Category: Marketing

Success vs. Business

Sometimes I look at the things I’m avoiding, like using any of the increasingly-large offers for free AdWords advertising I keep receiving, and wonder whether I’m afraid of success. Literally, I do not advertise my books or art through any traditional means. I don’t think it’s because I’m afraid of success. I think it may be because I’m afraid of business.

I don’t like the parts of running a small business that are the business side of things. Accounting/bookkeeping, paperwork, taxes, marketing, even some aspects of customer service. All of which are things which increase in time investment & complexity, the more business I do. With the books side of the business, the side most likely to be able to create working advertising for, the amount of extra work that needs to be done for each book sold seems disproportionate with the amount of income earned, especially in relation to the same ratio re: art sales. But how do you sell my original artwork via a 2-line text ad? What search keywords are going to be coming from people who will like my art and will click on an ad? Books are somewhat easier, though I doubt the word “zombie” comes cheaply…

If I were selling enough paper books directly (I earn 2x to 6x more per book when I sell directly, rather than wholesale, so hitting any $ target is less copies/marketing/et cetera that way) to say with any seriousness that I was making as much or more than I could earn via a traditional publishing company & contract, the time and effort it would take to physically process & ship the orders would nearly be a full time job in itself, leaving little energy left for creation of new works. That is a scary thought. That is what I’m somewhat afraid of: that I’ll be doing so much business that I won’t have time to create.

So, yes, perhaps I’m doing this writing thing “all wrong” and I ought to have gone the “normal” route where I let a publisher take most of the revenue in exchange for doing all the business-side stuff I don’t like, giving up the ability to do the editorial, design, layout, cover design, and web site design aspects of the job that I do like along with them. Except that doesn’t really end up paying much better than what I’m doing now, for most authors, since they’re putting their own money into the publicity efforts I’ve mostly been avoiding… Out of the advances they’ll be lucky to ever earn out. Maybe.

Success, though… For me, it’s more about being able to create. To create what I want to create, when I want to create it. I semi-recently had a conversation with my wife about it, where she (effectively the sole income-earner in our household) questioned the very idea that I ought to be trying to earn any sort of living from my creations. Like, “where did you get that idea?” And I think she was right, and well in tune to what I actually believe & want than my own behaviors and projected beliefs represented.

We’re closer now to a financial situation where we don’t have to worry every month about how we’re going to afford groceries than we were last year, and I’m decreasingly thinking about how to turn my creations into a regular income. I have faith in my work. I believe in the act of creation.

I don’t believe in the value of money, business, the market, or marketing.

And yes, this post is a messy ramble. I wrote it on my iPhone while my iMac was occupied with actual work.

thinking about galleries

It’s always come up, from time to time, but I’ve been noticing it more in the last few months, that people want to know what galleries I’m showing at. Years ago, it was uncommon – I would tell people I was an artist, and they would ask about the art: “What style of art do you do?” … “What medium do you work in?” … “What is your art about?” … that sort of thing (which I almost never had a good answer for, either) but now when I tell people I’m an artist, a larger and larger share have a first question of “What galleries do you show at?” I’ve even begun to get it at the Phoenix First Fridays Art Walk, where I am a street vendor. People see me standing in front of my art, hear me talking about my art, watch me trying to sell my art, and ask what galleries they can see it in. If my work was in a gallery, don’t you think I’d be there, rather than standing in the road, competing with myself?

My website, wretchedcreature.com, is my gallery, I say. I do most of my sales online, I say, and a fair amount through the First Fridays Art Walk.

Then, about half the time, they want to talk about what other local artists I know, show with, and/or work with.

Sigh. Continue reading thinking about galleries

“new” book: Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut

I’m becoming more free, more liberated in how I think about and how I operate my publishing company. So Monday morning when I saw yet another review of Lost and Not Found which seemed to have misunderstood the entire point of the book and to have interpreted the heart of the book to be a mis-step and an incoherent disappointment… I realized that instead of just thinking about releasing an alternate edition of the book, it was fully within my power to actually release it.

So I took some time on Monday and put together a quick “Director’s Cut” that had all the love story and fantasy adventure that had ended up being the last third of Lost and Not Found, cut out the few scenes that had connected it further to the confusing-and-irrelevant characters-who-get-found-and-forgotten, and re-attached the part of the story that goes to Skythia (released earlier this year as a short story in More Lost Memories). I wrote a few words about why I was creating the Director’s Cut, put them up on modernevil.com. I wrote a quick marketing summary so I could put the book up for sale as an eBook on Smashwords. Whoosh, from frustration at people misunderstanding my book to publishing a version of the book that those frustrated people would hate outright, in the space of an afternoon.

Yesterday I sketched for a while & then painted an image for the cover.  I’ve been thinking about doing this with other books (have you seen the covers of More Lost Memories and Cheating, Death?) and I’ve finally decided to do it with the Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: I’ve put the painting I did for the cover art up for sale at a price that will allow me to fund a paperback release of the book. If you buy the art, I’ll make the book available on paper. ((Alternatively, if I can get, say, 25 people to pre-order a paper copy, I’ll make the book available on paper.)) Otherwise, it’s going to remain available only in formats that cost me nothing to make available: eBook (and probably audiobook, later this year, especially since I’ve already recorded most of it).

I’m thinking of trying this with some of my future books:  Release them as an eBook and if 1) enough eBook copies sell or 2) the original painting for the cover sells or 3) enough people are willing to pre-order then I’ll put out a print edition.  Because realistically, right now, I’m not even breaking even on the publishing costs.  I sell too-few copies.  I’m not saying this is permanent/final, especially since I sell a lot more paper copies by hand (and make more money per copy) than I sell eBooks, but I figure it’s worth a try.  It’s my publishing company, I can do what I want, right?  The only rules to follow are my own.

So, here’s the brief marketing summary I wrote for Smashwords:

A non-traditional story; no real conflict, no struggle, no antagonist, and -some would say- no plot. A love story of fantastic proportions, of two people who realize that the less-than-comfortable normalcy they’d felt responsible to is the only thing keeping them from achieving true bliss. With a faerie, titans, a two-headed monster, a flying city, amazing museums, unusual time mechanics, & more.

And here’s the page-or-so I wrote “About the Director’s Cut”:

Lost and Not Found was the first look at the storybook universe expanded upon in Forget What You Can’t Remember, More Lost Memories, and Cheating, Death. This “Director’s Cut” of Lost and Not Found comes closer to my original intent, and to the original first draft of my 2002 NaNoWriMo novel, originally released in limited edition under the title Forlorn. Forlorn was written in the final 8 days of November, after a similar ordeal to the fictional one presented in Lost and Not Found.

In response to the criticism and feedback from a very vocal and adamant subset of the people who read Forlorn, and based on advise about what “all” fiction “needs” I spent the following year trying to find ways to give the story I’d written in Forlorn things like conflict, character arcs, and a three-act structure. I ended up cutting Skythia out completely, and writing a significant amount about the writer’s life and the journey toward the heart of the story, which I’ve always believed starts with the word ‘Forlorn.’

I released the First Edition of that expanded, “fixed” book as Lost and Not Found in 2004, and I’ve been receiving two kinds of feedback from readers in the five years since then: One group of people liked the book right up until the word ‘Forlorn.’ This group thinks the rest of the book is a “wrong turn”, and they were disappointed by it. The other group of people typically don’t even remember what happened in the book before the word ‘Forlorn.’ They understood the heart of the story to be the same thing I did, and they loved it.

This “Director’s Cut” of Lost and Not Found is bound to divide readers in the same way, though I expect to a more significant extreme. The people who would have been disappointed by the end of Lost and Not Found will be disappointed by this entire book. The people who would have loved the end of Lost and Not Found will probably love this entire book. And I, increasingly emboldened to do what I want to do with my books and with my publishing company, love the idea of releasing a Director’s Cut of the book, one that I prefer and that I think my true audience will prefer.

Cheating, Death – giveaway at Blog with Bite

Haven’t bought your own copy of my new zombie novel, Cheating, Death, yet? It’s only $4.99 as an eBook or $9.99 in paperback… and I gave away copies of the paperback to 5 lucky Goodreads readers this weekend.  If you weren’t one of the winners, you have another chance to snag a free copy: Blog with Bite is giving away four more copies this week! [Blog with Bite: Cheating, Death Giveaway!] Entering can be as easy as leaving a comment or tweeting a link – and you can increase your chances just as easily; read the post for all the details.  (Contest ends this Friday the 13th!)

In addition, I’ve done a Q&A about Cheating, Death at Blog with Bite.  I think you might enjoy reading it – and if you like horror et cetera, you might like to take a stroll around the site & see some of the other books they’re reviewing and authors they’re interviewing.  They’ve got an interesting dynamic for a book review site, where all the reviewers give their individual takes of the same book – so you get more than one point of view.  (I’m looking forward to seeing what they have to say about mine!)

Remember, if you’re a book blogger who’d like to review Cheating, Death, just let me know and link me to your blog – I’ll be glad to send you a PDF right away.  I might be able to swing another paperback or two (though I’ve already reached the number I’d set aside initially for reviewers) if you ask nicely.  Or, if you prefer to listen to the book, the podcast version starts going out this Friday the 13th, as well.  Look for it on Podiobooks.com and on the Modern Evil Podcast.

statistics, perspective, perseverance

I’ve been seeing a bit more of statistics hitting the web lately, with regard to different independent authors’ successes at finding audiences and making money online.  There is only a tiny percentage of people who are comfortable revealing such statistics, but as more and more authors begin to use the internet to get their words in front of people, the pool grows and -with it- the number of numbers available.  I have considered, now and again, posting my own statistics.  My numbers.  My facts and figures.  Sometimes I have given a few numbers.  Here and there.  I’m still considering it.

All these numbers, they’ve helped me get a bit of perspective on my own numbers.  Working in a near-vacuum, it’s been very difficult to tell whether my numbers were good or bad.  Whether they painted an average picture, or a below average one. Whether my struggle was a result of the medium, its newness, and the fractional nature of the cutting-edge (it is, by definition, not mainstream) – or whether my struggle has been a result of some failure on my part. The more numbers I see, the more clear it is to me that I am -at least in part- to blame.

(This may be my severe depression talking.)

I am aware I am not even trying to write fiction with mass-appeal.  I’m not trying to write like other authors.  I’m not trying to fit into any particular genre or genres.  I do things with my books that no one sees, no one notices, no one thinks about (or if they do, no one mentions – and those I’ve asked are oblivious), and while I’m doing unseen things I require readers to carefully parse sentences and to consider meanings, just to get through the books.  I use “big” words, uncommon words, and I use them in long sentences to express complex concepts.  I am aware that I am not writing easy books, or books for everyone.  It’s my fault I write this way.  I’m to blame.

It’s also a choice.  I didn’t choose to be an author because I thought writing would be a good way to make a living, or because I thought I’d be good at cutting off a slice of the multi-billion-dollar worldwide publishing market.  I chose to try to find a way to make money selling my books because I know I’m an author, and because I’d rather be doing something that comes naturally than struggling just to survive every day.  (2007 was the soul-crushing, creativity-wrecking breaking point – I was still writing, but could barely manage to write more than a haiku’s length at once, and it was mostly about how painful working my corporate desk job was: I published it anyway, it’s Worth 1k.)  … and though the struggle still exists (in fighting with a world that still expects me to pay the bills in months when people aren’t buying what I’m selling, and in fighting the traditional publishing world, and in fighting my own severe aversion to business and marketing), it is significantly less here, and distant. Continue reading statistics, perspective, perseverance