#writing – AJ Mullican, Author

(Not so) well read

Novel, Reading, Self Publishing, Writing

So Kindle has this thing where if your book is enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited deal, you can see how many pages a person has read if they have downloaded your book through Kindle Unlimited.

Somebody has been reading my book! But they’re not very far in…eleven pages one day, three the next, then nothing for a few days, then twenty-five pages yesterday. (And there’s no way to tell if it’s all the same person or different people, so I don’t know if the first two days were people who got bored partway through or if all three days read are the same person.) Still, even if they’re all from different people, at least one person got a good couple of chapters in yesterday. I’ll keep checking it to see if any more pages get read. I’d love to be able to watch as someone reads all the way through.

Still no reviews after my free promotional period, but I’m not surprised. A lot of people download books while they’re free then take their time reading them. I’m sure plenty of those nearly 600 people have lists of books that they want to read, so I’ll try to be patient.

Haven’t written anything new in the WIP, but I’m planning on possibly rewriting the beginning once I have a better idea of what my world is like. And now, more pre-surgery-shift Internet laziness!

Coat of arms

Comic books, Cosplay, Crafting, Geek, Writing

Next up on the cosplay list: the coat for Shatterstar.

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More color blocking to work out. I’m going to start either tomorrow or the next day on the mockups for that part. The pattern I have is kind of complex, with lots of pieces, so it should be interesting to see how the color blocking will work into that. I may have to do some big modifications to the pattern. I’m feeling more confident about that sort of thing with each new thing I sew.

Very excited to get my serger later this week. I’ve heard that it makes things much easier (once I get the hang of it). It should prove interesting to say the least.

All of this cosplay is putting my work in progress on hold, but it’s given me time to reflect and realize that I really wasn’t ready to start it yet. Some of what I’ve written is good material, but it doesn’t have a solid foundation at this point. I need to reflect more on it and build up more of the world before I try to lay down a story in there.

Tomorrow I start again.

Experiment’s End

Promotion, Uncategorized

The final tallies are in, and I have mixed feelings on my free promotion experiment for my novel.

Overall, I “sold” 596 free units of the book. Yes, 596 is an amazing number considering I’m an unknown author who just posted on Twitter and Instagram about the deal. But considering they were all free, there’s no royalties in it for me. So now I have to rely on my lame “marketing” until I learn proper marketing.

I know, I know, I should read some articles or take a class or something. I just don’t have the energy for all that. In the mornings it takes me a couple of hours to wake up enough to be able to comprehend the ins and outs of marketing techniques, and when I get home I just want to spend time with my husband.

Another side effect of the free promotional thing is that in order to be able to do a free promotional period I had to sign up for a Kindle program that allows for people with Kindle Unlimited to read the book for free as well. Soooo….that will cut into potential royalties.

Then again, if no one wants to pay for the book, the royalties will be zip.

I’m going to give this a month or so before I make a final decision on whether or not this was a success. Give the people who purchased the free copy time to read it, wait to see if reviews come in, etc. Then I’ll decide if I want to do a weekend promotion next time, or maybe a promotion where it goes down in price then increases by $1 increments each week until it’s back at regular price. I might even do another free promotion during my birthday weekend. Why not? If I’m not selling paid copies anyway, might as well give myself an ego boost by watching the numbers go up as people grab a free copy for themselves.

Experiment, Day 4

Flash Fiction, Horror, Learning, Marketing, Novel, Poetry, Social Media, Writing

Well, this is somewhat interesting. My day 4 numbers as far as free book downloads were more than double the day 3 numbers. Could it be that people are trying to get the book while it’s still free?

Today will be the final day of the free book promo for my novel and my two anthologies (my poetry anthology and my short story/flash fiction anthology). The horror short anthology has been doing relatively well, considering I haven’t really advertised it specifically on social media. Not nearly as well as the novel, but decent numbers for not having been talked about.

This experiment has been interesting, given that I haven’t done anything different besides putting my novel on a temporary free promotion. Does this mean that people aren’t willing to pay the price I’ve set for my novel? If so, does it mean that the price is too high, that the blurb isn’t catchy enough for them to want to pay for it, or does it just mean that people like free stuff?

Since I’m not a scientific person by nature, I’ll probably never know the answer. Still, this has been a new experience that I will probably experiment with more later on.

Experiment, Day 3

Learning, Marketing, Novel, Reading, Self Publishing, Social Media

My experiment is more than halfway over, and I have come to the conclusion that perhaps a full five days of freeness might be too much.

I wanted to reach the largest audience I could, so I figured the longest available free promotion would be best. It’s looking to be an error in judgment right now. Though the book did quite well the first day and somewhat well the second day, yesterday (day 3) was something of a bomb in comparison:

The first day saw 227 copies sold, the second 144, but yesterday only 42 copies were sold. Granted, 413 copies is vastly more than any number I had reached prior (I think my previous record was six in one day, just after the launch), but how many will read it? I myself have gotten free books before and not read them. I have probably at least a dozen on my Kindle app waiting to be read, maybe even two dozen.

I’m not drawing any definitive conclusions until the five-day promotional period is done, but I’m thinking that five days is too long. Free for a weekend? Yeah, that’s a possibility. But free for five days? It’s not looking like there’s much interest anymore.

Today (day 4) there has only been one copy sold, but given that it’s only 1:15 in the morning we’ll just ignore that little tidbit and wait for more solid results later in the day.

As far as predictions for tomorrow go, it’s hard to say. Have all the people who were interested in the book gotten it already? Will some people see that “last day to get it free” tweet and scramble to pick it up while the deal is still going on? Who knows.

Experiment, Day 2

Musings, Novel, Thoughts, Writing

The second day of my free promotional period on Whispers of Death is over, and the numbers are about 100 less than they were on Day 1. I ended the day with almost 400 total with the two days combined, and so far today only 9 units have “sold.”

I’m debating on tweeting about it again, but I feel that’s part of my problem when it comes to marketing: I don’t know how much is too much. I feel like I’m annoying and/or bothering people with the tweets and Instagram photos and the like. Buuuuuut…I still want to get my book’s name out there. If people download it and read it and tell their friends how much they like it (hopefully they like it), then maybe after the promotion is over people will be more inclined to buy it.

Also, I’m hoping reviews start to come in. I’m sure having only four reviews so far isn’t helping me any. Well, I guess it’s helping a little. Even with the “decline” in units sold between Day 1 and Day 2, I’m still in the top 10 in the Occult genre on Kindle and hovering around 20 in the Paranormal & Urban Fantasy genre. Not too bad for someone who is almost a complete unknown.

Past, Present, Future, and Beyond

Novel, Sci-fi, Self Publishing, Thoughts, Writing

Which type of fiction is most difficult to write, I wonder? Historical fiction? It certainly has its challenges. Researching for accuracy while trying to put your own unique spin on things. Trying to keep the nitpickers from tearing apart the tiniest anachronism. Taking what was and turning it into what might have been.

But what about urban fantasy? How would modern characters react to the magical and supernatural existing side-by-side with cars and cell phones and airplanes? How would the magical and supernatural beings react to existing side-by-side with these things? Did they always exist together? Were they recently introduced?

Okay, those are both tough subjects to write. But I’m not done yet. Futuristic sci-fi and dystopia? You’d have to take current events and let them play out in your mind, marching forward into a time that has not yet happened. Do those cars and cell phones and airplanes still exist? What, if anything, has taken their place?

Yeah, yeah, that’s all well and good–but high fantasy? World-building? I don’t know if I could even attempt that. Creating an entire world, sometimes an entire universe, from scratch. Sure, you can take bits and pieces of the past and present of our reality and combine them with the realities in your head to make a quilt that blankets your stage, but where to start? What do you use and what do you toss aside? How do you stitch the pieces together into a cohesive picture?

So what’s next for me? I’ve tried my hand at urban fantasy already. I’m too lazy to do the research for historical fiction. And I’ve already said that high fantasy is beyond me … so sci-fi it is!

Experimentation

Flash Fiction, Novel, Poetry, Promotion, Reading, Self Publishing

So, as I’ve established before (or at least I think I’ve established it here before), I suck at marketing for my book. I’m trying something a little different now, though.

I’ve actually set up a temporary free promotion through Amazon KDP for a few days, starting tomorrow. I’m trying to see if this generates any “sales” (yeah, they’ll be unpaid sales, but sales nonetheless) and if it gets the word out more about the book.

I don’t know how well this will work. I don’t know if there will be ANY sales during my promotion, but I figure since it’s not selling now, what am I really missing? At least this has the potential to get more reads, reviews, etc. Maybe some of my friends & coworkers who have said they’ll read the book will actually “buy” it? 😉

But what’s this? I’ve also put my poetry anthology & collection of horror flash fiction/short stories on a free promotional period as well? I must be crazy!!!

Or….I’m just lost.

We’ll see what the next 5 days brings.

By the way, here’s a link for my Amazon author page (where you can find all three books):

amazon.com/author/AJMullican

It’s already showing Whispers of Death as available free to Kindle Unlimited subscribers…I don’t know if I did something wrong (the promotion is supposed to start tomorrow), but what the heck. Here I go!

Language barrier

Charity, Diversity, Education, Language, Learning, Musings, Reading, Writing

English is one of the toughest languages to learn. This is almost universally agreed upon.

You know what’s even tougher? Learning proper English when you’ve spent your entire life speaking and writing in American English.

British English is almost as different from American English as any two other languages you could pick. The grammar is different. The punctuation is different. The slang is different. The spellings of some of the same words are different. As an American reading British writing (for the charity anthology project I’m working on–with primarily British writers), it can be frustrating. Is this a misspelling or just a cultural difference? What the heck is this word? What the fuck does this even mean?

For the writers of the anthology, one of our functions is to critique the other writers’ works. This critique process helps to clean up first drafts, second drafts, etc. It also gives the author of each piece a different perspective of how the piece reads. It’s a great process, and it has improved my writing immensely. However, as a “foreigner” when it comes to British English, I feel as though I’m trying to critique a short story/poem/etc that’s written in Greek or Spanish.

Granted, I’ve learned quite a lot about British English through this project. When I watch a British television show I’m not quite as lost at some points as I may otherwise be. It’s quite interesting to see the differences in two languages that are supposed to be the same language. No wonder it’s considered one of the toughest languages to learn. You can learn British English fluently, then take a trip to America and suddenly feel as though you don’t know English at all (or vice versa).

Since I’m partially bilingual (I know Spanish well enough to converse with the Mexican patients at work and we can largely understand each other, but I don’t consider myself fluent), does my newfound knowledge of British English make me actually trilingual? It’s a fascinating concept.