New Marketing and Old Media I

Well, I've obviously not been around here much lately, and I doubt I will be in the future. I must not be doing this tagging thing right, because this blog does not come up very high on searches that I need it to. "Christian humor" may just be too ubiquitous on the web. Anyway, here's another review, someone who obviously didn't get it. Why do these reviews always end up on Amazon, but the insightful ones don't? One of the big hurdles I've encountered is that online reviewers say they're prepared for Christian fiction, but then don't read with that in mind. There's a real possibility that they can only handle the most obvious of Christian content. Just waiting for that next "Left Behind" story.

So, anyway, it's on to phase two. I determined long ago that blog reviewers have no influence at all, and that to get exposure to a large audience, the traditional media is still necessary. But my strategy was to collect enough minor reviews to throw myself to the traditional media wolves again, and so I have. At the beginning of this gambit, which started last Labor Day, I sent copies cold to a number of magazines and other outlets, and mostly got zero response. Today I sent out a dozen emails to some of these - Christianity Today, CCM Magazine, &c. - with links to the better online reviews. My hope is they'll do a little research and decide I'm legit. If I get anything to show from this, I'll let you know.

New Media and New Marketing XX

Well, I've not been around here for awhile, and I've got to mention that I'm about to give up. I continue to get good reviews for "The Job," for instance this new one at Simul Iustus et Peccator, but these things don't seem to ever show up on Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, Smashwords, &c. &c. where they could actually do some good. As well, a quick googling of some of my key words to this blog shows that it's not showing up even on the first 10 search pages. So what's the point? (or "pint," as I nearly typed). This blog has three followers, and I'm one of them.

On top of that, I was shut out of the Independent Publisher Awards, the only contest I had a chance to be recognized in. I'd entered in the humor and religious fiction categories, and came away with nothing. Not really surprising, but the winner of silver in religious fiction was "The Sherlock Holmes Church Mysteries." This was an author who stole an iconic secular literary character, long after its creator was dead, and adapted it to her agenda. And she gets an award for it. So I'm pretty close to giving up any kind of marketing. It's not what I should be about, anyway. Success in the marketplace is not the raison d'etre of art and literature, and certainly not of the Church.

New Media and New Marketing XVII

Hey, I thought of something. I've finally figured out what to do with a meaningless review. 

A new review came in the other day, which I'm not going to link to for reasons that will become apparent. First, I have to say that any review is a good review, because it gets "The Job" in front of eyes that might not see the title otherwise. Also, I've never gotten a bad review, even when the reviewer obviously didn't get it. But insightful commentary on the book seldom comes through, which has left me wondering how to use these things pro-actively.

This is how. The review that I speak of reads like this, in toto: "This book is humorous and short by Craig Davis . I couldn't put this one down. This one I highly recommend  this book but a easy short read." Extra spaces and jumbled line spacing is sic, and I don't mean that in a hip way; I don't know what that last sentence is supposed to say. This girl is clearly not a writer, and I think she's not really a reader either. She gave "The Job" four stars, which is fine, except that a review of her blog reveals that she gives any brainless romance five stars. I think "The Job" is blown off to some extent because it is humor and short, and many times it's read superficially, and I think reviewers who read any book only at that level, or want only books that can be read that way, should be discounted.


So what about me? What can I do with this? Here's what: Copy and paste "I couldn't put this one down. This one I highly recommend" and add an ellipsis. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, because it's standard practice in any kind of testimonial, but at least I've got it now. So be prepared for lots of ellipses in future posts.

New Media and New Marketing XV

Time for a new post even though I've got nothing to say. I will mention my new author page at Family Fiction, an online Christian magazine that focuses on fiction, oddly enough. It's worth a mention because I broke in there through my weasely social networking.

Family Fiction is one of the groups I joined on Facebook, and then I added links to a couple of comments they posted, knowing it would show up on the news feeds of their followers. It also caught their attention too, which I hadn't counted on. Judging from their website they seem to focus on traditional publishers, and there's no way I could find to contact them directly, so this is a major breakthrough for me, at least as a moral victory. So be sure to go there lots and generate a lot of traffic.

Gearing up for Sample Sunday #3!

New Media and New Marketing XIV

Well, SampleSunday passed, and I finally learned how to see retweets, and my tweets for Feallengod were retweeted exactly once, and that by a friend I had to pay a lot of money to. JK. But only the last part. So it remains true that social networks are really useless unless your network is really behind you. That seems to be the nut remaining to crack. But I'm going to stick with it for awhile; next weekend, Wars of the Aoten.

But, in other news, I did learn how to track retweets, which proved to be quite easy. For some reason I couldn't find any instructions on how to do it on the World Wide Web. Another thing I've been struggling with is Amazon's best-seller lists based on genre. I think I've finally figured that out as well, and The Job is #68 in the Christian humor fiction category. And this after a brutal March. So tell your friends.

The final comment I'd make today is that Twitter followers are really fickle. Although I'm up by about 30% again after this weekend, that includes a number of drop-outs. I think a lot of people are just trying to set records with followers, and if they pick you up and you don't reciprocate, then you're done. But if someone has several thousand followers, they're never going to see your tweets anyway, so what's the point? So I'm happy with the handful I've got. Especially if they retweet.

Sample Sunday

Here we go again. Sample Sunday is coming up again, surprisingly enough on Sunday, and I will be participating again with an excerpt from "Feallengod: The Conflict in the Heavenlies." I will be offering Chapter 8, which according to St. Celibart stats, is the most popular chapter outside of the penultimate, which is the coup de gras, and I'm not going to offer it to anyone who can't find St. Celibart. So there.

So here's the deal: Independent authors band together on Sample Sunday to Tweet using the hashtag #samplesunday. Each tweet includes a link that leads to an excerpt from one of the author's books. Twitterers who are involved follow the links, and if they like the excerpt, they retweet the original tweet. That way the author's work gets exposure to each re-twitterer's network of followers. I'm also using the hashtags #spiritual and #literaryfiction, so you can search with those to find me if you want. It seems like an effective way to use Twitter.

Speaking of which, I've figured out a couple of the chintzy ways of manipulating social media. First a disclaimer -- there's nothing new here. First, on Twitter I'll often use one of the top hashtags, so hip people will be forced to see my tweets. Of course, the activity around these hashtags is fast and furious, otherwise they wouldn't be at the top, so I'm probably just getting lost in the fray. And then there's Facebook, where I join appropriate groups and wait for them to post something. Then I'll comment and leave a link, which will show up on the news feed of everyone in that group. So I have to say I've got it all figured out.

BTW, I've sold one copy of "The Job" this month.

New Media and New Marketing XIII

I had an interesting weekend. Did you? Spring is now upon us in all its glory, so I decided to spend a couple days inside staring at the Internet.

First, I found a few Facebook pages that seem useful: Writing Kindle Books, a closed group for, believe it or not, those who write books for Kindle. Another is called Book Worms, which is mostly for readers but has an area for authors to mention their books, and yet another is Christian Books, which apparently just helps people know what's out there. So I'm all over that. I also discovered Pixel of Ink, which highlights e-books that cost less than $1, so I'll probably be using them eventually.

The other notable event of the weekend was my first Sample Sunday, which I think may also have been the first ever. Sample Sunday is a Twitter event in which authors tweet about their book(s) and include the hashtag #samplesunday. Then followers are asked to retweet, and on and on, to gain exposure for the books. I joined in, and even though there's no way to tell if it meant anything, I'll continue on the next several Sundays. I can say that my Twitter followers grew by 50%. I'm just now figuring out Twitter, and I'll probably offer some thoughts about it later. In related news, the viewership of my video on YouTube is still going strong. But sales remain elusive.

I've got another marketing ploy up my sleeve, but I can't say anything about it now. If it develops, I'll certainly let you know.

Book giveaway

And the winner is -- nobody! Because nobody entered. Which told me what I wanted to know.

Promotion through the Internet is like chasing the wind.

Posting the giveaway here, and on Kindle boards, and Barnes and Nobles' discussion boards, was viewed a number of times but raised no interest. So it remains a mystery how to engage the imagination of the market.

New Media and New Marketing XII

Well, the big experiment is over, and it's report card time. All my books were 1/2 off at Smashwords for "Read an E-book Week." The week started out with a sudden sale of both "Feallengod" and "Wars of the Aoten," neither of which I'm promoting at all, and after that -- nothing. Not a peep. So, I conclude that my sales are not being affected by my prices being too high. And I don't think they're being affected by my attempts at promotion, either. Inexplicably, the day after the sale, somebody downloaded a sample of "The Job"; that guy's timing is off.

This past week I've joined Kindle Forum, which appears to be a small attempt at a social network for everything Kindle. I've also been active lately at Barnes and Noble's bulletin board. When you look up strategies for building an "author platform," as they call it, getting on bulletin boards is pushed as essential, but I have yet to draw much of a response to any of my threads. My posts do appear to get a number of views -- in a related matter, my YouTube video has increased its views by a third in the last three weeks, after being posted a couple of times on Kindle Boards -- but I can see no way they've inspired interest in the book itself.

So, that's a lot of complaining. Should I care about all this in the first place? More on that later.

Belief, books and baseball

My friend Tim Ellsworth's new book Pujols: More than the Game, written together with Scott Lamb, has been released by Thomas Nelson and landed in my hands. Thanks Tim. I read most of it in manuscript form, and I can assure baseball fans, in particular St. Louis Cardinal fans, they'll enjoy it. But the book goes well beyond Albert Pujols' baseball accomplishments, and dedicates at least half of its chapters to his life of faith and charitable works. The balance that Pujols' has found between almost unprecedented success in his sport and humility before Christ is good to see. As a Cubs fan, I have to mention that there is some fawning over Pujols, but the authors don't gloss over the controversy that has arisen around Pujols over the years, limited though it is.

So congratulations to Tim and Scott for finding an idea and seeing it through. Much of what is published for the Christian market are testimonies by the rich and famous, and while this book is not exactly that, maybe I'll comment more on that phenomenon later. Pujols: More than the Game has a built-in market, particularly in the mid-South, and a release date during spring training couldn't be better, so I'm sure it will sell well and lead to bigger and better things.

New Media and New Marketing XI

Not much to say today, but a reminder that this is Read an E-book Week. I don't know who came up with that brilliant idea, but Smashwords.com has taken it under wing, and they use it to promote themselves and their authors. All of my books are half-price this week, so check them out using this link. Good luck, 'cause as of this morning I think their server had been crashed.

Also, there's a new review, from Cynthia Hickey of Author's Choice Reviews. It's a rolling page and they update every day, so you'll have to scroll down some. This site rates books according to their "faith element" (The Job scored high), and I think is aimed at wholesalers -- bookstores or distributors who care about what message their books get across. Anyway, it's another link on the innernational inter webs.

New Media and New Marketing X

My animated video excerpt has broken through the 200-view level on YouTube. It's been up for almost six months, so that's not exactly viral. It's been seen in Slovakia and Vietnam, among other random world sites. I don't know how people can find it in those places, but so few see it in the English-speaking world. I did find a link to it at World News, a web page with an unique approach.

So the big news is the podcast version is now officially available and searchable at the iTunes store. The problem is, I don't know how to steer people toward it there, either. Am I whining now? What do you mean 'now'? Yeah, I'm whining, and I will until I figure this out.

Don't forget the giveaway!

New Media and New Marketing IX

I mentioned the KindleBoards here last week, but here's more detail about them. They seem like a great resource for people looking for independent authors for their Kindle, but it is a real mess there. I've been promoting "The Job" there for several months. But if you're looking for a particular kind of book, it's like being lost in a tangle of roots underwater.

I've tried to help myself (and others) in this regard by starting a couple of discussion threads, Writing for the Spirit and Kindle-ing the Flames of Wit. Their themes are, hopefully obviously, spiritual writing (avoiding the red flag word "Christian") and humor writing. My hope is that visitors who like these genres will find the threads and see books there that interest them. The advantage to authors of threads like these is collusion -- get all the authors in a genre to work together posting regularly, and the thread will stay near the top of the list where visitors to KindleBoards can easily see them. Every author who posts there gets exposure for his or her book without flat-out promotion. That hasn't been the case the "The Job"'s  thread, because nobody posts there but me, and I can do that only once a week.

So this is another angle on Internet marketing. If you are interested in either genre, I invite you to visit the threads and participate in the conversation.

New Media and New Marketing VIII

I'm all about marketing strategy right now, hence the existence of this blog, but so far I can't see how anybody breaks through to the public consciousness. One of the strategies that a number of "experts" suggest is getting on bulletin boards. So I joined the Christian boards that I could find, and I wanna tell you, they are dead as a doornail. Many won't allow links to be posted, many won't allow promotion of any kind. The ones that do, I have found, get no traffic anyway. Many seem to exist to minister to lonely or troubled people somewhere out there in the cyber world, as if that were really possible on the Internet.

One board I've found that does seem to have some muscle is KindleBoards, which I believe is Amazon-sponsored and seeks to serve Kindle users overall. This bulletin board gets a lot of traffic, and gives writers and readers with similar tastes an opportunity to interact.

Unfortunately, Christian writing is trod underfoot there. There are only about eight authors listed under the "religious" genre, out of who knows how many untold thousands of authors with e-books at the Kindle Store. The link for "The Job" has received a grand total of one comment in its four-month existence. Since the author of a thread can post and therefore bump the thread only once a week, this means that "The Job" thread spends most of its time buried in the listings where nobody can find it.

So I've conspired with some of the other writers of spiritual works there to maintain the thread Writing for the Spirit, dedicated to discussing Christian writing. As long as a few of us post once a day or so, the thread should stay near the top of the list and be seen by visitors to the bulletin board. We may even have an intelligent conversation. I started it up this weekend, and so far it's been pretty busy, but we'll see how dedicated the writers are there to keep in vital.

BTW, somebody bought "Wars of the Aoten" off of Smashwords. Though this blog is dedicated to "The Job," obviously, I do have two other books for sale. Here are links to Smashwords, if you're interested. They're also available on Amazon and B&N, but my royalties are higher from Smashwords, and they have all the different e-book formats.

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/26915

http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/31861

The Was that Will Be

First, kudos to Walt Kelly and the fact that I could steal and pretty much destroy his title for this very important blog post.

Once upon a time, the publishing business didn't really exist. After Gutenberg's invention of the press, authors would pay printers to print and bind their works, and then they would deliver them to local bookstores for sale. There wasn't that much reading material available, so stores were happy to take whatever books they could get, and readers as well. So what came to be known as publishers were just a hired service, and authors made only what they could get stores to pay them for books. If the author couldn't afford printing costs, well, that was just too bad.

Somewhere along the way printers found that they could take on the costs of publishing, thereby attracting popular authors and make a tidy profit. I don't know how this came about, but I do know that Charles Dickens became widely popular by having his stories serialized in magazines, then afterwards published as full books when the audience was well established. This was the mid-1800s.

So who cares? Nobody. But it appears we're back at square one, as traditional publishers struggle to squeeze out a profit while thousands of would-be authors pay self-publishers to print and bind their books for a fee. The catch again is whether these authors can get bookstores to carry their books, now in a culture where not only is there no lack of reading material, but also the broad audience would rather watch Hulu than read anyway. The growth of e-readers will only increase this cacophony of information. This is where I am with "The Job", although I add the twist of being my own printer. How to get notice remains the greatest challenge.

Eragon-e

Get it? "Era-gone"? Oh well.


How do I hate thee? Let me count the ways -- Actually, I don't hate this travesty, but it's certainly a great example of what's wrong with modern publishing. First let me say I know virtually nothing about the book except what I saw in the movie version's trailer -- that it is a rip off of both "Lord of the Rings" and "Star Wars" mushed into one. In other words, as the old-time pundit, printer's-ink-in-the-veins journalists would say, it's "strictly boilerplate."

Probably violating some Amazon copyright here.


According to Wikipedia, the incredibly talented and home-schooled Christopher Paolini began writing "Eragon" when he was 15, and it was first published in 2002 by his parents' company, Paolini International LLC, which had been formed only five years before. He then toured some 135 schools promoting the book, so the folks definitely had plenty of financial resources to invest in marketing. Eventually "the stepson of author Carl Hiassen found Eragon in a bookstore and loved it, and Hiaasen brought it to the attention of his publisher, Alfred A. Knopf", and the rest is history.


This is an odd twist on "it's who you know," which is an absolutely true platitude in publishing, and also in succeeding (financially) in any of the entertainment arts. No respected agent or publisher would ever have given a second look to a book written by a 15-year-old, but his own parents sure would. Also no school would ever have given time to an adult wanting to promote his fantasy book to a captive audience of kids, but another kid -- wow, that would be inspirational. Christopher cashed in on the money and grunt work his parents invested, and on his own youth to find a core market, one of whom had a connection with a real publisher. All this for a story that will be completely forgotten by the next generation.


So I guess I'm just jealous, because in truth it's exactly what I'm doing. I've got my own "publishing" company simply to give "The Job" an existence before my core audience, which is Christian reviewers and media in general. My real hope is that one member of that market will see the real worth of "The Job" and become its advocate. It's a total shot in the dark, but let's face it, God loves weakness, and there really couldn't be much of a weaker attempt than this. We'll see what He does with it.

It ain't the way it used to be -- more about that later.

New Media and New Marketing VII

I love Roman numerals.


Well, the Facebook ad campaign is over, after four months. Did you see it? More than 2,100,000 pairs of eyes supposedly saw it in the English-speaking world, targeting Christians and readers. More than 270 clicked on the ad, which directed them to the Facebook fan page. Of those, it's hard to say but I think fewer than five "liked" the page. So who knows if it really had any effect.


So why then? Well, back in the day during the advertising class I had to take in college, I learned that direct mail is the most effective advertising there is. Electronic social networking ads are basically the same thing, but a lot cheaper. Judging from clicks, I had a .013% response rate. That doesn't seem like a very good return, but who's to say about advertising? In broadcast all an advertiser really knows is an estimate of how many people see an ad based on how many are watching a show. My real goal was just to get "The Job" and its cover in the subconscious of my target audience so if it does show up in book stores, they'll remember they've seen it before.


It's just another shot in the dark.

New Media and New Marketing VI

Here's an interesting story on the new world of self publishing. It shows well what authors face just getting their work into print. For myself, I learned long ago that the only way to get a trade publisher's attention is to know someone (rant coming on "Eragon") or to have an established name that will guarantee sales. Next time you're in a bookstore check out the number of book covers on which the author's name is in bigger type than the title. And you can't really fault publishers for this, because traditional publishing has extremely small profit margins, and publishers do have to stay in business.


Here's an apocryphal tale about Eric Metaxis' recent biography about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. His original publishing deal was with Harper Collins, but once they saw the manuscript they decided it could make money at only half that length, presumably simply because of production costs. So Metaxis took it to Thomas Nelson, who published it untruncated, and it has become a best-seller. So there you have it. But it does illustrate the pressures and worries of the traditional publishing world.


So what's the point? Really it is that the article mentions marketing issues, but doesn't offer any ideas that a self-published author can use to market his book. As I've said here before, my approach is to have only enough hard copies to have a token existence of "The Job," and to send them out to reviewers and contests. Also, hit internet networking as hard as possible. Beyond that, what else can an author do? I was hoping for some other ideas from the article, but there were none.

New Media and New Marketing V

Here's a new review, posted by Joanne Bayles at Figuring Out The Small Stuff. Joanne won her copy from the giveaway at Kathy Habel's I Am a Reader, Not a Writer. I'm still waiting on a review from her.


Which begs the question, why this blog? Don't I know that nobody blogs anymore? Well, yes, I do know that, except that book reviewers seem to be an exception. People who like to read all fancy themselves reviewers, even if they can't get the traditional media to pay them, so blogging is an effective outlet for this. Also, as with all reviewers, if a consumer of books finds someone with the same tastes as him, it makes sense to follow that reviewer and check out books that he (or more likely she) likes. Blogs fill this point of contact nicely.


Still, why this blog? Well, I was reading this other blog (he didn't get the memo either), and that blogger is promoting a book online. His advice was to sign up on as many web directories as possible, using meta words and tags that would make your book rank high in Google searches. I had to ask around about what a web directory was, so archaic is that idea, and I'm not sure it's worth it to pursue that strategy. But he also said to blog a lot, getting those links and meta words out there in cyberspace, so here I am.

New Media and New Marketing III

So I'm a publisher -- ha! I print and bind books in my office. This is not publishing. But the paperback version of "The Job" exists just enough to be available on Amazon, to be sent to reviewers and contests, and to be left at random locations (keep your eyes open). This is the current leg of my marketing strategy, since no agent nor trade publisher thought they could make money off me. I've taken the position that I can prove to them there is a market for this book. My theory is that with exposure from online reviews and contests, a demand for the book could arise among readers, creating pressure on book stores, which would necessitate mass production through an actual printing/binding company. It might also cause notice from mainstream media. From there buzz might arise that I can eventually use to once again pitch the book to trade publishers. It's a longshot, but what else do I have going on?


Here are links to the reviews that have been posted so far: Midwest Book Review, MotherLode and Tribute Books Mama. It is fascinating to see the different extents to which the reviewers "got" the book. It's also worth noting that at Tribute Books Mama the reviewer enjoyed "The Job" without having a clue what it was about. I should eventually end up with around 20 reviews, which I will link to as they are posted, and I've entered "The Job" in three contests and plan to enter the Amazon Breakthrough Novel contest, so I'll let you know how they come out.