Joshua C. Cook's Blog, page 11

Finding time to write

Eariler this week I had a brief twitter conversation with another author, far more successful than I, about finding time to write. As I’ve mentioned before, I came into the whole writing thing kind of naive about what writing would take from me, and what it would mean for me. Now, as some may know, I’m blessed with one background factor, my mom is a now retired english professor who specialized in creative writing, rhetoric, and poetry. While she didn’t come to that job when I was growing up, she and my father were avid readers when I was a child. It wasn’t until my teen years that my mom went back to school to get all her English degrees and pursue that path. I knew that writing took time, I got that.

But I wasn’t quite as prepared for the 1001 distractions that happen when your writing. You have everything under the sun wanting your attention sometimes. I actually find it easier to write at work (during lunch break!) than at home a lot of the time. Even with my day job being something that can take a lot of attention at times, I find that I’m left alone more at work.

 

At home, my kids have the uncanny ability, the moment I sit down, to need me. I don’t begrudge them this, they are young kids, and it’s really important to me to be there for them, even if it’s a 20 minute rendition of everything that’s cool with a bunch of dinosaur toys my son likes. But still,  5 minutes before i sat down no one had said anything to me for an hour, i figured I was home free!

The other issue I find myself struggling with is sleep. Usually I can only really write at night, when everyone is asleep. that means I don’t get to even start writing until 9pm or later. On weekdays, I find myself, even with coffee, starting to nod off after 1000 words or so. I recently even fell asleep at the keyboard, head down, mid sentence for 4 hours.

The other issue with writing at night vs writing during the day, is quality. I write far better during the day. The ideas flow better, the wording is better, and I don’t read over it and think ‘This is total crap.” It’s a struggle at night sometimes. My mind just isn’t as focused.

So, to anyone reading this.. How do you find time to write?

 

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Book Title, Cover Change

So of course the big “news” at the moment in my newly minted writing world, is that I’ve changed the first books title and cover. There were a few good reasons for the changes, all boiling down mostly to the fact that the old title and cover, well.. needed work. The cover idea I had, just didn’t look very good honestly. And the title didn’t work well for the rest of the arc, I needed a better one to fit the arc, and the story better. So in my typical bullet list style…

 

The old cover, looked like crap.
The old title, was kinda nonsensical, and hard to remember.
I had gotten feedback from multiple people telling me the same things.

 

So, I changed them. And honestly, I’m really glad I did. I’m a lot , LOT happier with the new title and cover. You can see it here:

http://goo.gl/YcHZlx 

 

Oversee of One? Yes, MUCH better than GHIB-T47.

Cover? Brown and boring vs. a bit more dramatic, more.. moody.

So yeah.. I’m happy with the change.

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Reviews for eBooks, how to get them?

One of the more interesting things I’ve run across with this little start to writing and (self) publishing, is I don’t think I truly understood the power of a review. I’ll be honest, I never really left reviews myself, and didn’t ever think about not leaving them, until now. With from what I understand at least, Amazon really counting reviews a lot towards marketing. This gets you better visibility, and hopefully, better visibility leads to better sales. Which hopefully leads to more reviews, which leads to better visibility, etc etc.

Of course the kicker is how to *start* that process. Your a nobody with an idea and a recently published eBook. You think it’s pretty good, maybe you’ve gotten a family member to read it, they think it’s pretty good. And you  hope they just aren’t saying that.

You can beg, annoy, cajole everyone you know to both get the book and review it. And say, put it up for free for 5 days. And out of over 100 downloads, you end up with 4 reviews. Great reviews to be sure, but 4…:(

Then you “submit” your eBook to services that are supposedly there to help promote the book, but your not even sure they do anything.

I once thought writing was the hard part, and it is sometimes. But just as hard, and in ways I never expected, was the marketing aspect of an eBook.

I’m going to redo the cover, I changed the categories the book is under, and tightening up the way I tweet about the book. Trying to find the right hash tag for it.

Marketing an eBook, is in some ways, it’s own special challenge. Getting reviews for eBooks, can just be plain hard.

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Free eBook for Kindle coming to an end, was it worth it?

So as part of the Amazon select promotion, I put my first book (Shameless plug goo.gl/YcHZlx) out for free for 5 days. So far..

 

The Good

1) I’ve had nearly 100 downloads.. that’s pretty good I think considering I’m brand freaking new to the world of ebook self publishing.

2) I’ve netted two additional reviews, both 5 stars! Also pretty good.

3) I’ve used the free time test and track using an affiliate link for the book access.. working well! So that’s good.

 

The bad

1) I had a hella lot of downloads the first day, then tapered off  a lot. I don’t know if that’s normal or not. But it does worry me.. anyone know?

2) While I didn’t get into this first off to make money, I like most “starting out” authors do on occasion daydream about making a living doing this.. I look at all the free downloads and think.. “Man, that would look good as a check.” Course I’m at 0.99 cents, so it’s not that much money, but still.. LOL

3) I sometimes have felt like I’m forcing the book down peoples throats to try and get eyes on the product. I’m not big on that. I never was a big sales guy.

 

So.. was the free eBook for kindle worth it?? I don’t know yet. We will see how things go next week when it’s back on the 0.99 cents plan.. If I can get another review of two today, that might help.

 

Josh

 

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Amazon Affiliate Links

So, I learned something new today, though in retrospect I really should have known about it before. Not only can you make money off the sale of you book(s) but you can also make money off of being an affiliate for your OWN books.

*smacks head*

Basically, you sign up to be an affiliate, linking to your own products. Then if someone uses your link to buy your book, not only do you get the royalty from the book sale, you can get a kickback via the affiliate link. Which is awesome! Just wish I’d known it before the free week I’m doing now. I’m only using the affiliate link now for my tweets and the like, but man, that would have been useful last week. It’s very easy to sign up to be an affiliate, so that’s good. The plan is once the free week is over with this weekend, do some more twitter marketing and Facebook stuff. I’ve also really got to figure out goodreads, and how to use it without breaking the rules on Amazon Select. That’s really confusing me so far in the game.

So, if your going to be selling eBooks via Amazon, do it with an affiliate link, and get a bit of extra cash!

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First review..

And its actually a good one! And even better the name is not familiar.

Lol

Im pretty happy.

Getting reviews is pretty crucial on amazon, so getting a five star review from someone kinda makes my day.http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L3G089I

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Perils of my day job

As the blog title says, my day job is being IT manager. One of the weird circumstances of my job is that EVERY time I go out of town, something happens.

I’ve had everything from the main fiber loop for the town I live in get back hoed, to email servers crash, a simple server move go horribly wrong, to most recently, an ancient sun Solaris workstation that acts as a processing station for an equally ancient nuke camera.. Blew.

There is nothing I could do to stop these things from happening, but I just find it amusing in some level that these things happen all the time when I leave town. My teams got it covered, but still.. Very strange stuff.

 

Add in the HR directors email vanishing, and so we continue on the path of strangeness when I go away.

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Surreal time

So, on vacation with the family.. Had the enjoyable but semi surreal expierence, of watching my wife read my first eBook/story. I found myself really nervous that she wouldn’t like it. One of the many things I love deeply about my wife is the fact that she has always been totally honest with me. And so I hoped she would like the ebook, simply because I didn’t want her to tell me what was wrong with the story lol

She loved it

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eBook Marketing 101

To my past self:

 

So you want to start being a part time to full time writer eh?

 

Ok..so here’s what you gotta do.

1) Write the damn book. Far easier said than done.. but you can do it.

2) Get it published. Ok, we can do this.. Fiverr is your friend. Covers, kindle formatting, etc. Fiverr if your on a shoestring budget is  your go to place.

3) Marketing.

 

What’s that? You think you don’t need to do number 3? Ah.. foolish foolish boy.

You will have to market the hell out of both yourself and the book. No one knows you, no one knows the story, and no one even will pay it any attention in the 80 thousand other books out there. You will have to submit the ebook to everywhere you can find, post every and anywhere you can proclaiming the book, and beg for real honest reviews. Now don’t be a dishonest guy, and pay for reviews, but submitting the eBook to websites that put the book and it’s cover out there? Yes please.  Yes, I’m aware we don’t like promoting ourselves, but you want this? You gotta work for it man. Put it out there, be larger than life as the saying goes.

The only person keeping it from you.. is you.

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Now, all is correct eBook wise

So, I’ve fixed the eBook on Amazon. All is working and good to go. Finally have the correct version up, with the right edits. Still kicking myself for that one. Also, I’ve “announced” via my personal facebook page and my ye old twitter account (that I have barely ever used) that I’ve done this and taken this step.

So, I’ve heard of, but not seen, sites out there that you can submit a story to for review? For free, honest upfront reviews.. Can anyone point me in that direction? It’s a short story, a pretty easy read over all. But all feedback is good feedback, (and least I hope so.) I’d really like to get eyes on.

I’ve had some family and friends either get the book, or say they will be “soon” but I’d love other feedback, as much as possible. So if anyone has a site to share for review services (not pay for review, I don’t play that game.) Let me know.

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