Post Weekend Promotion Extravaganza!

This morning, while walking to drop off my little one at Nursery, I found a £1 coin on the floor. While part of me was happy at the luck, the more sarcastic bit of my brain (one which has grown in recent years) said ‘charity for a weekend of mixed results.’

Now, to clarify and expand on that remark.

This weekend (rather from Friday until Monday) was the free giveaway event for The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark. I had planned the event from some time now, and had proceeded to promote the event quite enthusiastically via word of mouth, Twitter and a Facebook events page. The FB events page had over 500 people invited by the end of it, between those I originally sent invitations to (about 380 people on my friends list) and those invited by other friends who shared the promotional poster I made for the event (actual attendees was about 10-12%. Roughly what I expected.) I tweeted about the upcoming event regularly, and by that I mean once every couple of days in the week prior.

I was feeling pretty good about it and looking forward to spending a positive frantic 4 days on FB and Twitter rallying the troops and trying to get to that magical number I conservatively set to try to beat (NOT David McGowan’s 19,122, but rather just the 122).

But life, as we all know, has a way of resetting the goalposts mere seconds after the ball leaves your foot.

Midweek, my grandfather-in-law passed away. It was tragic news for my wife and her family. I had known him for close to a decade and considered him pretty much family. His health had not been the best the past few months, and although it was in the horizon, his passing was still something difficult to take in.

I offered my wife to drive over to her home town in Nottinghamshire for the weekend, departing on Friday, and knowing full well that this would pretty much mean I would either do very little promoting or none whatsoever.

In hindsight, perhaps I should have opted for that last one.

But I had already established a rudimentary rapport with some potential readers, and it would have been seen are rude if I simply disappeared from Social Media altogether during this event.

I also didn't think it appropriate to make mention of the passing of my grandfather-in-law at the time as a reason for backing away from the event.

I was therefore between the proverbial Sharp Rock and Abrasive Hard Place.

And inevitably it led to a tense weekend where I struggled to be in any one frame of mind.

Friday was the trip to Notts, which took about three hours. I was able to tweet at the rest stop, and then some time during the evening, but the mood was understandably heavy at my in-laws.

The following day I spent the early afternoon at the Hucknall High Street Bonanza with the family,

Followed by a trip to my grandmother-in-law to help build a new shed for her. 

While my mind selfishly drifted back and forth about just asking my wife to let me go back home to work on the promotion of CDDD I soon found myself entertained by the hopelessness of the antics of trying to build the shed between my mother, father and brother-in-law and myself.

In the pouring rain.

With rubbish instructions.

And parts that did not fit or resemble anything on the instructions.

I must admit I’ve never quite heard my in-laws use the word ‘screw’ so many times as Saturday.

I felt bad because looking back on it in my mind, I often found myself stuck to my mobile phone tweeting while in the middle of what was essentially family time.

Sunday, there was again no respite from activity, as we decided (a bit of a Royal ‘we’ there) to take our son to White Post Farm (in all fairness, though, WPF is a fun place to go to). Amidst being harassed by chickens while eating our sandwiches, I once again turned to Twitter.

This became a theme for the weekend, if you could sort of imagine.

Lots of family activity.

And Oh, Look! Mario on his phone burning the battery while trying to convince someone in Jakarta or Singapore to download a free copy of CDDD before the promotion finished.

This was probably best encapsulated when I was watching some of the photos my father-in-law took of the WPF trip yesterday before we left back for home. In a sequence of three or four photos, there was my wife, happily chasing after our son, while at the edge of the photo, sat on a small poof on his mobile phone tweeting to the people of China to download CDDD without paying attention to anyone was daddy.

It made me feel horrible as a father and a husband.

I was a miserable git the whole weekend.

I pretty much gave it all up after seeing that photo and said to myself 'I'll take it up tomorrow and see what the results were.'

The download numbers didn't particularly fill me with the sort of ‘oomph!’ that would make me think of making the cover for my first novel look like the covers done by all the great modern writers:

Strangely enough, I rather like this cover, and would probably buy the book if I saw it at a bookstore... 

It started promisingly, with 38 downloads on Friday, but I couldn't quite capitalize on the momentum of the first day, and while there were still downloads the other three days, the never did reach the lofty heights of 38 again.

Total tally for the weekend: 82 downloads, which if you add to the previous promotion ran a month ago makes it 115 free copies downloaded.

Still short of the 122.

If anything, this should be a learning experience for me. Social media as a promotional took requires an amazing amount of preparation and organisation. It was staggering to see the amount of tweets I had to send for what were probably minimal returns.

Did I send the right tweets?

Did I target the right people to tweet to?

Did the right people retweet it?

Did those who retweeted my tweet ACTUALLY go to the link and download CDDD?

Did I tweet enough times during the event?

Did I tweet too much? (I was told by someone I did not tweet nearly enough.  I am fairly sure I sent out 

close to 100 tweets this weekend)

Did I use the right links?

Was the poster effective?

Should I have been on Facebook more often?

Should I have joined more Facebook groups?

It all amounted to a massive headache. I genuinely just want to get back to writing the rest of the story line for the novel which is where CDDD comes from.

And I wish I had a Literary Agent. :-(

To those of you who downloaded the book this weekend and who participated with such vim and vigour during the event posting on Facebook and Twitter, my most sincere and humble thanks. While I may whinge that downloads were not as plentiful as I wished, the fact that you good folk were willing to download CDDD and give it a read means the world to me and I’m pretty sure to Colette as well. You are the reason why this weekend is in many ways a success (no matter what the previous rant said).

Now, if you liked the story, spread the word to your friends.

And if you didn't like the story, tell me why you didn't.

:-)

Oh, and in the end, I decided a pound was a pound, be it luck or charity and it means I can get a cup of coffee at work (which I did).

Oprah, if you are reading this, I hope you read the book and I hope you liked it. ;-)

Freebie Friday has Arrived!

Yes, the date of this entry is Thursday, August 20 2014.

Somewhere in the Pacific Ocean, Tonga, Samoa, and parts of New Zealand millions are currently fast asleep.

And it has just turned Friday, August 22nd, 2014 there.

Huzzah!

It means someone in those parts of the world can now (in theory) download a copy of The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark for FREE!

Yay! Let four days of promotion begin!

I am equal parts excited and terrified. Excited because I can now offer the book for free to anyone and I am eager to see how many people will actually take up the offer to have a read of it. I ran a similar promotion about a month ago, though it was only for one day (Kindle only allows you 5 days during a limited time period to run promotions or giveaways) and it was relatively low key, being mostly family and friends who took advantage of the deal. Terrified because of the same reason, to be honest. I have now placed some sense of expectation on myself and on the book.

What if no one downloads it?

What if no one reads it?

What if they hate it?

I imagine these are the sort of usual questions that tend to keep self published writers and authors awake at night with a stomach churning sense of dread.

This time around I've been routinely tweeting about it for the past two weeks, trying to build some form of momentum. I also created a public Facebook Page for the event, inviting everyone in my friends list to it. I suspect for my efforts I may have lost one or two friends on Facebook who upon receiving the invitation probably wondered 'Why am I still friends with this weirdo?' The public event page has thus far proved of some success, with quite a few friends sharing the promotional poster on their walls (and I really cannot thank you enough for that!). 

Tomorrow morning begins the frenetic, frantic and frenzied promotion in earnest, with lots of contacting of people and groups on Twitter and Facebook.

A friend and coworker, David McGowan, who was one of the reasons I made the choice to self publish, jokingly challenged me to get 19,121 downloads over the promotion (the number he achieved on his first promotion). I don't expect to reach those lofty heights. Truth be told if I reach 120 downloads for the weekend I will be happy. David writes fiction novels, which, while a niche readership, is still considerably larger than the readership fan base for fables.

Granted, it is a fable that forms a part of a larger world and mythology and is an element of a wondrous Fantasy Fiction adventure.

But it is still a fable. 

Now, I chose to run the giveaway this weekend for two reasons:

1- It is a Bank Holiday weekend in the United Kingdom, which means people have Monday off and may want to download something for the long weekend (though it is not a terribly long read, but I think it is interesting and well worth the free download).

2- It is the tail end of the 'Feria Internacional del Libro de Panama.'

Yes, you heard the last one right.

You may ask, why would I bother? particularly given that CDDD has been written in English (and is therefore not called La Cigarra y la Profuna, Profunda Oscuridad).

I guess it comes down to a sense of perhaps silly patriotism. 

I just like being both Panamanian and a writer. 

Who knows, maybe someone in Panama reads it and likes it so much they recommend it to friends who then recommend it to friends who then recommend it to friends and it snowballs into a wonderful thing.

And just in case you thought I wasn't going to take this time to yet again insert the poster for the Free Download, think again!

The downside to all of this promoting and tweeting and hooting and hollering about the giveaway is that for the past fortnight I have had virtually no chance to do anything else writing related (I sit here writing this during my lunch break at work. An...extended lunch break). 

Plenty of ideas are swirling around in my head, which is a good thing.

But none are being put down on paper.

This promises to be an interesting weekend.

 

How this all came about

Right, explanation time, I guess.

The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark (CDDD) started in a non-conventional manner.

I mean that because it was not a purposely written story from the start.

I was in the middle of writing a chapter for a fantasy fiction work I’m trying to develop (which direct publishing is kind of sabotaging, but I shall expand on this later) in which a series of events lead to two characters discussing a children’s story due to an obscure line one of them overhears. And yes, this is kind of spoilers for that fantasy story, but I’m not revealing much. At the end of one scene, one character asks the other ‘What was the name of the story?’ I then put myself in the spot. I had to think of a name to a story. Simple, you would think. Except I wasn't happy with just coming up with a name for the story. I needed to actually sit down and create a story which would then make some sort of plot sense, at least to the characters in the story. So I wrote the first draft and passed it on to my editor. Well, by editor I mean Kirsty (my wife), who in all honesty is a very good editor and Master of Arms of the Grammar Police.

It was during the creation of the draft that I started considering making this an independent work. It means not only did it have to make sense to the characters in the story, but the story itself needed to be read as a stand-alone if need be (in case the main FF novel is never written). So more drafts were written and more editing was done by Kirsty. CDDD is a fairly short story and I based it on most of the fables I read as a child.

I also decided at this time that it would be a good story to publish as a self-published body of work, and looked at Kindle Direct Publishing because a colleague at work (David McGowan) has been using KDP for his work. I skimmed over all of the how-to bits on the KDP website and decided to give them a go.

I then thought about illustrating it. I know Colette from work and I was aware of her abilities as an illustrator. I approached her mid-late May about the book and she seemed interested, though this was a first for both of us. I had never had anything published before and she had never done children’s literature before.

If anyone wants to get a cup of tea or coffee, feel free. Still lots more to go.

PART II: I set myself a hard deadline of mid-July to have the book ready, story, artwork, and formatting. I know myself as a person, and committing to doing something in a particular time frame was the best way for me to work (also the most stressful way, but I can be a glutton for punishment sometimes). Colette and I would meet roughly once a week and discuss progress. First it was settling for a particular style of illustrations, and then it was a particular look for the characters and so on. She would do some preliminary sketches and e-mail them to me for comment. Two-three weeks before deadline illustrated pages started to come together with text and the whole book began to take on a different life. It now moved on from an idea or concept to something much more concrete.

While this was going on I was also getting to grips with KDP. I had to register with them, which anyone can do. Before publishing, though, you do need to do a tax check with US authorities. I have been told by others the process was a lot more convoluted than it is now, and involved you having to call the IRS directly to receive exemption if you are a non-US citizen publishing and living outside the US. I just had to fill the form online, thankfully. You spend an awful lot of time filling out forms on KDP before you publish, to be honest, though they are all the forms you need to deal with royalties, form of payment, markets being covered for distribution, download fees you may have to pay to KDP if you chose plan A over plan B, so the whole administrative process takes about a week to sort out. KDP will publish anyone so long as their material is ready, in the correct format (see below) and contains no objectionable material (I leave it to you to read what they define by that).

Deadline weekend came and Colette duly delivered the formatted work. And that’s when it all went pear shaped. And it was my entire fault. The beauty of KDP is the simplicity if offers for the conventional author who wants to write a 5-600 page novel with a simple cover. You write everything up on MS Word, slap the cover on and upload. Kindle re-formats it and allows the reader to change font size (hence why Kindle tells you not to put page numbers on the document being uploaded), brightness, contrast, pixel resolution and other highly technical sounding words. Some of the more tech savvy authors know how to format their work so that it can still contain page numbers. Kindle does allow you to submit in other formats, but it prefers by and large MS Word (at least in my experience with one book, so this might be highly biased). PDF files are a hangman’s noose, as a lot of the formatting is lost or reformatted during the upload process. Mercifully, KDP lets you preview your creation before publishing. 

(Coffee Break!)

PART III: As you may have guessed, my first file was PDF. It looked like it had been chewed by a grammatical cow and it had come out the other end after passing through its five stomachs. I panicked, and contacted Colette, who was en route to going on a mini break, which I almost ruined.

Thankfully, she sent me all the files, and after much prodding, reformatting, screaming at the laptop at home and one or two co-workers in the office, I was happy (or rather I gave up and accepted this was as good as it could get) with the end result and opted to publish.

It was then that my editor decided to tell me that quite a few of the lines were a bit off. This is what happens when you try to do a partial rhyme scheme on a children’s book. This led to another few nights of frantic re-editing, screaming at the laptop some more, ambling like some mad lunatic in the office thinking to myself what rhymes with wing?! WHAT RYHMES WITH WING?! After a long day, new samples were presented to the editor (I have to admit, I like calling Kirsty that) and she was please and dare I say impressed by a line or two. So, it was all uploaded. KDP tells you once you finish it will take about 12-24 hours for your book to appear on the Amazon websites while it does copyright and other related checks on it. CDDD was up about 2-3 hours after upload.

In that respect, I am immensely happy with the achievement.

In another, though, self-publishing CDDD was only the tip of a very, VERY LARGE submerged iceberg. This is the bit of the romanticized, be your own publisher that I am now learning is not as idyllic as it seems. The fantastic thing about having a publisher or a literary agent (and if anyone is interested, I am available to be represented) is that they do an awful lot of the dirty work for you in terms of editing the material (something which now more than ever due to the volume of self-publishing taking place is crucial) promoting your work and getting it to the right audience. Self-publishers have to do that all by their lonesome selves and it can at times feel like a full time job. Since publishing CDDD a little over a month ago I now spend an awful lot more time on Twitter and Facebook promoting the book. You then run into the minefield of issues that I am now discovering plague all self-pub authors:

Who should I promote my eBook through?

How do I approach people?

Will I come across as too pushy?

All in all it becomes a daunting task that requires a high degree of attention and organization skills (I don't really think I have that particular unique set of skills).

I think a good story will always shine through and gain readers, but sometimes it helps to have the word spread out, and I think conventional publishers and literary agents still have a big sway in this regard.

Mind you, I am ultimately happy that the book was written; that the story was told and that it was illustrated to such a magnificent standard. Because it means a story that started as a little spark inside my head attempting to make a larger story flow gained a life of its own and is now out there to be read. 

Time to Promote a bit of Free Reading!

One of the complexities of self publishing is having to wear as many hats as is allowed before you compact several vertebrae in your neck from the burden. You are not only writer, you are also marketer, blogger, editor, printer, tea lady, and hair-cuttings sweeper. These are the sort of things (well, perhaps minus the hair-cuttings sweeper, lest you have a truly outstanding literary agent) that more conventional writers have tended to to a much greater degree by their publishers or literary agents.

So kudos to those who practice those dark arts. You, kind ladies and gentlemen, do an awful lot for your clients!

However, in the absence of said agents of help, I am tasked with rather happily (well, 50/50 elated and absolutely terrified beyond belief) announcing that this weekend, The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark will be available as a free download, free download, free download (yes, say things 3 times for better memory retention) via all amazon websites. The hyperlink on the title will take you to the amazon.co.uk site only, but feel free to look for it in your local amazon.

And for further reminding, here's a handy dandy poster! :-)

We begin in the beginning...sort of.

Welcome!

Let me start by introducing myself. My name is Mario, and for lack of a better description of what I do, I like to write. I wouldn't call myself an author yet, mind you. I hold a strange traditionalist view that until something I write (not counting letters to magazines) is actually printed on paper, I haven't earned my spurs. This is, of course, a completely personal view of the matter, and it takes nothing away from being a self published eAuthor.

But I still like the feel of paper in my hands. I'm just old fashioned that way.

Anyways, I am rambling a little, so my apologies. I am not new to blogging as a form of communication, and it seems to be a defining characteristic of my blogging, this meandering at times.

If you are here, then you are, of course interested to some degree in what I have written, which at the moment is only The Cicada and the Deep, Deep Dark (beautifully illustrated by Colette Lilley) or possibly what I will write sometime in the future.

I hope that you will enjoy my musings (and probably an awful lot of ranting).

Mario.

P.S. No se sorprendan si en este blog encuentren partes escritas en Español. ;-)