The 500 Plan: There may be something in it for you.

Numbers are meaningful. I used numbers in my writing; be it the number of syllables in a line of poetry or the repetition of a number that is pertinent to the plot in fiction.

Sadly, numbers are meaningful to the success of a book as well, so that is what this is.

I self-published some work last year. Since then, my bibliography of publications that made it past editors is growing. To be honest, I think this lends a little bit of credibility to my work. Editors are the gatekeepers in the literary world. They decide who gets read – right or wrong – and I’ve been managing to get past them.

I would like to use that to my advantage, and I would like to use this Goodreads account to do so as well.

I plan on doing that with numbers. Right now, I am just calling that the 500 Plan. I am calling it that, because every stupid thing needs a name. Right?

Right now, I have only twenty-two followers. The first prong of the 500 Plan would be to get that number of followers up to 500. It would be great if some of those followers could spill over onto my Facebook and Twitter Accounts.

Here’s that:

1) Facebook: www.facebook.com/ernestgordontaulbee

2) Twitter: @gordtaul

At the moment, Facebook is just mainly people I know: friends, relatives, and people I grew up with. There is nothing wrong with that. Twitter is a brackish montage of strangers, most of whom seem to want the same thing I want: self-promotion. Again: nothing wrong with that, but a bunch of people self-promoting themselves to other people who are self-promoting doesn’t seem like a very worthwhile endeavor. I would like it if both the Facebook and Twitter would be people I could actually share my work with and have some level of meaningful discourse.

Once more, the goal is to get the number of Goodreads followers to 500, but that is only one prong of the plan. The other is to actually get my work read. The two works I am most interested in having people read are my novella _Until Hell Wouldn’t Have You_ and my novel _A Sibling in Always_.

If you want to try before you buy, sample downloads are available on my profile here on Goodreads. You can also find my work in journals like Sediments Literary-Arts Journal, Nixes Mate Review, Fried Chicken and Coffee, and Live Nude Poems. There are a few on the way, and one or two I may have missed.

I realize buy books costs money and takes time, but you wouldn’t be on Goodreads if you didn’t love reading and didn’t love finding new books.

Here is the plan in full with the first point repeated for a third time, just to sum up.

1) Reach 500 followers on Goodreads.

2) Have as many of those followers read and review my books. The goal would be to reach 25 to 50 reviews on Amazon and Goodreads each for both books.

That’s right. Two points. That’s all.

How can you help, you ask?

1) Follow me on Goodreads.

2) Encourage your friends and followers on Goodreads to follow me as well.

3) Follow me on Facebook and Twitter. Encourage your friends to do so as well.

4) Buy my books and review them on Goodreads and Twitter. If you are reviewing a Kindle copy, the review will probably go onto both automatically. The star ratings are great, but the text reviews are much, much better.

a) They can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B01GGRCKJO.
b) If you would prefer the print versions, I have the priced as low as I can in the Create Space store. Here: https://www.createspace.com/pub/simpl....

5) Encourage others to purchase, read, and review my work.

6) Encourage others to read this blog entry. Yes, the one you are reading right now.

How can I help facilitate this:

1) Lower the price of my books. Right now, I don’t have the option to list for free on Amazon. I’m removing the books from Kindle Unlimited, so I cannot do free promotions. I’ll lower the price of _Until Wouldn’t Have You_ to $0.99 and the price of _A Sibling in Always_ will go to $2.99.

2) Incentive the thing. I am going to try this for a 90-day period. If I end up with forty or fifty followers and no reviews as a result. Well, hell, it was just some time spent typing this thing up will sitting at home on a sick day trying to get over strep throat and a raging ear infection. Nothing lost.

a) At the end of the 90-day period, if the 500 Plan is 50% successful (i.e., 250 followers and about a dozen text reviews of each book). I’ll send an autographed copy of _A Sibling in Always_ to five randomly selected followers. With their permission, I will list those winners in a blog post on here.

b) If, at the end of the 90-day period, the 500 Plan is 100% (i.e., 500 followers and at least 25 text reviews of each book), I will send ten random winners an autographed copy of _Until Hell Wouldn’t Have you_ to randomly selected followers. The five copies of ASIS per the paragraph above will also be sent.

Day One will be today, August 29th. Just to make the math easy, I’ll say the “90-day” period would end the weekend after Thanksgiving.

I’m not saying I’m anything, but if this successful – if nothing else – participants could say they were part of something if it does help me turn these books into a success. In truth, there is probably nothing in it for you, other than a chance to get a book in the mail and to maybe read a book you may enjoy. I guess I’ll see.

Unless I am breaking some Goodreads rules I don’t know about and a scathing email from a moderator is headed my way, let’s see how this goes. So, good luck with it, Ernest. Why thank you, Gordon.

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