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.

The King and the Kingdom

Well, the wedding's over, and presumably everyone survived. I suppose it's to be seen if Harry lives through the after-party.

I've never been much of one for the Royals -- I thoroughly avoided the Charles/Di debacle thirty years ago. It seems to me that the hype this time around was much less, possibly because Pr. William has not bandied about for fifteen years as an eligible bachelor like his father. I also have detected more cynicism about this wedding, which shouldn't be surprising from my seat here in the U.S., and I think it's political in nature.

Since the royal wedding thirty years ago, a lot has happened in the world besides the royal blowup, namely, democracy is rampant. The Eastern Bloc and even (for Pete's sake) the Soviet Union have fallen apart, majority rule came to South Africa, de facto representative governments stuck their heads above water in Afghanistan and Iraq, who-knows-what is trying to overthrow dictators in the Middle East and North Africa, and even China has granted economic freedoms. Monarchies and other authoritarians are becoming more and more of an anachronism.

Which poses a question for Western Christians -- how ready are you to bow to the King? Does it seem odd to think of being under absolute authority? Even decisions in most of our protestant churches are made by committees or direct election, not by elders as scripture directs (and the U.S. is definitely a protestant nation in nature.) The church in the West has no inkling of what it means to fall to your knees before one you call Lord. Something to think about.

Oh yeah. Buy my book.

Back to the Old Grind

Well, this has been enlightening. As reported, a feature on DailyCheapReads.com boosted sales of "The Job" at the Kindle store, although not to the great effect that I first thought. The next day, sales went back to zero, and it's been that way ever since. So getting on a prominent website can substantially help a book, but once it's no longer at the top of the front page the effect is over. The only thing I can think of to do with this is, since these sites are mostly blogs, is every time a new feature or review is posted, leave a comment about the new post. Probably won't garner much attention, but what else is there?

In other news, the second installment of the Poncey stories is finished in first draft, and the opening story is undergoing its editing process. Don't know what I'm talking about? Stay tuned for more details!

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.

Old Media I

When you get to the end of the story, you stop writing.

I posted only once last week, and here it is Wednesday and I'm only just getting around to it now. I'm running out of ideas already, and my news to share is paper thin. So has the blog already run its course? No, because it was never about ideas or news, it was about links. Sorry to be cynical, but let's face it, I have no illusions of attracting a big reading audience. I just want links to show up on Google searches, which I'm told begins to happen after about four months of blogging, so I'll keep plugging along. The Job.

I did have an idea about old media and where it might be going, but now I've forgotten it. Maybe it'll come to me.

Here's a feature on The Job at Indie Books Blog. A review would be better, but you take what you can get. I have gotten a handful of new offers from reviewers, but these things take time to turn around.

No Bad Publicity

If you're an author, you're probably not reading this. If you are an author reading this, you can quit now, because you've already seen it.

This is what Internet marketing is all about, in a twisted kind of way. Independent book publishers/authors are all salivating after that killer review, but this woman got more than she bargained for. Jacqueline Howett sent her book, The Greek Seaman, to Big Al's Books and Pals for a review. And that's what she got, and it wasn't particularly bad. But "Big Al" did point out technical flaws in her writing, which led to this firestorm. Now more people know about Jacqueline's book than she could ever have hoped for, and maybe some of them will even buy it.

But more will probably buy this. It's a real measure of our current media culture that you can make a fool of yourself, and someone will be making a profit off you before you can get up off the floor. Big Al is also suffering from the aftermath. Which didn't stop me from sending him a request to review "The Job," because let's face it, a lot more people know of his blog now than they did a week ago. But his sudden fame has surely brought on an onslaught of review requests, so I don't expect to hear from him. But given the size headache he no doubt has now, he might benefit from reading "The Job" anyway.

In other news, Sample Sunday is coming up again. This week I'll be featuring a chapter from "Wars of the Aoten," once again based on St. Celibart statistics, the most popular chapter. If you're on Twitter, just search for #samplesunday, and click the links that authors have tweeted. If you like their writing, then retweet their links to your followers. Help out an indie.

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.

Mediasaurus

I was literally lying around the other day, reviewing my stellar career in the news media. The reverie was brought on because I'd seen a promotion the newspaper I used to work for had posted online for its new Twitter news feed. This development had made me remember how I told a co-worker in the mid '90s that print newspapers would mostly disappear in 20 years (I thought the only survivors would be huge "newspapers of record," as they are called, and small-town weeklies.) Just call me Nostradamus. My afore-mentioned employer has been very slow to develop its Internet presence, much less apps for smart phones and touch pads. They seem to finally be dipping their toes in the social media. Meanwhile, they've been cutting positions and salaries like Johnny Depp in "The Demon Barber of Fleet Street."

So what's new in all this? Well, as my mind was wandering around, it occurred to me that even with all the adjustments the newsies are making to use new media, newspapers and magazines are doggedly hanging on to the printed page, even though that technology is sinking faster than the Andrea Doria (thought I was going to say Titanic, didn't you?) After salaries, ink and paper are the biggest expense a daily newspaper has. If these news outlets would jettison their printing, they'd have a windfall of money to invest in improving their staff and therefore their product. So there must be some reason they're hanging onto this deck chair, even though it's water-logged and dragging them down.

I think it's because the printed page is their last vestige of exclusivity. Anyone can blog, anyone can Tweet, anyone can become a clearing house of news links on the Internet (this essentially is what the Drudge Report is.) I have a friend who's been following the turmoil in North Africa via Twitter's news feed, and he's been better informed about the overall scene than reporters who are there. But not everyone can afford to print their product every day, or week or even month. That sets these old media outlets apart, and I think they're clinging to it as a mark of legitimacy and therefore power. But that's another thing they just don't get -- the new media has put the lie to press "objectivity" and the limits that printed pages (that is to say, space) put on news coverage. The same thing can be said about the limits (that is to say, time) put upon broadcast news. The old media is just inferior in every way. And it will die a tortured death if it doesn't recognize that soon.

Check out my page on Goodreads.

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 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.

Comics are Serious Business

All through my childhood and well into my adult years, my dream job was to draw a newspaper comic strip. "Mac Quack: Corporate Duck" was my last attempt at this, and like all others, was universally hated by syndicates. But, like everything else, the electronic media has made newspaper comics an anachronism, and anyone can reach the world with their comics electronically now, if the world can find it. Also, if you are willing to take up the daily grind for no reward whatsoever.

So who cares? Nobody. I only bring it up because I recently bought another original of "Pogo" by Walt Kelly. The remarkable thing about this particular strip is the larger character inside the bag is Simple J. Malarkey, Kelly's caricature of Sen. Joe McCarthy during the height of McCarthyism. Kelly stood among only a handful in the media to publicly challenge McCarthy's innuendo and bullying. Communism was a real threat hanging over the country domestically and internationally during the '50s, but McCarthy's tactics were self-serving, unconstitutional and in the end served only to de-legitimize more measured efforts to protect the nation.

So this drawing is a part of certainly the most significant sequence Kelly did in more than 20 years of drawing the celebrated strip. I can't be sure, but it seems like this character appeared in only about 30 strips. Of course, here you can't see the character per se, but there's even a funny story behind that. There was another character, a chicken, who already had been established as a Rhode Island Red from Providence. When the caricature of McCarthy reappeared in mid-1954 (he had first appeared in 1953), the newspaper in Providence had declared that if his face showed up again they would drop "Pogo." So Kelly, who must have been working on a very short deadline, had Malarkey say "No one from Providence can see me" as the chicken approached, and put a bag over his head. The newspaper got the joke, but indeed Malarkey's face never appeared again.

This strip was relatively cheap, particularly for an example from the '50s. I think maybe the seller didn't know what she had. This feels like a piece of history to me.

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.

Life is a "Cabaret", again

Watched "Cabaret" again for the first time in decades the other night, and I was struck by how modern it is. The movie came out in 1972, based on the Broadway musical of 1966, based on the 1951 play "I Am a Camera," based on the 1939 novel "Goodbye to Berlin," based on 1931 Wiemar Germany. The main thrust of the story is the decadent escapism of Berlin night life, offering  the people some release from the anxieties of daily life, punctuated by the militant rise of the Nazi party (National Socialists). Thrown in for good measure are homosexuality, abortion, alternative sex partnering, racism and political indifference within private life. The only issue of Wiemar Germany that is glossed over is the economic disaster of hyper-inflation and a worthless mark.

So I was watching it, and I'd see a character and say (quietly to myself) "Wow, she looks just like (insert current celebrity)", or I'd hear a line and say "That sounds just like (insert current political agenda)" or a scene would develop and I'd say "Wow, that's just like (insert current international ideology)". It was truly creepy. One musical number has the androgynous master of ceremonies singing about wanting to marry someone in a gorilla suit, and at the end tells the audience, "She doesn't look Jewish at all." There is even now a prominent group worldwide that describes Jews as pigs and apes.

The warning is that – although I doubt the movie makers intended this – the culture of the cabaret life was inviting the rise of fascism. It is a well-documented cycle that liberal (and I mean that in the classic sense) cultures devolve into hedonism which then gives rise within the population a desire for stricter authority. This is what "Cabaret" presents, and it is unmistakeably the condition of the western world today, in Europe even more so than the U.S. On top of that, the undermining of currency through government borrowing and printing of money (the head of the Federal Reserve a few months ago printed up hundreds of billions of dollars in hopes of creating inflation) will eventually further undermine the stability of our society. What large movement looms on the horizon today, ready to fill a vacuum and force discipline that current authorities are unwilling to enforce? You figure it out. In my mind, we need to get ahold of ourselves before it's too late, or our children might be living in a much-more unforgiving world.

I recommend "Cabaret" as a study of the western condition, and besides, the musical numbers are great. And I'm not generally a fan of musicals.

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.