it's February, let's get this show on the road

I'm impatient to get an audience because, well, I've written a lot of stuff, and I just think people should be reading it. The people are out there, I'm sure. I'm not sure if what I write is good enough to merit a big wide audience like the best of writers have. But I know that if I could make them aware of me, I'd have more readers than I do now.

In some ways I feel like my time is running out. I have a lot to write, still, yet marketing the way I do is time-consuming and life has its demands. It's frustrating to feel like I could be doing better especially if I paid a pro, but I really really don't want to pay a pro, don't want to spend more money on it than I have. I've become indie to the core. I've learned cover design (still a ways to go there) and gotten better at proofreading my own (harder than proofreading anyone else's). I've figured out how to maximize my time so I can get a few readers here and there, and keep lowering my ratings (they are much better now than they used to be, though, from the outside you could look at them and say, this guy has a ways to go). Some people are reading some of my work. It's rough though. And slow. I am so glad i'm not relying on this to make a living.

I am thinking of a Little Free Library program. It means, roughly, organizing my extra books (those whose covers have changed, and which I no longer sell) so that they all end up in Little Free Libraries. This is a bottom-up kind of approach. Get the paperbacks in the hands of people who might read them. I have no faith in the brick-and-mortar libraries, though I think that in the big picture they might work too. It's small-town America where people are dying for something to read to get them out of the boredom, the stifling nature of cultural expectations. Starting right here in western Illinois, I'll put my books out and see if it works.

season's greetings

Annual report

As I look back over the last year, one thing that bothers me is that I didn't quite fulfill what I wanted with this blog: to make a post, or more, about the fantastic indie authors I have run across. It wouldn't be hard to list maybe ten that made such an impression on me that it has lasted even until today. And these were for the most part books I never would have even found if I wasn't out there looking to market my own.

Another thing I can definitely say is that I have reached a point of diminishing returns with read-marketing, namely prowling on the six or more sites that I use, to find someone who will read my book in return for me reading another. I enjoy the reading; yes, I enjoy it immensely. But there are increasingly fewer books over time that I haven't already read, and this means a lot of prowling and not enough action. The sites (six or so, as I've said, though there are more and may be some good ones that I don't know about) are well-managed these days. People have figured out how to do it. There is a fairly tight group of authors who have read most of each other's work and are always willing to read something that hasn't been read. But the list of things that I've read is so extensive, I have to wait a week for an opening, and when I get it, some other author pounces on it in a flash - they are in the same straits I am in.

The answer is in pulling in lots of fresh blood. If the authors out there all knew about these sites there would be a lot more of them. I may do some pulling-in myself. It would be in my own self interest.

If the read-marketing logjams are stifling then it's a clear sign I should get back to my writing - I know I have plenty on my plate and plenty to do. The problem there is that so much of my life I'm in "distractable" mode - that is, I can be called away any minute, and am, so I hate it when I've gotten all absorbed in writing and then can't play it out. I save writing for those few times when I can get thinking about something and stay thinking about it, like when people are gone from my house leaving me alone. There are a few of those, but not enough. And late night is the best, but by then I'm exhausted and not good for much besides reading.

Starting this blog was a way of saying that yes, I'm totally immersed in this world these days. I will come out with a "Best of Indie" post soon - it's important to me to at least pass along the most interesting of things that are being written.

A look back, eleven years or so

In 2011 I published A Dozen Crime Stories from a well-known, big-box, discount retail chain, putting it on Amazon, and I was disappointed at the resounding silence I got as a reception. I really had no clue about marketing back then, and was unwilling to spend money advertising, so I began to refer to publishing as "dropping it into the Amazon sea" as it was just a drop in the ocean as far as Amazon was concerned. There are what, thousands of books that are published every day?

I wanted to be careful that I didn't step on anyone's toes, so in a way I was glad that it didn't get instant fame. But in a way I was disappointed too, because it was a good book and I wanted people to read it. I got the local bookstore in Lubbock to sell one on consignment, but someone stole it when they put it out on the shelf. Well, that was confirmation that it was a good concept and a good idea, but I knew that it was totally underperforming in the world of books.

Nowadays I have a group of people who like reading each other's work, and it has proven to be popular. It's a good book to introduce the rest of my stories, because its stories are all well-written and complete. The idea to base it around a certain popular store was a good one. In general it does better than most of my books, at least on Kindle, and I like giving it away knowing that when people read it, they'll respond well to it.

Through that book, I almost went into the crime-story genre. In general most crime stories have much more in the way of wanton ridiculous violence, bloodshed, the kind of story we're all attracted to when we open the news. I don't really like appealing to people's macabre curiosity and desire to learn about these crimes all the time, but on the other hand blood and guns and explosives are just like the stock and trade of these stories anyway and I'm sure to some degree you get used to them and then just enjoy a good short story, which as someone once said, always has an unexpected, but absolutely inevitable, end - it surprises you, but you realize that it had to end that way. You get used to it after you've read a few hundred or thousand I suppose.

Now, with a kind of writer's block impeding my more serious work, I turn to writing other stories just for a little experimental fun. Crime? Yes. Small-town America? Yes. I'm totally immersed in both. I might as well go with it. It reminds me of good old times.

Crime Stories, by the way, turns out to be very popular in the UK, where at the moment it is #104 in US short stories. I would have never known that if I didn't get out and show it to a bunch of social media authors, many of whom are from there, and many of whom read it and liked it. I guess they don't have Wal-Marts in the UK, but because they have a keen eye for a kind of gentle satire on American culture, they have given it a pretty good reception. I still wish I could get it in front of a much wider audience. But it's now over eleven years old, and it might be easier just to crank out a few more. Go into a life of crime, er, stories, as it were. It's always possible.

Hark, indie authors!

This post is intended for those young authors who grew up in an era when English teachers did not teach this kind of thing. As surprised as I am that they just don't know, I thought I'd take the time to explain a couple things, just two, that really irritate me when I'm reading. I'm just a typical reader in some ways. But in this way, if you don't know this, you should. You should know how it's making my blood temperature rise.

First, don't change your time strategy mid-stream. That is, you can tell a story in present (I wake up, I look out the window, I see snow) or tell a story in past (I woke up, I looked out the window, and I saw snow), but don't tell your story in both. How did it happen that people don't know this? I have my own explanation. It became clear over the last twenty years or so that both are acceptable; in fact, you can have the same result with either - a good story. Present is more immediate, more dramatic, more in-our-face. But it's a perfectly good way to tell a story. The problem is when you switch back and forth. We can't handle that. We are still paying attention to the time. EIther it happened, or it's still immediate. But not both!

Second, if your parents have a house, it is your parents' house. That's because they own it together. It is very unlikely that you can write about your parent's house, because if you have only one, it's more likely to be your mother's house or your father's house. Possible, but unlikely. What happened to putting the possessive apostrophe on a plural? People just don't do it anymore. They didn't learn it. But they should.

We readers are tasked with figuring this stuff out, getting meaning from it. Telling us you have two parents and then that one of them has a house buy you're not willing to tell us which one, or you're willing to let us guess that apostrophes are totally random in this book and just don't matter - sorry. that's like hitting me in the face. You're a writer. Get this stuff together. If you have any questions, just ask. I hate sitting around getting mad at you.

100 percent indie

I've started using the tag #100percentindie on twitter, because I am. I don't pay anyone to do anything for me. The hardest two things are covers and proofreading. I thought proofreading would be easy, since I'd done it for years for other people. No, proofreading my own work is incredibly difficult.

Just plain marketing is a problem too. There's a steep learning curve. I'm finally in the position where I can get a few Amazon ads, but I haven't done it; the whole thing intimidates me. I did try it once, and learned a lot, but really I should keep at it to get better at it and to really see it have results. I've never made a sale from an Amazon ad; maybe I can change that.

An interesting experiment would be to target a certain market with an Amazon ad, say amazon.co.ne, or perhaps es or it. By certain market I mean those who would buy something in English, but through that Amazon. I would probably do ok in the UK, Australia or Canada too. But I'd have to understand Amazon ads well before I started.

I find authors with all kinds of strategies. Generally, if you get yourself out there, you find results; if you do nothing, you get nothing. I worry sometimes that in the big picture, what I've done hasn't amounted to much. This is true, but I had to start somewhere. I've got more now than I had before I started.

Twenty seven books, an Amazon page, a few good ratings, and something to do during retirement.