Friday, June 2, 2017
Thursday, June 1, 2017
New Facebook page
It's here, and I have to admit, I've been exploring Twitter, the blogosphere, and LinkedIn, and I'm still more inclined to go with Facebook than the rest. Why? Because it's more social. I'm considering staging a "Go Live" soon and that's for several reasons, but one big one is, this page is probably going to be the center of my marketing situation. Lots of new things are happening:
Because I'm off work for a short period of time (I'm a high school teacher, and have the summer off even if all goes well), I'm going to put some time into various kinds of marketing: Going Live, Kindle promotions, possible LinkedIn advertising (first $50 free), short story contest, etc. But I'm also publishing a friend's Quaker book, and trying to write. I'm writing several things: A novel about Texas, the next e pluribus haiku (almost finished), autobiography/travel stories (also almost finished), still another novel, and an ESL reader.
A little too much on my plate. And, the house (cabin) is full, since school is out. Rambunctious kids, and stormy weather. Dogs barking, and in fact, here comes the rain. Sometimes I take my Navajo tea and go out on the front porch. Join me, I'm shooting for Sunday at 7, mountain time.
Because I'm off work for a short period of time (I'm a high school teacher, and have the summer off even if all goes well), I'm going to put some time into various kinds of marketing: Going Live, Kindle promotions, possible LinkedIn advertising (first $50 free), short story contest, etc. But I'm also publishing a friend's Quaker book, and trying to write. I'm writing several things: A novel about Texas, the next e pluribus haiku (almost finished), autobiography/travel stories (also almost finished), still another novel, and an ESL reader.
A little too much on my plate. And, the house (cabin) is full, since school is out. Rambunctious kids, and stormy weather. Dogs barking, and in fact, here comes the rain. Sometimes I take my Navajo tea and go out on the front porch. Join me, I'm shooting for Sunday at 7, mountain time.
Monday, May 29, 2017
Authors Wanted
The first step in starting an Authors' Choice Short Story Writers' Contest is to find five authors. If I find five authors who agree to do this, we will have a contest.
Here's how it works: Each author will contribute three books; they can be all the same. Mine are all short story collections, but valued at only about $6 each, so these don't have to be huge books. They can all (3) be the same, because they will go to first, second, and third place winners. Each winner will receive a set of five books from different authors as part of their prize.
So let's say 100 people enter, each paying $1 to enter. First place winner gets $50 + five books. Hopefully the five books will be worthwhile enough for them as a prize. The way I figure, I can't lose.
The authors have to do one more thing: Participate in the grading. You may read 100, or you may read 50, or you may read only a few. You will distribute points according to how you think they deserve them. If the deadline is in November, you will have about a month to read and grade. It should be possible. All this stuff is negotiable.
I take it back about not being able to lose. Two ways we could lose are: Receive thousands of entries, and receive only seven entries. If I receive a thousand, I'll distribute them in batches, and make each grader read 50. Then I'll take the top ones from each batch, and make the graders read those top ones. So it's like they'll read two batches of 50, with the second batch being the top ones from each group. And people can have the time they need to grade.
In the case of only seven entries though, it's a little trickier. We may have to come up with $100 minimum pot, or, I guess, if response was so bad, we could just cancel the whole thing. I'm thinking, I can probably just come up with that myself.
Ideally, though, I have five writers at least. And we share these decisions, share the risk, share the joy, share the grading. Any takers? Let me know. If I find five, we're on, and I'll tell you where to send the books. Use my e-mail leverett @ siu.edu, with no spaces.
Here's how it works: Each author will contribute three books; they can be all the same. Mine are all short story collections, but valued at only about $6 each, so these don't have to be huge books. They can all (3) be the same, because they will go to first, second, and third place winners. Each winner will receive a set of five books from different authors as part of their prize.
So let's say 100 people enter, each paying $1 to enter. First place winner gets $50 + five books. Hopefully the five books will be worthwhile enough for them as a prize. The way I figure, I can't lose.
The authors have to do one more thing: Participate in the grading. You may read 100, or you may read 50, or you may read only a few. You will distribute points according to how you think they deserve them. If the deadline is in November, you will have about a month to read and grade. It should be possible. All this stuff is negotiable.
I take it back about not being able to lose. Two ways we could lose are: Receive thousands of entries, and receive only seven entries. If I receive a thousand, I'll distribute them in batches, and make each grader read 50. Then I'll take the top ones from each batch, and make the graders read those top ones. So it's like they'll read two batches of 50, with the second batch being the top ones from each group. And people can have the time they need to grade.
In the case of only seven entries though, it's a little trickier. We may have to come up with $100 minimum pot, or, I guess, if response was so bad, we could just cancel the whole thing. I'm thinking, I can probably just come up with that myself.
Ideally, though, I have five writers at least. And we share these decisions, share the risk, share the joy, share the grading. Any takers? Let me know. If I find five, we're on, and I'll tell you where to send the books. Use my e-mail leverett @ siu.edu, with no spaces.
Friday, May 26, 2017
Promotional Ideas
Recently I have finished my first semester and been able to turn my attention to my weak promotional efforts. Up to now, I've been concentrating on cranking out things I like to write: collections of short stories (just finished my sixth), Quaker plays (I finally collated 15 years worth of them), gigantic haiku efforts (I wrote 1000 in a year, and just finished), and various other ideas. I have two other irons in the fire: A book on language theory, and an autobiography - a book of true travel stories mixed in with the true account of my life.
But on the publishing end, I've become dissatisfied that, basically, I drop all this hard work on a vast sea of self-published drek, and nobody can tell whether it has any quality or not, because so few of them ever pick any of it up or read it. Now I've been mostly focused on the book sales, when in fact, I've done better on audiobook, but I've pretty much ignored Kindle completely. I've come to the conclusion that Kindle is an unexplored and lucrative market, and that in fact it's possible that more people read Kindle than I thought, and that I should study ways of marketing myself on Kindle.
Given all this background, I've been mulling over several ways to jump-start the promotion engine. I am fortunate that, as a public school teacher, I don't have to live off this meager income. But I'm a little aggrieved that my strategy of giving it away cheap, hoping that it will catch on and be popular world-wide, hasn't exactly panned out. So, I've raised prices to a level that I'm a little more comfortable giving it away at. And then, I'm trying a number of different ways to pick up awareness of my "brand":
Possible advertising on LinkedIn and Google: This would be free for the first $50 on LinkedIn, and $25 for the first $100 worth of advertising on Google. I have never spent a penny on promotion; it's kind of like I'm dipping my feet into a pool.
Making ESL/EFL textbooks out of some of the work: this is easier than it looks; it's actually fun. I made ESL reading materials for years. I kind of miss it. An ESL/EFL reader would probably be popular. And I have a friend who might help me publish it.
Sponsoring a short story contest. Some publications do this and do it successfully. The idea in my case would be simple. Charge $1 per story. Get five short-story authors to underwrite it by providing books. Make the winning pot half of the take, plus books from all five authors. Read everything that comes in, thus becoming a better short-story writer.
Making a separate Facebook Author's page, so that I don't constantly harp on my friends to buy my books. Last time I did this (about a week ago), out of almost 800 friends, I got a miserable amount of sales. It seems my friends shouldn't be my primary market, though I don't know if, maybe come gift-giving time, their awareness of my work may kick in. I will probably keep hocking my friends, who in most cases I want them to know what I'm doing anyway, but I will put the majority of this information on a Facebook author's page, so it's open to everyone, and it pretty much tells them what I'm up to as an author.
Going Live on Facebook. This would be experimental, but it would involve getting in front of a camera with my banjo and fiddle, playing a number of songs, and pushing my books in between them. The attraction of this, to me, is that I need to keep playing music anyway. My opportunities in the music area have dwindled here - I could be in a country band, but I'm not; I could play in Mayhill with an old gospel fellow, but I haven't; and, I'm not doing much about that, so, as a result, I'm left with my banjo on weekends. If I got in front of a camera, regularly, I'd solve two problems at once. AND have fun.
There are more, and I will experiment with them as I'm moved to try them. Stay tuned and you'll see the picture evolving.
But on the publishing end, I've become dissatisfied that, basically, I drop all this hard work on a vast sea of self-published drek, and nobody can tell whether it has any quality or not, because so few of them ever pick any of it up or read it. Now I've been mostly focused on the book sales, when in fact, I've done better on audiobook, but I've pretty much ignored Kindle completely. I've come to the conclusion that Kindle is an unexplored and lucrative market, and that in fact it's possible that more people read Kindle than I thought, and that I should study ways of marketing myself on Kindle.
Given all this background, I've been mulling over several ways to jump-start the promotion engine. I am fortunate that, as a public school teacher, I don't have to live off this meager income. But I'm a little aggrieved that my strategy of giving it away cheap, hoping that it will catch on and be popular world-wide, hasn't exactly panned out. So, I've raised prices to a level that I'm a little more comfortable giving it away at. And then, I'm trying a number of different ways to pick up awareness of my "brand":
Possible advertising on LinkedIn and Google: This would be free for the first $50 on LinkedIn, and $25 for the first $100 worth of advertising on Google. I have never spent a penny on promotion; it's kind of like I'm dipping my feet into a pool.
Making ESL/EFL textbooks out of some of the work: this is easier than it looks; it's actually fun. I made ESL reading materials for years. I kind of miss it. An ESL/EFL reader would probably be popular. And I have a friend who might help me publish it.
Sponsoring a short story contest. Some publications do this and do it successfully. The idea in my case would be simple. Charge $1 per story. Get five short-story authors to underwrite it by providing books. Make the winning pot half of the take, plus books from all five authors. Read everything that comes in, thus becoming a better short-story writer.
Making a separate Facebook Author's page, so that I don't constantly harp on my friends to buy my books. Last time I did this (about a week ago), out of almost 800 friends, I got a miserable amount of sales. It seems my friends shouldn't be my primary market, though I don't know if, maybe come gift-giving time, their awareness of my work may kick in. I will probably keep hocking my friends, who in most cases I want them to know what I'm doing anyway, but I will put the majority of this information on a Facebook author's page, so it's open to everyone, and it pretty much tells them what I'm up to as an author.
Going Live on Facebook. This would be experimental, but it would involve getting in front of a camera with my banjo and fiddle, playing a number of songs, and pushing my books in between them. The attraction of this, to me, is that I need to keep playing music anyway. My opportunities in the music area have dwindled here - I could be in a country band, but I'm not; I could play in Mayhill with an old gospel fellow, but I haven't; and, I'm not doing much about that, so, as a result, I'm left with my banjo on weekends. If I got in front of a camera, regularly, I'd solve two problems at once. AND have fun.
There are more, and I will experiment with them as I'm moved to try them. Stay tuned and you'll see the picture evolving.
Sunday, May 21, 2017
Mannequin Challenge
& 20 short stories you can't put down
Available on Amazon
$5.50 + shipping
Available at the Createspace store
$5.50 + shipping
Available on Kindle
$2.99, also on Kindle Select
Saturday, April 22, 2017
Sunday, February 19, 2017
tlevspress moves to Cloudcroft
People who know me have known this for a while: We live in New Mexico now. Cloudcroft is a town of about a thousand, nine thousand feet up, in the Sacramento mountains of southern New Mexico. Our cabin overlooks the White Sands, and is in general a good place to write. I had to give up ESL to move here, although I haven't given it up entirely; I am now a substitute teacher at local public schools. I don't get subbing work every day, so I use my free time to write. My current writing projects are:
Another book of short stories; this one is tentatively called Filibuster, and should be out in a few weeks;
Just Passing Through: True stories from out there, an autobiography/nonfiction thriller, that should set the record straight about where all these ten kids came from, but hopefully won't grievously offend brothers/sisters/exes etc. Only the truth.
Vowels in the Elevator - recently I've gotten this out again, why? because subbing offers me the opportunity to think out the hard parts which I have not really been able to plow through. It's a language theory book. Language is a self-organizing system. Someone needs to show how.
e pluribus haiku - my long-running haiku project, in which I've become determined to produce a thousand new haiku every year. Last year I had maybe six hundred new ones; this year it'll be up to a thousand, and it will focus on the trip itself, kind of set in the 1970's and the physical world. I'm about 700 into it. My target date is April (Haiku Day) as I want it out there well before the Fourth.
That's it - stay tuned!
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