First a reminder before I put the video up. LEGENDS OF WINDEMERE THUNDERCLAP CAMPAIGN ENDS ON OCTOBER 4TH! DON’T WAIT FOR THE LAST MINUTE!
CLICK HERE!
Got that? Good. Here’s my second choice of song because my first choice is being saved for next month. I stumbled onto this by accident and I liked it:
This has been a week. Finished editing Prodigy of Rainbow Tower and I’m still trying to start in on Allure of the Gypsies. It’ll go quicker even though it’s longer because it was in this book that I was warned about my repetition and sought to fix it. Mostly I’m hunting for dialogue tags that aren’t needed, which is dangerous. I found that I might know who is talking, but damned if I’m sure a reader would. Guess I’m still learning. Having a chunk of the series ending fall into limbo isn’t helping me, but that’s a story for 2017 due to spoilers.
Quick question: What do people think of me pricing Book 1 at 99 cents, Books 2-6 at $2.99, Books 3-11 at $3.99, and Books 12-15 at $4.99? Just toying with the grand plan here.
I was delayed in starting the next project because my son was home sick on Friday. One of those precautionary deals because he had a cold and it might have set off his first asthma episode, which was just a wheeze to me. Either way, he’s on a nebulizer, which he loves because the mouthpiece makes his words impossible to understand. Yet I still manage to get it right for some reason when I guess. He’ll be back to school on Monday, but he has Thursday and Friday off. Wife will be working and parents will be away, which means it’s just me and him. I’ll also have to cook dinners, but that’s practice for the 3 weeks of me in charge that comes later in the year. I REALLY want to get the editing done by then, but if it doesn’t happen then it doesn’t happen.
In regards to the THUNDERCLAP campaign, I think I’m using it for an experiment beyond marketing. Just how useful is social media to me? Do many of my Facebook friends even care? Well, the answer so far is no. I’ve had very few reactions on Facebook and only one of those was from someone that I didn’t expect. That isn’t an insult, but I know who has my back in the writing. I got no reactions from others and that has gone for my non-author posts too. I think all my time promoting other authors since I had nothing worthwhile to say on Facebook has killed me there. Even the video of my son went relatively unnoticed beyond the usual crew. Guess I need to post about politics, religion/atheism, war, violence, sex, being vegan (I’m not), or something that will get people upset. Seriously, that’s all I see on there and people wonder why I don’t comment. If I want that crap, I’ll watch the news and cry. Yeah. This is a long rant that’s been in my head for years.
Oh! I did finish all of the posts for October except for Halloween Week. I plan on making a request for another MONSTER MAKER FUN event. This means I’ll be requesting nonsense words to transform into creatures. If this falls through then I’ll just be doing a week of music videos and mope in the corner . . . with a bag of Snickers.
Here’s the tentative goals:
- Start editing Allure of the Gypsies.
- Help son on homework.
- Cook Meatball Grinders one night and Savory Lemon Chicken the other while wrangling the child.
- Get back to biking because little guy being home derailed that for a day.
- Watch Captain America: Winter Solider. I own it and I watched it twice in theaters.
- Think more about Child of the Hunt and other W.I.P.
- Figure out what adventure to go on with the child. Sadly, he needs to take his medicine every 4 hours until Thursday and Friday is going to be the follow up appointment. Might just be a trip to the playground or the mall depending on the weather.
Legends of Windemere 
I am totally with you on facebook rant. If there is anything more I can do for your campaign,please let me know.
And those cooking plans sound delicious! I have to wrangle Seth all the time, so I decided to just not. Now i pretend that me giving him a lemon is a serious task and he participates and its much more easier. He just gets bored of helping me really fast, and just brings a few toys to the kitchen and is relativly good while the cooking goes on.
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Thanks. I’m not sure what else can be done. I promote it on Twitter and Facebook, but I’m only at 43. It’s inching along and has 13 days left. Hate to say it, but I’m already having doubts about this. I’m trying to look on the bright-ish side. I’m kind of seeing where I stand with people and how much support I really have. Might sound pessimistic, but I’ve been wondering for a while how many people I knew actually cared about my success.
I’m hoping I can simply plop my son on the opposite counter and let him play supervisor. I did a little cooking on Friday with him around, but he kept trying to call for me to help with something. Toys in the kitchen is a good idea. I’ll have to try that.
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Facebook is not really the best place for it. I think you would have much more luck and genuine support if you tried your chance with a few writer forums, but then again, even there there is a culture of “like for like” and automated responses. This is why I dont even try to ask the question you did, because I am afraid I already know the answer, and well, it angers me and turns me into a sad person that feels like she should be rewarded or that somebody owes me something in return for something I did and I know the world doesnt work that way and, much like you, helping others gives me a satisfaction and makes me feel good, and I dont really want something in return for it, it’s not why I did it in the first place.
Toys in the kitchen really saved me, but its the engagement thats actualy the trick. If I just put his toys there, yeah, he is gonna play, for like 3 minutes then he will be off doing the unimaginable (like, turning on the washing machine by himself, after putting what he thinks needs washing inside). So for example, he has a set of cards he plays with lately, they have drawings of animals on it. While im there peeling and stuff, I cant really dive in and touch the cards and play with him, so I engage with him by telling him to find my favourite card from the pile and show it to me, then find his, then make a combo of this or that. This way, he feels like I am not cooking, we are just playing in the kitchen.
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I used other social media sites, but it just isn’t happening. I woke up to several people retweeting my call for support on Twitter. I figured some of them had to have joined up or netted a few people. I got nothing. 44 out of 100 like it was yesterday. 12 days left and I’m out of ideas. We live in the age of ‘like’ and that’s rather disappointing. At least I didn’t lose money on this thing.
I talk to my son while I’m cooking and sometimes have him hand me stuff. Things get a little tough when he’s on a computer in another room. Youtube doesn’t always work the way he wants it to. It was easier when I could just plop him into a high chair and that was good enough for him.
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Yeah, Youtube tends to be a partypooper for real
Regarding the social media stuff, every outlet is different. To me, twitter is entirely different than facebook. For example, on it, I would do daily quotes of characters and scenery and stuff like that. On Facebook I would not, I would center more on the graphics and visual effect of my book and represent it more in that way.
I think a part of your problem lies in the fact that you are mostly “preaching”, so to say, to mostly other writers. I think you need to reach out to some pure readers, hence why I suggest forums for example. Most fantasy lovers I know would highly appriciate it as an author, you are like a dream come true for them. You engage, you give them extra stuff like your character posts etc. but these kind of people (the ones I know at least) do not venture into blogs, or search for new reading material on facebook or twitter.. If they google your book names and just find your book on your blog, they will be less inclined to check it out. On the other hand, other people who are also authors use WordPress as a marketing/chilling/making stuff/socialising platform in connection with their books and the stories their books tell and it is about how much you are kind to them so they participate in your efforts.
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I have tried to post or do stuff on reader-centered forums, but that gets tricky. Many of them state that they are open for promotion, but the actual members get angry when you do it. I think too many authors have abused these sites, so I’ve been driven off a few of them. That’s why I spend more time on the blog. As for Twitter, I keep having issues with the 140 character limit. Not many quotes stem from my books at such a short length. Not without context issues.
With my blog, I do try to do a lot of stuff here. It’s just that I don’t seem to get anywhere. I pose questions for readers and writers, which seem to be ignored. That’s rather disappointing and it’s caused me to scrap doing such things. I guess what I’m saying is that there’s no way for me to post what people want to see if nobody gives me feedback.
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I understand the issue with the forums. As a reader and frequent poster on some of them, I do not like to see a crude promotion either. What I mean to say is that I think you would have more fruits of labor if you engaged more with pure readers, oposed to just writers.
I understand the character limit issues with Twitter, too, and the context problems it stems. but this is Twitter we are talking about,if you ask me it is the dumbest thing ever. but we are talking bussiness, you want to sell books, so you ahve to be sleezy, which is something I know you dont like. I meant cheesy quotes. The trendy shit. The “Beautiful forest leaves of Autumn were swirling around her ebony hair” kind of quotes. I really cant imagine any hardcore twitter user even caring about any deeper and more intelligent stuff. This is why all of the marketing shit is simply that, shit
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Engaging on a forum is a good idea, but there is that one roadblock. It’s the reason I keep trying to use my blog for interactions. There are only so many hours in the day and I’m at a point where I can’t put a lot of them to writing/editing. At this rate, I’ll be lucky to get one chapter section written a day when I get back into the books and I was averaging 2-3 over the summer. Adding forums into it, which require repeated checks, would be a problem because that’s a repeated interruption. I think this is what causes a lot of faltering because of the ease that you can unbalance yourself. Too much forum and your writing falls behind to the screams of people wanting the next book. Too much writing and the forum stops talking about you.
I do catchy promos all the time for my books. Last one was ‘Size isn’t everything when it comes to dragons. Fizzle returns in THE COMPASS KEY!’ Taking stuff from the actual book is tougher. As you’ve seen here, I’m rather wordy. So I can’t even get a full descriptive sentence at times. The only one from the new book I could get to work was ‘You’re not in control here’ or something like that.
This is probably why they say the best marketing you can do for your book is write another one.
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As far as the Facebook item. I am in the dark as well. I also have the doubts you have on support. I have people who I have bought, reviewed and plugged their books and they can’t even bother to re-blog a review or even just say they would like to read on Goodreads. (let alone buy and review the book).
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I keep forgetting Goodreads. Even if they can’t find time to read the book, supporting various promo ventures isn’t hard.
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I saw mention of your Thunderclap campaign, but I’m still not quite sure what it is… (Didn’t look closely enough when it came up.)
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It’s basically a site where you start a campaign and gather supporters. Think of it like Kickstarter only with social media volunteers instead of money. You choose how many supporters you want to get by a certain time. I have 100 by October 4th (only at 44 now). If you meet the deadline then all of the volunteers will automatically have a promo post go to their offered platform, which is a combo of Twitter, Facebook, and/or Tumblr. If you don’t meet the deadline then the campaign failed and nothing happens like how you’re not charged for a failed Kickstarter.
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What exactly do the volunteers have to do?
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Just sign up with their chosen social media. The post was pre-written by the campaign maker, so you don’t have to do anything after you give your support.
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I made myself a note to look into this. It’s on top of all my other notes, so hopefully… 🙂
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Thanks. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it succeeds, but I’ve run out of promotional avenues. Strange that I have to promote a promotion to get that promotion to succeed and earn more promotions.
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And that’s what it takes to be an author! 🙂
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Okay, I looked at Thunderclap. Everything looked great, but Twitter gave me a warning about the app:
Read Tweets from your timeline.
See who you follow, and follow new people.
Update your profile.
Post Tweets for you.
Follow new people, update my profile, and post tweets for me. I expect it to post the one tweet that I authorize, but don’t expect it to add new followers or update my profile. I guess I’ve read too many novels that I first think of what’s the worst that can happen. 🙂
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Odd. I never saw that warning when I did it for someone else. It’s only supposed to do the one tweet and that’s it.
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