S.J. Pajonas's Blog, page 112

How Not To Give A F*ck – Get A Hobby

In this continuing series, I will show you how not to give a fuck about your book rejections, bad reviews, and disappointing sales. Please see the table of contents at the bottom of this post for more in this series.

Writing, although an amazing hobby for some people, can easily become your job. And even though it’s an awesome job (I would argue it’s the best job ever), it can also become a life sucking leech. Don’t deny it! There are times when we feel drained of creative energy, ready to throw in the towel, and have no place to turn.

It used to be I would stop writing and try to convince myself that I was writing for “a good cause” because I was making money at it or gaining some kind of ground as an author because of all my hard work. I would walk away from my manuscript and look at my sales dashboard. Hoo boy, what a bad idea that was! You know what’ll drive you into a deep depression as an author? Knowing you spent $1000 or more on editing, cover design, and formatting, only to find your total sales for a month are $4.92. And you know many fucks you’ll give about that? A lot. You’ll throw time and effort and money at the problem, but most of the time, you’ll just dig a bigger hole to fall in.

This is when you need a hobby OTHER THAN writing. I remember when I used to have hobbies *sighs wistfully* and I need to bring them back! Your hobby can be anything but writing! Gardening is nice. You spend time outdoors, doing something physical, and you can listen to music or podcasts while doing it or just let your mind wander about your writing. Same with coloring books. It’s no wonder adult coloring books are a super hot commodity especially among authors. Some like scrap booking. Others like hiking (which goes back to my section on exercising, which can be a hobby as well). Race car driving, cooking or baking, volunteer work, video game playing, metal working — these are all great ideas.

By focusing your creative energy, your mind or body, on something other than your writing career, you’re giving your overall well-being a chance to grow, relax, and move on from the anger, disappointment, or depression. And when you come back to your writing, you’ll feel a sense of renewed purpose, your mind will be unblocked, and you’ll be ready to go.

My hobby is knitting. I have a project I can always pick up and knit on when I need a break from writing and its related bullshit. When I’m done, I have something tangible I can wear or use! And I can knit while letting my brain take a rest or I can knit while listening to podcasts or an audiobook. This is what I love about coloring, too. I can either take a break or double-down on the creativity. It’s a break from writing but it can be fun and educational too.

Consider a hobby that’s easily picked up or put down when you have five minutes. Race car driving is fun but I’m sure you need several hours for that. So maybe that’s a secondary hobby but painting a watercolor is your primary hobby. Think strategically. You’ll never know when you need to distract from something that will try to take all your fucks.

Tell us about your hobby! Maybe you’ll inspire other people to try something new!
Table of Contents for the How Not To Give A F*ck About Your Book Rejections, Bad Reviews, and Disappointing Sales Series

Introduction
Meditation
Exercise
Negative To Positive
Keep Learning
Get A Hobby

Expect a new post in this series every Friday!

My Eternal Struggle With Facebook Ads

Okay, I need a moment to explain what I’m going through and PLEASE FEEL FREE to chime in on what you think I could try instead. But I’m warning you, I have tried pretty much everything and it’s still not working!

Let me start off by stating my current situation. I listen to a lot of podcasts and read a lot of blogs on marketing for authors. My line-up on my Podcasts app looks like this.

All right? I listen to these EVERY SINGLE WEEK (excepting Serial which I WISH was on all the time), and almost every single week, some author is on these podcasts talking about Facebook ads and how they are the savior of your career. I’ve taken Mark Dawson’s free course. I’ve listened to his podcasts every week. I’ve read a million blog posts on how these Facebook ads work. I subscribe to Jon Loomer and have read his ebooks on Facebook ads and the Power Editor. I have done a lot of research.

Unfortunately, I only make about $70-$100 per month (sometimes as low as $30/month) so I don’t have the money to pay for Mark Dawson’s paid course, but I wonder how effective it would be if I could even sink the money into both the course AND the ads. Right now, I’m not even having enough success in small amounts to give me the confidence to pour hundreds of dollars into it per month.

I write Japan-inspired science fiction and mysteries. When it comes to targeting my ads to either add people to my mailing list or sell books to them, I’ve tried (for the scifi)…

(Japan OR Japan Popular Culture OR Manga) AND (Science Fiction Movies OR Science Fiction Novels)

(Japan OR Japan Popular Culture OR Manga) AND (Popular Science Fiction Authors like Andy Weir, Hugh Howey, John Scalzi, Octavia Butler, etc.)
Just Japanese Culture
Just Science Fiction
Just Science Fiction Authors
Manga
Different Manga Titles
Manga Authors
Anime Movies

I’m sure there are more I’m forgetting. None of these produce results for me. I’ve tried different ad images. Different ad copy. Snappy copy. Highlighting good review quotes. Still nothing. Do you have any idea how much money I’ve put into this venture over the past two years? Hundreds of dollars, and I only have about $1500 per year in money to spend outside of what I make. Not a lot.

Nothing I’ve done from the mainstream works. I recently made a cool 35 sec video trailer for my Nogiku Series and spent $3/day on serving it on FB. I’ve heard that videos do the best on Facebook, so I wanted to give it a shot. I modeled my ad after several other successful ads and set it to go. I spent $10 and only got 2 clicks before I turned it off. I’m willing to spend a dollar per click, maybe a little more, but $5? NO.

Sigh. Just today I turned off a Facebook ad for a free book I have on offer that only reached 107 people and cost $1.90 (more than a penny per person to reach) and no clicks. I should have let it run for longer, but with all the luck I’ve had lately, I decided it wasn’t worth it.

What to try next? I’m close to giving up on Facebook ads altogether but I feel there may be things I haven’t tried yet. Right now I have one semi-successful campaign running every day. It’s a big campaign with lots of ads in it for posts on this here website! Posts about Japan get served to people who have already been to SPajonas.com. I gather their visits using a FB pixel on the site. If you’ve been here before, I serve ads to you to bring you back. Easy enough. And it works. It doesn’t sell books, but it reminds you that I’m here and brings you back to read more about Japan. I want to continue those and I add more blog post ads to that every few weeks.

I was listening to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Marketing Podcast today with guest, T. S. Paul, and he mentioned something interesting that he does on his FB Page with ads. He said that he did a meme/image of a cat (I can’t find it or else I’d link to it) and served it up to women who like cats and science fiction. It did great, as all things cat or dog related on Facebook do, and he got lots of people to like his page. He then turned around served ads about his books to those people (I’m guessing you can create an audience of those people, though I’ve not done that yet but you could just serve the ad to people who like your page). I thought that was pretty brilliant.

I kind of want to do something like this too. I’m going to Japan in August, and I want to take LOTS of photos. My current plan is to post these photos to my Page and boost them to people who like Japan and Mysteries or Scifi, and then hope it brings people to my Page and like it. Then I will serve ads to those people who like my Page. I feel that, like my ads that serve to people who have come to my website, if I continue to present myself and my books to people who are already familiar with me, I might have more luck. This is the same successful approach I use with my mailing list. By continually engaging with my list and reminding people I’m here, I have better luck getting people to download or buy my books.

What do you think about my idea? Think I’ll have luck? Have any suggestions of what I could try? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Teaser Tuesday – Every Yen Counts

One of the main plot lines of THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER is that Mei has very little in the way of money and must find some way to make a living and help her mom make it through until spring. Any money Mei makes is precious to her, and she holds onto it tightly, spending yen only when it’s necessary. With her new job helping elderly around town, she’s making a minimum wage per hour and counting everything that comes into her wallet.

So imagine her surprise when she gets mugged while sleuthing! I won’t give away any of the details, but it’s a moment that really knocks her down. What we learn of her in that moment is that she cares enough about her friend’s death that she’s willing to put her own safety at risk to find out the truth. And even when all her hard-earned savings are gone, she still feels enough pride not to want to take money from friends. Thankfully, she has generous friends who care about her, though.

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER goes on sale on July 7, 2016 and is available for pre-order now!

Sunday Update – June 26, 2016

What a week we just had! It was the first week of summer without school, and I had the kids home Monday through Wednesday while my husband was away in Salt Lake City for work. Of course, I only had one objective: go to the pool every day that it was nice outside! And we achieved that, so I feel very accomplished. Lol.

Monday, we slept in a bit, ran errands while the cleaning ladies were cleaning, and then met the kitchen contractors at home to go over the last to-do items on the kitchen renovation. There were just a few last things to figure out and we got them all in a list. Then we went to the pool for a short while before our regular Monday afternoon appointment. On Tuesday, we slept in a bit, hung out at home, and then went to the pool the whole afternoon, only stopping for an hour to go to my CSA and work my shift, get the veggies, bring them home, and return to the pool. I spent the whole evening cleaning veggies and putting them away.

Wednesday was another pool day after getting the girls’ hair cut! Thursday was cloudy, so after the girls were done with summer school, I took them to an indoor play place for the afternoon.

Friday, we were back at the pool, but not without incident. We arrived, after hurriedly getting everything ready, and I realized I had left everyone’s towels at home!! Argh! So we sat down to eat lunch and then I handed the girls off to a friend, a father of one of the girl’s friends, and said I would be back in 15 minutes. I would drive home, get the towels, and come back. When I got in the car, I thought, “I’m not going to speed. I’m going to be careful. Because it would be awful to get in a car accident while the girls were at the pool and thinking I’d be right back.” I TOTALLY JINXED MYSELF because I was driving down the main road, when someone pulled out of a side street and hit me.

How Not To Give A F*ck – Keep Learning

In this continuing series, I will show you how not to give a fuck about your book rejections, bad reviews, and disappointing sales. Please see the table of contents at the bottom of this post for more in this series.

One of the best things about being an author is the ability to keep growing. With every step we take on our journey, new lessons are learned either through experience or continuing education. Just think of the knowledge you can gather in one day’s worth of blog reading or Facebook group posting! The knowledge out there is unlimited, and you are a sponge soaking it up. You can easily not give a fuck about dismal sales as long as your craft is getting better, your marketing is getting savvier, and your books are getting more professional. Not only are you improving but that time you spend learning is time you don’t spend agonizing over shit you can’t control.

This is me, continuing my education in astrology, which I use in all of my books!

I have a couple of suggestions to get you started on the road to being a smarter artist!

First, I never discount getting another degree, but if you plan to self-publish for the foreseeable future, I don’t recommend getting an MFA. MFA’s are wonderful, indeed, and if you plan to write literary fiction, by all mean, have at it. If you write genre fiction and publish it yourself, welcome to the school of hard knocks instead. You have a lot to learn!

Here’s how I do it. Each year, I set new learning goals for myself so that I always have something to fall back on if things get really dire. Last year, I wanted to learn more about story structure, outlining, and social media advertising. Whenever I was feeling down about a horrible book launch or a sales rank in the millions, I threw myself into studying up on one of my chosen topics. This year, I wanted to learn more about Excel and mailing lists, and wouldn’t you know it? I’ve had a down period of about five months and I have learned everything I need to know about MailChimp and automation. Not only is it helping my business, but it’s helping me not give a fuck about not writing. (Though I admit that I’ll be writing later today because I’m very ready to start again!)

Armed with new knowledge, I’m able to focus my energy towards making my career either easier, more robust, or more streamlined. So even though I can’t control my sales or when some troll comes along and leaves 1-star ratings on all my books on Goodreads (it happens to everyone at some point in their career!), I can control the quality of my work that I publish. That, in turn, will (hopefully) alleviate some of the negative feedback, which means I will not have to work as hard to not give a fuck about those things I can’t control. (There were a lot of double negatives in there but I think you catch my meaning).

Some ideas about continuing your writing and publishing education include:

Learning more about the software you use to write (tutorials on using Word, Scrivener, etc).
Learning more about the software you use to publish (Photoshop, Canva, GIMP, InDesign, etc tutorials).
Learning more about the software you use to organize your writing business (Excel, etc. tutorials).
Reading writing craft books (Save the Cat, Story Grid, Story Structure, Voice, Dialogue, World Building).
If you self-publish, there are literally hundreds of things to study: learning about proper English grammar and syntax, formatting ebooks and paperbacks, understanding translations and world rights, legalities of copyright, best practices in anthologies or publishing an omnibus, audiobook narration and production, etc.

The choices are endless. You could tackle several things a year and not really scratch the surface of all you could learn. And while you’re learning all of this awesome stuff, you’re not giving a fuck about those reviews are you?

Nope. No fucks are given.

I see lots of newer authors come into this business wishing they had all the same information and knowledge that people who have been doing this for a long time have. But if you make plans to conquer new knowledge and continue your education every day, every month, every year, you’ll be up to speed in no time and forgetting about those non-existent sales or checking your email a billion times per day waiting on that agent to get back to you.

This is honestly the best kind of distraction. Lots of people distract themselves with things like TV or video games, and while those have their place, nothing is better for your career than distracting yourself with education!

What are you learning about currently? What would you suggest others learn about that will help them stay distracted but succeed as well?
Table of Contents for the How Not To Give A F*ck About Your Book Rejections, Bad Reviews, and Disappointing Sales Series

Introduction
Meditation
Exercise
Negative To Positive
Keep Learning

Expect a new post in this series every Friday!

Are You A Morning Person Or A Night Person?

Let’s discuss, if you care to! I was going to post about Korean food but then I realized that the post I had archived was already on my website. Lol. I have so much content I forget what I post! So let’s talk about this instead.

I listen to a lot of podcasts on writing and marketing for authors. Authors always love to sit down and talk about their methods: how they write, what they write, and WHEN they write.

The WHEN always gets me because SO MANY writers talk about how they get up at 5am to write in the morning before anyone can intrude on their time. This is such a strong and pervasive writing theme that there’s a group on Twitter devoted to it, the #5amwritersclub, and even I tried the whole writing/editing every day at 5am for a bit.

I have to admit that, even though I did do a stint where I woke up every day to work at 5am, it didn’t last long. I was working on revisions to one of the Nogiku books (I think it was REUNITED), and I spent a good portion of the hour staring into space and yawning.

I AM NOT A MORNING PERSON.

You have no idea what it takes to get me out of bed at 6:15am every day during the school year. Most days I do wake up before the alarm goes off, but I lie there, trying to motivate, going through email on my phone, staring into space, curling back up in a ball, and sometimes even drifting off again before I pull myself up and dress. By 7am, I’m only half functional, usually grunting my way through making breakfast for me and the kids. By 7:45am, I can be mostly human, packing lunches and repeating “GET READY FOR SCHOOL” over and over like a robot until we’re out the door and walking by 8:15am.

When I hear about these morning authors, the ones who are up at 5am and working on their craft, I think, “YOU ARE CRAZY” before I think “I WISH I COULD DO THAT.” Because I tried and it just did not work. I got through those edits of REUNITED, and I went back to “sleeping in” till 6:15am. Fuck that, I said. Half the time I was lucky if I got ANYTHING done.

So when I heard this quote from Toni Morrison, I remembered that there’s an edge of the day that I like even better, nighttime. When the house is quiet and the kids are in bed, I work, just like I am right now, writing this blog post past 10pm on a weekday. I like to be in bed and lights out by 11pm, but that does leave me a few hours to get stuff done between 8:30pm and then. I actually do my best work in the late morning and right after lunch, but nighttime works really well for me too. I thrive at night, if I’m not dead tired, and during the summer even more so because I’m charged up by the sun and all the Vitamin D!

I’ve been learning good lessons about my writerly habits as of late. Not only am I a nighttime person, but I’m also a binge writer. I don’t write my fiction every day, though I do write other things every day. I write my fiction in binges, like months of writing and then months of nothing. It can be a little disconcerting for sure, when I go months without something new, but I guess my habit of writing at the edges also includes this! I used to think I was a fairly moderate person, routine routine routine. And yes, I do like a good routine for normal life, but creative life needs room to expand and thrive. I do that at night and for months at a time until I’m spent! Funny how that happens, no?

You can answer this question even if you’re not an author! Are you a morning person or night person?

Teaser Wednesday: Daydreaming Of Things To Come

Due to the fact I had my cover reveal yesterday, I’ve moved Teaser Tuesday to Teaser Wednesday, which I admit, does not sound as nice and alliterative as Teaser Tuesday (plus I’d have to make a whole other header image), so we’ll be back on Tuesday next week.

Anyway, one of the things I love writing about Mei in THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE and THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER are her tendencies to go off on daydreaming tangents, living out wild ideas and other lives all in her imagination. Sometimes her brain wanders to places that can be self-destructive, like her obsession over Yasahiro’s famous ex-fiance, but many times, she dreams of her own success and how she’ll achieve it.

In THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER, Mei is unable to pick back up her love of painting due to the circumstances she’s been plunged into, and she spends a great deal of time thinking about what she’d like to do for a career. Like I mentioned in last week’s teaser, she gets this idea to work with the elderly and would like to parlay that into a real job with real potential to be a life-long passion.

I just love the dreamy look in her eyes. She definitely has a plan! On a side note, this woman looks SO MUCH like my friend Shannon that I swear this is her sister separated at birth. So weird!

THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER goes on sale on July 7, 2016 and is available for pre-order now!

Behold! All New Covers For The Nogiku Series!

Today is the day I’ve been anticipating for over six months. SIX MONTHS, PEOPLE. It was early in the winter when I decided the Nogiku Series needed new covers. I always liked the ones with people on them, but looking at the covers for other books in the same genre on Amazon, I knew that my Nogiku books just didn’t fit in cover-wise. For over a month, I played with the idea of designing new covers myself, and that was when I decided I no longer wanted to design covers anymore. I was writing the first two Daydreamer books, and I wanted nothing to do with designing covers! So, in an effort to get to know a new designer, I asked Najla Qamber of Najla Qamber Designs to give me new covers for both SUMMER HAIKUS and FACE TIME. I figured it would be my first real chance to hire out work to someone else. It was a test. She had no idea. Lol. But she came through with flying colors.

When the covers for SUMMER HAIKUS and FACE TIME landed in my inbox and I was happy, I casually mentioned to Najla that I wished she also did scifi covers. Her catalog is mostly romance, so I wasn’t sure if this was something she could do. She bravely said she wanted to make more scifi covers, and then I tasked her with redesigning my whole series! It was a super pleasant experience, as always, working with her. We brainstormed lots of ideas and using the family kamon, the family crests, from the series was our favorite of the motifs.

Here are the new Nogiku Series covers! Many thanks goes out to Lola of Lola’s Blog Tours who helped put together a massive cover reveal for this. I adore her and she did another amazing job helping me to promote this series.

ALSO THIS SERIES IS CURRENTLY ON SALE! REMOVED is free as always but both RELEASED and REVEALED are both 99¢!

If for some reason, you see the old covers below, be sure to force reload your browser!

I hope you love the new covers as much as I do! Feel free to enter the raffle I have going too! Thanks for being so supportive and for taking a chance on me and this series.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Sunday Update – June 19, 2016

Happy Father’s Day to all the dad in the house! We celebrated this morning with waffles and gifts. The girls and I bought Daddy a Hot Sauce of the Month club and some specialty bitter (also spicy) for his drinks. We’re going to the pool a little later too! It’ll be a nice day, but unfortunately, my husband needs to get on a plane later and fly to Salt Lake City for most of the week. Sigh.

It was a busy week around here. I worked and walked at the treadmill desk almost every single day. I was exhausted by Friday! I was working on listening to and proofreading RECLAIMED, the last book of the Nogiku Series, getting all the files compiled and ready for the big cover reveal on Tuesday, and working on images for the website. I have also been working on a newsletter automation sequence to welcome new newsletter subscribers so I don’t have to do it anymore each week. This is a set-it-and-forget-it automation and I’m hoping it does good things for my new subscribers. I also finished a proofread and dealt with the last-week-of-school shenanigans which included writing thank you notes to all the teachers and dealing with the kids home Wednesday-Friday in the afternoons because they had half days all those days.

I AM BEAT. And I still have so much more to do that is NOT writing, AND I REALLY WANT TO WRITE. It’s been so long! But I need to make a landing page for the Nogiku Series for a Facebook video ad I made last week, set up all my blog posts for this week, cover reveal, etc. I didn’t think June would be this busy and it’s killing me. But I would rather be busy than bored! So that’s all the complaining I’m going to do. Lol.

What else happened this week?

Here’s where I spent most of my week, at the treadmill desk.

Picked up veggies from the CSA on Tuesday!

Made a big batch of Japanese curry.

The proof for THE DAYDREAMER DETECTIVE BRAVES THE WINTER arrived!

And I made waffles this morning for Father’s Day breakfast. Yum! These are really good. I make a yeasted batter for this and they come out light and fluffy.

Coming up this week on the blog: The Nogiku Series Cover Reveal, Teaser Wednesday (since the cover reveal is on Tuesday), a post about Korean food, and another edition of How Not To Give A F*ck.

Say Anything Saturday – Reading Outside

Possibly one of my favorite things about the summer is the ability to read outside. Even though I have horrible allergies, and often go to bed at night with red, itchy eyes and a stuffy nose, I still take the time to read outside if I can. I’ve found that my kids are more likely to play outside if I’m out there, too, so it gives them a reason to enjoy our backyard, the swing set, and the sandbox.

Listening to music, eating, and reading outside (I was reading on my phone, Lol.)

I read both out in front of my house and in back. All depends on where the activity in my house is on that particular day.

The pool is one of my favorite places to read outside, and hopefully I’ll be there a lot this summer, both reading AND writing.

I think my love of reading outdoors stems from my parents who always loved to read at the beach or in the yard or the summer porch when I was growing up. When I was in high school and I no longer had to go to camp every day, I would spend my entire summer reading. I would get tons of books from the library and lay on a towel outside and just read for hours. I’m hoping my kids are the same way once they get older. Right now, they’re both not into reading, but I’m pushing for a big change with that this summer.

Happy summer everyone!