought related to something I wrote on Joe Indie yesterday … unless the real point of this blog and my ebooks is to sell copies of The Journal. (I'm not saying that selling The Journal is the real point, only "what if …")
 
If that is the case, then there is less of an emphasis on revenue and profit from the blog and ebooks and more of an emphasis on converting blog and ebook readers into buyers of The Journal. Which removes the pressure from the blog and ebooks to show a profit–except it then ads the need to convert readers to software users. And that emphasis on conversion would cause a change in the content of the blog and ebooks. In other words, I'd stop writing stories and start writing ad copy.
 
I hate writing ad copy. So fuck that.
 
Which means that the blogs and ebooks will remain my particular strain of fiction (however it's defined), and that I will probably continue with my current pricing scheme for ebooks.
 
Offering free or heavily discounted ebooks, BTW, only works if people notice. Which again requires readers. It's OK to do these things, but pointless to do them in a vacuum.
 
Readers are the key. An audience. People who actually care enough about what you have to say to offer you a bit of their limited finances in return.
 
What I need are … readers.
 
Duh.
 
Except that "readers" is too general a term. There are billions of readers in the world. What I need to do–what I must do–is narrow down the huge ocean of "all readers in the world" into that lake (or sea) of readers who would actually like what I write.
 
And then figure out how to get their attention.
 
-David
 

Nasty, Brutish & Short Short – Now Available

A collection of violent horror flash fiction and short short stories by David Michael.
 
The Call of the Hunter Moon – Violence is easy. You just let go. Your hands become claws for ripping. Your teeth bare, you snap, you grab, you tear. You smell the fear, savor the screams, taste the blood…
 
Tucker – When I arrived, the boy stood there surveying the chaos he had wrought, gloating over it all–except for her. He wouldn't look at her. She knelt by the body she had once inhabited, her physical face now unrecognizable in the gore…
 
Crowfeeder – At our arrival, the closest of the black carrion birds startled. A ripple like a wave in a black ocean flowed across the field as the birds flapped into the air, reconsidered once they saw how few we were, and settled back to continue gorging…
 
And 10 more!
 




Nasty, Brutish & Short Short Edition


Price




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$0.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$0.99




 
Cover painting, Ornery Streak, and layout by Don Michael, Jr.
 

The Summoning Fire – Now Available

 

Welcome to Hell on Earth!
 
All Reese Howard has left is pain. Pain and a pump-action shotgun.
 
The Old Man killed Reese's lover right in front of her, a blood sacrifice for whatever twisted powerplay he has in mind. She hopes the Old Man made a mistake, leaving her alive and armed. But she doubts it.
 
He knows she's coming. The bastard has to know.
 
Whatever the Old Man knows or doesn't know, Reese plans to make him pay.
 
And she plans to die trying.
 
 
 
 
 
The Summoning Fire
 
Now available in trade paperback and ebook!
 




The Summoning Fire Edition


Price




Trade paperback (Amazon)


$9.99




Kindle edition (Amazon)


$3.99




Ebook (Smashwords)


$3.99




 
Cover painting, End of Days, and layout by Don Michael, Jr.