Long Tail Writing

Looking ahead at 2020, there are things that worked well and things that didn’t. Some of the things that worked well in 2019 are producing quickly and building audio books. That constant stream of content allowed me to leverage more promotions. This combination led to my highest Amazon author rank ever. I sold a lot of audio books and my email list has grown 4.8% every month. Another thing that worked out well for me is setting a bar on writing profits. Anything above $350/month goes towards retirement/saving funds. That allows me to see the profit grow in a different way. I also like the idea that my work and effort doesn’t fade but continues to grow year after year. That’s the “long tail” of “long tail writing”: building once and seeing slow growth. However, a few things didn’t work out so well. I started a goal of writing every week day, but that evaporated. I had to scale that back to a weekly goal and had trouble with that. I determine that the main issue is that I wa

I don’t think being 100% “pantser” is an effective way to write fiction. This method is where you have no plan and just start writing. I also believe that being a 100% planner ultimately results in analysis paralysis. (That’s where nothing gets done because you are planning too much.) Most writers I think fall into the middle, and here are 5 reasons why a bit of planning is a good thing. Connection of points previously not thought about When you plan you get to see the plot from a different perspective. That higher perspective can reveal recurring themes and conflicts in your work. That can help you play towards those themes, giving you book a much better impact overall. Allows you to recognize junk to cut Much like point one, knowing a high-level perspective can help you identify which components don’t fit. That can allow you to cut out junk the reader doesn’t need. Ultimately, the best stories are ones that are told in as few words as possible. This means tha

Lately I’ve found myself struggling to continue towards a daily writing habit. There are so many things to distract me and I am not just talking about social media. Instead there are many writer activities that can distract me from writing. For example, plotting for new worlds, trying to determine how a mechanic would work, or even working through promotions. As I look to the new year, a few things will need to be sorted out. Here is a brief list of each and what they may mean. Daily Writing Habit Writing Vacation Days World Burner New Years Resolutions For the daily writing habit , what needs to be sorted out are the prompts. I need to build a system that helps me feel excited and ready to write for the next day. I think that part of that needs to be building daily writing prompts for myself. For example, if I end the day writing about a fight, I need to write a prompt that talks about ramifications of that fight. The idea being that I can dive quickly

My mailing list is an amazing resource that I look forward to building into a multi-prong tool. The goal would be to deliver different types of value to those who most desire it. In October I tried out that approach but haven't found a good way to separate this. (Several of the "potential paths" that would have led to segments in my mailing list had few people click on them.) However, I took a few moments and built a summation of how my mailing list is doing since I revived it this year. Here is the five-month summation of my list: It is currently growing by about 4.8% per month (after uninterested are removed). These are more actively engaged (the typical author mailing list has 40% open, 10% click. We have 50% open, 15% click) which means 1.5x better results than typical author. [So that 4.8% growth is really 7.2% growth] On the flip side, I was curious how my growth (with brutal removals of inactive users) compares to more relaxed removal of inactive user

I was recently thinking about what I want from each component of my author platform. I think this was the result of paying for Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ads that didn’t come anywhere near paying off. I keep hearing that the market is “pay to play”, and that this is the gateway to play, but I simply have found walls here… not doors. I realized that this wasn’t a pay to play situation. Instead, it was a way to drip pay for advertising research. That’s great, but not exactly what I was expecting. If I am going to pay for advertising, I want to be given access to unique ecosystems that thrive on niches. Amazon feels too combined for me on that. In addition, they have been known to have horrible stat problems (not updating correctly, incorrect information, etc). I don’t think Facebook is much better, because they make it seem like there is a lot of action around each dollar you spend, even though it’s not real action. “Having an interaction” with an ad is not just seeing it

Write every day means making time to write. That doesn’t mean making time to use marketing channels to sell the book. Herein lies the crux of the author dilemma. How do you spend the minimum amount of time marketing, so that you can instead spend the time writing? Step 1: Define Your Goal and Timing Let’s start with a few assumptions. Every writing journey can have different goals. If your goal is to simply have a book in your hand, then no marketing is necessary. If your goal is to sell it to just one other person, a phone call with your mother should be enough. Goals can include making enough to live off of, building a stream of royalties, getting reviews, identifying popular trends / tropes, building a fan base, etc. Identifying a specific goal helps an author move from “those all sound good” to “I have XYZ figured out, but I still need W”. After you’ve gotten a broad sense of a goal, narrow it down. How much feedback are you looking for and how fast? Are you wantin

I was recently given the reminder that I should only write for fun, never because I think it’s a chore. While that makes sense on the surface, I wanted to take a moment and deconstruct that. I think there is more to this than meets the eye. Deadlines can lead to joy The first component of this is that sometimes having a deadline can eventually lead to joy. Sometimes the hardest part of a project is simply jumping in. Once you are “swimming in the cold water” you get used to it and can even find it fun. However, when you look at the surface and think of the initial impact of the water, it can lead you to avoiding it all together. Life is too short to avoid building things that can lead to joy. Sometimes, having a deadline in that can be frustrating, but can lead to something you get in the rhythm of. Inspiration can be caused by action One thing sometimes leads to another. A spark of inspiration can cause a raging fire to occur. That’s why having a deadline can be

I’ve come to the conclusion that simply writing a bunch is not enough. However, in order to meet the goals that I want to achieve, I must write a lot of words. So there is the potential conflict. I need to write enough good things that people enjoy what I am writing. On the other hand, I need to recharge and seek out cool stuff to write. I think the trick with all of this is that it’s not static. It’s not always a 1-to-1 ratio. Some stories simply require more work than others and that requires more recharging. That’s all well and good, but I don’t know the difficulty of a story until I get into it. A story that could potentially be extremely easy to write might appear tough. On the flip side, an “easy to write” story could quickly become a nightmare if I don’t get a good handle on it from the start. So what are some things that can be done to strike the balance initially? Decide on Method of Recharge Some things help recharge the creative juices more than others. For me,

I recently asked for feedback on what could be improved in my newsletter. I had a bit of a chuckle when I got four responses about frequency and all four were different. One person wanted once per month, another every two weeks, another person was weekly, and finally a person wanted this email twice per week. I have a feeling somewhere in the middle of all that is where I’ll rest the frequency (2-3 times per month). I think that this will ultimately rest with value. Can I bring new and good value every few weeks? I believe so. Twice a week? Nope, unless I decided to shift to releasing serials. What’s more interesting to me is the other feedback I received, both in the reports and in replies. My reports say that offering an “instant win” contest increases the amount of clicks in the email. That’s not a huge surprise. However, it also decreased the amount of unsubscribes (by about 3x), which is a surprise. The amount of opens was about the same as average. The replies rev

Balancing new email subscribers with old is a good problem to have. This balance for me is because I am using MailChimp as a starting point. They allow a generous 2,000 subscribers before they start charging you. (Most other companies are around 1000 subscribers) However, I am currently gaining around 18 subscribers per day through all my various methods. That means I could fill up the entire 2000 subscribers in about 3 - 4 months, even if I started with 0. Here is where the balance comes in. I want to continually check to make sure I have the right people and an engaged crowd. To do that, I’ve sectioned off my list into two lists. The first is a slower build with a less engaged crowd and has a singular focus: share free deals I’ve found. In exchange for these free deals, I have those places market my books, if they are a fit for their readers. Readers that are engaged with my books go on a second list. These readers get more information on what I am writing and review cop

This weekend I finished up editing the beta version of two Halloween stories. The first is “Dead and in Working Order” which features mummies. The second is “Masonic Werewolves” which might need a bit more tweaking. I am hoping to have the final tweaks on this story completed in the next few days. I also just sent out the mailing list email for the month, so that will hopefully work well. The only thing I haven’t had much luck on lately is writing my main novel, but that will hopefully change this week. I am hoping to knock out three chapters of the main novel this week. The only other downside is that my audio book bundle of Vampire Caving 1 – 3 hit a snag that I thought might happen. Apparently for every bundle you need a unique intro/conclusion. Hopefully I can get that fixed up and ran through extremely quickly. I’ll email ACX once that’s in to see if I can get any kind of rush on that. The hope is to give out Audio Codes on that September 24 th . Normally it takes two w

It has been a ridiculously busy week for writing. I’ve had to work towards preparing multiple stories for Halloween. I’ve now completed them and need to continue the process of cultivating them through the various stages. With any luck, I’ll have a Halloween Bundle #2 ready for 2019’s Halloween. I also put together a bundle of Vampire Caving 1-3, so that I can start sending that out. I’ll know if that works through the systems over the next couple of weeks. My hope is that I get that completed before the month is through. Ultimately, I have a massive amount of work I am trying to figure out, but in a way, it’s worth it. By using these systems I’ve discovered, I can have my work pay for itself. That means that by the time I am full done with each story, I have a new well-rounded product on Amazon. These stories have been edited, decent covers, and some reviews. They have multiple ways to consume the stories (digital and audio) so that they gain the most readers possible. I

Time is tricky, because it can feel so abrupt and life can feel so large compared to what time we have. I think with this writing thing, I am having success because I am ignoring how hard it can be. If I stopped and thought about all the work I’ve poured in, and all the work I have left to do, I would be paralyzed. In this moment, however, I’ve just accomplished a good chunk.  I have another small story done and thoughts for yet another story.  I ’ve built a release schedule based on promotions I have planned out.  I have the promotions planned out, to pay for the production costs.  Finally, I can see the trajectory of my current marketing and how well it is working. I am feeling accomplished because I have the direction I need for the next year+. There is a lot to accomplish, and I am excited about building those accomplishments. With any luck, this writing thing will continue to grow, and I’ll grow alongside it. In time, I would like to split the royaltie

I am trying to get back in the habit of writing daily. I think the first source of that needs to be with having and organizing inspiration. I’ve worked hard on discovering what I can do to organize that inspiration. I dug through connections between Google Docs and Google Keep (notes) to try to divine a workable system. After becoming frustrated with that, I stumbled upon an article ( https://evernote.com/blog/how-to-organize-big-writing-projects/ ) on how to organize for a novel using Evernote. I downloaded the app on my phone and tried out a number of features. While there is still some improvements that need to be made, this should suffice for the moment. Some of my favorite features include grabbing snippets of web pages and sorting them into specific folders. I also like the style of being able to see multiple notes at one time. That way if you have several photos of something, along with some description, you will see those at the same time. What I would like improv

Writing every day is extremely difficult because there are so many things to try and work through. As an author, you need to build the marketing along with the product. That can be great to build a wonderful synergy, but it can also lead to inhibitions on production. That’s because you need to almost do both at the same time. Writing every day and working with readers to get that writing in their hands. I am not sure how to build that balance. It would be easy to build that balance if the tasks were all set in stone. However, often times the tasks are from a regular consistency. For example, I need to work through several edits of a story, respond to review copies requested, try to work with Audible customer service, and yet… write for several hours. I can’t produce all that. I can do a little of each, but not all of it. So the best I can resolve is to prioritize and build out the parts that need to be done. The first and foremost is to cater to the review copies, then foll

I am finishing up a book called Newsletter Ninja that talks about some of the basics behind setting up an author mailing list. Overall, I think about 80% - 90% was already understood, but it did give out a few pieces I hadn’t known. However, I am now trying to decipher another potential gain, but I don’t quite know where to go. I’ve asked the Sub Reddit group I am in about it, with not much luck so far.   The focus I am aiming for is to build a new mailing list focused around UK readers. There are three main reasons on why to focus on this market. First off, any books I produce can be read without much (or any) modification. The second reason is that this market is smaller and may have less competition than the main USA market. The final reason is that Audible has a UK site with unique codes. I get a lot of these review codes for the UK market and I’ve never been able to really give them away. I’ve given maybe a dozen away total, over all my books. I think if I can build a

"The Muse Rewards Action" Lately I’ve been thinking of the role of the artist. What is their specific purpose? I am concentrating on a particular concept. A line I recently found is ‘the muse rewards action’. That resonates with me, because it is almost like an artist’s role is to be active in that rewarding action. An artist’s goal is to take the action, get the inspiration, and form that inspiration into a product. The world then consumes that product for a number of reasons. Perhaps for escapism or perhaps to show a vital truth that wasn’t uncovered until recently. The next question then becomes, what kind of product does the artist want to build, which is much easier. I want to build something elegant and approachable. Something that is almost a common extravagance. I want to build something like a cup of Starbucks coffee. It’s more costly than coffee at home, but is done in a way that is more delicious than what I could brew. In addition, it still has a low eno

Progress forward is sometimes a tricky thing. You can spend a bunch of time trying to figure out an aspect of your work (such as newsletters, which is what I’ve been doing). You can have great luck in that area, but then feel like a failure in another area. I’ve let my curiosity into building newsletters overshadow my daily writing habit. I need to put this back in proper order. I’ve taken a look at my past statistics and have noticed a few things of interest. My average weekly output, since I’ve tried starting a daily writing habit nine weeks ago, has been 6k per week. The truth is I had two bigger weeks; which when removed, the average dives down to 4k per week. This is way more than I originally could do. In fact, this year is on track to be my most productive one yet. However, I want to build so much this year, and am just getting hazy about it. What do I mean by hazy? I mean that there isn’t a sustainable focus. I want want want; but I keep changing that vision by incr

To start with, I want to say that I am extremely happy with how this has been turning out! I've had some success with BookFunnel and I am hoping that will continue. I've also been able to email out a lot of review emails, so hopefully those will produce some fantastic results. On all of this, time will tell, but I am hoping it is moving in the correct direction! BookFunnel When I last updated this, I had sent a test email to 153 users. Since that email on Friday, I’ve had 45 more subscribers join the list. That’s pretty amazing! As far as statistics go, I had a 64.7% open rate, 26.1% click rate, and a 5.9% conversion rate on the previous 153 person email. Currently, this is my high-water mark. In a previous post, that mark belonged to Noisetrade users. I am really excited by this, especially because I feel it’s going to be very cost effective to continue this effort. Currently, each subscriber gathered via this method is costing 4.8c, which is extremely cheap. Happy

I've done a few things, so now I am looking to describe how those things went; or are going. The ultimate goal of building any newsletter list is to have users that interact with the content. I went ahead and removed around 200 users that had never interacted with any content. I think this purging is good to do several times a year. I then tested my audiences gained from several solutions. Here are the current results. Measuring Stick (Low) - Giveaway Hops So the way I can tell if the audience is worth it or not is by comparing it against my normal gains. These are low-interest users gained from book Giveaway hops. It's nearly free to participate in these, and I get a solid stream of users. I had 34 email addresses gained in the last month. I could have pushed this harder, but had a lot going in July. Of those people, 11 opened the email. 0 clicked on the link in the form which obviously resulted in 0 conversions. So: 32% open rate, 0% click through, 0% conversions. In t

It’s been another week since I started this experiment with these different services. We have about 1-2 more weeks to go until we figure out how well this all works. This week I need to prepare my list, moving motivated readers to a different list. The hope is to make one list a larger “trading list” and another list a “motivated” list that loves my work. We shall see if this will work. BookFunnel I currently have been in two promotions. These are like newsletter swaps, but with more people. Last week I had about 47 email addresses. I now have about 124 email addresses. This has brought the $10/mo charge to be $0.08 per address.   I am pretty happy with these results. The truth of success through will be in determining how they respond to my unique content. I will be putting them in a different segment in a few weeks and sending a promo then. StoryOrigin I had messed up last time and my Amazon link was marketed. Oops. I’ve switched it to be my mailing list and now ha

So I’ve used these systems and now have an impression to share from a week later. Your mileage may vary, but this is what has happened in my own use. BookFunnel First off, I had a hard time trying to figure out where I export the CSV file that has any user emails. I think that made it difficult to determine if this service was working or not. I paid $10/mo for this service, so out of all the ones listed, it’s the most vital to work. I ended up going to the book, then following it to the page in order to get the email list. I am scheduled for three promotions, the first one being kicked off yesterday. At the moment, I have 47 email addresses, which puts the cost per address at around 0.21c. It’s hard to say if that’s a bargain or not, as it all depends on how these users interact with my future newsletters. This is also the first day of things, and the promotions still have a long ways to go. The best users I’ve found (via Noisetrade) cost around 0.56c each. I am judging these users n

My goal with my mailing list may be different than most. I am not looking to build a readership that buys a massive amount of books on day 1. My goal with my mailing list is to give away free stuff. The hope is that people enjoy that free stuff and leave reviews. These reviews will then influence other people and algorithms to get people to buy the books. In addition, I hope that I can slowly start making some fans of my work. Up until recently, my mailing list has been unfocused. I’ve told people about new books and upcoming books… but that really didn’t lead anywhere. Instead, I am finding giving away review copies to be a strategy that should work well. To do this, I am trying out several services. Here are my first impressions of these services. I hope to also include another post in August on how this effort went. (I won’t fully know until August 5 th or so) BookFunnel The focus of this service is to build a book advanced reader copy (ARC) and give it away to build

A recent trend in book publishing is building writing journals. The idea, as far a I understand it, is to build a journaling system that ties into an online platform. The hope is to build a skill enough where you can achieve a specific goal. Some journals focus on writing prompts while others are introspective (such as “burn after writing”). However, when I look at the preview of these journals via Amazon’s sneak peek, I can’t help but be disappointed. Usually these “books” are single questions filled with lots of free space. I don’t see charts, I don’t see a system, and I don’t see anything more than a marketing ploy. Perhaps I am missing the “system” behind many of these journals. Here are five things I think these journals are missing. Missing Journal Feature #1: Math and Tables This is my top compliant. It’s easier to build a product that is pure fiction then it is to build a scientifically useful product. How do you make a scientifically useful product? Include calcu

Writing can be a tricky endeavor, because you may not always want to write. I think there are a number of things that can help with this effort. The hope is to make it more fun to write and more inspiring to write. Here are five tips to make writing more fun: Tip #1: Plan your writing Often times the worst part of writing is not knowing what you want to write. That blank screen can be intimidating. By taking some time to plan your writing, it gives you “training wheels” on starting to write. That can make things a lot easier. Tip #2: Dig up inspiration Sometimes the best way to move forward is to find pieces of writing, artwork, or music that inspire you. That inspiration can give you a feeling that you can then describe in your work. That feeling not only helps move the word count forward, but it can help you give some extra authenticity to your work. Tip #3: Writing prompts When you don’t have anything particular to write, but you still want to write, these can

I've just finished part 1 of 3 for "4 Wizards" (that will not be the official title, but I am just keeping it that way until I figure out a good title). With that complete, I've decided to write the next 10k effort. This is part of an ongoing effort to sprinkle 10k's along with the major books. These 10k's will then wrap up into a larger effort forming their own book. The idea is to make book 2 in the "Morning Motivation" series. It would be nice to have a new morning motivation book every year. Beyond letting me practice writing in a variety of different ways, this effort helps me reset my brain. That way it's not dragging as I work through major series. This gives me a quick break while I transition from part to part of the larger books. This 10k that I am currently working on is called Western Fantasy and is going to be an odd one. I am hoping to write it in a Western style, but incorporate some magic traces in there. I was going to wo

The title of this article may sound silly to most, as sentences were taught back in grade school. However, there is more to writing a quality sentence than simply reflecting knowledge that you found out at the same time as brushing your teeth. A great sentence takes the world, full of oddities, and puts logic to it. Sentences define the intention behind the logic. They show patterns and help us expand our focus. In addition, a great sentence should be as few words as possible. The fewer the words, the easier it is to understand. That's the skill of writing a sentence. Convey logic from chaos with as few of words as possible, without losing intention. Once a sentence is perfectly constructed, you do it again and again. That leads to a paragraph. Much like a sentence, there is an intention here as well. One paragraph leads to another, leading in and out of each intention. Soon a rhythm or outlining idea is presented. This is what people understand as writing. There is one lev