Harry Connolly's Blog, page 27

Eyes or No Eyes: An Advertising Conundrum

Among all the good folks checking out my ads for The Great Way and leaving feedback, one of the most consistent is that they don’t like that ad #2 does not show Tejohn’s eyes.

I felt the same way about them, until my son showed me how it looks with the eyes. Check it out:

Original:

Ad number 3

With eyes showing:

It seems pretty clear to me that the ad that shows his eyes is weaker than the original, which is not what I would have expected.

I dunno. I find it interesting.

Ads for The Great Way (asking a favor)

Sales of The Great Way trilogy have lagged pretty significantly, and while I’m working on my new project, I thought it would make sense to do some advertising.

Buying book ads isn’t the usual thing, but I keep hearing that it does well for other self-publishers, and I’m not averse to spend a little money as long as I make back more than I spent. However, before I put anything online, I thought I’d ask for feedback on the ads themselves as well as the landing page.

My son made these ads as part of a homeschool project. He’s fourteen. Please be gentle.

Ad number one

Ad number two

Ad number three

I know there’s not a lot of data there, just images and a little text, but it’s supposed to be intriguing enough to entice a click. Readers who go for the ad will arrive at this landing page. Input on that page would also be most welcome.

I’m planning to run them through Project Wonderful, probably at the forums for OOTS. I’m not sure where else. It depends on how things go. I’m told Facebook is a useful ad space, but I’m not in a hurry to go there.

Comments on this blog are usually turned off, but I’ve tried to turn them on for this post. WordPress can be cranky about this stuff, though, so if you find you can’t (or don’t want to) offer your comments below, you can tweet them at me @byharryconnolly or post them to my LiveJournal, Facebook, or Google plus pages. If you’re old school (or prefer privacy) you can email me at harryconnolly at sff dot net.

Thanks for your help.

B&N Buy links broken

Barnes & Noble used to run their affiliate sales program through a third-party website, but they’ve now cancelled that agreement. As a result, all of the B&N “buy” links on this website go nowhere.

Sorry. Today’s non-writing writing work is replacing all of those links with direct non-affiliate links. I’ll also be stripping out the affiliate links to Kobo, even though those are still live. I don’t want to have to do this again if that affiliate loses their contract.

It’s not like I was actually making money from those affiliate links.

Authorial Self Sabotage: first in an informal series

The common wisdom is: if you publish in the genre, go to conventions. Here:

Sad but true fact abt cons. Best advice David Hartwell gave us at Clarion was “go to cons.”Took me 15yrs to know why https://t.co/Ilg7cDARUC

— Kameron Hurley (@KameronHurley) January 31, 2016

Now, to clarify (because this has bitten me in the ass before) I’m quoting Kameron Hurley to talk about her assertion, not to blindly agree with it.

I’m going to relink the article she’s linking above because it’s worth reading, and I’m going to quote it, too.

Check this part out:

Here’s another wrinkle: at least in SFF writerdom, there is really no meaningful distinction between friends and colleagues. Which, sure, is true of a lot of fields. But these relationships are particularly close, and the professional utility of these friendships can be very high. There are costs to missing out, to not being at the right place at the right time to meet the right person. Missed connections are a real thing. Because here’s another wrinkle: it’s not just about being talented. It’s about being noticed.

Which calls back to some other, previous posts of mine about luck. (Don’t roll your eyes, people, I’m going to be brief this time.) If you maximize your interactions with other people and with new experiences, and you remain open to new opportunities, you increase your chances of a “lucky” break. That’s why people who say you can’t control luck are wrong. You can’t control luck in any specific situation, but you can increase the chances that something lucky will happen over the long term.

Therefore: conventions, where you meet colleagues who become friends. The benefits of that are unpredictable but they’re there. The costs are there, too.

See this post by Chuck Wendig listing the upside and downside of attending. As Chuck says, the point is to meet people you like and be liked in return. It’s a professional opportunity to make pals, not to cynically acquire names and resumes who will give your career a lift. Chuck also makes an extensive list of the downsides, one of which is cost. Marko Kloos broke down the cost of attending Confusion, an event he really enjoyed and which is apparently the cool new thing.

Clearly, $1,888 isn’t chump change, and it’s clear that no one is going to make back that money on the weekend itself. The money I just paid to Bookbub was not tiny, but the extra sales more than made up for the cost. But that’s short-term thinking. That almost-nineteen hundred dollar ConFusion expenditure will pay off, if it pays off at all, in the long-term benefits that come from the friendships formed at the event.

For example: we’ve all seen writers pushing their books on social media, and most of us know that, while it works once in a while, it’s not an effective way to sell. You reach your core followers, they buy the book, and the positive effects of future promotion nosedives.

But being promoted by other writers to their followers, with a personal recommendation? That’s gold. Meeting an editor who remembers you as smart, funny, and sensible the next time your agent submits your work? Making a good impression on a handful of fans who decide to try your books, then love them so much that they evangelize for them? Also gold.

And it can’t be predicted or forced. It’s like the old saying: “If you want to find someone to love, be someone worth loving.” Authors just have to go, spend the money, the energy, and the time, and hope good comes of it.

For those who have found benefit that way, great. I’m glad Kameron Hurley’s career is doing well and I hope she becomes a best-seller (or whatever her goal is). But it’s important to be wary of Survivor Bias. My own experience at big meetups is not all that positive. Usually I leave feeling that I should have spent that time writing.

And then there’s this:

Excerpt from ‘The Career Novelist’ by Donald Maass

That advice is more than 20 years old and it’s the exact opposite of what authors are told now. Conventions may have been around for a long time, but could things have changed so much?

I’m open to the possibility that social media magnifies the effects of creating a F2F friendship with your colleagues; it’s possible that folks who witness fun and funny online exchanges between pros would be willing to sample the work of a whole clique. I also suspect that’s where “cool kids” rhetoric comes from (as in “I’ll never be one of the cool kids”). In social media, casual expressions of camaraderie are a public act and it’s easy to feel excluded when it looks like everyone but you gets to take part in the fun (Not to mention getting the reviews, the blurbs, the nominations…)

Then again, what looks widespread and pervasive on social media is usually neither. The ongoing drama in one person’s circles goes completely unnoticed by the world at large. And those people that look like they’re among the “cool kids” are struggling with their books and their insecurities just like any other writer. The only difference is that their circle of friends has a high(ish) profile.

Still, the idea that long-lasting sales comes to those who don’t waste time on the social stuff is very very tempting.

Back and forth. Back and forth. Is it worth the time and money? How many cons does it take to start making friends? Is it even worth it for me, a guy who hates to be jostled, who can’t hear in noisy environments, and is terrible at recognizing faces? (also names?)

Maybe it would be worth it, but feh. I’m terrible at that stuff. We only get 52 weekends a year, and I don’t want to use one of mine on socializing when I could be working on a book.

I could be shooting myself in the foot with that decision, but it wouldn’t be the first time.

Today’s Twitter Confession

Sometimes I squelch the urge to say things that are true but seem obvious. I probably shouldn’t.

Weird to realize that ten years ago I thought writing well enough to be published was a worthy end-goal & then things would become easier.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

Instead, things have gotten harder. The goals are more difficult, the pace and the pressure are more intense.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

It's like training for a race; just qualifying seems like such a big deal until the race begins and we see the huge crowd of runners.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

Not that I'm unhappy with my lot. It's great to be in the race at all and I feel lucky most of the time. But it's not what I expected.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

Don't ask me what I expected, because I barely remember now. Maybe I'd feel more accomplished? Happier?

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

But happiness comes from the people in our lives, not necessarily the stuff we achieve.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

And goals that look big when we're racing toward them look much smaller in hindsight.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

And the reason I'm typing all of this is because I have to describe the protagonist's feelings and I'm not sure what they are yet.

— No Fighting (@byharryconnolly) January 27, 2016

And this is why Wren, an app that lets me send Tweets without being distracted by reading anyone else’s, is a great way to let off steam when I’m writing.

Mysteries with Honest Detectives and Sad Endings: Netflix Codifies Art

This article pushes all my buttons.

The more I learn about the way Netflix determines their categories, but more convinced I am that they’re doing something really useful that will soon apply to all entertainment media. To summarize the article briefly: not only have they created over 75,000 separate “genres” (called “altgenres” at the company) but they rate and categorize films according to a very complex system of metrics. How gory are they? How romantic? Where are they set? What job does the protagonist hold? How happy is the ending?

Hiding behind those 75+K genres are all sorts of ratings that Netflix pays careful attention to. If you watch a lot of movies in the Action categories but consistently turn off the gory ones before the end, Netflix will stop suggesting action movies with a high gore rating to you. Other kinds, sure, but not that one.

I’d hoped books could get a system like this with Game of Books, but they didn’t deliver. The project was sold or abandoned, and backers’ pledges were returned.

I still interested in a system that could do something similar with books. Bleak mysteries with an honest detective and a sad/tragic ending ought to be easier to find than they are, but the personal recommendations I get through social media haven’t scratched that itch. Those books were one disappointment after another. Would the Game of Books have managed it? Would “Netpages”?

Obviously, a system like this would never be perfect; Netflix’s certainly isn’t. That’s why I miss Netflix’s “Random” category, since my recommendations are now swamped with kung fu movies and British crime shows. (And why not? Love ’em!) Random allowed me to see recs beyond what the algorithm thought I wanted.

For Netflix to survive, it has to connect subscribers with shows they love over the long term, but sometimes its recs are so narrow that we only get to see a thin slice of what they offer. Basically, they hide most of their library. Before she moved in with us, my niece thought she’d seen everything of interest the streaming service offered. Now she’s binging on all sorts of shows. That suggests that Netflix’s algorithms are too restrictive right now. More variety is needed.

As for books, well, variety is not the problem. Covering them all would be the problem. Still, I think it’s inevitable.

I know there are people who will recoil instinctively from the idea of breaking down books into component parts in order to categorize them, but I can’t help but think that, if readers were able to look for “Contemporary Fantasy Crime Fiction with a Sad Ending”, I might still be writing Ray Lilly novels.

Genres are just descriptions for the marketing department, after all. I suspect we’re coming to a time when book classification is going to have to get much more granular.

Our Immortality Lies In The Effect We Have On Others: RIP David Bowie

David Bowie talks about performing “Heroes” at the Berlin Wall in 1987. HT @elenacresci pic.twitter.com/oc1NyAuYzQ

— CTM FESTIVAL (@CTM_Festival) January 11, 2016

I just recently wrote about fearing obscurity, but of course death is out there, too. Death is the end of all our contributions to the world. It’s the end of our opportunities to experience joy and delight, and to make an impact. It’s the end of us.

But we all get to have a kind of immortality, too. When any of us show kindness to someone else, we brighten their day. If we’re lucky, they feel happier than they did, and they get a chance to pass that kindness to someone else. In that way, a good deed can circle the world, just as long as recipients give away what they have received.

That’s our immortality, and it isn’t about us as individuals. The effects of our kindness can touch people who have never heard of us, and it can last long past the life span of those who knew our names or laughed at our jokes. It’s immortality as life force, the soul defined by the effect we have on others, and the way those effects ripple outward.

Maybe one particular good deed was prompted by a kindness someone else showed to us, which would mean that good deed sustains someone else’s immortality, mixing it with our own. Maybe the good deed is something we created ourselves, as an antidote for being mistreated. Either way, every kindness becomes part of the heaven that we ourselves create.

Because heaven isn’t a place we go at the end of things; it’s something we construct with our words and our deeds. It’s found inside generosity, joy, and connection like little pinpricks of light, and it’s something we make for other people, not for ourselves.

The way we raise our children, and the way we treat our neighbors and our friends over the long term… those things have an even larger impact on the world, for good or ill.

And then there’s the art we make.

David Bowie reached a great many people with his art. I’m not going to try to summarize his career; others will do that better than I ever could. But I don’t think it’s out of line to estimate that there are millions of people out there who feel that his music saved them in one way or another. That’s a powerful legacy–any artist would dream of having that kind of effect before their time on this world comes to an end, myself included.

He may not be with us any longer, but his impact remains. If David Bowie ever brought you joy or comfort, please try to pass that on to others. In that way, you help to make him immortal, and you become immortal with him.

Death… I mean, Obscurity stands at your left shoulder and whispers “Soon.”

I should have put this here instead of on Twitter, but I got into a roll and what the hell.

Here it is, my short essay on obscurity:

1. Putting my book down to tweet a few things I've been thinking about. Always dangerous, I know. I'll try not to be too depressing.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

2. I know some people will laugh at this, but I'm not writing for people's beer money, or for throwaway entertainment. I want more.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

3. I'm hoping that people will still be reading my books 100 years from now. Or 80 years. I want to be read long after I'm dead.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

4. Like Agatha Christie or Raymond Chandler. I want to create books that people return to. And I'm honest w/ myself about it.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

5. It ain't gonna happen. I mean, it might, but the odds are long and everyone is playing this same game. So I'm trying to do my best.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

6. Because, if you go into a thrift store, you'll see used books w/ old-fashioned covers that say "NY TIMES BESTSELLER!" and if you take out

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

7. your phone, you'll see that a lot of those authors–best sellers whose names you don't recognize, are still alive.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

8. They had a career. They were fairly successful. Now its is over. They outlived their own career.

That's a scary thing. The scariest.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

9. The idea that I might still be writing but readers will have moved on is the thing that worries me the most.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

10. Yesterday, I had that Bookbub promotion, and someone was nice enough to mention my book on reddit. I sold nearly a thousand books.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

11. A drop in the buck compared to what some self-publishers do, but if it brings me new readers, I'm glad.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

12. Today, I sold a little over 250. Most of those were the 99c promotion, so they're not bringing in a lot of cash.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

13. Being listed on Bookbub cost over $500. I'm thinking I'll make that money back sometime tomorrow. But it's not really about the money.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

14. I would have done it anyway even if all it did was bring in new, serious readers. Because obscurity is the enemy here.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

15. Obscurity is not patient. It doesn't wait in the wings, lurking at the edge of the pack. It goes right for the throat as quick as it can

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

16. Because it's completely standard for writers to toil in anonymity, to be dumped by their publisher after one book, to be forgotten.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

17. And I don't know any way to prevent that, except to toil away, try to be original, and write honest entertainment well. As well as I can

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

18. Lots of writers struggling today, and I have my own numbers to look at. It's not easy or encouraging.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

19. Okay, stopping there. Goals, I have them. The good thing is they're the kind I'll never know if I truly failed them or not.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

@byharryconnolly I hear you on all this

— Kate Elliott (@KateElliottSFF) January 4, 2016

@KateElliottSFF Normal people feel Death standing at their left shoulder. Writers have Obscurity.

— Round Things (@byharryconnolly) January 4, 2016

I wish I could edit tweets.

Anyway, re: #18, here’s Jaime Lee Moyer talking about her series being cancelled after Tor pulled her first two books just as book 3 was coming out and here’s Patrick Swenson talking about Tor dropping him after one book. Those forgotten bestsellers I mention in tweets #6 & 7? At least they made a little money first. For too many of us, even that’s beyond our grasp.

I have also been thinking about George RR Martin, who recently announced that his next Westeros novel will be delayed. It reminded me of an article I read about JK Rowling, and the pressure she felt while trying to finish the last few Harry Potter books. Those authors have had amazing success, obviously, but they still feel Imposter Syndrome. They still worry that readers will be turned off and turned away. That readers will move on.

Anyway, that’s what I’m thinking about lately, as I watch the Bookbub sales bump fade, and wonder if those readers will move past the 99 cent promo novel to my other work.

Hey new readers, if you want to keep up with my future work, why not sign up for my newsletter? I only send it when I have something new out.

Also, it helps keep the specter of Obscurity a few paces behind.

The Way into Chaos is currently 99 cents

Tomorrow, the second of January, The Way into Chaos is going to be included in a Bookbub promotion, and I’ve already lowered the price to 99 cents in anticipation.

With luck, this will give me a worthwhile sales boost, not only of book one but the whole trilogy. I’ll post about that later. In the meantime, if you’re an ebook reader and you haven’t tried this series–or you know someone who might like an epic fantasy merged with an apocalyptic thriller, you can pick up a discounted copy from one of these vendors:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

iBooks

Kobo

But only for a limited time.

The paper edition is still available, too, naturally, but without a discount. However, the Amazon “Matchbook” program has changes so that if you buy the paper edition from them, you get a free version for your Kindle.

Holiday time with my family, plus secular symbolism

I’m not a Christian, but like many Americans I’ll be celebrating the holiday today. We have our niece visiting from out of town, and the tree has lots of gifts under it, four stockings hang over the fireplace, the fridge is stuffed with the traditional foods, and the shelves are full of board games waiting to be played.

Twenty years ago I would spend the holidays alone, making ravioli and writing. Personally, I prefer this. If you find yourself spending the day in a way that makes you feel awful, please reach out. There are folks out there who want to hear from you; you don’t have to be alone.

Whether you celebrate or not, I hope you have a wonderful day. If you like, you can check out my post from two years ago about secular symbolism over the holidays.

Best wishes to you.