Archive | April 2017

I’ll Be Honest Here

Apr17

I got nuthin’.

Did you see the “Sex and the City” movie? (Not the Dubai one that was so crappy, my friend threatened to beat me and have me committed if I even thought about adding it to the permanent collection. The somewhat less-heinous one. The first one with all the extremely expensive clothes, jewelry, and housing that was passeed off as within reach of upper middle class women) There is a scene where Carrie Bradshaw is sitting in front of a blank screen with a blinking cursor and…nothing. She’s supposed to be writing about love. Nothing.

That’s me writing this blog.

I have to get over the notion that I MUST share solid gold nuggets twice a week. I have to go with the more realistic “even a blind pig finds an acorn every now and then.” Apparently, confessing to being an idiot (my last post) attracted a lot of attention (relatively speaking). People were waiting for me to admit that, I suppose. Bastards.

Or maybe I said something of value…maybe?

bobasekjax17 selfie

 

 

 

I am an Idiot. I Admit it Freely.

Apr14

So far, going to signing events has not been profitable. I don’t sell a lot of books. However, I learn things and I am the Founder, Dean, Provost, Sergeant At Arms, and Faculty Chair of the School of Learning Things the Hard Way.

For example, how to market one’s books. I screw up. I screw up a lot.

I figured, “Write a story. Get it edited. You’re done! You’ve created the book!”

Not so much.

I’m a solo act which means I am the one responsible for marketing aka convincing people to buy the book. I can persuade people to buy stuff, just get squeamish when selling MY stuff. That doesn’t work well when you are a solo act.

Authors create swag: small pieces of merchandise that reference you and your works. Things like bookmarks, cards, business cards, tiny versions of your book cover made into magnets, bookmarks, other chotchkes. The idea is that people will have your stuff and think of you, think of your books, maybe persuade someone to buy the books.

Go ahead, ask me if I had contact information on my stuff.

Nope.

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Didn’t even have a good email address on my business cards (it used to work, but I forgot the password and Gmail wouldn’t let me get it going again. For all I know, it’s how the Russians hacked the election).

I’ve spent more than a couple hundred dollars on swag. My bookmarks didn’t have MY contact info, but they had the Twitter handle of the Etsy artisan who made them. Not smart.

I’ve come up with a couple of images for branding purposes. It’s a start. I’ve come up with a new Gmail address for the business stuff (and for my pen name). Another step forward.

I’ve invested in some actual advertising in “Affaire de Coeur” magazine. Will it lead to sales? Don’t know. Pam Ackerson, who knows her way around advertising, a) explained how exposure works and it’s essentially a funnel that narrows down the field of possible buyers faster than the NCAA tourney clears out teams, and b) she came up with some excellent taglines. It’s like dating: you have to get out there (and the Amazon Kindle One-Click is kind of a Tindr app for buying books. Far too many people not swiping right on my stuff).

So, I need to redesign, including contact info. I need eye-catching. I need an elevator pitch for all of my stuff. I can do these things.

I may be an idiot, but that can be overcome with education. It’s just expensive, annoying and time consuming doing it my way.

But, I’m learning.

And Onward…

Apr10

bobasekjax17 selfie

 

Yes, I’m still here. This is the second week in a row I missed the Thursday post.

And the second week in a row none of your shnooks complained about it.

Book Obsessed Babes Jacksonville 2017 has come and gone. The above photo is me playing selfie. For that to happen, I need 1) fresh hair color and cut, 2) a good night’s sleep the night before, 3) preferably something blue, and 4) a face full of makeup. And voila, I took a picture. I will add photos to this post at a later date. Let me tell you what I did.

I have previously written erotica for Playgirl magazine. Year ago. I decided to wade in again, but do it in my own fashion: make it funny. Laughter is sexy. Sex is ridiculous. However, since this is a new direction for me. I chose a pen name (Monique DeSoto) and wrote “Patti Goes to the Dungeon.”

“What happens?” you ask.

“Spend 99 cents to find out, ” I reply.

So, I  offer the following pre-order for your consideration:

Patti Promo

 

See that? You can just shoot that code with your phone! And push a button, then wait for delivery! Cool, huh?

No, I’m not good at teasing. But Patti is…

 

Did You Miss Me?

Apr3

I know, I know; I didn’t publish anything last Thursday, the 30th (what would have been my mother’s 81st birthday. Yes, I am estranged from my immediate family, but I keep track of the dates). What can I say? I flaked. And I didn’t hear any complaints from out there, so…

Book Obsessed Babes in Jacksonville, FL is ON this Saturday, April 8. Tickets still available (the freebies I had have gone). Here’s the link:

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Tickets for Book Obsessed Babes 2017

Come on out. Sheer Bliss Events and the Omni put on a great event last year. Serioyusly, worth the price of admission. And there are usually great raffle baskets.

I have been working on other projects, writing projects that I can’t really talk about here. Yeah, I’m delving into writing erotica, I’m using a pen name for it, and I need to properly launch it. So…maybe later.

You would think the toughest part of creating a book is writing it. Wrong-O. Marketing is a cast-iron bitch from the darkest depths of Hell who wants you to die of embarrassment just because. And it’s not easy on a shoestring. With a day job. My day job.

I can attest to the difficulty mostly because of how blessedly ignorant I am. I figured “Write book. Get cover. Upload to Amazon. People find book. Sales go through the roof. Done.”

Not so much. You need a campaign. You need to launch it like the European Space Agency launched the Rosetta spacecraft to land the Philae probe on a comet 10 years (10 YEARS!) and 6.4 billion kilometers after it was launched. They started planning it in 1986. Rosetta was launched in 2004. Philae landed (wrong) in 2014. That’s 28 years.

This comet was probed by aliens.

This comet was probed by aliens.

I’m not that patient.

Confession: (and yes, another reference) I think highly of my writing skills. In “Amadeus,” Salieri looks over an assortment of Mozart’s sheet music and sees that there are no corrections to it. “As if he was taking dictation from God.”

I don't actually work like this but...

I don’t actually work like this but…

Truthfully, I’m probably closer to Salieri.

I figure (wrongly, perhaps, but I have trouble admitting it) that I got it write the first time and additional drafts are for chickenshits. When I am done, I am DONE and don’t wish to get stuck in the after phases of writing. I could rationalize this by copping out, “I’m an artist,” but the truth is, I’d rather have someone else do that part. Publishers aren’t lining up, so guess who has to tote the load? Yup. Annoyed sigh.

So, here I am, having to go back over steps because my impatience caused an error, waiting on a reply to get a book launch party on Facebook, needing to get ISBN, ASIN, the alphabet soup of needed things to sell a book in the Information Age. It’s annoying as hell. But, I’m doing it.

I will try not to flake on the Thursday post. Next Monday, I’ll give you the wrap up from BOBASE