Tuesday, August 27, 2019

Organizing Notes Using Evernote





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 improved is a method to place a picture embedded within a text note and I would love if I could link a Kindle book area. I have a lot of eBooks as references, and it would be great to have a quick link to those references. At the moment, I am stuck either typing those references out or making a screenshot. Both of those can take a lot of extra time to complete.

My hope is to slowly build this collection of writing components so that a methodology is shown. The idea is that I can regularly cultivate inspiration the way that others would grow vegetables. I think that when you are emerged in a story that it becomes more fun to write. You can’t wait for the next thing to happen, so you get excited about writing it. That’s the focus that I am trying to head for with this writing craft. I don’t know if I’ll be successful, but I hope I will be. I do enjoy writing and I want to continue to make it fun to write.

Monday, August 19, 2019

Balance Among Writer Tasks




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 followed by figuring out support. Once that’s done, it was working on grammar for a potential story and then trying to produce this. Again, it’s a balance, and I can’t be angry with myself for striking that balance. I produce a lot, and sometimes I just need to accept and enjoy all that I create. Hopefully I will continue to build at this wonderful level and I can make more and more connections. Only the future will determine that though.

Friday, August 16, 2019

Trying to Build a UK Mailing List




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 UK audience, it would really help boost things.

So far the advice on the Sub Reddit I’ve joined is basically a shrug. The sources I find potential readers is worldwide, so if UK readers join, then great. However, the majority of this source of readers is still the USA. I am going to dig into some online resources to see if I can’t find a way to build out this portion of my mailing list. If I can, it would be a huge gain I my growing author career / habit. I may also start to tag any email addresses that end in “.uk” or perhaps tag any country specific emails that are from the United Kingdom.

I would love to have three lists total: My Main USA list, My Main UK List, and my experimental list. The experimental list is more for group promotions, trying out new techniques, and trying to offer value back to other authors. The main lists I want to be groomed and well-maintained, where the experimental list should be focused on figuring out random feedback and group promotions.


Tuesday, August 13, 2019

The Role of a Writer


"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 enough cost that it can be afforded on a regular-ish basis. When I have a cup, I feel a bit fancier than if I were to drink from a mug I brought from home.

So the question becomes, what does it take to build that elegance? The answer to that is: pre-work. Research and study ahead of time. Using methods to help elevate what would normally be done. The thoughts I am trying to sort is what pre-work methods can be done that would be most effective? What modes of inspiration help start the cycle the best?

I’ve started with using music and images to help with inspiration. I’ve tried out using books to help me learn more about the craft. Hopefully, I can build that common luxury item that people enjoy. A splurge to make their lives a bit better and help them escape things. I still need a better system, and I hope to get to that end. For now, it’s a matter of trial and working things out, bit by bit.

My current thoughts are to use some kind of system between Google Docs and Google Keep. These can be connected together, are accessible from anywhere, and are backed up in the cloud. However, I haven’t yet thought of how to weave these together. Perhaps I need to look at the strengths of each and play to that end. I could build “bonus keep notes” in the main documents and these would be temporary storage to hold onto concepts I am looking into. However, they would only be used in a temporary capacity, with any more concrete capacity being Google Docs? I am not sure how this will look now, but I feel like I need to build some kind of system to capture all the various components I am gathering. Perhaps the best way to do this is to look at how I would consume the random bits and then play towards that? Again, I am not sure of the proper system here.

Friday, August 9, 2019

Changing Weekly Word Count Goal



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 increments. Originally, I wanted 300k words created this year, to be spread over four bigger books. Now the vision is 270k words focused on four other bigger books. I know this doesn’t seem like a major change, but I am only 75k words into the year. That’s a quarter way in and I already want to change everything. Beyond that, this daily writing habit is hard to focus with because my mind simply wants to go and discover other things. I think I need to revel further in inspiration. The year is way over half over, yet I’ve only got a quarter of my stuff done? Plus I want to do even more?

At the current pace, I’ll hit 150k in the year. That would get one book completed, another 5/6 completed, a third book 3/4 done and the last book 0% done. That’s not satisfying at all. I need, at very least, to up the output to be closer to 6k per week. I am going to modify my daily goal from 2500 to 1500. If I complete that extra 1k, that would mean that last book would also be done.

Monday, August 5, 2019

BookFunnel vs StoryOrigin vs BookSprouts: Results so far


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 happy happy about this!

StoryOrigin
Over the weekend, 54 email addresses turned into 66. That’s good progress, but I still didn’t have a good open/click/conversion rate with this source of addresses. This might be good to do just to help round things out, but I don’t know if I would consider it my primary source of potential new readers.

BookSprouts
So, two of the three people posted their reviews online. That’s fantastic as I didn’t pay anything for this service. Again, very happy with this option.

Friday, August 2, 2019

Testing Users: BookFunnel vs StoryOrigin vs BookSprouts



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 the past this group has been at 27.3% open, 2.8% clicks, 0.36% conversion. What does all that mean? For every 280 people, I get one conversion.

Measuring Stick (High) - NoiseTrade
The best people I've found so far have been off NoiseTrade. A recent test of 430 users saw 51.8% open rate, 9.7% click rate, and 4.9% conversion. That is an absolute amazing amount. For every 20 people, I get one conversion. Again, that's amazing!

StoryOrigin - Results: Low
As you may recall, I messed up and used a universal link where I meant to get email addresses. I fixed this error and received roughly 54 email addresses total. I sent out my test email and 14 of those people opened the email. Of those 14 people, 3 clicked on a link to my form. None of them filled out the form for a free book. So: 26% open, 21% click through rate, 0% conversions. The result is moderately promising... The open rate is pretty standard, but the number of people clicking is high. However, none of them are converting. That probably means my offer is not hitting the mark correctly on this one. This is closer to my low measuring stick, so I am categorizing this one as "low" in results.

BookFunnel - Results: TBD
I just sent out the first test email to 153 new recipients. (Turns out some of the people are in both StoryOrigin and BookFunnel) This campaign will need the weekend to see how successful it is, but as of the writing of this, we've gotten 8.5% open and 2.6% clicks. That's nothing super impressive, but we'll know more over the weekend. I am categorizing this one as "TBD" until after the weekend. I will also take another look at my StoryOrigin results to see if those had any luck.

BookSprout - Results: TBD
So we still have only three users that requested an ARC. Those reviews are due soon. We will see if this sprouted any fruit over the next week or two.
 

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