S.E. Doster's Blog, page 2

Why We Don’t Need a Black Widow Movie (Right Now)

Black Widow has been a strong female presence within the Marvel movies for quite some time, and I always see fans campaign for her solo movie. The movement also appears to be fueled with angst every time Black Widow ends up being left out of Avengers merchandising plans, and I totally get the frustration, but I think she isn’t necessarily the best option for solo female movie.

Image from Marvel.com

My pick for a female lead in a superhero movie?

Ororo Munroe.

And the question I often get when I say that?

“Who’s that?”

*Insert facepalm here*

Oh-em-gee. It’s Storm from the X-men. Sadly, many who watch the comic book movies don’t even really know her name or where she comes from. Ororo Munroe is the descendant of a long line of African priestesses who all donned white hair, blue eyes, and harnessed the power of magic.

Many people might not know Storm spent part of her childhood in Cairo, Egypt where her parents were tragically killed. Or that she was trained in the art of thievery. Or how she came to join Charles Xavier and the X-men.

Marvel’s Astonishing X-men #29 cover by Simone Bianchi

In a step towards diversity, I think it’s fantastic that a Black Panther movie is in the works and a Luke Cage show is prepped for Netflix. I also think the diversity needs to continue with LBGTQ characters and more people of color—females included. To give the spotlight to another straight, white hero would be a missed opportunity to showcase that comics do have marginalized characters with great stories to tell.

WARNING: Mild spoilery alert ** Agent Carter is doing a great job of showcasing a different Black Widow character within the miniseries. Everyone knows Natasha Romanova wasn’t the only Black Widow, right? Agent Carter’s character, Dotty, allows us to dive deeper into the origins of the Black Widow program. So we have one Black Widow going mainstream in Marvel movies and one lesser known Black Widow on television. I think we can cover another area of interest. **

So again, we have Peggy Carter and Jessica Jones repping the ladies with their recent lead roles. So why not go further and add Ororo? Yes, I know the whole Marvel and Fox movie rights over mutants creates an issue, and at this point in time a Storm origin movie would most likely be made by Fox, but I think it’s a movie well deserved to join the ranks with Deadpool and Captain America no matter which juggernaut creates the film.

I think Storm is a strong and well recognized character, but she’s someone who has an interesting backstory still unknown to many people outside of comic reading group. I mean, we’ve seen Peter Parker’s origin story so many times that poor Uncle Ben could use a break. Who better to fill the origin shoes than a female, POC badass? So I don’t think we need a Black Widow/Natasha Romanova movie right now. We need an Ororo Munroe movie more.

 

The Lack of Diversity in Comics and Who Gets It Right?

I grew up reading comics littered with straight, white characters—predominantly male heroes. The biggest diversity I can remember was seeing Storm and Bishop in X-men comics. The lack of diversity in literature definitely hasn’t helped the world’s struggle for equality. People need to see and read about the lives of all people and cultures and not succumb to one majority. I think by now many of us have learned that fear is created by what we do not understand, and how do we understand the marginalized groups if no one will give them a voice?

In fact, I personally struggled with this as a young adult because I lived in southern state crammed with religion and homophobia—a typical haven for “White America.” So I fought myself for years before I accepted my sexuality. The 90s weren’t nearly as diverse as 2016, and yet we still have so far left to go on the road to equality. So reading books and comics with those straight, white, male protagonists didn’t help my struggle because there was so much hate towards the LGBTQIA community and our voices weren’t recognized.

Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer was the first show I saw properly recognize LGBTQ characters, but we were still nowhere to be found in any literature I was reading.

So as I discovered Brian K. Vaughan’s comics as an adult, I was quite pleased to find much more authentic diversity. He wrote strong female characters, provided racial diversity, and gave me the LGBTQ characters no one else seemed to be writing. Hell, BKV was writing sundry characters before everyone else realized it was the right thing to do.

My heart melted when I discovered Karolina Dean’s sexuality in Runaways and followed her journeys through romance. She was the character I needed in comics when I was younger. She’s the character many LGBTQ readers needed. The entire Runaways series offered a diverse team with characters such as Alex Wilder as an African-American, Nico Minoru who is a Japanese-American, and Xavin who served as a gender fluid shapeshifter.

Marvel comic series created by Brian K. Vaughan and Adrian Alphona.

Just like Runaways, Y: The Last Man stands as one of my all-time favorite comic series. The series might revolve around Yorick Brown, who is dubbed the “Last Man on Earth,” but my favorite characters were Agent 355, who was an African-American badass and Dr. Allison Mann, who was of Chinese-Japanese decent and also an awesome LGBTQ character. Honestly, Y: The Last Man had several same sex relationships, and I felt the entire series authentically depicted the craziness and diversity of society thrown into chaos when almost the entire male population dies off.

Vertigo Comics series created by Brian K Vaughan & Pia Guerra. Cover by J.G. Jones.

Combine diversity with BKV’s witty dialogue—best compared to Joss Whedon’s writing style—and it’s easy to see why two of my all-time favorite comic book series are Brian K. Vaughan creations. BVK has earned several awards for his creations, including Saga and Ex Machina.

I look forward to reading the next BKV creation because I believe he will continue to create the authentic and diverse worlds more in tune with reality than many other stories offer. We must further diversify our stories if we wish to do break down the barriers which still prevent equality.

The Music That Fueled The Alliance Part 1

Some writers prefer quiet and solitude while they write, but I enjoy music for added inspiration. I turn on a playlist at various stages of the writing process. For the brainstorming and early drafts, I do enjoy songs I’ve collected which fit the mood of my current WIP. So, as I continue to hammer out the first draft of the third Alliance novel, I thought I would share the music which played while writing the first two novels. Kicking things off with The Alliance: Bloodlines inspirational music, I’m listening to this playlist as I write this post with all the nostalgic feels.

 

The Alliance: Bloodlines playlist:

“End of the World” by Cold

“My Letter” by Flaw

“Strong” by Flaw

“I Hate Everything About You” by Three Days Grace

“Never Too Late” by Three Days Grace

“Animal I Have Become” by Three Days Grace

“Hero” by Skillet

“Monster” by Skillet

“Awake and Alive” by Skillet

“Take Me” by Papa Roach

“Scars” by Papa Roach

“Black Clouds” by Papa Roach

“So Far Away” by Staind

“Fade” by Staind

“Forget to Remember” by Mudvanye

“Becoming the Bull” by Atreyu

“Down with the Sickness” by Disturbed

“Bodies” by Drowning Pool

“Somewhere I Belong” by Linkin Park

“Numb” by Linkin Park

“So Cold” by Breaking Benjamin

 

There were probably more songs than what shows on this list, but these tracks are what remains of the original Alliance playlist. The rest of the songs are for the Drakon playlist which i’ll post next week.

 

 

Xbox One From a PlayStation Fan Perspective

When I accomplish a great writing session, I like to reward myself with extra time to play video games. Hell, sometimes I even reward myself with new games or accessories. This week I finally caved an bought an Xbox One. I’ve been playing PlayStation consoles since the days of PSone and Cool Boaders, and i’ve loved my PS4 since launch day. My PS3 has almost kicked the bucket, and I can rarely get discs to read, so this new Xbox One console took its place on my TV stand.

After finally getting to test out Microsoft’s Xbox One, it’s easy to see why so many gamers have switched to PS4 and Sony’s sales have been higher.

Does this thing play VHS?

The Xbox One is unfathomably archaic. The controllers still require batteries, the controller itself needed an update to work, the power brick is HUGE with a cord so short that you don’t have a lot of placement options. The console itself is the size and style of a DVD/VCR combo circa 1994. Personally, I find navigating the blocky menus sucks just like Windows PC sucks.(Instead of PS4’s linear and easy navigation menu.) Installs take FOREVER and seem to be accompanied by unwanted freezing/pausing which takes the download even longer to complete. The older Xbox One’s didn’t even make it easy to chat with a current headset.

Seriously, this is archaic. Xbox One may support the newest Windows and the Snap option is handy, but everything else feels outdated as hell.

With that hate out of the way, I do find the Xbox One controller both visually and physically appealing. I loathed the 360 controller, so this is a great improvement. The 360 controller hurt my hands after about an hour of use, but I played Gears of War with the Xbox One controller for over an hour with no pain at all.

The graphics don’t look nearly as bad as many of us assumed when we poked fun at the lack of 1080p. It’s also nice having a Showtime app. That’s the only really nice things I can say about the console so far, but maybe my opinions will change.

Again, all my opinions. The overall console war is silly, and it’s always just about opinions and preferences. If I had to pick only one console, I know I would pick my PlayStation. I have friends who live and die by Xbox. It’s also okay to love them both. I was just personally disappointed in Microsoft’s decisions for the Xbox One.

And to end on a brighter note, I’m replaying Tomb Raider on my PS4 so I can play Rise of the Tomb Raider on Xbox One.

Lara Croft is a badass!

What games are you playing or looking forward to? I’m also a huge fan of TellTale Games, so I can’t wait for their unique Batman story and Michonne’s  Walking Dead mini series.

Indie Author Marketing Tips

As writers, we have to understand the phrase, “If you build it, they will come,” does not apply to us or our books. If we want sales, we have to work harder than we worked to write the damn books.

So, how do we do that?

Buckle up and I’ll explain!

You won’t find one exact formula for success. Try different options and combinations for marketing your novel until you find one that works for your books.

There are two important things you must remember:

First, make sure your quality is there. If it’s not, go back and splurge for professional editing, formatting and, cover design. Trust me, I saw a bump in sales by releasing second edition of my first novel with professional quality. The sales bump wasn’t anything huge, but it was much needed progress. If you need help with how to generate the extra income for this, please check out my guide to self-publishing on a budget.)

Second, keep writing. Nothing sells book one better than book two or three. People are more likely to invest in a new title when they discover the book is part of a series. They won’t have to wait for the next book. They can binge read all the titles you have available. Many authors state they didn’t see significant sales until they were four or five books into a series, so don’t get discouraged with book one, two, or three.

Okay, still with me?

Now we’ll talk about how to promote your current publications.

Know your keywords

You need to be savvy with keywords when publishing on Amazon/Createspace or anywhere else. Here are some helpful links to finding your appropriate keywords. Here is a guide I found for Kindle keywords to help you out.

Update your Amazon author profile

If you’re on Amazon, make sure your author profile is update. You can find tips for making the most of your profile here.

Update your social media accounts

I would assume that anyone trying to be an indie author would be social media savvy. Facebook, Twitter, Pintrest…whatever. Make sure those accounts are updated with your current bio, book info and such. Also, make sure you’re not being spammy with your promotional posts.

Send out ARCs

Advanced Reader’s Copy or Advanced Review Copy is a tool for generating a buzz and getting early reviews to entice readers at launch. Reach out to book bloggers and offer ARCs, but make sure you’re offering a polished manuscript. Don’t send a draft!

Find marketing sites

Research popular book marketing sites such as Bookbub and check their requirements for advertising. Some sites require a minimum number of views, some are free, and some are paid ads.

Perma-free first book

Some authors found success making the first book in a series perma-free. Readers who find value in a free book will generally buy the next one to keep reading the series.

Pre-orders

I haven’t tried this myself, but I’ve read many success stories involving pre-orders. I plan to offer pre-orders with this year’s holiday release.

Press Release

Creating a press release can be an easy way to have your book information ready to hand over to any bloggers or sites willing to promote for you. Initially, I found press kits to be overwhelming because I had no idea what I was doing. I found this helpful guide here and maybe it will help you too.

Make use of giveaways on sites like Amazon and Goodreads

They are pros and cons to each one, so try them all or see which ones best fit your budget. I like Amazon’s Giveaway options because they do all the work for you! Unfortunately, you pay full price for your book plus shipping costs, and with Goodreads you can buy books at your cost and ship yourself. So, part of your decision might boil down to whether you prefer to save a little time or a little money.

You also want to consider that the people who could win your Amazon Giveaway might not be a bookworm, but assuming if someone enters the giveaway on Goodreads, chances are very high that they are a reader likely to review.

 

I hope you find this information helpful. As you try combinations of these options, try to gauge how well your book sells with each. Measure which price points and promotions work best, so you’ll have a better strategy for the next book release. Remember, lack of success isn’t losing, it’s a game of learning. So, make marketing your novel a game you aim to win at.

 

How to Self-Publish with Crowdfunding Help

Writing a novel is not an easy task, but the steps for self-publishing can create an even greater challenge. Writers can write. They can’t always be writers and masters of cover design or formatting. Authors seeking to self-publish a professional quality book may be discouraged when their budgets don’t match the costs of self-publishing.

So what do you do?

While this approach may not be for everyone, some authors might find that the answer is crowdfunding.

Kickstarter and Indiegogo are just some of the platforms available for those looking for a site to fund their latest creation. There’s a ton of information surrounding the specifics of crowdfunding for those who aren’t familiar, but this blog post is focused on building a plan for your campaign and what worked for me. You can view my campaign here.

So you want to start a campaign?

I was successful with my Indiegogo publishing campaign last year, and I’ll share my plan with you. Everyone has different strategies and what works for some, may not work for others. The rules mentioned below will apply to most campaigns, and the you can tweak the plan to make it work for you.

RULE ONE: Plan ahead

This sounds like a no-brainer, but not for some people who can get impatient (like me) and want to jump in head first. I didn’t launch my campaign until May 2015, but I started planning in 2014. It was so hard to be patient, but there was a lot of planning involved which led me to my successfully ended campaign.

RULE TWO: Know your audience

In order to effectively market the campaign, you need to understand who is going to be interested in your novel and where to find them. This is probably not too hard because authors should always be considering who their target readers are. Don’t limit yourself to just friends and family on Facebook. You need to think outside the box when it comes to reaching your audience.

RULE THREE: Build your fan base

You want people to know what you’re doing. Start with friends, family and coworkers and compile a list of people you think you can count on to help.

**disclaimer** Only a percentage of that list will activity participate, but you still need to build it. Just don’t get discouraged when you don’t see the number of people you estimated.

The more people you have actively supporting you the better. It’s even better if you have some on your list with big social media connections to help you spread the word. Word of mouth can be huge for advertisement—crowdfunding is no exception.

If you already have a website/blog, FB fan page for your book, Twitter…whatever. You might already have a social media presence of your own. Keep building that. If you don’t have any social media presence, spend time on that long before you attempt to launch a campaign. People aren’t going to take a campaign seriously about “the next hot book” or ya know, whatever, unless they see you putting yourself out there on social media. I won’t give much thought to a campaign promoted by someone with a meager 8 Twitter followers and no blog or other social media presence. Put yourself out on social media and be active. And not spammy! Be engaging. Talk about topics related to your book or discuss books you love. Interact with people who can share interests with you. Find some of those target readers.

RULE FOUR: Research and develop your game plan until you’re sick of it and then research more

Search the vast craziness of the web for minor celebs or other authors who might be willing to help you. Maybe your local newspaper would be interested in covering your latest work. Look for sites related to your project where you could send a press release. (I made a press release, but I really didn’t know what to do with it at the time. I’m successful, yet still continuing to learn how to get better at crowdfunding.)

RULE FIVE: Have rewarding rewards

You need a range of reward/perk tiers for various budgets, and they need to actually feel rewarding. You also need to spend a lot of time debating how much the rewards will cost you. Digital rewards are great because they don’t cost shipping, but they need to have some value. Some people prefer physical rewards, so you’ll want to consider your options for books, shirts, bookmarks and such. Calculate and plan for this. You don’t want to launch your campaign just to realize you messed up and some money comes out of your pocket to finish shipping out the physical items.

RULE SIX: Be reasonable

I left this near the end because you’ll probably try to be pretty reasonable in the beginning, but maybe things got out of hand. Go back and check your project. Check your plan and minimum goal. Is your minimum the actual lowest amount you could receive and still get the job done?

My first campaign failed because I wasn’t nearly as reasonable as I could’ve been. I budgeted for the highest level of editing costs, high priced cover art and so on. Set your budget to the bare minimum you need to complete your project with a satisfying quality and still cover your rewards.

Stretch goals are designed for increasing the quality of the project. So you can plan to add those if you are successful at hitting your initial goal. So you can add in your campaign details that you can get your cover art done for X amount of money, but if you surpass the goal, you’d like to try for a higher quality illustration or artist if a stretch goal of X amount of money is met. You can also use your stretch goals to up your reward tiers or add new ones. Maybe you hit a small stretch goal and want to offer bookmarks for everyone already set to receive a physical reward.

Whew, now that now that my basic rules are covered, let’s get more specific with my plan.

My pitch was a YA supernatural thriller. I knew my books contained fantasy and supernatural elements with a bunch of geeky pop culture references thrown in. I had my bases covered with social media because I had already built up a social media presence—which of course I continued to grow throughout the year. I also built a street team of fellow readers, writers, gamers and friends to help me spread the word.

I had a spiral notebook where I kept a detailed list of ideas, supporters, and of course my constantly edited campaign plan. I planned out my rewards to be mostly digital copies of my novels, but also offered higher tiers for those wanting signed copies of my finished products.

Books make great rewards because not only are you rewarding your contributors, but you get your story into more hands and that’s exactly what you want as an indie author. If you used the money from the campaign to make a great quality book, then you could very well generate some reviews and word of mouth advertisement from those who received your rewards.

Here’s where things get real. Maybe you have more eager friends and family with the extra cash than I had, but the number of family that supported my campaign was pretty damn low, and I have a pretty supportive family. You have to consider that people get busy, forget, or don’t have the cash. We all know times can get tough, but we wouldn’t be crowdfunding if we had all the money ourselves, right? The hard truth is your support from friends and family might be super limited. You’ll need to think outside the box.

For me, I used a different platform for occasional advertisement. I found those geeky gamers who I marked in my initial plan as my target audience. Where? I found them while gaming, duh. I write stories that I would want to read, so naturally I needed to find others like me.

So I logged on to live stream a video game on Twitch (as I had been doing all year) for viewers to chill and chat. We talked about a variety of topics. Our favorite games, comics, books…you name it. I spent a small amount of time talking about my book and when my campaign launched, I added a bot to the chatbox which would display the link to my campaign. My best friend (who also live streamed for a much bigger audience than I did) did the same to help spread the word. Between her channel and mine, we fully funded the campaign in just three days with most of the contributions coming from our regular channel viewers in just one night.

We did it by going outside the normal social media outlets and creating a discussion. I let viewers ask me questions about writing and influences. It was an amazing—possibly magical experience with the appearance of unicorns and double rainbows—and I probably would’ve been far less successful or barely hitting my goal if I had limited myself to the typical social media outlets.

Don’t be afraid of the rejection because some people are going to tell you no. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box. Work your butt off. Find your people. Be passionate.

And for the love of Joss Whedon, don’t be annoying and spammy with promotional links.

I also strongly suggest learning about press releases and how to write them. I will also make this one of my goals for 2016 and will assist in a campaign I hope to launch later in the year. I’ll also do a blog post on the topic once I’ve learned enough to be helpful, haha.

I hope this information helped and feel free to ask questions in the comments below or tweet me @sedoster. If you’d like to find out more about my Alliance YA series, you can check out my website sedoster.com or find my books on Amazon.

 

Alliance YA Novels Now Available

It’s done! Finished! All of the hard work, waiting, stressing, more waiting and all other things related to my successful Indiegogo campaign are finally over! I have two complete self-published YA novels now available on Amazon! The digital rewards have been sent out to my awesome contributors, and physical copies of the books are on […]

Drakon Cover Reveal

A few weeks ago, I released the cover reveal for my YA novel The Alliance: Bloodlines. Now I’m excited to reveal the cover for Drakon, the sequel to Bloodlines.   Drakon Blurb The Alliance still defend the streets of Jefferson City, but the demon hunter team thought life would be better after the battle with Jaysk […]

The Alliance: Bloodlines 2nd Edition Cover Reveal

Two years ago, I released my very first self-published novel, The Alliance: Bloodlines. Bloodlines was scheduled to be the first in a series of YA Urban Fantasy novels, but the debut novel generated little buzz. Rookie mistakes were made including my cover design choice, and a list of my lessons learned can be found here […]

Thank You Indiegogo Campaign Supporters

In June, I created an Indiegogo campaign with the hopes of reaching the minimum amount needed to self-publish my novels with professional formatting and covers. I was overjoyed when friends and fans of my first novel, The Alliance: Bloodlines, rallied together to fund my campaign in just three days! The initial goal of $500 was […]