One Year Later, Starting to Get It Right...
It's all my fault. No, really, it is and today's rambling post points my own finger of blame squarely at me.
One year ago this week, my first novel, Testing the Prisoner, hit the market in paperback and Kindle, and later, on audio. I am happy to report that I have not had one piece of negative feedback about the book. As a new author, believe me, I was bracing for it. Sales have been decent but not overwhelming and I take sole blame for that. Friends and co-workers have been extremely generous, some buying upwards of four or five copies each. Convention and online sales have been average.
It has been an interesting and educational year. It has also been challenging, partially because I made some mistakes with regard to promotion early on. Oh, once my manuscript was accepted, I told everyone I knew that I was about to be published. However, during the initial writing and revision processes, I focused entirely on the manuscript and did very little promotion.
In other words, to stand on my "platform" at that time, you would have needed only one foot. I didn't jump in with both feet until after the book's release.
I hadn't a clue about platform building until then. I joined Facebook and LinkedIn three months after Prisoner's release. I didn't start recording the audio book in earnest until May of last year and completed it in July. It began airing as a bi-weekly chapter podcast in August on Prometheus Radio Theatre, my publisher's Mark TIme and Parsec award-winning radio show and audio book site. It will finish in about a month, then the entire book will be posted on Podiobooks (that's the plan). That's all wonderful but my mouth should have been in front of my Blue snowball mic the moment my manuscript was accepted as the final draft, not after the book was already out.
This blog did not launch until June 2010. That was about the same time I joined The Writers Coffeehouse group on Yahoo.
As a resident of the Lehigh Valley you would think that I would have become a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group ASAP. Yeah...uh...that just happened last month. I'm a late bloomer. At least I joined Peroozal last year...but only yesterday got my ass in gear and created a presence on Goodreads.
I attended a whopping two conventions in 2010 as an author. The first being Farpoint, which is a wonderful, fan-run SF media con in Maryland that was co-founded by Steven H. Wilson, the same chap that started Prometheus Radio Theatre and Firebringer Press (my publisher). The second was Shore Leave, a larger and older fan-run SF convention also in Maryland.
The thoughts running through my mind at the time were something like this: I've been attending these annual shows for 15 years, everyone knows me! They'll all buy a copy to support me, I know they will! Right? Right? Well, at Farpoint they did. Sales were excellent there despite the fact that I was not scheduled to give any readings or host any discussion panels. Hell, my first sale of the con, I had the book priced at $15 and one guy gave me $20 and told me to keep the change!!! I wish they were all like that!
That success psyched me up for Shore Leave five months later. It's a larger show with two to three times as many actor guests and higher attendance. Shore Leave even has a traditional event every Friday night called "Meet the Pros" where they line up all of their author guests in the lower lobby for two hours and for the first time in my life, I was one of them!!! It was a wonderful honor.
So, of course, my head was filled with dreams of soaring sales. Books would move so fast, I wouldn't be able to sign them quickly enough. In fact, as I did with Farpoint, I paid for a quarter page ad in the convention's program book. I'm gonna rock the house!
I sold one copy at the entire show.
And I had to guilt trip the guy into buying it after he spent about 10 minutes busting my chops about everything from the reader reviews that I had displayed down to the title of the book. He was someone I'd known for years and remain friends with today. He has a reputation as a smart ass so I wasn't taken aback, I just pressed him into buying a copy. If I had to sit there and listen to him poke at me, he's going to pay for the privilege!
You can imagine my disappointment leaving Shore Leave but I'm not one to stay down for long. I was already well into a second novel and was lining up other book signings for Prisoner. I had reached out to a number of independent bookstores earlier in 2010 to see if they would carry Prisoner on their shelves.
Then, I was slammed with some unexpected bills last April which prevented me from delving into the promotion I wanted to. But that would not have mattered had I done my work in advance. The platform would already have been there and I would not have need to scramble as much as I did after the book's release.
Now that my platform is established and people are asking when my next book is coming out, hopes are higher for my second book. I was back at Farpoint last month where I gave a reading and hosted a panel on the paranormal. That garnered some decent sales. I also finally networked with all of the veteran writers that I'd known for fifteen years(all of whom were given free copies of Prisoner last year as a thank you for inspiring me). This time, I politely asked each author if I could interview them for my blog and every one of them gave me their email address. So far this year, I've interviewed two of them, Howard Weinstein and Bob Greenberger. Aaron Rosenberg's interview will be posted next week with Steven H. Wilson, Jeffrey Allen, Michael Jan Friedman, Keith RA DiCandido, Kelly Meding, and Peter David coming soon.
And of course, the more you blog and respond on other author's blogs, the more you get your name out there. In fact, because of that, I also interviewed writer Alyce Wilson and met Jon Gibbs, an Englishman in New Jersey.
This year, although I will miss Shore Leave, I will be attending my first BaltiCon as a participant along with Steve Wilson and later in the year, the Collingswood Book Festival in New Jersey.
In summary, promote and create your platform early. Learn from my mistakes. I know I did---and I'm confident that my second novel will benefit from that education.
One year ago this week, my first novel, Testing the Prisoner, hit the market in paperback and Kindle, and later, on audio. I am happy to report that I have not had one piece of negative feedback about the book. As a new author, believe me, I was bracing for it. Sales have been decent but not overwhelming and I take sole blame for that. Friends and co-workers have been extremely generous, some buying upwards of four or five copies each. Convention and online sales have been average.
It has been an interesting and educational year. It has also been challenging, partially because I made some mistakes with regard to promotion early on. Oh, once my manuscript was accepted, I told everyone I knew that I was about to be published. However, during the initial writing and revision processes, I focused entirely on the manuscript and did very little promotion.
In other words, to stand on my "platform" at that time, you would have needed only one foot. I didn't jump in with both feet until after the book's release.
I hadn't a clue about platform building until then. I joined Facebook and LinkedIn three months after Prisoner's release. I didn't start recording the audio book in earnest until May of last year and completed it in July. It began airing as a bi-weekly chapter podcast in August on Prometheus Radio Theatre, my publisher's Mark TIme and Parsec award-winning radio show and audio book site. It will finish in about a month, then the entire book will be posted on Podiobooks (that's the plan). That's all wonderful but my mouth should have been in front of my Blue snowball mic the moment my manuscript was accepted as the final draft, not after the book was already out.
This blog did not launch until June 2010. That was about the same time I joined The Writers Coffeehouse group on Yahoo.
As a resident of the Lehigh Valley you would think that I would have become a member of the Greater Lehigh Valley Writers Group ASAP. Yeah...uh...that just happened last month. I'm a late bloomer. At least I joined Peroozal last year...but only yesterday got my ass in gear and created a presence on Goodreads.
I attended a whopping two conventions in 2010 as an author. The first being Farpoint, which is a wonderful, fan-run SF media con in Maryland that was co-founded by Steven H. Wilson, the same chap that started Prometheus Radio Theatre and Firebringer Press (my publisher). The second was Shore Leave, a larger and older fan-run SF convention also in Maryland.
The thoughts running through my mind at the time were something like this: I've been attending these annual shows for 15 years, everyone knows me! They'll all buy a copy to support me, I know they will! Right? Right? Well, at Farpoint they did. Sales were excellent there despite the fact that I was not scheduled to give any readings or host any discussion panels. Hell, my first sale of the con, I had the book priced at $15 and one guy gave me $20 and told me to keep the change!!! I wish they were all like that!
That success psyched me up for Shore Leave five months later. It's a larger show with two to three times as many actor guests and higher attendance. Shore Leave even has a traditional event every Friday night called "Meet the Pros" where they line up all of their author guests in the lower lobby for two hours and for the first time in my life, I was one of them!!! It was a wonderful honor.
So, of course, my head was filled with dreams of soaring sales. Books would move so fast, I wouldn't be able to sign them quickly enough. In fact, as I did with Farpoint, I paid for a quarter page ad in the convention's program book. I'm gonna rock the house!
I sold one copy at the entire show.
And I had to guilt trip the guy into buying it after he spent about 10 minutes busting my chops about everything from the reader reviews that I had displayed down to the title of the book. He was someone I'd known for years and remain friends with today. He has a reputation as a smart ass so I wasn't taken aback, I just pressed him into buying a copy. If I had to sit there and listen to him poke at me, he's going to pay for the privilege!
You can imagine my disappointment leaving Shore Leave but I'm not one to stay down for long. I was already well into a second novel and was lining up other book signings for Prisoner. I had reached out to a number of independent bookstores earlier in 2010 to see if they would carry Prisoner on their shelves.
Then, I was slammed with some unexpected bills last April which prevented me from delving into the promotion I wanted to. But that would not have mattered had I done my work in advance. The platform would already have been there and I would not have need to scramble as much as I did after the book's release.
Now that my platform is established and people are asking when my next book is coming out, hopes are higher for my second book. I was back at Farpoint last month where I gave a reading and hosted a panel on the paranormal. That garnered some decent sales. I also finally networked with all of the veteran writers that I'd known for fifteen years(all of whom were given free copies of Prisoner last year as a thank you for inspiring me). This time, I politely asked each author if I could interview them for my blog and every one of them gave me their email address. So far this year, I've interviewed two of them, Howard Weinstein and Bob Greenberger. Aaron Rosenberg's interview will be posted next week with Steven H. Wilson, Jeffrey Allen, Michael Jan Friedman, Keith RA DiCandido, Kelly Meding, and Peter David coming soon.
And of course, the more you blog and respond on other author's blogs, the more you get your name out there. In fact, because of that, I also interviewed writer Alyce Wilson and met Jon Gibbs, an Englishman in New Jersey.
This year, although I will miss Shore Leave, I will be attending my first BaltiCon as a participant along with Steve Wilson and later in the year, the Collingswood Book Festival in New Jersey.
In summary, promote and create your platform early. Learn from my mistakes. I know I did---and I'm confident that my second novel will benefit from that education.
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