Dale’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2017)

Dale’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

I've had very few pieces published on Medium in The Writing Cooperative for over half a year now. Partly that's because I haven't had too many ideas for stories for them, but partly it's because they've changed their guidelines and are being a lot pickier now.

Some of the changes deal with formatting requirements, and if you don't get it exactly right, they reject automatically reject your story. They don't ask you to fix an otherwise good story's one formatting flaw; they just reject it, and then you can't resubmit.

Some of them deal with content and seem pretty straightforward, but yesterday I had a story rejected because it was considered a "blog-style" post. I didn't understand what they meant, so I sent in a request for clarification. The response was from someone who hadn't read the story, but they said, "We do not prefer blog style posts, where the author is only taking about their experience and not in some way providing advise to others."

Problem is, that's not what I sent them. I crafted a piece about a specific writing problem, gave clear advice on how to resolve it, and illustrated it with some of my own work. I think the latter point was what turned off the editor. It was written from the perspective of a problem I had and how I resolved it. But it clearly was "providing advice to others."

Beyond that, I've found recent stories on WC where the author did exactly the same thing, and that was apparently okay.

I find this pretty frustrating. Yeah, they're allowed to pick whichever stories they want, but inconsistency drives me up the wall, and I'm left with the feeling that they're using the rules to justify a rejection when an editor just didn't like it as much as another. Fine, reject my story if you don't like it, but don't point to some inapplicable rule as the reason.

Grrrr . . .

Simi wrote: "On the subject of books, I finally had the nerve to publish my book, The Weight of Our Souls, in print. I was nervous of doing it, but I did it. It's all thanks to Alex and my famil..."

Congratulations!

My latest from Publishous: No Dumping. It's about hauling away information dumps.

Stephanie and Alex,

You're both very welcome, and thank you Alex for the user agent switcher tip. I'll have to look into that. Right now, I use Buffer Publish (https://buffer.com/) to set up posts when I have photos on my PC that I want to use. Buffer transfers photos and text to Instagram and alerts you through a mobile app, which you can use to edit and complete posts. It's not a perfect system, but it works reasonably well so long as you have access to a mobile device.

Alexis wrote: "Today I asked and received permission from my linemanager + employer to publish my books! Had a pesky clause about "ancillary activities" included in my employment agreement.

But YES, we're good t..."

Congratulations!

Since my last post, I've been working on building up my Instagram profile. August suggests using Instagram to promote fiction and Medium to promote nonfiction. (Although both are published on Medium, it does seem that nonfiction does better there.)

There are three key parts to using Instagram: your profile, your tags, and what you actually post.

Profile: Instagram doesn't allow links in posts or comments, but they give you one link in your profile. August recommends using this to link to your free offer signup (which is of course your newsletter signup, too). Put information about what you like to read and write in your profile. Keep it simple and direct, and avoid being pushy. Only the link actually "sells" anything, and that's a freebie.

Tags: As with other social media, tags can be used to make posts searchable. Instagram helps by giving you suggestions when you type #. One particular tag is very important: #bookstagram. Bookstagram is a subset of Instagram comprised of tens of thousands of readers, many of them voracious readers who not only love to read but treat print books as works of art. They arrange them artfully on shelves, use them in decorating, and take pictures of them to post on Instagram. They are also a very friendly bunch of people. You want to join them, be part of their world, follow them, like and comment on their posts, share with them your love of reading and books, and occasionally talk about your own writing. But you don't want to be pushy. Treat bookstagrammers right, and they'll treat you right. Give them a hard sell, and they'll probably unfollow you in droves. Use the #bookstagram and #bookstagrammer tags often. Also use #writersofinstagram and tags related to your genres or whatever else you're posting about. (I've used #astronomy and #chess, for example, when appropriate.)

Posts: If you're new to Instagram, you'll first want to build up your profile with 15 - 20 posts that do not try to sell anything. Instagram is all about pictures. Text is referred to as "captions," although they are often not merely captions but posts designed to share information or start conversations. On your profile, you'll see all of the pictures from your posts, neatly arranged with the newest at the top. Bookstagrammers often set up and process photos according to a theme: color schemes, types of backgrounds, etc. Their profiles are stunningly beautiful works of art! August recommends trying to create such a theme for yourself, although he never did. He experiments a lot and says not to use his profile as an example.

Once you've build up a body of posts, then he recommends posting four times per day: three posts of general interest to bookstagrammers, and one inviting people to click the profile link for the free offer. He leaves that post up for 24 hours, then deletes it, so that people scrolling through his profile won't see him asking for clicks over and over again.

My experience over the past week is: this is a hard schedule to maintain. August says spend a day or two building up the initial set of posts, then start in on the four times per day routine. It took me most of a week to build up the initial posts, and so far I've only snuck in one free offer invitation. Yesterday, I didn't get any posts up at all. This is partly due to my work schedule. Instagram is designed for mobile use. You can access it via a browser on a PC and can enter comments, but you can't create new posts except in the mobile app. For me, this means all my posting must be done either mornings before leaving for work or evenings after returning home, and I have a lot of other things going on then, too.

The volume matters partly for consistency, partly for the rate at which you build up your email list. If people see your free offer regularly, they are more likely to click on it at some point. And the more often they see it, the sooner they are likely to click on it (within reason). August's idea is that one invite a day will build up a good-sized email list in the course of a year. And since that invite should be the minority of your posts, the four-a-day schedule is needed. Fewer posts mean a slower build-up, and inconsistent posts could be the death-knell for your efforts.

At this point (after about a week of Instagramming) I have gained over 30 followers, a few of whom regularly like my posts. Nobody has yet signed up for my newsletter, but I've only managed a single invite post, so that's not surprising. I also have not entirely figured out a theme yet, although I'm kind of leaning towards blues and greens/growing things/nature/etc. For now, I'm just trying to keep posting, in spite of utterly failing yesterday. I do swipe through other people's posts and like/comment as often as I can.

I also have followed everyone who liked/comment on/followed me. Well, with a couple of exceptions. I tend to look at profiles before I follow. Whenever I see a photo of a beautiful young woman who follows hundreds of people, is followed by only a handful, and has never posted a single post . . . nope. Those accounts are fake.

Alex wrote: "I like that, Dale. I'm curious about the pine marten, so interested in the story because of it.

I was thinking of trying to create a story that is sort of Harry Potter except that Harry has no ma..."

Thank you! And yes, that could be interesting . . .

I'll skip the technical details of setting up an email list and website for now. (I can address that later if anyone needs help.) For now, I'll explain August's method for using free offers and newsletters to get and engage subscribers. If you want to follow along, you can view my signup form (and use it to subscribe to my newsletter) here on my author website.

In order to start list-building, August's method requires a free offer for subscribers. The idea is simple. Most people won't give you their email address for nothing. They're far more likely to give it to you in exchange for something of value to them. So you need to extend an offer that has value.

August gives away a short story collection that's tied to his novels, plus a set of four downloadable bookmarks, plus a subscription to his newsletter. He calls this a "reader bundle." (The subscription is something people would get anyway, but he points out in the bundle blurb what you get when you receive his newsletter: free short stories, info on his writing career, updates on forthcoming books, discounts on books, etc.)

I'm starting more simply: Since I only have three books out at the moment, all part of a series, I'm giving away The Fibonacci Murders plus free access to my (so far) only Howard County Mystery short story on Medium (via friend link), plus the newsletter subscription.

These freebies are delivered via links in an email sent automatically when a new subscriber signs up. The subscription form is all about giving away the freebies. As I mentioned above, mine is on my author website. I also have it on my author page at Facebook. A smaller version of it is on my website in the right margin on every page. I'm going to redesign the website soon (I hope!), so that might change; I might use a banner at the top of each page to promote it instead.

Email providers allow you to set up an "introduction" sequence of emails. August sends a series of four (I think) to new subscribers to introduce himself and his writing. Then they get weekly newsletters. MailChimp has this, but it's a paid feature, so I'm not using it right now.

Instead, I sent a newsletter this morning talking about my plans for the coming year and asking existing subscribers to update their reading preferences, which is a new feature I added to my signup form. This is my own "innovation" and not part of August's method. His fiction is exclusively thrillers, but my fiction crosses several genres. I want to be able to capture info about subscriber interests to customize newsletters for them.

If you're not a subscriber to my list right now, you can view my current newsletter here. You can always sign up, too, and get your free ebook, but I'm not sure you'll receive this email since it's already been sent.

I've redesigned my newsletter to incorporate features August recommends. One is a conversational style. Another is limiting it to one action you want readers to take. (One purchase, one profile update, one survey.) Giving too many options can leave readers overwhelmed, and then they might do nothing. Finally, when you want them to click a link, include it three times, once near the top, once in the middle, and once at the end, in case they scroll all the way down without reading carefully.

The point in all this is to build not just a list of subscribers but a list of engaged subscribers, those who get your free materials and connect with you as a writer, who take the actions you ask them to take, and who provide feedback. Engaged readers will spend money on your offerings (books, courses, bling, whatever), and that enables you to build meaningful income from writing.

Again, you can visit my signup form if you want to follow along more closely as I work with this new process. [Did you notice? That's three links to it. ;-)]

Alex wrote: "We all need Time-Turners from Harry Potter.

Or just Harry himself. Funny you should mention that. Here's a snippet from Weasel Words, which I hope to release later this year:

"Bernard ... sauntered across the room, pretending to admire the portraits on the walls and the chandeliers on the ceiling and the ornate walnut crown molding at the junction of the two. Cameras looked down upon the pine marten from everywhere, their lines of sight converging from a dozen different angles, leaving no way to block the adorable monstrosity from their view short of using an invisibility cloak like the one that English wizard kid owned. Bernard briefly considered how useful it would be to own an invisibility cloak. Or better still, to own an English wizard kid. Imagine the conversation at Fitzroy Fortresses as its experts looped recordings of a chunk of sterling silver levitating out the door."

Great minds, and all that. ;-)

Yeah, been thinking I need to do that, but I have no free time . . .

My latest from Publishous: Marshaling the Critics

Carole wrote: "I just got this email from her and it's timely for what we've been talking about. I'm not pushing- just sharing info."

Thanks again, Carole. I'll definitely have to look into this.

Thanks, Carole, for the additional advice. I'll see how I can incorporate it.

Theodore wrote: "Booyah! Good luck, Dale!"

That was Alexis. I was just congratulating her. ;-)

I'm terrible at marketing, so I'm going to make an effort in 2020 to become less terrible at it. Those of you on Medium may have run across a writer named August Birch who both writes fiction and talks a lot about email marketing. He has a free course on the subject, which I decided to take, since it's free.

If you want, I'll point you to it, but I thought I'd use this thread to report from time to time on my efforts at applying what I've learned from him. Maybe my experiences will help someone else . . . or keep them from wasting their time. We'll see.

The first steps August recommends are getting an email service (which some of us already have) and a website (likewise). Then he tells you to create a freebie package that you offer in exchange for email signups. In my case, I'm bundling an ebook copy of "The Fibonacci Murders" with a Howard County Mystery short story I wrote for Medium. (I make the story available to subscribers via a "friend" link.) The next step is to set up a welcome email that is sent whenever someone subscribes, so they get the links to download the freebies.

I've done all that. You can see my signup form on my author website or at the MailChimp page.

The next step is the really hard part: building up an Instagram presence and connecting with readers through the #bookstagram hashtag. Before you can make any offers, you have to become a known quantity, a part of the community, playing nice with everyone by both sharing and reading/responding to posts.

-There are a number of subtleties in all this and a lot of work, so I don't recommend taking the above and trying to run with it. But I'll be happy to talk about it and answer questions to the best of my ability. Once I have a sense for how well this system works, I'll be more willing to suggest people actually take August's course. But let's see what happens first . . .

Magnus wrote: "Welcome to instagram, Dale. You've got a new follower, btw - yours truly (https://www.instagram.com/magnusstanke/). And yes, I'll follow instagram authors back, too. Have a swell weekend "

Thank you! I've followed you back.

Alexis wrote: "I finished the first draft of my first YA!!
I finished the first draft!!
I actually FINISHED IT!

Congratulations!

Writing Cooperative just published my reading suggestions for 2020: Twelve for 2020. This is part of a tagged collection they're doing called Seeing 2020, which is designed to help writers advance their skills and careers in the coming year.

Hi everyone,

I now have an Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/dale.e.lehm.... I've followed all the IG accounts I've found here (only 7, if I counted correctly). I'm still getting things set up, but if you want you can follow me back. Thanks!

I hope this does me more good than harm: Life Inside the Oort Cloud. A lot of fascinating sciencey stuff related to my forthcoming novel, Space Operatic.