Joshua C. Cook's Blog, page 7

Goals, Plans and Writing

Goals are important. Plans are important. Writing is even more important, if your a writer or at least trying to be one. With the release of Bridgefinders about two weeks ago, I seem to have fallen a bit on the productivity scale. I think I was throwing myself a bit TO much into the marketing of Bridgefinders, and less into the actual work of writing. While an upcoming post will be about the results of all that said marketing, for now I need to focus on setting goals for this quarter.

Taking a page from other ‘indie’ authors (which is to say, we who self publish. Though I cringe a bit at the semi cache of saying ‘indie’.) I’m going to do a vlog this week about my goals for the quarter. I’m going to do it as a vlog simply to force myself to get a bit more comfortable with that medium. You’d think someone who had a theater scholarship outta High School and had done a great deal of performance training would slip into it well, but that was nearly 25 years ago, and honestly I don’t like watching myself on film. But I’m working on it..

Bridgefinders

So finally.. Bridgefinders is out.. for sale, ready, done.. finis. Whhhoohoo. I’m really proud of Bridgefinders, I truly believe that it’s my strongest story yet, which makes me pretty happy. The eBook is out now, the paperback is coming out the next day or so, hopefully Amazon will get them linked correctly, otherwise I’ll have to jump through that hoop. For those who don’t know, if you have your book out on Amazon as an eBook, and you add a Paperback version via Createspace (an Amazon Company) they don’t *always* seem to link them, meaning there’s a totally seperate page for the paperback version and the eBook version. Then you have to get Amazon to link them, which can take a few days.

But anyways..and also for the first time, I’m working on getting Bridgefinders made into an audiobook through ACX (Also an Amazon company) that if all works, will mean the Audiobook will be on Amazon, audible and iTunes. This is new territory for me, so we will see how that manages to go.

Now that the book is actually for sale, all the Marketing plans are being put into motion, including a new one I had briefly mentioned before. There will be a follow up post on that, but I think that’s it’s a decent idea, and the other self published authors I’ve talked to about it have liked the idea.

For now Bridgefinders is for sale for *ONLY* 99 cents. Trying to drive early support and reviews to it now, hopefully that works. The price will go up to 2.99 at some point after the first month.

But for now, I’m really happy with the work, and how well it all turned out.

Upcoming: The marketing idea, and FINALLY finishing the keyboard review. I’m writing on the mechanical keyboard right now, still liking it…a lot.

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Bridgefinders cover and Marketing.

Bridgefinders

Cover time and Marketing! I’ve release this on Facebook and Twitter, but hadn’t done it here on the blog yet, which in retrospect, I should have done it here first, and then on twitter and Facebook. Drive more traffic here, right? Next time!

Anyways, I’m really happy with this cover. The creator of the cover is the talented @authorsahunt. Very easy to work with, asked the right questions. Highly recommend, and I will be working with him again for the sequel (in progress!) for Bridgefinders. I’ve got about a week left till I get my manuscript back from the editor, the also talented @brianawrites. She’s finishing up copy edits, and she wanted to format it as well, so more’s the power to her on that!

Which leads me to the next subject, something I’ve not taken overly seriously until now, marketing.

See, like a lot of folks who write, I have some issues with putting myself out there and flogging the book. While I used to do a lot of theater (had a very nice scholarship for it back in the day.) I’ve gotten away from that over the years, and found myself somewhat uncomfortable with selling. I like to sell my books, don’t get me wrong, the money is nice as a reward for the work. However like other’s who came into this over the years, I seemed to suffer from the common delusion that writing was easy and once I got it done I’d just put it for sale and then make money.

This, however, is grade ‘A’ total fantasy.

Writing is harder than it looks.
Marketing your books is totally 110% necessary if you actual want to sell any of them at any volume.

Now, if your writing and just putting them out there for family and some friends to buy, great! Have a wonderful time doing so, but don’t really plan on getting any real money out of it. Yes, there is I guess some slight slim chance you’ll get ‘discovered’ and do well. But the odds, frankly, are against it. You’ve got to try to push the book. So this time I’m going out of my way to do so. And yes, that means I may have to spend $$ to make $$$.

So what you ask am I doing?

Facebook ads. Yes, really. The fact is, Facebook will let you target your ads in certain places. But I’m not all that good at that. So I’ll be using a service I already had to help get those ads out.The service is authorRise. authorRise has a neat tool that allows you to make free “book flyers” for your book to share on twitter and other social media sites. They also offer targeted Facebook ads to help drive sales, so I’m going to try it. The cost is minimal but there is a cost.
theBookPromoter. Another book marketing service. Also costs (but again, not breaking the bank, and has a money back guarantee. So there’s that. Includes twitter traffic, mailing the book to a list of book reviewers, and more.
Targeted traffic for the first two weeks of sale. This means quite simply, I’m flogging the book for the first two weeks at a discounted rate (.99 cents vs 2.99) and calling in every favor I can to get family and friends to buy the book and review it. The goal, to get on Amazon’s ‘Hot and New’ list for my genres. Going to try at least. Doing so gets you a TON of exposure.
Picking the RIGHT genres. I’ve been working out exactly which lists or area’s I’m going to place the book in. I think I have a good plan now but I’m going to leave this one a surprise.. for now

Free Book Experiment :Results

So as promised, here’s the results from the ‘Free Book Experiment.” I posted about last week. As I said I had kept reading about how you should do a free book promo to get traffic, reviews, and ultimately, drive some sales. I used one of my older books, Project:Perception and using the Amazon author portal, made it free for 4 days. The results were in fact a bit better than expected, but not any sort of major breakthrough.

The first day I had a major spike in downloads of the book. This is pretty normal for the first day on any free promotion. I’m not clear on how Amazon markets this, but I hit 600 downloads, 634 to be exact on the first day. But then as normal, the second, third, and fourth day dropped a lot. 211, 63, and 51 respectively. This is also pretty normal, the spike and tapering off of downloads. The nice thing is that your book gets a lot more visible, but only while the free promo is going on.  Once the promo is over, your book vanishes from the free list and back to whatever it was ranked before.
One unexpected thing was a download or two via Kindle Unlimited. This is still free, but I get paid based on the number of pages read. Tiny money, but still, money. I say unexpected because I hadn’t had that happen before.
I got one review, but a 3 star out of 5. So it was so-so to them. But still, nice to have. (I’ve mentioned before, reviews are gold.)
I got one actual sale of the book after the promo ended. One.

So was it worth it?

Not sure. Now I didn’t do this “Free Book Experiment” the way most do. Usually this is planned out more, you submit your free promo to mailing lists, promote it on social media, and flog the hell out of it. I didn’t do any of that. I simply made it free, posted it once or twice on twitter, and mentioned it on my blog (which auto-posts on twitter, and I made a Facebook post for it.) So I really didn’t market it at all. Would the results have been better? Quite possibly. If you can get it mentioned on some of the larger eBook mailing lists I’ve seen reliable accounts of getting 20-30K downloads in a single day.

So all in all I’d say this has been a mostly useful exercise. I got a review, made a tiny amount of cash, and really didn’t do any work for it. (Well outside of writing the book in the first place.)

Upcoming: *finishing that keyboard review*, Cover reveal for Bridgefinders (much rejoicing.) and the release of Bridgefinders, currently looking like the first week in April.

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The Free Book Experiment

So I always saw and still see posts or guides that say ‘run a free book promotion, then when it runs out you’ll get sales!’ to be honest I’ve always been highly skeptical of this idea. Why would running a free book experiment give me sales? When it’s over, it’s over, and who wants to buy the book now? On top of it, my books that are in Kindle Unlimited don’t get checked out, and they are free, right?

But, in between writing the next book in the Echo Worlds series and working with my editor (@brianawrites)  AND finally finding a cover artist for Bridgefinders, I’ve decided to try this.

I have picked the book Project:Perception for the ‘free’ promo. I chose this book for two main reasons, one, I think it’s the better of the two on Amazon Select. CANITUS while I think is a good story is honestly a mess. Someday I may pull it and get it edited by an actual editor, but I’m not proud of the work there. And secondly, Perception is a combination of two stories that while for sale separately, aren’t on Amazon select. You can actually find the two stories that make up the bulk of Project: Perception on Smashwords, and whomever else they provide it to. (Note: no one reads it there either *heh*)

So the ‘Free Book Experiment’ will run from today through Saturday. A nice long couple of days, then post Saturday I’ll see if there are any actual sales of the book. Or any of the other books for that matter. I don’t think there will be honestly, as I’ve played around with free books and not noticed anything worth mentioning. But I’m going to really pay attention this time and see what happens.

The one thing I will say is that since the book went free at Midnight last night….

No one downloaded it until around 6:30 am today EST. And now, as I write this at 12:16 PM EST, I’ve had…176! Downloads of the book. Which honestly, is far more than the last time I did one of these. Of course I look at those numbers, and think oh man, if only I could get that many at $2.99, my cut would be 2.09 so that would get me…(Runs to find a calculator) 367.84$ Which is more than I’ve ever made selling books on Amazon. It’s both amusing and sad to see something you write jump up the charts, but only because you made it free for a few days. I’ll update the blog next week, the time to report back if there were actual actual sales that I can track back to the free book experiment.

 

On other news: Still working on the next vlog, honestly I’ve just been busy with stuff, it WILL get out this week. As I mentioned above I found a cover artist, and I’ll do a reveal once I get to that point. My editor sent me change suggestions last week, and I processed through all of them in two days. This is not overly odd for me, I want this book out. I’m really really happy with this book, and I hope you all are to.

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Working on Second Draft

So I got my first draft back from my editor (the ever talented Briana Morgan) and lo and behold, she liked it! Always good when your editor likes your work! But in all seriousness, I’m really pleased with this book. So far all my Beta’s have liked it, my Alpha’s liked it. And now the editor likes it. So yeah, I’m pretty happy with that.  The Second draft reads really well, taking in all their suggestions.

That’s not to say it doesn’t need tightening up and tweaking. I’m really forcing myself to take my time on this second draft, making sure all the details work, things match up, timelines are tight, etc. I honestly fight myself daily not to publish it like now, I want it out there for people to read, right? But I remind myself when I get that way that I rushed CANITUS. It needed work, tightening, cleaning up, and It didn’t get that time to fully mature. And it paid the price by not really being anything to write home about.

Bridgefinders is the first book in a series though, and I want it to shine. While I’ve already started the second book, I’ve stepped away from that draft while I polish this one. Once I’ve got this one released, I’ll return to the second book, never fear. Besides all this work with polishing the draft, I’m also still working on cover idea’s and looking hard for a good cover that isn’t going to cost me an arm and a leg. I’m not a graphic artist, so making a cover myself probably isn’t in the cards. Sure I’m a computer guy, but the skill (and patience) for digital art is a bit beyond me.

I’ve also been gently reminding people on Facebook and other mediums, that if they buy or ‘check out’ the book on Amazon, to PLEASE leave a review. I don’t think people really understand how insanely important reviews are to self-pubbed authors, and how much they matter to how Amazon handles your book. Get enough reviews and Amazon basically starts marketing your book for you, which is insanely helpful. So I’m working out a strategy to get as much traffic to the book as quickly as I can right off the bat. I want to get on that ‘Hot and New’ list from them, and go from there.

Also, please if you want to know more about the books, and other things I’m involved in here, please consider joining the site as a member. That will help me build an email list, and continue to help me market the books.

Enough about that though (Marketing was never my forte.) After this second draft is gone through, it goes back to the editor for a good full copy edit and formatting. Then it’s cover time, publish time, and marketing time. I look forward to it!

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First Product Review – In Progress

so, if you watched my first ever Vlog a few weeks back, I mentioned I was thinking about doing some product reviews. But product reviews for aspiring writers. A niche to be sure, but it allows me to combine my love of gadgets with my love of writing. My day job is in the IT industry, I LIKE gadgets and software. So this is kind of right up my alley. For my first product review, I’ll be tackling the most commonly used piece of equipment for any writer…

 

The Keyboard.

Yes, really.

I can hear it now.. “A keyboard? Why review that? You type, words appear, it’s not complicated.”

Yes… and no.

First off 99.9% of the keyboards you get with a computer are what’s called a ‘membrane’ keyboard. You push down on the keys, a little dome of plastic is pushed down, circuit is completed and the character appears. However, you get these because they work, and they are cheap to make, and produce. What you may not know, is that there are mechanical keyboards, that use a far different mechanism. They use an actual switch or in some cases a spring to complete the circuit. The advantage is really in how hard you need to push. Less pushing, can mean faster typing, faster typing means more words down, more words down means.. drafts done faster.

Now, mechanical keyboards are louder, they make a far more noticeable ‘clicky’ sound than a membrane keyboard. Some hate that, some don’t mind, and some (i.e. me) love it. For my first product review I will be reviewing a lower end price wise mechanical keyboard from Monoprice. Why lower end price wise? Simply put.. money. Since I’m paying for this myself, gotta keep costs low. Plus, like most writers, I don’t make a ton of cash off of writing. Aspiring writers like to keep things under control price wise, so it makes sense.

I’ll be testing typing speed, typing ‘feel’ and overall feel, compared to a traditional membrane keyboard. Also a bit on a few of the features of the keyboard. Look for that review to come next week here, and on my YouTube channel.

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Making Money as a Writer

So here we go, a post on ‘Making Money as a Writer.’ A subject that seems to come up often, far more than I ever thought it would actually when I began this journey. Let me start by saying of course, when I started this I thought “Oh I’ll write books, make $$$, quit my day job and be a writer for the rest of my life, it will be easy living!” I think that every writer has that same little fantasy that this will come and come fast and easy. It’s normal. It’s also almost never like that.

Yes, it *can* happen. And so does getting struck by lightning, or winning the lottery, or even creating this really new hot viral app that makes you $$$ hand over fist. All of it’s POSSIBLE. But likely? No.  I have been asked more than once, by very smart and well meaning people why I don’t just write full time. Simple answer? Money.

See I think those same people think it’s easy to make money writing books.It’s not. Not even close really. In grand total for ALL of 2015, I made…. 211$ Whoohoo! off of writing. Yes, that little. Why so little you may ask?

Lack of understanding on my part about marketing.
Poor choices of categories
Rushing books to market before they were ready.

All of those hurt me badly when it came to earning $$$, and I’m working heard to rectify those issues with my next book (coming soon!)

Then of course you read things.. things like http://bit.ly/1W64joy.

Basically the statement is to give it up, only 40 Amazon authors made “money”. But lets look at the definition of making money they used.. selling 1 million eBooks in 5 years. Excuse me? What??

Basic math here folks.

You sell a Million eBooks in 5 years, your averaging 200,000 a year. The most “common” eBook price (because the article is short on the details) is 2.99. Assuming your using the 70% royalty plan (and there’s no reason to think your not) you would be making 2.09 PER eBook sold. Which means your making 418,600$ a YEAR.

 

Yeah… That’s a fair amount more than “just being successful.” That’s being majorly AWESOMELY successful. It’s also a highly unrealistic number to use as “making money from self publishing.”

What do I want? My dream goal would be to pull anywhere from 70-90k a year from writing alone. That would be insanely awesome. Truly. My realistic goal, if I can get to 30k a year from writing, that would be great!! Would I quit my day job? Hell no. But if someone came up to you and said “Hey you want an extra 30k a year in passive income?” I think anyone and everyone would say yes please.

Why write then? If money is not so easy to make, why do it?

I actually really enjoy writing
I enjoy telling stories
I get a kick out of creating something that is out there for others to enjoy.

You want to know what you can do to support or help an self publishing author?

Buy their books
REVIEW their books (seriously, telling someone you like their book is great, but writing a LEGIT review on Amazon is better, FAR better due to how Amazon does things.)
Recommend their book to others.

That simple.

 

 

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My first Vlog.

So I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time, but I finally got around to creating my first Vlog. My inaugural Vlog is about using Mind Mapping for your characters. I’m not an ‘outliner’ in terms of how I write for the most part, as I reference in the video. I’m what a famous author calls a ‘Gardener’, meaning I have an idea, I plant it and let it grow and change naturally.  Some love the outline bit, and in truth I thought I would as well. However for me it didn’t work, and in fact I felt somewhat limited by the process.

That’s not to say I don’t have any framework. I tend to write a paragraph or two about the story, I create a timeline for it, if needed that is, and then create my character mind maps. I use a free piece of software called ‘Xmind’ that does a great job for me. But here it is, my first ever Vlog, I hope you like it! (Hint, if you do subscribe to the channel, then as I do more you’ll find out.)

 

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My fist Vlog.

So I’ve been meaning to do this for quite some time, but I finally got around to creating my first Vlog. My inaugural Vlog is about using Mind Mapping for your characters. I’m not an ‘outliner’ in terms of how I write for the most part, as I reference in the video. I’m what a famous author calls a ‘Gardener’, meaning I have an idea, I plant it and let it grow and change naturally.  Some love the outline bit, and in truth I thought I would as well. However for me it didn’t work, and in fact I felt somewhat limited by the process.

That’s not to say I don’t have any framework. I tend to write a paragraph or two about the story, I create a timeline for it, if needed that is, and then create my character mind maps. I use a free piece of software called ‘Xmind’ that does a great job for me. But here it is, my first ever Vlog, I hope you like it! (Hint, if you do subscribe to the channel, then as I do more you’ll find out.)

 

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