Jason Brant's Blog, page 9

Day 96 – Accountability Day

I took most of the day off today. The past two weeks have me feeling close to burnout, so I needed a bit of rest.

Still managed to get a workout in, see a movie for Final Guys, and work on a short story. I also tinkered with some Bookbub advertising, and I think I’ve got the process figured out. Now it’s just about wasting a few hundred dollars till I get it dialed in. Not looking forward to that.

Didn’t make a ton of progress in the story, but I’ll take anything I can get. The short might be something I launch on Patreon if I decide to go that route. Still haven’t decided.

Tomorrow, I should get Decayed back from the first proofreader, so more progress will be made on that front then. And I’m getting back into writing pretty heavily tomorrow, so I’m pumped for that.

What did you accomplish today?

See ya tomorrow.

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Day 95 – Misc

Worked on pricing of my books, the website, and started some advertising campaigns for The Hunger series.

My website has looked mediocre, at best, on mobile for a few years. When I first set everything up, most of my traffic came from computers. Making everything look great on the PC was more important than mobile views at the time.

The inverse is true now, so I’m finally getting around to fixing everything. I did a lot of that today, with a few more changes to the homepage coming soon. But for now, it’s good enough. I’m happy with how it looks.

Promoting The Hunger series is my number one goal now since I have two more books releasing within the year. Amazon has moved to a pay system. They don’t give free rides on book releases anymore, so I’m attempting to figure out the advertising side of everything.

Honestly, I have a feeling that solving the advertising for Google Play, iTunes, and Kobo might be cheaper and more lucrative, but I won’t know until I start dropping cash on it. I’ll post my results here, good or bad, as I go. Things are going to get interesting.

There’s a book trailer coming for Decayed tomorrow, hopefully, so watch Facebook and Twitter for that. Got Wayne June to read a few lines for it, so yay.

That’s it for today. See ya tomorrow.

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Day 93, 94

I spent the majority of yesterday moving my office. It always takes me a lot longer than expected. By the time I got my computer hooked up, it was late and I didn’t feel like making a post.

Whoops.

Today, I worked on the website, uploaded a new book review (Sick House by Jeff Strand) to Final Guys, and continued sorting my office.

I’m attempting to get my Macbook Air connected to my Ultrawide monitor, but it’s giving me a hell of a time. If I didn’t need this stupid laptop for formatting my books, I’d throw it out the window like a Frisbee. It is such a pain in my ass.

Decayed is going through the first round of proofreading, so I’m in a waiting pattern until I get it back.

That’s about it for today. Might get some actual writing in tomorrow.

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Day 92 – Edits Are Done

It took a lot of hours, but I managed to finish the edits on Decayed (The Hunger #5). The next step is packaging the novel as an ebook and shipping it off to my proofreaders.

They’re magical people who manage to find the smallest annoyances in my work. It usually takes them a few days to a week. Then it’s off to the beta readers. That’s typically another week or so.

And then we publish. Assuming my cover is done by then. Hopefully I’ll have it soon so I can at least do a reveal before publication day.

Tomorrow, I’m going to finish setting up my office. The desk is put together, but I have to move my PC up there. And buy an AC, because my office gets hot during the summer when I’m editing video.

Once that is finished, the plan is to work on a newsletter, since I haven’t sent one in way, way too long. Then I gotta finish refurbishing of my website, if I get around to it.

Maybe I’ll get back to my manuscript later in the evening, but we’ll see.

I’m also kicking around the idea of bringing Drinking with Jason back, but haven’t fully decided yet. If I do, there will be a lot of changes in the way I do things that should make the show better. Dunno if I want to go down this route or not. It’s a lot of work.

Anyway, that’s it for today. Got a ton done. Hoping to keep smashing through the rest of the week.

See ya tomorrow.

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Day 91 – Back on Track

Final Guys is streaming again. The audio needs some tweaking, but otherwise, we’re back in business. I have some ideas that should make the show a bit friendlier for video, but we’re looking good. Check out the newest episode here:

The website is good to go again, so I’m going to resume posting book and movie reviews there. They should appear sometime later this week, assuming all goes to plan.

My biggest goal for tomorrow is to finish going through my edits. I want to have the book in my proofreaders’ hands by the end of the night. Maybe the following morning at the latest. Once that happens, I should be about two weeks out from a release. This novel has taken forever to get here, so I’m pumped to finish it.

I haven’t mentioned this here yet, but I’ve been focusing on getting healthier. My diet is better during the week, though I relax it on the weekends some. I’m stretching and lifting three times a week, first thing in the morning.

Daily walks have increased my cardio a lot, even though I’ve only been at it for two or three weeks. It’s making me feel much better and clear headed.

So far, I’m down 16 pounds and counting over the past 7 weeks. Nothing insane, but it’s steady progress. The best results, so far, have come from stretching. My lower back pain was getting pretty obnoxious, especially in the mornings. But that has disappeared since I started stretching.

Good stuff.

Anyway, I got through about a quarter of the edits today. Should finish tomorrow.

See ya then.

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Day 90 – Fixing Problems

I THINK the podcast issues are fixed. If they’re not completely solved, then they’re close. Should be taken care of tomorrow, praise Cthulhu.

I THINK the Final Guys website is fixed. The homepage is being indexed by Google again, so people can actually find us. If everything isn’t completely taken care of by now, it will be tomorrow, praise Cthulhu.

I THINK my dog’s health is back to normal.

So I’m finally trending back to a regular workflow. I only managed to get through a third of the edits on Decayed so far, but I should come close to finishing them tomorrow. I might even complete the task just before Final Guys. We shall see.

See ya tomorrow.

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Day 89 – How I Go Through Edits

I’m exhausted today, but I wanted to give a quick overview of my editing process. As I’ve talked about in earlier posts, I only do two drafts of my books. The first draft, I do my best to bang out the story, without worrying too much about repetition or sentence structure. I’m cognizant of it while writing, but it isn’t a focus.

While I’m working on that first go round, I keep a Word doc with any fixes or errors that I need to correct during the second draft.

That second go through is where I pump up description, fix errors I’ve caught, and worry about repeating words or sentences. I fix a ton of stuff during this draft. What I don’t do, is change the story much. What I come up with the during the first draft is pretty much what I stick with.

After I finish that, The Tall One reads the book. I fix all the crap she finds.

Then it goes to Cynthia, my editor. She finds 800 bajillion typos, missing words, and extraneous phrasings. That’s the actual number of mistakes she finds. It usually takes me a few days to get through everything.

I send her a Word document of my manuscript. She turns on the Track Changes function, finds my errors, and sends it back. Using Word, I can accept or reject the changes. It’s a slick option in the program that makes this kind of thing very easy. Time consuming, but easy.

That’s what I’m working on now. Tomorrow, I should make some serious progress, if not finish going through her notes.

Then it’s back to banging away on the sixth book in the series. I want it to release not long after Decayed, which is two or three weeks away.

See ya tomorrow.

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Day 88 – Edits

My editor sent back the manuscript for Decayed (The Hunger #5). So that’s my life for the next few days. The amount of errors she finds is pretty crazy, so it takes me a long time to go through it. Because I suck.

So no new words over the weekend, but the book should be in my proofreaders’ hands by Monday. We’re looking at 2-3 weeks until release.

Boom.

Still sorting out my site and Final Guys. Still waiting on a cover. Still working on the podcast.

The real work begins now, in the rush to release. I’ll blog about each step as I go. More tomorrow!

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Day 86-87 – Annoying Crap

The server that hosts the Final Guys website and this one was hacked sometime this week. It’s been a pain in the ass. The reason I didn’t upload a blog last night was because I couldn’t even log into my site.

But we’re back in action… for the most part. I had to update a ton of stuff, change passwords, blah blah blah. Doing so made the Final Guys site more secure, but it also made the homepage look weird. So I had to track down the culprit of that (a plugin) and fix the layout.

The podcast continues to be a shit show because of the disappearance of Hangouts on Air in YouTube. I spent hours editing the episode this week. It usually takes me half an hour. Annoying as hell. I had to upload a new audio version this morning because some people were having trouble hearing the original stereo track.

Google as delisted Final Guys homepage from their search results until I can get the hacked content off the site. Should happen in the next day or so. But our traffic has suffered because of it. Hoping to get that situated soon.

I’m also in the process of giving this page an update on mobile. It has always looked great on desktop, but the mobile interface has suffered a bit over the years as my theme and WordPress have updated. I made some serious progress last night and again this morning. Hopefully it’ll be taken care of by tomorrow or Sunday.

Yesterday, I managed to get 1357 words down in the untitled sixth book in The Hunger. None today because of all this website and podcast garbage. Won’t be any tomorrow because I got Ruined back from the editor. Now I get to spend a lot of time going through all my stupid mistakes she caught.

I’ll finish going through the edits this weekend and get it shipped off to the proof readers.

See ya tomorrow.

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Day 85 – Advertising is Required

This isn’t going to be an in-depth post talking about marketing strategies and the like. I’ll save those for when I’m working on campaigns for upcoming books. This one is more about the general swing of the industry, because of Amazon mostly, toward the requirement to advertise.

Just a few years ago, I could release a book and, with a decent amount of initial sales, get an organic boost from Amazon’s algorithms. I’d push my social media and newsletter audiences the first week and then wait for Amazon to kick in. The weeks after that would often get solid pushes organically from their systems.

That doesn’t really happen anymore.

Amazon has switched to a pay-to-play model. If you want their algorithms to push your work, you gotta pony up some cash.

I know this pisses people off, but it’s the natural progression of industries. If you want the end cap in a store, you have to make it rain. That’s just the way it goes. Everyone seems to forget how new this whole indie-publishing thing is. Ebooks haven’t been an industry for long.

So Amazon has monetized their system. Makes sense, just adds a layer of cost and difficulty for authors and publishers.

Nowadays, you gotta spend some money on your release. And your back catalog. Whether that’s through Amazon, Facebook, or Bookbub, you gotta do it. The days of being organically discovered are almost gone.

On Amazon.

But there are other stores that move copies for me. Apple and Google, in particular, do healthy business. They’re hard to get noticed in too, but they haven’t moved to their own advertising model to be discovered. I’m going to tinker with those stores more in the near future. I’ll post the results here.

Long story short – it’s getting harder to be discovered. Don’t let that get you down. If you’re willing to put the work in, and adapt with the industry, you’ll rise above the tide that’s washing other authors away.

Today, I finally got back to writing, but just for a few moments. I got a little over 500 words, and that was it. But I wanted to make sure I got something down. I spent hours working on Final Guys. The whole way we record the show is a complete mess right now. Tomorrow, I’m going to refocus on writing.

See ya then.

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