novels

If you truly love me, you’ll ignore my screams of terror

/ Scott Nagele / Leave a comment

Like many things in life, writing is a roller coaster ride. But it’s a ride that most writers can manage by themselves, or with the encouragement of a small group of peers. The scarier roller coaster departs the platform after the book is written. This is the hell ride known as promotion.

Promotion is a huge, daunting monster you can’t work out in your own head while sitting quietly. If you are a low-key, quiet type of person, it can be difficult to even board this ride without lots of support. It’s important to have a few people who love you. It’s also good to have some people who like you.

The people who love you, a spouse for example, can help psyche you up for this ride that goes so much against your nature. They comfort you and coax you toward the car, then, when necessary, in the ultimate act of love, they give you a good shove into the seat and slap down the restraint bar over your arms. You know you need to do this, but it’s hard to overcome your nature. Only the most cherished loved ones will be there to tenderly ignore your screams of terror and lock you in before you can run away.

If you are that shy, quiet writer, do yourself a favor by marrying someone completely opposite from you. Find someone who likes to plan events, rocks social media, and has no qualms about tooting your horn for you, because face it, you’ve never been any good at tooting it yourself. Your better half makes it sound much more melodious than you ever did.

running the show

“You just hold your hands out and smile big, and I’ll make sure this whole ball of yarn happens.”

Do your best to make sure they love you, because they really excel at these things when their heart is in it.

If they are the best thing you’ve got going for you in life, they will also be the best thing you’ve got going promoting your books.

This crazy ride is also easier if you have people who like you. These are the people who show up to your signings and pay their hard-earned money for your books, not because they are sure you are this generation’s Steinbeck, but because they like you and they want to show you some support.

They get excited about having you sign their copies, not because your autograph promises to become valuable, but because your signature is a memento from that time when they watched you reach for the stars, regardless of how close you came to touching any sky.

A little help

It’s nice to have friends to look out for you when your comfort zone gets turned upside down.

I’ve always tried to be likeable to the people I know. This has paid off in the support I have received from them. I wonder what would happen if I had spent more time getting to know a larger group of people. But that’s where my nature limits me again. At least I didn’t spend my life pissing off my relatively small group, so I’ve got that going for me.

And that’s a good start.

The Goodreads giveaway learning curve

/ Scott Nagele / Leave a comment

A few posts back I mentioned that I was holding a Goodreads book giveaway for A Housefly in Autumn. That giveaway has come and gone. Here is what I learned.

Submit your giveaway at least a week before you want it to begin. It’s supposed to take Goodreads a couple of days to approve your giveaway. Mine took about a week. I had scheduled my giveaway to begin the day after I submitted it and run for a month. Consequently, I lost about six days off the front of it. I wouldn’t have minded so much losing six days in the middle, but what I didn’t know is the first few days and the last few days of a giveaway are the most important.

There are tons of giveaways on Goodreads. Most folks who are interested in them look in two places: the list of new giveaways and the list of giveaways about to end. When my giveaway was finally approved, it was already six days old. My listing, when it showed up, was already deeply buried with in the new list. Only giveaway hunters with great perseverance would dig that deep. I missed out a good number of entries because of this.

giveaway pitch

According to the site, the average giveaway garners 825 entries. When you miss the first week or your own giveaway, you get fewer.

The middle of a month-long giveaway is the doldrums. The book is prominent on neither of the lists people search. Hence, the number of entrants drops sharply. Only after I had set up my giveaway did I find good advice about ignoring the Goodreads recommendation for longer giveaways. A long middle does no good. It’s best to jump directly from the new list to the about to end list. A week seems plenty long for a giveaway.

I offered autographed copies. This was another mistake. Autographed copies meant I would have to mail them myself, which led me to yet another mistake. I limited my giveaway to the U.S. because I didn’t want to have to pay huge amounts to ship books overseas. If I had not offered autographs, I could have bought the books online and had them shipped directly. Who knows how many entrants I cut myself off from by limiting the giveaway like this?

There are two main goals in offering a giveaway. The first is to get members to add the book the their “to-read” lists. The mistakes already mentioned hindered my efforts in this direction. As it was, 525 people entered, of which 228 added the book to their personal lists. Many of those people have more than 1,000 books on their “to-read” lists; some have tens of thousands. This means there are thousands of books on lists that will never be read.

The second goal of a giveaway is to garner reviews. Goodreads say that around 60% of people who win giveaway books write a review. Most commentary I’ve read suggests this is overly optimistic. I gave away six books. By Goodreads numbers, I should receive at least three reviews. I would love for this to happen, but one thing I’ve learned in this self-publishing biz is not to hold my breath.

Selling it by giving it away

/ Scott Nagele / 4 Comments

The book has been published. All the hard work of editing, proofing, and layout is done. It’s time to take a break, sit back, and relax for a while.

Not.

Anyway, I can take a break from the completed book and turn my attention to my work in progress. Well . . . actually . . . I can’t do that either. The work in progress may have to stay on hold for a while longer.

A Housefly in Autumn may be published, but I’m hardly done with it. There’s promoting to be done.

Promoting can be a hard pill to swallow for someone who revels in the introverted nature of writing. Fortunately, this is not my first trip through the cycle, so I am somewhat prepared to face it. I’m never wholly prepared for promotion, but somewhat prepared is better than not prepared at all.

Promotion can be a slap in the face to the first-time author. It is tempting to think that once a book is released, people will naturally buy it. After three books, I am fully cured of this temptation.

I know how difficult it is to sell a book. That’s why I’m working so hard to give them away.

It may sound counter-productive to give books away, and maybe it is. There’s no guarantee it will result in eventual sales, but the idea is that people who might not have bought the book will be attracted to the giveaway. If they enjoy it, they may review it or tell their friends, or otherwise increase visibility, eventually making the book attractive enough to be worth actual money to the reading public.

Book giveaway

If not for the Internet, I’d be handing them out to passersby down at the docks.

The giveaways I’m working on right now are at Goodreads, for the print copy, and Amazon, for the Kindle version.

The Goodreads giveaway is running now. I am giving away six print copies of A Housefly in Autumn. The giveaway is open to US readers and runs through July 26, 2015, when six winners will be chosen.

The Kindle giveaway will run July 15-17. This is an unlimited giveaway. The Kindle version will be free to all who wish to download during that time. Amazon is in charge of the logistics, but from my experience, I expect this to be open to international readers as well.

Setting up the giveaways is not difficult nor time-consuming. But if you’re giving away your book, you want somebody to take it (if only for self-esteem purposes). The more difficult piece is drawing attention to your giveaway. This involves researching and registering your giveaway on blogs and web sites that advertise such things. All have different rules and requirements. Figuring out where to post and filling in required fields eats up time. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to eat up a lot of money, because it’s hard enough to give so much of your toil away; it would be far worse to have to pay to give it away.

Please take a moment to explore these giveaways and/or mention them to other readers.

Book release: A Housefly in Autumn

/ Scott Nagele / 2 Comments

Since I began this blog, last September, I’ve been talking about my forthcoming book, A Housefly in Autumn. Before I started this blog, I owned a traditional web site. There, I talked about my forthcoming novel for even longer. Altogether, I’ve spent a long time talking about something happening in the future. If you saw any of these mentions, you may have begun to wonder if the future would ever get here. I know there were times when I did.

It took its sweet time, but the future has arrived.

Available in Kindle and paper

If you buy the paperback at Amazon, you can download the Kindle version for free. Just in case you can’t decide which you like best.

Today is that day. I can finally hold a real live copy of A Housefly in Autumn in my hands. I can download the e-book to my Kindle. In fact, I have already done both of these things, and now so can you.

A Housefly in Autumn is available in paper and Kindle formats.

Where to buy:

Amazon Barnes & Noble Createspace
Paperback Paperback Paperback
Kindle

This book has taken longer to publish than my previous ones. The editing, the proofing, the cover art, it’s all been a longer trek. That’s why this day is sweeter to me than past release days. It’s the culmination of more investment, more sweat and toil.

That also may be part of the reason there’s more trepidation than before. There’s more toil at risk. But the toil can’t be undone so it might as well be pushed with all the other chips into the pot.

I’m all in. Now I get to see what kind of hand I’ve dealt myself.

Introducing:

A Housefly in Autumn

                Book Description

A Housefly in Autumn is intended for Young Adults and up. A historical novel, set in 19th century Europe, it follows the life of a young man whose dreams have crumbled down around him. In an act of heroism, he sacrifices his own promising future to save the life of another. Now he must decide whether to cling to the unlikely hope of regaining his old life, or aim his efforts toward making the most of the life fate has dealt him. Though it is difficult to let go of the rewards that life once promised, perhaps the greatest rewards are the ones earned by building new hope from the bits and pieces of wrecked dreams.

                Synopsis

At 17, Anders Christiansen was a young man overflowing with potential. All his teachers believed he was destined to blossom into a leading man of letters, enjoying a life of rich rewards.

That was before the accident.

Now, Anders’s great talent lies fallow. He can’t produce the complex ideas he once did. His thoughts are slow and his words simple. The world holds little promise for him anymore.

Struggling to build a meaningful life out of the wreckage of his dreams, Anders learns the value of simple treasures. Loyalty, devotion, and even sacrifice hold rewards of their own to renew hope after tragedy. Love can cause hurt, but he who gives love when he hurts the most will reap a joy outweighing the pain.

Anders gives meaning to his life in the way he spends it. He will face grave danger to spare those he loves, and though his gifts be diminished, he will share them freely with even the humblest of children. Though never sought, Anders’s reward is immense and enduring, showing the millions of reasons to go on sharing even the simplest of gifts.

 

So now I guess I have to find some new future event to start talking about. Fortunately, my future is full of things that probably will happen but might take longer than I expect. There will be plenty to talk about.