Smashwords Interview

Smashwords have a feature where the site will interview you, in a broad, author-y kind of way. I went through the process.

You can view the interview here.

Why I Am Really Bad At Marketing

If I was an author hip to the world of marketing then I would have really dragged out the reveal of the cover of my new book. I would have "teased" it. I would have built audience anticipation. Oh man, if I was good at marketing you wouldn't have slept for at least a week wondering what the cover of Starfall would look like. You would have had a little calendar on the wall counting down the number of "sleeps" until the cover was revealed.

Man, if I was good at marketing the release of my novel would be the single most important event that has ever taken place in your life. The reveal of the cover would be the anticipatory hors d'oeuvre of the whole thing. I would be the king of author foreplay.

If.

Unfortunately I am terrible at marketing. I'm so bad that the cover of the book has been visible on the Smashwords preorder page for the book for almost a week. I was confident no one would "leak" the cover because no one really cares. This is because I am terrible at marketing.

It's not like I lack confidence in the product. It's taken me over a decade to get Starfall ready and I am confident that the work stands up to scrutiny. If you like dark fantasy, mythology and learning new things then this will be one of the best books you read this year, I absolutely guarantee it.

But that's not really marketing, is it?

This is probably the main part of the problem. I have no idea what the difference is between conversation and marketing. I have no line between self-consciously advertising something and just telling people: "Hey, you know, you might enjoy this, I have to charge you for it, I like to eat."

I do know that authors on Twitter annoy me like you wouldn't believe. At one time I guessed that I too might have to rack up 20 different ways of saying "Buy My Book" on a tweet scheduler and leave it to howl it's robo-sales pitch into the Social Media maelstrom, hating myself for doing something to make the overall intellectual quality of the internet worse than it already is.

But then I thought, no, forget that. Not because I'm better than that, but because I am bad at marketing. I cannot, in good conscience, message all my friends via Facebook to buy my book, regardless of whether I think they'd get a kick out of it or not. I cannot see myself morosely repeating my sales message on my Facebook author page. I am using Lulu for print copies and Smashwords for e-books because I like to support business that isn't Amazon, monopolies are bad for everyone, the monopoly holder included, I am trying to save Amazon from themselves.

All of this because I couldn't identify an effective marketing strategy in a line up if one had mugged me in a dark alley yesterday evening. I'm sorry officer, it all happened so fast, I didn't have time to see how many engagements the perpetrator could convert. I have no funnel strategy. I just wanted some people who might enjoy it to read my book, and I wanted to get paid, because people do cool, creative things, they deserve to get paid. That's what I thought.

Yeah, let's face it, I am bad at marketing. Hey ho.

New Things And Old Problems

Not Books Or Not Not Books? That is
the rather confusing question.

In the spirit of blogging more often but with less verbiage here's a quick one just to set down what's going off in the world of everyone's favourite monkey-themed indie author with the initials LS.

I have been messing about with video content. This has lead to me delaying the release of a review because I wanted to put up a video segment to go with it. I'm beginning to reconsider. Vloggers of all stripes put a lot of effort into their craft and, until I have time, I still can't legitimately partake in this hobby, I just feel I can't produce content of the requisite quality.

I'm considering going back into podcasting again. The No Dice podcast was fun for a couple of years, the Tarot podcast I did with Mrs Monkey worked out great and was really a sort of defined set of content that we were happy to donate to the world. Podfade is always a fear but I have some ideas on that front.

I'd like to do a little more software development, not sure what though, a game? I never wanted to develop a game but I am thinking about it now. A web site? I have some ideas but I do believe a website should support an existing social movement or function, not try to create its own. Manuscript V2? Well, further development on Manuscript is needed. Something will happen. That I'm pretty sure of.

The concerns I have are two fold. One, too much to do, too little time. The other surrounds the assignment of an ISBN to my Smashwords published version of TSM. Although I have done the reading and am satisfied that Smashwords are donating the ISBN in a "non-evil" manner as a service I still have a political issue with ISBNs themselves.

I like the idea that a book type object (electronic or paper) with no ISBN is, according to this ludicrous bureaucracy, not a book. This even has tax implications. I like the fact that the earnings from a book with no ISBN are "product revenue" not "royalties". I am amused by the notion that such a ridiculous technical distinction even exists. I revel in the fact that I publish under the moniker "notbooks".

If I take Smashwords up on the offer of a free ISBN then my Notbook will become a Book. I'm not super bothered about whether certain bookshops won't sell my stuff because it has no ISBN. I would love to frustrate the bureaucracy by producing stuff people want to read that they refuse to buy because of a technical discrepancy in record-keeping.

But still... maybe I'm just being stupid. I genuinely don't know. I would have to come up with a new name for my "publishing house" because the whole point of "Not Books" is that they're well... not books.

Hmmm...