I already don’t like that strained analogy of a title, but we’re going with it unless I can think of something better. The writing part of my brain pretty reliably ebbs and flows between two points. Sometimes, all I can think about is the story in front of me and how I can bring it to fruition. Other times, all I can think of is all the stories except the one immediately in front of me.
I’ve been pretty heads-down on part 2 of The Herb Witch Tales the last few weeks, but recently, my mindset and thought process has started to shift. This is a natural phase for me, but it’s helped me come to a bigger realization about my writing. I need to focus more on the stories themselves. Continue reading “Seeing the Story Trees for the World-Building Forest”→
Two weeks ago, I suggested in my wrap-up post for 2020 marketing goals that I hadn’t yet reached my goal for sales/giveaways of my books in 2020. I just wanted to run one giveaway through KDP Select to close out the year.
Well, I mentioned in last week’s post that I wanted to make a final push on selling/giving away copies of my novel, The Warden of Everfeld: Memento.
My fantasy novel is now available for free on Kindle until midnight on December 20 PT. This is 200,000+ words of engaging characters, adventure, world building, and that touch of magical realism that I think we all could use to close out 2020.
Want to read a full synopsis or some character bios for Aston and Jaed? Check out my summary page for The Warden of Everfeld: Mementohere.
Tell your friends, tell your family, “buy” my book as a gift, or just because we all need to pad our TBR lists.
Behind the Scenes
I decided to enroll my novel in KDP Select, which means I can run a 5-day giveaway. (I will definitely be sharing the results of this giveaway after the fact.) This is my first time running a giveaway promotion like this, so I’m really excited and maybe a little bit nervous.
My goal from earlier in the year for total book sales/giveaways for 2020 was 30. I have sold just 1 copy so far, so I basically need this giveaway to carry my goal for the entire year 😀 No pressure.
Side note: today we hit 700 followers on this blog. Completely unrelated to my giveaway, but still awesome. Thanks guys.
Well, it’s not quite the end of 2020, but I’m ready to put a pin in my marketing goals for this year. The main reason: marketing did not go well for me. I can likely point to a number of reasons that this is the case, but the primary one is that I was likely too ambitious to start the year, and even a little too ambitious with my adjusted goals at the mid-year point.
One key thing I’ve learned this year is to aim high in my goals while still being more pragmatic about which ones are really attainable. Let’s dig in. Continue reading “2020 Marketing Goals Wrap-Up”→
It’s been a long time since I’ve written about actual marketing strategies, so I wanted to find a topic I could cover in greater depth over the next several months:
Promoting a New Book Release!
This topic is relevant to my own publishing efforts, since I’m writing and aiming to publish a two-part novella later this year. I’ll start off with a summary of different book promotion strategies, and then deep-dive into each topic in later posts.
As I write “Survivor”, my not-officially-titled duology, I keep thinking about how I might be able to organize my world-building canon better.
Most of what I’ve written in my fantasy universe has been in The Warden of Everfeld stories, of which I have one novel published and one in draft. “Survivor” is the first story that does not overlap WoEM, but shares some of its history and geography with those novels. And I want to make sure that what I write in one doesn’t contradict the other.
This morning I finally gave my presentation to a class of high school creative writing students. Honestly, I think I was as engaged with the discussion as they were, which was an amazing feeling.
This one was a sub-headline, but I still have issues with it.
Want to learn how to write good headlines? Check this out. Perhaps it’s time to write a post about creating good sub-headlines…
What this sub-headline does right:
Tells us the author’s purpose for writing the book… I guess?
What this sub-headline does wrong:
Takes a cliche expression and makes it blander.
Doesn’t actually tell us anything about the book.
History repeats itself, if we ignore history we are doomed to repeat it, etc. This sub-headline is essentially those cliche phrases except worded more poorly.
We can glean from this snippet (and the headline if you saw it), that this is for a historical novel. What type of history? That’s a mystery! (Not even the headline made that clear.) Maybe this book is really a detective caper where we have to guess which historical event it’s actually talking about, giving us clues along the way, but then there’s a big twist at the end!
The sub-headline of a press release is supposed to provide those little extra details that are just too wordy for a short snappy headline.
Here’s the how Google populates the press release I sent announcing that WoEM had been published. See that smaller text beneath the main headline? That’s officially called the meta description, but for a press release, that’s where the sub-headline would populate.
My sub-headline isn’t perfect, but it provides at least a little extra information. Notice how Google truncates it after about 150 characters? That makes it even more important that you front-load that summary with information that potential readers can act on.
What could be done differently:
Just rewrite the whole thing. Replace it with a description of the book, perhaps an actual piece of advice that could be taken from this mysterious history lesson. Or maybe tell us When and Where the book could be purchased.
As it currently reads, this sub-headline is effectively wasted space.
With all of the narrative shifts, outlining, and pondering I’ve done about The Warden of Everfeld: Legacy and related stories recently, I wanted to revive my world-building series.
And boy was I shocked to find that I haven’t written an Exploring Úr’Dan post in over a year! Here’s a refresher for all of us (myself included) of the fantastical ground we’ve covered previously:
Evening Satellite Publishing 