What Have I Been Up to This Week? Editing – Facebook Marketing – Article Writing – Oh, and a Yoga Video!
What have I been up to this week?
It’s been a dramatic week for me personally, but aside from the things going on in my personal life, I have managed to get a lot of work done on many side-projects and fun things.
The first thing you’re probably all wondering about is the status of Return to Red One, the upcoming final part of the Pirates of Vexa Prime trilogy.
Beta-copies came in on Saturday and I have been busily editing away! I noticed right away that the book arrived too large – I mean that literally. The dimensions were way off. That is one of the best examples I can give as to why it is important to proof these physical copies of the books rather than doing it all digitally. It’s the little things like sizing and spacing that you may not otherwise catch.
Right now my goal is to edit through at least 100 pages per day. So far I am easily on track for that. In order to get the book out by its April 22nd release date, I’ll need to submit everything in finished condition by April 18th at the latest.
Given my current rate of editing, that should be easily doable.
In the meantime, I am trying out a fun promotion idea to increase brand engagement. I put out a post on Facebook for people to share in an attempt to spread my name to the world. From now until April 22nd, people will share the post in order to be entered to win the prize of a free set of books. Here are the details I wrote in the post:
Avast ye’ hearties! This be yer’ chance to win some bootie! You can win THREE FREE paperback books: Seas of the Red Star, The Daltus Conspiracy, and Return to Red One. Own the entire Pirates of Vexa Prime trilogy by winning this here grand sweepstakes – it be better than walkin’ the plank!
All ye’ need to enter be these simple steps:
1) Share this here post with all ye’ mates by clickin’ “Share”
2) Like The Color of Water and Sky page by clickin’ “Like”
It be that easy! Contest begins now and ends April 22nd.
Good luck to the lot of ya’!
The goal is, obviously, to get people to share this message across Facebook and therefore to increase my brand visibility. It’s advertising, in a sense, with people being the advertisers and my budget being books. I’ve seen this as a common tactic among authors, so I know this is something other people do. We’ll see how it pans out.
In addition to doing work on Return to Red One, I’ve been busy in other ways as well. I had a lot of articles published in Run Washington over the past few days, which you can view here:
April 6th – After Several False Starts, Running Sticks for Ken Quency
April 2nd – Marathon Day Stayed on the Calendar for Some Local Runners
March 30th – High School Coaches Tackle and Unexpected Offseason
Additionally, I have two more articles that I submitted to the editor. One for Run Washington, the other for a different publication, VIP Alexandria Magazine. Hopefully those other two articles will be up soon, though I have no control over the date of their release.
Typically I usually average about one story a month for Run Washington, but with so much free time after being furloughed from my day-job, my output has increased tremendously.
Lastly, I had some fun on Friday co-hosting a live yoga event on Facebook as part of VIP TV. I was basically acting from home as an “anchor” and cutting away to a yoga instructor as she offered a class. It was very fun!
Click HERE to see the video and click to the 38-minute mark to see the portion where I come in. Yes, I realize after the fact that my hair did not look good, but hindsight is 20/20.
If you are interested, I am scheduled to be co-hosting another episode of VIP TV tomorrow. You can tune in to see tomorrow’s episode live!
