Marketing – Page 8 – Teel McClanahan

Preparing to publish a new book of poetry

Exciting news: After nearly a year without a response (hopefully, people saw my submission guidelines & took my advice about going the self-publishing route for electronic publication), Modern Evil Press finally received its first submission, and it was a good one. A poetry collection. Within just a few minutes of reading the poems, I immediately thought to myself, “Hey, I think this person actually read my submission guidelines – this is just the sort of poetry I’d publish! This reminds me of my own depressing poetry!” (My guidelines include things like “read my books” and “know what I publish” before getting to anything like technical requirements.) I continued reading, and continued to appreciate what I saw, and have been going back and forth with the author for the last several days, and it looks like I’ll be publishing a new collection of poetry soon. The title is Unspecified, the author is Yoshira Marbel of South Africa, and the poetry cuts deep.

As you probably know if you’ve been following my work (or this blog) at all, my publishing model (to be sure books are, if not profitable, at least don’t lose money) has two parts: 1) Electronic publishing, which doesn’t cost me much money, and I’ll do for any book I publish (eBooks and audiobooks, for free and for sale), and 2) Print publishing, which costs a couple/few hundred dollars for setup & initial printing), and I’ll only initiate printing after I’ve raised sufficient capital to pay those up-front costs, usually through the sale of the original artwork I design for each book’s cover. The time and effort it takes to get the book ready for publication is roughly the same whether I’m only doing one or I do both, and since I only publish books I either love or wrote (preferably both), I don’t count the time & effort spent to publish a book against its profitability. (Yet. Perhaps someday I’ll sell enough books to be able to pay myself a salary. Heh.)

As it is with my own books, so it goes with the new one. Yoshira and I would really like to do a print version of the collection, so while we’re still selecting poems and crafting their order, polishing the front matter and end matter, designing the cover and writing the copy, I’m getting started on the fundraising. Immediately upon reading her poetry, which hews toward themes of heartbreak and sadness, I knew I could use my painting ‘without you’ to raise at least part of the funds.

If you haven’t seen it before, yes, those are real razor blades. They really cut into the canvas. I actually forced red paint (no, not blood) through the cut canvas to get the drips just right. I painted it specifically to capture an emotion I was sure razor blades were the only answer to. Alas, it was not really appropriate for the cover of this collection… Still, it matches well enough with the book that proceeds from its sale are definitely earmarked for covering the costs of printing this collection. Continue reading Preparing to publish a new book of poetry

Numbers for PHXComicon 2011

Phoenix Comicon 2011 was this weekend, and for the second year in a row, I had a small press table there. Let’s start with raw numbers, then get into a description of the experience. I’ll get into a bit of detail below, but in addition to the following book sales I sold two paintings during the course of the con, and traded a crochet sculpture for $50+ of merchandise from another local creator.

Here are my total sales (all paperback, except where noted), with last year’s comparable sales (in italics, in parentheses):

Lost and Not Found: 1 / $14 / (0 / $0)
Lost and Not Found – Director’s Cut: 0 / $0 / (1 / $10)
Dragons’ Truth: 2 / $26 / (4 / $49)
Dragons’ Truth MP3 CD: 0 / $0 / (1 / $13)
Forget What You Can’t Remember: 1 / $14 / (5 / $70)
More Lost Memories: 0 / $0 / (0 / $0)
MLM/Pay Attention chapbook: 0 / $0 / (1 / $2)
Cheating, Death: 7 / $70 / (6 (plus 2 given away) / $55)
Cheating, Death eBook (collectable card): 1 / $7 / (N/A)
Time, emiT, and Time Again: 3 / $42 / (N/A)
Untrue Tales… Book One (OoP): 1 / $6 / (1 / $12)
Untrue Tales… Book Two (OoP): 0 / $0 / (0 / $0)
Untrue Tales… Book Three (OoP): 0 / $0 / (0 / $0)
Untrue Tales… Books 1-2 (combined, OoP): 1 / $6 / (0 / $0)
Untrue Tales… Books 1-3 (combined, OoP): 1 / $12 / (8 / $200)
The First Untrue Trilogy: 6 / $144 / (N/A)
The Second Untrue Trilogy: 3 / $70 / (N/A)
Total Comicon book sales: 27 / $411 / (27 / $411)

…that… didn’t total out the way I expected it to. I apparently sold the exact same number of books for the same amount of money, compared to last year. Weird. Anyway, based on my rough estimate of the same thing, I did pre-pay for a small press table at the 2012 Phoenix Comicon, so I’ll be there again next year.

((For reference, ‘OoP’ is ‘Out of Print’ and is the out-of-print first editions of the Untrue Tales books, which I’d had printed along the way as I’d finished each book – and which, with the new editions of the complete series out, I want to get rid of. Thursday and Friday I tried “Name your own price” but found people don’t like to do that, so Saturday and Sunday I said “50% off” and sold a couple of them.))

In addition, I brought a couple of paintings with me to show at the con: The original artwork I created for the cover of Cheating, Death, and my latest, ‘RainbowAwesomeUnicornWow’. I bought an easel specifically to show these paintings at this con, and I suppose it worked out alright, because the unicorn painting (which I had at/above eye level throughout the con) certainly brought more visibility to my booth than I would otherwise have had, and before the convention was through, both paintings had sold, for $400 apiece. I’ve still got to deliver them (this week), and both buyers will be working out payment plans with me over the next few months, but they’re also repeat customers who are also friends I trust. I’m sure that part of what made up their minds about buying the art this weekend was that I was showing pieces they were interested in, and that other people were expressing interest in buying them. So… not technically sales I made / money I took in at con, but certainly sales which mightn’t have happened any time soon otherwise. I feel a bit bad about it; it hadn’t been trying to pressure those particular people into buying those pieces, I simply wanted to sell the art. I haven’t done any Art Walks or other shows in over a year, so wanted to take advantage of the opportunity. :/

On the other hand, if I add the art sales to the book sales total (using accrual method accounting, of course), my sales at this year’s con are nearly triple last years… even though they were actually, eerily flat. (Come to think of it, the only non-book I sold at last year’s con was a crocheted artwork, sold for $55, and this year I brought a single piece of crocheted artwork to decorate my table which I traded, at the last moment, for roughly the same value.) Eerily flat.

Of course, there are also expenses. The cost of the table, of gas to and from downtown every day (or, as others do, of renting a room downtown for the duration), the cost of parking (last year I was trying to use free street parking ~1mile away & ended up getting a ticket – this year I paid to park in a garage adjacent to the convention center & ended up paying much less), the cost of food while captive downtown for ten and twelve hour days, the cost of the new easel, a few display materials, hundreds of business cards, and (I never account properly for this) the value of my time. I’ve been coming out a bit ahead each year, though realistically -if I want to do any better- I’ve got to spend significantly more money. Buy bookmarks or postcards or the like to try to sell or simply give away. Buy big, full-color signage; at least with my company name, possibly with my book covers, et cetera. Pay for a full-size booth instead of a small press table. Worse, perhaps worst of all to me, and most-recommended to me by other creators and by fans/attendees alike, is to show/sell at more conventions. Leprecon, San Diego Comicon and Emerald City, Tuscon Festival of Books and TusCon, Saboten-Con (really?), CopperCon, and on and on… Each one a big up-front cost for a space, tied to the hope/dream that I’ll sell enough to earn it back, and most with travel expenses far, far beyond both booth costs and my best sales experiences, ever. Hotels, gasoline and/or flights & shipping, and the cost of eating out multiplied severalfold (I could eat breakfasts at home, this weekend, and make/pack lunches, which is difficult or impossible from a hotel room in a strange city) and I doubt I could make enough sales to break even with such expenses. Yes, it’s a problem of confidence. It’s also a problem backed up with data, as in: $400 in book sales doesn’t cover $1000+ in expenses for a non-local show. Heck, a standard 10’x10′ space at SDCC is listed at $2200 for 2011. (The Leprecon & TFoB web sites are so terrible I can’t quote prices for you here; I can’t find them.) If I were motivated by money, I’d likely either have some terrible plan to make conventions profitable or have given up on the whole thing by now…

Realistically, I wouldn’t be doing Phoenix Comicon, either, if my wife weren’t in love with the whole thing. It’s a lot of effort, it results in a tiny amount of profit and a huge amount of stress and a small number of new readers. (For comparison, I sold books this weekend to only 20 new readers and gave away roughly 200 business cards (most of which have probably already been thrown away) – while each of the 13 of my titles which are available as free eBooks and podcast audiobooks finds nearly 200 new readers a month, every month.) There are roughly 3 people I met and talked with this weekend who I expect will, upon reading the books they bought from me, turn into “true fans” of my work (though 2 of those are teenagers who I’m not sure qualify in the sense of a small number of “true fans” being sufficient to financially support an independent creator, yet) – and that’s great… but I wonder about how much time and effort and money ought to be invested in acquiring one more fan… and I really need to get some sleep.

I’ve just looked up and it’s after 2AM… and I’ve been running long, hard days at the comicon since I woke up early Thursday morning. I probably won’t get much more good thoughts out of my now-almost-painfully-tired brain until I’ve slept. Feel free to insert your input in the comments, or by email, or by calling/txt’ing me… Or by buying my books… or art… *sigh* Enough trying to sell. Hopefully for a long time.

Author Self-Interview

Okay, so I stole these questions from Pat Bertram, to answer on my own site… so it’s only partially a self-interview. I’m pretty much too shy to actually do interviews, but answering questionnaires, that I can do! Of course, I could have then sent my answers to Pat & pretended she’d interviewed me, but I’m almost too shy to actually make contact with people – I mostly keep to myself, these days. So… instead I’m just posting it here. Because so many of the questions assume I’ve only got one book to talk about (though really, I’m putting my 15th book out this month, along with paper-book re-issues for the entire Untrue Tales… series, and I just launched a Kickstarter project for yet another book), I’ve selected … the entire Untrue Tales series as “my book” for the purposes of this “interview.” Also, Pat suggests answering 10 or 15 of the questions, and I’ve answered every one. That’s 46 questions, and this post is over 4300 words. Enjoy.

What is your book about? I never know how to answer this question about my books, and that failure is probably the biggest reason my book sales are consistently slow and low. If I had to answer, without going into great length, I’d say perhaps that the Untrue Tales series is about watching reality unfold around you and the uselessness of trying to control anything. Ask me again in a week/month/year and I’ll probably have a different answer.
How long had the idea of your book been developing before you began to write the story? Ooh, this is a good question, for this series. I actually started “working on” what became the Untrue Trilogies over twenty years ago. All through my youth (I can’t be sure when it started, but perhaps age 10 or 12?) I was a storyteller, often with myself at the heart of the stories. Rather than writing my stories down, I practiced oral storytelling, and I told my stories as though they were true stories about my life – and believe me that trying to tell the story of how I accidentally bested Satan at age 12 and was forced to take over the day-to-day operation of Hell in a realistic and convincing way was a learning experience. All the basic threads of story which ended up in the Untrue Trilogies (and quite a few which didn’t) were part of these overlapping narratives I developed primarily during my high school years (roughly age 12-16), which I then adapted into a new story, not about me, beginning in 2004.
What inspired you to write this particular story? I guess I partly answered this, but the development of these stories was in large part an attempt to gather people’s attention. Prior to high school I had been largely an outcast and picked on to the point that it got me kicked out of school (you can read a modified/compressed/fictionalized account of this, buried in my first novel, Lost and Not Found), and when I finally got back into school, a new school, I was determined to do things differently. Developing these stories, largely in collaboration with the friends I was making, seemed to help cement my role in several social circles. Years and years later, after I’d written a couple of novels, I decided to try to resurrect those stories, rather than allow them to be forgotten, and thus began the seed that led to these six books.
How much of yourself is hidden in the characters in the book? Around the time I wrote Untrue Tales… Book One I was likely to be heard saying that all the characters in all my books are me, and that’s still true, in some ways. Without giving away the ending of the last book, I’ll say that there’s quite a lot of me in Trev.
Tell us a little about your main characters. Who was your favorite? Why? My favorite character? Is it cheating to say it was my daughter? Err… Trev’s daughter, Neyal’h… Except, she almost isn’t in these books at all. She’s practically peripheral, the entire journey, despite being central to all the action in most of the books. Why is she my favorite? Don’t you love your daughter? … If you check with me here in “reality” I don’t even have a daughter, so I suppose this answer doesn’t make sense. But if you’d read the stories I was writing, all the way back to when I began writing stories, you’ll find her there. Maybe someday I’ll re-release an updated version of The Vintage Collection (everything I wrote as a teen, which I’d made available in paperback for a few years), and you can see for yourself. Continue reading Author Self-Interview

One thing at a time? Nah…

I’ve heard rumor that other people, especially people who want to maximize … blah blah blah… attention, focus on one project at a time. I know of several authors who spent several years focused on marketing a single book, before moving on to their next project. For some of them, this was a successful way to build an audience. It’s not for me. I’ve put out 3 new books in the last ~4 months, in audio and eBook formats, have combined them for a print trilogy, have created a second edition of the trilogy that preceded those books, and before I even get those new paper books in my hand, I’ve already begun work on yet another new book/project. Here’s a video about it:

I’ve put the Kickstarter widget, which gives a brief image/blurb and tracks the progress of the funding, in the right-hand column of this blog and on the front page of modernevil.com, hoping that’ll increase its visibility. I’m going to be putting a brief audio promo for the project in all my podcast/books. I’m blogging about it. I’m Twittering and facebooking about it. I may become annoying about it in the coming weeks, depending on how funding goes.

To prevent being annoyed, please, pledge today. Tell your friends to pledge. Post the widget around. Surely, you know people who are interested in writing & publishing. Or people who like rainbows, beards, and/or suspenders. Show them my video.

Oh, and there’s still over a week to enter the contests to win copies of my the Untrue Trilogies, on this blog or via Goodreads. Because I can’t seem to do only one thing at a time.

Oops, my new books are available

As I posted about recently, and as expected, my books are available now, well in advance of their “official publication date” of April 1st, 2011. They’re currently listed at full list price at Amazon, and at a 42% discount at Barnes & Noble, and they’ll be popping up at other online retailers’ sites in the next week or two, mostly between those price points. If you can’t wait, you don’t care about supporting me (the author), or whatever, you could order both trilogies right now. OR:

I’ll have my copies of the books this Thursday (March 10th, 2011), and will make them available for purchase from modernevil.com as soon as possible after they arrive. As detailed in my last post, I’m planning on offering them at the following price points:

$50 for both Untrue Trilogies, unsigned
$50 each ($100 for both) Untrue Trilogies, signed

No additional shipping/handling charges, sent via USPS Priority Mail with delivery confirmation, packed and shipped by the author… signed & personalized by the author, if you pay for it. Is my signature worth that much? Maybe, but that isn’t the point: The point is to give people the option of becoming a patron / benefactor / philanthropist / supporter of an independent creator, rather than just a blind consumer looking for the best price. If you want the best price, currently $28.92 for the pair, go buy at B&N (or wherever), and I’ll get about $13.88 of that. If you order unsigned from me, depending on what shipping costs me (I don’t have the final weight of the books yet, and it depends on where you live, but it’ll be somewhere from $6-$11 for the pair), I’ll net $25-$29. If you order the signed copies, I’ll net $75-$80. See how that works?

Oh, and in case you didn’t read my last post (because it was over 2k words long?), you may have missed that I’m giving away FREE copies of the full Untrue Tales… series. You can enter right now on Goodreads, or you can go back and comment on that post and have a much better chance of winning. (Currently, I’m the only person eligible. Maybe I’ll win copies of my own books…)