Category Archives: Self-publishing

Acorn Squash Soup

10 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by in Food, Recipes, Self-publishing, Soup

≈ 6 Comments

acorn squash soup

Acorn Squash Soup

I have wandered around the country hand-selling Instant Pots to people by cooking for them, but I never remember to tell them to use my affiliate link, drat it. I’m so bad at trying to make money from my blog. I did make $12 in August somehow, though. I think it was from people clicking the link to 36 Questionsand then buying other things. I say that because the affiliate link fee for a .99 ebook is .04, and I didn’t sell anywhere near 300 copies of 36 Questions, from links or otherwise.

Let’s see… yeah, total copies sold, 92. So that’s not how I earned my $12. Hmm, I’m not sure I should have looked that up, because it makes me a little sad. Zero copies sold this month. I’m guess I’m not surprised, really. I wouldn’t buy it now, either — a bunch of reviews that say it’s too short doesn’t exactly constitute the kind of social proof that sells. But hey, $12 is $12, so I should not complain. And this is not a soup recipe, so let me get back to what I meant to write…

I’ve owned two Instant Pots. I’m using affiliate links so if you use them to buy, I’ll get 4% of the purchase price. Feel free to not use them, of course, but if you do decide to buy an Instant Pot from Amazon, please consider at least using AmazonSmile so that a tiny percentage of your purchase price — .5% — will go to a charity of your choice. And yes, a blog gets $4 out of a basic $100 purchase, a charity gets .50. Not exactly fair. Hmm, this blog post keeps getting off-track. Back to the point!

Anyway, the first one IP I owned was the 6Qt and I was perfectly happy with it, except that it was impossible to store in the van. It didn’t fit anywhere. In August, I traded it to my friend P for a Instant Pot Mini 3Qtwhich is less usable for some purposes, but fits in one of the overhead storage cupboards. If I lived in a real house and I cooked for other people, I would definitely want the bigger one, but the small one works fine for my purposes.

And yesterday’s purpose was squash soup! I debated buying pre-chopped squash at the store and if you’re not on a budget, you can save time by doing so. But it averaged out to be about twice as much, so I saved my $3 and bought a whole squash. I cut it in half, and pre-cooked it in the IP on high pressure for 12-15 minutes with a cup of water. (Because I have the small IP, I had to cook the two halves separately — I did the first one on 15 minutes and it was falling apart, so I did the second one on 12. I bet I could have gotten away with 10 for both of them — basically, this is just pre-cooking it enough to make it easy to scoop the meat out of the skin.)

I poured the water from the IP into a cup to save it for the soup, then turned the IP onto sauté, added a little olive oil and half a white onion, chopped. When the onion was lightly browned, I added about a tsp each of turmeric, cinnamon, and ginger, plus half a tsp of paprika, to the onions and swirled it around briskly. This is called blooming the spices and it goes terribly wrong if they burn, so you might need to add some more oil first or a little of the reserved water. I didn’t add oil, but did add some water when they looked dry. I gave them a minute, then scraped the squash out of its skin into the IP, added a chopped apple (not peeled), and the reserved water, plus a cup of chicken broth, then closed the pot. I think I set it to 12 minutes on high pressure.

I then had a lovely conversation with my son, so when the IP dinged, I ignored it and let it go to its Keep Warm function. One of the great things about the IP is that you really don’t have to pay attention to it. None of the water is escaping, so your food is not going to burn or dry out. You can let it stand for hours and when you finally look at it, it’ll be warm and still tasty. But eventually, I got off the phone and opened the IP. I would usually add coconut milk, but I bought some sour cream a while ago and have been trying to use it up, so instead I added about a cup of sour cream. I squeezed in some honey, probably equivalent to a couple of tablespoons, and then sprinkled the top with salt. And then I used the immersion blender until it was a level of creaminess that I liked. If it had been too thick, I would have added more sour cream or maybe some more chicken broth. If it had been too thin, I would have been sad and probably added some stuff to it, i.e. leftover rice or quinoa.

I then sprinkled some parsley on the top so it would look pretty when I took a picture, but honestly, the parsley was my least favorite part. It was too bitter to go well with the sweet creaminess of the soup. Cilantro might have worked and mint or rosemary might have been nice, but a little swirl of greek yogurt and a sprinkle of cinnamon would have been terrific. Short version, don’t do the parsley, it’s not a net good.

So, could I make this soup without the IP? Sure. I could roast the squash in the oven, cook the soup on the stove. It would take forever — the oven roasting would probably be an hour at least, and I’d have to wait for the squash to cool before I could scrape it into the soup pot. I’d have to pay careful attention to the soup while it was on the stove so that it stayed at a low simmer and never boiled. And the van would get crazily hot from the heat of the oven and the stove. It would be a project. With the IP, soup’s not a project — it’s the kind of thing you can cook after a long day of driving, when you’re feeling lazy and tired.

36 Questions

24 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by in Self-publishing, Short Stories, Writing

≈ 6 Comments

I wrote this story back in February when I was trying to do something (anything!) to break my writer’s block on Grace and find my writing motivation again. I liked it enough to post it in the Scribbles section of my website and I think maybe a couple people read it. A few days ago, I sent it to a reader who’d written me a lovely email. She wrote back another lovely email.

As is probably obvious, my perfectionism has been seriously getting in the way of my writing these days. When I first published Ghosts, I was totally relaxed about it. I knew no one would read it, except for my fellow fanfiction writers and readers and maybe a few friends and family. How would anyone find it, after all? In an ocean of books — literally millions of them — Ghosts would be an invisible pebble, dropped into the sea.

That is not exactly what happened.

Which is good news, of course. Great news! Every writer’s dream.

But I’m an editor at heart.

Over the past three years, my perfectionism and my creativity have been at war, with my perfectionism always managing to kick my creativity in the teeth and stomp on her face on the way to triumphant (unproductive) victory.

Until today.

36 Questions is not a perfect story. In particular, there’s one sentence (it includes the phrase “reading was good”) that makes the editor in me go pale and feel faint with dismay.

I don’t care.

My friend Tim said, “This is perfectly and wholly charming and human. I love it!”

My friend Lynda said, “Holy crap…that was a fun little story!! I mean, seriously fun. My cheeks hurt from smiling while reading it. You can quote me on that. ;)”

The reader who wrote me a lovely letter said, “I just finished Thirty-Six Questions with a smile on my face. What a feel good story! I’d love to know how they answer the rest of their questions!”

Another reader who’d had trouble with my mailing list story this week (and who I sent this one to) said, “Enjoyed this short story as well! Truly inspirational romance – I love it!”

It hasn’t been professionally edited (by anyone but me); I designed the cover myself; and I did the production, too, of course. So yeah, I’m breaking all the rules of modern self-publishing. But I think it’s a nice little story. It may or may not be worth .99, depending on the value of ninety-nine cents to you, but I put it in KDP so I’ll have a chance to make it free for a few days later this month.

And meanwhile my creative self is sticking out her tongue, thumbs in her ears, saying “nyah, nyah,” to my editor self. Let’s hope she can keep up the attitude long enough to finish writing Grace and get it published, too.

PS That image up top is a link to Amazon, but here’s another one: 36 Questions

Gift horses

06 Saturday May 2017

Posted by in Food, Randomness, Self-publishing

≈ 7 Comments

Babelcube sent me $64.63 today.

I blinked at the email in surprise for a few seconds, then said, out loud, “Seriously?” Zelda put her paw on my knee and stared earnestly into my eyes, informing me that I should really not be reading my email before walking her, so I didn’t bother to look up the circumstances until later, after walking and breakfast. My walk thoughts, though, concluded that it was likely to be a mistake.

But nope, turns out the German copy of A Gift of Ghosts actually sold a few hundred copies in January and February on Tolino. I’m delighted — really more for the translator than for me, because yay, she’s finally earned some money for her hard work. Not much money, obviously, but I hope it came as a nice surprise to her, too.

I promptly spent almost my entire $64. My first purchase was two nut milk bags. My homemade yogurt tasted pretty good, but it was too thin. The internet informed me that if I want thicker yogurt, I’ll need to drain it, and offered lots of options for how to do so. I went with the nut milk bags as feasible, low-effort, and requiring minimal storage space. For obvious reasons, items that can be rolled up and tucked into corners make a lot more sense for quixotic cooking projects than mesh strainers or boxes of industrial-sized coffee filters.

Next up, AmazonBasics 4-Piece Packing Cube Set. I met a fellow Travato owner last week and her above-the-cab storage was so much more organized than my own chaos. It’s not space that I find very useful — I’ve got clothes, linens, jackets, towels, a yoga mat, window covers, and hand weights all stuffed in there, more or less haphazardly. She was using it for the same type of stuff but with packing cubes, which seemed so much more efficient. Her packing cubes are nice ones, but I decided to go with cheap ones instead. Fingers crossed that they last more than ten minutes.

Then I spent $38 on books, all by Lois McMaster Bujold. Huge mistake, most likely, because obviously, I am now going to want to read all weekend, but I’ve been slowly but steadily re-purchasing the books that I regretted leaving behind. I used to have everything of hers in hardcover and when I cleaned out my storage unit in April, I didn’t even look in the box that I was taking to goodwill. I knew once I saw them, I’d want to keep them. But Paladin of Soulswas only $4.99! And once I started… well, my two favorite Miles bookswere in a boxed set for only $8.99, and the books I was missing from the Wide Green World serieswere only $6.99 each and The Curse of Chalionwas only $2.99 and… yes, my resistance was low.

It feels delightfully improvident of me to treat a windfall as an opportunity to splurge. But it was really fun. If it had been just a slightly nicer windfall, I’d have a new shower headand/or a rather cool hanging organizeror maybe one of the interesting cookbookson my wishlist. Maybe next time!

Last night, it was so windy that the van felt like a boat, rocking from side to side. It was fun in a worrying sort of way. My neighbors, who are in a pop-out trailer, had a much more anxious night than I did, though.

ocean view at sunrise

Looking west at sunrise.

But I’m loving the weather. It’s only going to last for another day, but I baked cornbread (gluten-free) this morning to take advantage of it being cool enough to use my oven. I’m going to make a bay scallop chowder with coconut milk and ginger to go with it for lunch. In fact, I think I’ll go do that right now. And then I’m NOT going to reread favorite books, but am going to work on Grace. Well, at least for a little while.

(All those links are affiliate links, so if you buy something from one of them, I’ll get some percentage of sales. So far I’ve earned .20 from my affiliate linking, so thank you so much to whoever bought… well, probably a book! I appreciate the contribution. 🙂 )

Five-year plans

05 Monday Dec 2016

Posted by in Personal, Self-publishing

≈ 6 Comments

Almost five years ago, I was trying to decide if I should post A Gift of Ghosts to Amazon. I never really considered doing anything else with it: it was post to Amazon or let go, not start hunting for agents or rewriting or anything like that. I was well aware of the many things wrong with it, from an opening where she looks in a mirror to its lack of a real plot. But I liked it. I thought of it as not so much a novel as a puzzle box, something you keep opening (reading) to find out what’s farther in. My dad called it an “entertaining onion,” which I love as a description. And I’d let a few other people read it and they’d mostly liked it, too.

When I finally did decide to post it, I’d come up with a five-year plan: I’d write a million words, aiming for ten novels, and if I was earning $1000 per month at the end of the five years, I’d consider whether I wanted to take writing seriously. I also planned to finish graduate school, get my master’s degree in counseling, and find a job for my internship hours. Right about now, I ought to be about ready to open up my private practice, being duly licensed and all that.

Ha.

Life is weird.

That five-year plan was my very first five-year plan. I’m not someone who started college with an idea of what I wanted to be doing and my career–which worked out really well for me, actually–never came with associated goals. I didn’t flounder, but I always knew what I was doing made sense for the day I was in. Even when I hated my job, and there were times when I did, I was very clear with myself about why I was doing it. But it was never with an idea of where I wanted to be in five years or what my goals were. My goals were to do good work, be a good mom, and end the month within budget so I could take my kid out for Chinese food or maybe sushi now and then.

So here I am, having completely failed to accomplish my five-year plan. No million words, nowhere close. No ten novels. No degree. No license.

On the other hand, wow. The past five years have brought me so much. Some amazing friends — it’s hard to believe I hadn’t even met some of the people who make my life so much richer now. Some intensive self-discovery and growth. Some radical changes in diet and health — I couldn’t have imagined, ever, how much better I would be feeling physically. That it was even possible to feel so much better physically! If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t tell myself to write more and faster, but to get rid of gluten sooner. And, of course, adventures and travel and a stray dog and… joy. Lots of joy.

I sort of want to create a new five-year plan, not so much because I think I’ll accomplish it, but because this moment of looking back, of reflecting on what I aspired to and what I accomplished, is maybe what five-year plans should really be all about. I didn’t achieve what I hoped to achieve. In that sense, my five-year plan is obviously a big fail. But I am so filled with gratitude for what I found instead. My past five years were hard and painful and frustrating and challenging and so, so, so rewarding. For my next five… well, I’d really like to skip some of the pain. Maybe a lot of the pain, in fact. But for the rest… I guess I’ll be thinking about that.

But first, it’s back to Grace!

website fail

10 Monday Oct 2016

Posted by in Boring, Self-publishing

≈ 3 Comments

I’m feeling very gloomy about the state of my website today. Dreamhost told me I needed to update PHP, but when I did, my sites wouldn’t come back. I tried to restore them and the restorations failed and they sent me the most obnoxious email in response. This line in particular…

“Howevvvvver… we actually make no
guarantees about availability of backups, and highly recommend you
always keep your own copies of all important data.  Please follow the
link below for instructions with this:”

The link below sends you to instructions for backing up your data which is kind of irrelevant if your data is already gone. Rude, don’t you think? I’m going to be leaving them as a provider just for that line. The last thing I need when my sites are failing to restore is my provider being an asshole.

Fortunately, I had backed up my data: complete XML files for both sites. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out at all how to turn those backups back into my sites. Their help system was useless, they don’t respond to emails, and their customer support system kept sending automated replies to my emails explaining why they weren’t able to help me. Goodbye, Dreamhost.

My friend Lynda told me to make a wordpress site, upload my data, and redirect the Dreamhost sites to the wordpress site until I can find a better long-term solution, so that is what I’ve done. But for whatever reason, WordPress is choking on my site. Trying to get the post window open took forever and every minute, I get an error message that “Saving the draft failed.” Such a pain!

Not to mention that the menus on the site are screwed up for some reason and I can’t figure out how to do a mailing list sign up without having it be a pop-up which I seriously, seriously don’t want. I loathe those pop-ups, I do NOT want one on my site. They’re so damn rude! And that purple color in the header? Um, no. Just no, no, no.

Fortunately, I am at my dad’s house in Mount Dora, so I have internet. Unfortunately (that’s seeming like the theme of this blog post — the fortunate, unfortunate thing), this isn’t remotely what I want to write about, think about, or do. *sigh* I have so many more interesting things to write about and so many better things to do! But for the moment, this is what we’ve got. I’m going to try to post, so that I can see whether it’s working at all,  and then I’m going to go back to messing around with the behind the scenes details. And I hope — fervently! — that my next post is going to be far more fun and back to focusing on travels and writing, not website design.

Self-publishing

09 Thursday Jun 2016

Posted by in Randomness, Self-publishing

≈ 8 Comments

I’ve been a pretty terrible independent publisher of late. Despite my firm belief when I started in self-publishing that I shouldn’t do anything marketing-wise until I had ten books available (a goal that I thought I would reach much, much earlier than I actually will), 2014 and 2015 felt like years where I really tried hard on the “business” of publishing.

For A Lonely Magic, I spent months editing and rewriting, hired a professional editor, joined a NetGalley co-op, gave up away a multitude of pre-release copies in hopes of early reviews, worked to set-up pre-release marketing, had an ad budget and an intern developing a list of sites to advertise on, even did some video stuff with her. Oh, and spent six weeks or so working on an audio version. It was all discouragingly pointless.

In 2015, I tried the anthology experience. A lot of that was quite fun, because the people I was working with were great, but it meant time spent on Facebook parties and dollars spent on giveaways and more. We did ad campaigns and blog tours, twitter blasts and keyword loading, the whole thing. It was the full complement of the modern publisher’s toolkit of sales and marketing tools. It wasn’t pointless, but the real goal was to reach the bestseller lists in order to have that label in our bios, and we didn’t succeed in that goal. The second anthology I participated in was even more work for me, but in the end, I opted out before we went to press. (Long story, I’ll spare you the details.)

I also dabbled with conferences, attending two in the fall, one of those as a speaker. They were great. I had a really good time at both, learned a lot, had fun. I don’t think they did anything at all for my book sales, but I didn’t go into them with that in mind. Still, the conference route — including buying booth space and sitting at a table selling books — is one that some people seem to succeed with. I could still give it a try, and it might possibly work out better with my future life than it does with my current life. (My current restriction, is, of course, the two dogs that I live with. Going away from them regularly is not really an option.)

But I entered 2016 seriously considering what my future was as an indie publisher. I’ve not done the things I intended to do. I haven’t even updated my business site — my blog post was stuck on lessons learned from 2014 throughout the entire year of 2015, before I finally hid the blog. Now it’s just blank. How’s that for a professional business? I don’t even have all my books listed there! Bad me.

On the other hand, maybe that’s sort of the point of independent publishing? I certainly knew it was back when I started. I didn’t intend to take it seriously. I didn’t intend to be all gung-ho and professional about it. I loved the idea that I could write my stories, post them on Amazon, maybe make some coffee money from them and maybe make some friends. Maybe the point at which I decided to take it seriously was the point at which it stopped being fun? And, more importantly, the point where I stopped liking my writing?

I’m not sure what this means for my future. Obviously, it doesn’t mean anything about Grace. I’m going to finish (I’ve got an ending! Woo-hoo!) and I’m going to post it on Amazon and probably even send an email out to my mailing list. And I’m absolutely going to write A Precarious Balance. I can’t wait to get started — Fen is so much fun and the things I already know about her story give me a great glow inside. And then there’s the Heather story that I mapped out a few months ago, with Noah’s brother… that’s pretty fun, too. So, hmm, maybe I’m going to continue to write because I like writing, but maybe I’m also going to stop beating myself up about being a terrible indie publisher.

The reason this all came up was because I was posting new versions of the books to Amazon — long story, but I lost my mobi files, needed to download them again, realized I had new files — and saw this button, View Service, under KDP Pricing Support. Turns out, Amazon thought I should increase the prices on my stories and on A Gift of Thought, so I did. I have no idea what that’s going to do for sales or dollars, but the seeming immediate short-term result was that sales of the box set jumped (from 1 to 3, we are not talking meaningful numbers.) So I went back to the View Service button and looked at what Amazon thought I should do to that price. It turns out that Amazon thinks I should sell the books for $4.99 and the short stories for $2.99 but it thinks I should sell the box set for $3.99.

Um… no? At first I was sort of dismayed, really — frustrated by how much the whole business seems like a magical, illogical, black box — and then it made me laugh. Publishing *is* a magical, illogical black box and probably the best way to enjoy it is to treat it like that. Some hand-waving, some mumbo-jumbo, but in the end, the books will do what they do. And I’m going to continue writing them and maybe muddle around with my business site a little bit in the near future — really, it wouldn’t hurt to post all of my books there! — but continue with 2016’s plan of not paying much attention to the business of publishing and just write. I don’t know that it’s working in terms of financial success and glory, but when it comes to quality of life, it’s pretty damn great.

A Lonely Magic Cover

27 Friday Nov 2015

Posted by in A Lonely Magic, Cover design, Grace, NaNo, Self-publishing

≈ 2 Comments

Several days ago, I mentioned that I had — impulsively — commissioned a fifth cover for A Lonely Magic. Yes, insane impulse, I know. How many covers does one book really need? The short answer is five, because I am so absolutely pleased with this cover that I can’t imagine ever looking at it and not feeling a thrill of satisfaction.

ALM-JCaleb-FinalCover

Jake at jcalebdesign is phenomenal. He took the info I gave him and got creative, and then he took my absolute nitpicking insanity and managed five or six more rounds of design, changing and tweaking and never telling me that I was a pain and always trying to deliver what I was looking for. I am so pleased that at Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, I actually picked this cover as the thing I was thankful for — well, and then added my delightful son and darling dogs and lovely family and terrific guests. I’m not a total ingrate about all the blessings in my life. I’m just counting this cover as one of them right now, because it makes me happy to finally have my feelings about this book captured in an image.

And now I have to go reformat A Lonely Magic for print, because I want a paper copy of it with this cover.

Sometime today I’m also going to be trying to write like mad to catch up for my two NaNo days devoted to Thanksgiving dinner instead of word count, but I’m also feeling this great impatience to be done with Grace and Noah. I really, really want to get back to writing A Precarious Balance right now!

Motivation

22 Sunday Nov 2015

Posted by in A Lonely Magic, Cover design, Food, Writing

≈ 4 Comments

Sometimes it’s so hard to open up the file and start typing. I wish I knew why. I read The War of Art recently, subtitled “Break Through the Blocks and Win Your Creative Battles” and about all I can remember from it is a sort of religious idea of creativity, with Resistance being the devil’s handiwork. More or less. Really, probably less, I’m totally reading into it. But I remember nothing that tells me why I experience such resistance or what to do about it. Except, of course, to just open the damn file and start typing.

A few weeks ago I was on reddit and a cover designer posted a $30 cover offer for NaNo. On a total impulse, I took him up on it. For, of all things, A Lonely Magic. This will be the… fifth cover. I had to count on my fingers. Ugh. I should stop blaming the cover for the book’s lack of success — I worked in the business long enough to know that some books just don’t sell. Wrong time, wrong book, wrong opening, wrong blurb — it’s impossible to know why. It’s just the nature of the business.

But my Law of Attraction friend told me that I needed to be positive about the cover, to send out vibes into the universe that said “sparkling and magical” and to have faith that the cover would be, finally, the cover of my dreams. It would help, I suppose, if I knew what my dreams were. Anyway, I got a first design yesterday, and then a second pass at that design in the evening, and I’m actually rather impatiently waiting for the third pass. It’s different. I have no idea whether it will sell any books. But I’m definitely pleased with my $30 investment. (I’ll post it, obviously, when I get a final version.)

And now I should stop letting my Resistance run away with me. Yesterday I didn’t write a single word on Grace and today I need to do better. As well as doing all those chores I didn’t get to yesterday, including getting ready for Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, four days in advance! But I like to make it easy on myself by having almost everything prepped in advance. Last year, there were nine of us, and by the time people arrived, I had the kitchen close to clean, and by seven PM, it was back to normal. I aspire to do the same this year, with ten people, which means planning. But this year it ought to be really easy — I’ve got people bringing stuffing, mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, rolls, and two kinds of dessert. I’m on turkey, cranberry sauce, and gravy, but will probably add brussel sprouts and maybe salad, just to give myself more to do. Hmm, maybe I’ll make an appetizer? But I already know that my guests are happy as long as the turkey, stuffing, and pie are there, so I don’t really have much to worry about.

Resistance is writing about Thanksgiving dinner when I should be writing Grace. But if you know of any interesting Thanksgiving appetizers, please share them with me!

Autumn arriving

02 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by in Boring, Editing, Food, Swimming

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

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It felt like fall today, so I made myself winter food for breakfast: veggie hash, which is basically just whatever veggies I have available, chopped up reasonably small (for fast cooking) and sauteed, with some protein source mixed in. Today, it was acorn squash, sweet potato, carrot, parsnip, bok choy, and red onion with bacon. Some spices — garlic-salt and ginger — while cooking. At the last minute, I added half an avocado because I had two that are ripe. Wow, the avocado just made it. It added a touch of cool creaminess, but the heat of the veggies was enough to soften it, so all the veggies became lightly avocado-flavored. That sounds weird, but it was delicious.

In the last four days, I have edited 150,000 words. (Mostly not my own words.) I am seriously wiped out. Editing is such focused work. But I enjoyed it. Most of all, I enjoyed going over to a friend’s last night for our weekly writing get-together and getting to be back in my own world again. Spending my day hours editing made my evening hours of writing all the better.

I haven’t thought much about editing as what I should be doing to make money while I write for fun, but now I’m considering the idea. I thought I was so burned out on editing that I would never go back, but… well, I don’t know. Maybe.

Yesterday, first day of October, I stretched my lunch break to two hours so that I could spend one of them floating in the pool and reading a book. I think this is the first time that I’ve still been swimming regularly as October begins. This year I saw maybe two love bugs, that was it. Usually by now we’re infested with them. Maybe the summer was too wet? But I’m grateful for the last lingering days of enjoying the water.

This feels like a very boring blog post, but I’ve got a bunch of businesslike things to do — making a new box set, pulling The Spirits of Christmas from non-Amazon sites, downloading a translation, writing a book description and a forward — and I’m feeling so fried from the editing that I’m avoiding all those things. Plus, avocado in veggie hash & swimming in October are things I want to remember, and blogging works that way for me. But back to work I go…

Marketing hate

29 Saturday Aug 2015

Posted by in Marketing and promotion, Self-publishing

≈ 1 Comment

I have a thing to do. A very straightforward thing, really. I so don’t want to do it. So much so that even thinking about it makes me flee from my computer.

So Amazon has sort of changed the way that they format book info, making the info put into Author Central far more important than it used to be. The basic marketing blurb that one writes (with pain and difficulty, if one is me) gets hidden and requires a click for the reader to see in its entirety, while the Editorial Reviews section is much more visible.

The smart author — eh, it doesn’t even require smarts, it’s pretty basic Marketing 101 — therefore needs to put some info into Author Central in order to have it show up on their book page. (Grammar alert: I am choosing to use the plural pronoun as a gender-neutral pronoun, even though it causes me to cringe in editorial dismay. I’ll get used to it eventually and the world needs gender-neutral pronouns.) Ergo, I should do that. It’s really not hard — read some reviews, pick out some nice statements that people have said, perhaps write to said people and ask their permission if that’s possible, and copy-and-paste the info into Author Central. Within a couple of days, it shows up on the book page.

Easy.

Simple.

Trivial, in fact.

It requires me to read reviews. I don’t want to. I don’t like reading reviews. I like that they exist — I think it’s lovely that I’ve written things that other people have wanted to comment on, whether good or bad (although good is nicer, of course.) But reading them makes me feel exposed and raw and vulnerable, none of which are feelings that I enjoy, and so…

I can do this. Right? My goal for the day: to add content to the Author Central pages for my books. It’ll be pretty obvious if I succeed or not, since it’ll show up on the book pages, but since even thinking about it makes me want to clean my kitchen, take out the trash, do some laundry, and wash my hair… well, we’ll see.

In other writing news, yesterday was a zero-word day, so today is going to be better. In general, though, throwing out my plot and starting over has been good for me. I think the lesson I need to learn is that I’m not a plotter. The story works best for me when it heads off in its own direction. This one is doing that. I’m very much liking Grace. I thought I knew who she was and I mostly did, but she has more of a sense of humor than I realized before getting into her head. She’s the “good daughter,” but not because she feels the need to please people. She’s much more about taking care of people that she privately thinks are a little too incompetent to take care of themselves, and her family amuses her a lot more than I expected them to.

I’m not going to make myself do the Author Central thing before writing, because I suspect it would be more likely to mean no writing. Ugh, but I do need to figure out how to make myself do it. Bribery? Wine? Some type of reward? Some type of punishment for failure? Maybe an alert on my phone to go off every hour until it’s done… I wonder what I’d come up with after I’d been waking myself up for 36 hours in a row?

I think I’ll flee the computer for a while and think about this later!