Stuck in Childhood

I got a strange text from my mom the other night. She’s very controlling. I don’t like it. But there’s a lot to be said about control. 

I’ve written a lot before about how people deal with challenges in life. I follow one psychologist who talks about how all adult personality quirks can be pared down to some challenge in childhood. Sense of entitlement? Chalk that up to childhood wounding. Someone says “I love you” too? That’s a sure sign that they are emotionally immature and don’t have boundaries. Narcissism? That’s a ego centric emotionally immature person who never really moved beyond years 3 - 7 of childhood development. 

I look at the world through these lenses now and I think back to the girlfriend I had years and years ago. When I met her she had several turns of phrases about being unnoticeable . . . “Flying under the radar” . . . “Being the grey man” . . . “Pauses” . . . Is it any wonder that she ghosted me so often? I always saw ghosting as the weakest form of personal interaction. It’s a pathetic way to deal with people. To just stop talking to them. Makes me think about immaturity and not developing past 3 - 7 years old. 

 Now, thanks to this dust up with my mom, I’ve come to see it as a control feature. It may be a way of terminating a friendship, but it’s also a way of maintaining control. The person doing it may think their in control, but if you’re blowing up the relationship and the trust at the same time . . . What are they in control of actually?

Anyone who follows this blog knows I’m working on “self-authorship” as a part of my own adult development. As a self-authored individual I’ve come to realize that ghosting is not as big a deal as I once thought. Why should I care if that’s the way someone wants to deal with the world and those around them. I can’t change it. I can’t make them believe as I do. What’s the point of getting all razzed up about it? Let it be. See what happens. At most, hope that that person decides to grow beyond that phase of their ability to relate. 

Similarly, in terms of self authorship and control (which is really just a subset of the previous discussion), I don’t like to be “controlled.” I find it funny that my mother of all people, who keeps trying to do things to control me, doesn’t realize that her efforts have the opposite effect. The more control she tries to enforce the less she has. 

I wonder what childhood development stage that means I’m stuck at? What children’s age did I not progress beyond?

Funny ole world no?

The End of the Experiment (aka AAR 2)

Just like my original AAR, I'm a-doing one for On the Edge now.

I know that there was a variable "control group" since I had two different novels that I was promoting, but despite Sage's best efforts, I just don't see any great increase in sales due to the blog tour. Once again my family has come in strong ordering the bulk of the copies that have been digested by the market, and I'm wondering how many of my On the Edge novels will become "home-fill" for my Aunt Debbie and Uncle Richard's ski chalet, but I'll take home-fill over land-fill or no-fill.

That being said I'm going to try a couple more things.

First, I'm going to try a mass market promoter. This, I'm sure will provide a sterile experience that has been promised to be tailored to my specific genre. We shall see.

Secondly, I'm going to hit up the folks who reviewed my last novel, Toe the Line. Let's see if they like the second novel as much as the first.

Finally, one thing I've found, which is somewhat inspirational, for Toe the Line I got about five rave reviews and two "so-so's" and one straight up "this sucka is bad." Not so with On the Edge. By my tally, I've got about four "this is good's" and maybe two or three "I liked it alot and intend to buy more." That means growth in my book.

Test Case for Others

Over at BookBlogs there are several forum posts regarding the use of blog tours and PR folks to handle the release of a novel. It was a couple of months ago that I went ahead and signed up for one. I chose a package that provided 15-20 "blog stops" and reviews.

For the most part I feel that I was given what I paid for, but in some ways I'm unimpressed. Although the tour is not yet complete, so far the evidence is that there is no difference in sales to justify the expense. The last time I released a novel I did more work, but was able to tailor the blogs and reviews to blogs that more closely matched my genre, but more importantly there was a bit more rigidity to the schedule.

To the first part, last year I had to investigate and identify different bloggers who might be interested in reading and reviewing my book for their blogs. Many, in fact I would say 50% of them, told me that my novel might not fit their genre and passed on the opportunity. For the most part however, I found about 15 total bloggers over the course of three months and received decent reviews. How much of that translated into new sales, probably not that many. When I look at the types of blogs that have been used for this blog tour, I feel like I've really missed the mark.

Last year there seemed to be more rhyme and reason to the ersatz tour I planned. It was based on reviews. If an interview popped up, which it did at times, then that was found money. This tour has not had that foundation, one of being based on reviews. I have gotten good reviews (here, and here) but I got good reviews last time as well. This has been based on cover, banner and summary. I'd rather have reviews. Secondly, and this might have been the impetus of this post, the most recent stop on the blog tour was just an interview. A short summary to be sure, but mostly interview. Personally, I'd rather have a review that leads to an interview not the other way around.

All in all I think that the old adage, "if you want something done right . . . do it yourself" has been proven out here. One of the aspects of this experiment I didn't like was that I was using two different experimental media . . . ie. two different books. Last years novel was Toe the Line, this years is On the Edge. How would I know if a decrease or increase in sales was or was not directly related to the blog tour. Now that I've come to the end of the blog tour experiment, I think I am going to try last year's approach and measure my success rate there too. Because at the moment my answer to the Bookblogs question of "are blog tours worthwhile" . . . it would be a resounding . . . nope.

UPDATE: 6-29-13 - the original post included a diatribe regarding missed dates on behalf of bloggers on the blog tour. This was not accurate. Sage and her bloggers on this tour have hit each of their dates as scheduled and as promised.

Are Books Like Sausages?

According to Wikipedia,  Nicolas de Chamfort is attributed with originally saying: “One would risk being disgusted if one saw politics, justice, and one’s dinner in the making.”

The following few weeks I will provide a series of posts  that will put paid to the question of whether novels should be added to this list. With the upcoming release of my second novel, On the Edge, I hope to first use all of the lessons learned that I cataloged in the AAR series following my release of Toe the Line. The hope is that by following the AAR advice On the Edge can morph my hobby into a business enterprise by actually turning a profit.

That being said, an update on On the Edge is probably a good place to start. I wrote On the Edge as a part of National Novel WritingMonth (NaNoWriMo) probably in 2007. Despite the years in-between, this novel came together far more quickly than Toe the Line and is much more complex. At the moment I have completed a final rewrite of the novel and have asked my personal editor (my cousin) to read it through for obvious mistakes in the story and any spelling, grammar or other easy to recognize problems.

So for the moment I have a paper draft with a plethora of red marks and suggestions in it. The last time I dealt with this I uploaded it to my Kindle, re-read it, and made edits in that format. As I outlined in my previous post, this was a huge mistake. I shant do it again. What will I do? I will keep it in MS Word and make the edits. I plan to upload it to the iPad and reread it one final time before Step 2, which includes advance review copies.

I plan to have a post a week on this topic. To find the most recent be sure to check Self-Publishing Label in the Labels list on the right of the screen. And for goodness sake if you have some advice let me know now before I go too far down the wrong path!

A Plethora of Reviews

I've had quite a few reviews lately, and I thought I would go ahead and catalog them, not for the sake of self-promotion, although there is that to a small extent, but to have a link to these great sites so I can remember them both on a daily basis (as they are fun to read every once and a while) and to know where to turn for my next book review.

Read Rate and Review provided a great review of my work, but more importantly were probably the easiest blog to work with. The communication and willingness to work with me were by far the best of the bunch.

Home is Where the Book Is also another good review. There is an added bonus about this site, if you go to it you'll think you never left Publish or Perish.

At Curse of the Bibliophile I got a stunning review. This one actually made me think for a second that I'd sent them the wrong book. Now I think I just need to make sure they get a copy of book two first so I can feel good about myself.

Book Lover's Couch was perhaps the first review I found through Book Blogs and Michelle was my entry into the reviewers down under. Since then I've contact two other Aussie's, one New Zealander, and a Philippine.

Three Cats and A Girl are all up in Canada and all seem to like my book as well.

Another Canadian, this time a fellow writer, Cheryl has posted a review of my book on her personal website and coming from a fellow writer, this is one I'm particularly pleased about.

The first posted review I had was from Mom's Thumb Reviews and that thumb's up certainly got the ball rolling in the right direction.

Finally Living Loving and Writing has promised to put up their review of my work, I'm throwing this in now, prior to that posting, just so I don't forget. This might be the review that was furthest from me as Laura lives in Hong Kong.

There are still about a half dozen or so still out there reading it, or who have it in their to be read list. Another few have copies being sent to them. So this is what I meant in my earlier post about whether or not its worth scrounging for reviews or having a publicist do it for you. Two months worth of work, I say not a bad haul.

Another in the AAR Series

One thing that I've been both pleasantly surprised by and disheartened by is the process of garnering and asking for reviews for my novel, Toe the Line (here).

I read many articles about e-book and e-publishing success stories. In most cases they state that positive online reviews lead to their success (as stated in the article linked here). Each time I read it it sounded so arbitrary and ethereal. How did one go about getting reviews? I knew that there were companies out there that provided reviews, how much? What type of review did you get?

The first thing I learned was not to count on friends and family for reviews. Initially this was disheartening for me. Then I realized how few reviews I've actually posted on Smashwords or Amazon. Even for books I love I rarely post glowing reviews. Why should I expect from my friends and family something that I have never provided to anyone else?

I was not impressed with this avenue. It petered out quickly and the reviews left me wondering if the readers had truly read the entire book. First they cited only passages from the beginning and I've gotten more helpful and deep critiques from the YA reviewers I discuss below.

The second thing I found was that Book Blogs (here) is a spectacular avenue for finding reviewers. Sure a majority of the reviewers on the site are Romance novel reviewers and there also seems to be an overwhelming bias toward vampires and young adult novels, but I've had more luck using this venue than any other. The reviews I got (here), (here) and (here) all came from this site. There are three times that many I just didn't want to write and link (here) nine times.

Finally, and this is the key, I was contacted by Cheryl Masciarelli through LinkedIn about her company, Partners in Crime (here). This is a virtual PR business that helps young authors link up with publicists, bloggers, reviewers, and more. Basically it sounds like she would do all the leg work that I am currently doing.

Again, the question becomes is it worth the money. The results from the "for charge" review sites were not worth the dough and I didn't get as much as I hoped. Maybe there is something to be said for slogging ones own way through the morass. At this point I'm considering Miss Masciarelli et al to help out with On the Edge. We'll know if the investment pays off in my AAR following that release.

Covers . . .There's More to Covers Than You Think

Anyone who has seen my novel (here) will see that I went minimalist in my cover design. I tried to let the designs in so many Triathlon symbols inspire me (here). I think for the most part I achieved that, but still I think it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi that more professional covers have. That being said I've seen quite a few designs from my contemporaries (here) and seeing them makes me happy that I went the minimalist route. Some of the designs seem a bit too much, too busy, too loopy and chock full of stuff.

That being said there are things I missed cover-wise for this release. I had a cover ready for the website I was designing (here) but hadn't gone beyond that. I didn't have one ready (formatted for an actual book) for CreatesSpace, I didn't have one ready (shrunk for tiny viewing) for Amazon and Smashwords, just like the web-marketing I didn't have enough ready.

I should have gone onto Smashwords and checked out their template and made sure mine fit the bill. I could have made the second stick figure, the one with the gun, wrap around the spine so that it looks like he's running from the back cover to the front. I could have had a back picture ready as well as a blurb or two (more on that later).

Suffice it to say there were alot of things that I hadn't considered with the cover that with a small amount of research would have cleared up. Again, its on the AAR list now, so I shant miss it next time.

Less on the Website, but More on the Web

That title alludes to what I need to concentrate on next time. I spent alot of time and effort on building a website, and not enough time on web marketing. What do I mean? Read on to see.

I started building a DickHannahWriting website about three years ago. There's a reason I haven't provided a link. It's not done. I started on it ostensibly because I thought I needed one for marketing. Secondarily it went hand-in-hand with a project I was involved with at the company I worked at at that time (here . . . but don't hold me completely accountable, they've let it go to seed a bit it since my departure). It was a decent little website but sadly had even less content than decency. Since that time, I've started several stunningly good revisions, none of which panned out completely. I've since abandoned the project for  as no matter how I organize it, there is always too little content for a complete website. Needless to say the wasted hours on website development over the last couple of years grew and grew and grew.  

I should have spent more time on web marketing. What do I mean by web marketing? I mean those aspects of websites and e-publishing that are tangential but still inherent in so many of the portals where one can find my book. There is the Amazon book description (here), the Amazon author page (here) there is the (still absent) Facebook page on Toe the Line, the Smashwords author page (here) and the Smashwords book description (here) my BookBlogs author page (here) my Linkedin page and my banner ad (see the top banner in this blog).

 I'm not saying that each of these has to necessarily be unique or different, in fact many of them are direct cuts and pastes of one another, but I didn't know about most of them until I started down this path. I should have had them all prepped and ready by the launch of the book.

 The banner ad too has been used far more than I expected. I used it in forums in BookBlogs, I used it for the top of my blog, I used it in LinkedIn, Facebook, etc etc. Guess what? I threw it together at the last minute. I took a couple of features from discarded book covers and plopped them on the ole art board one evening.

 Had I known then what I know now I would have devoted more time to the banner ad and other seemingly less significant web marketing feature and spent less time on the silly website.  

Beginning the After Action Review

Whenever we completed a mission in the military we would perform an AAR or After Action Review. This would be a lessons learned session where everyone would get to talk about what went right with the mission and what went wrong. Although I'm still in the midst of self-publishing my novel, I think I can provide some AAR points on my efforts. Ergo, I am going to start having a series of posts on self-publishing lessons learned that way others who might be considering this option can learn from my mistakes and foibles.

It's Never Truly Complete/Edited

Toe the Line (here) was edited several times, and proofed twice. Despite that I am still finding problems in the text. Just last weekend I took my cousins marked up copy and inserted her edits. Far more than there should have been. The lesson learned here is DO NOT use multiple platforms for editing. I went from Kindle to MS Word and back to printed copy to make my edits. It was ridiculous, confusing, and I would swear it made for more problems than there were in the first place. Pick one (preferably paper) for that final edit and stick with it. Get a hard copy of your novel prior to announcing a release and have a trusted reader mark it up.

One of the editors recommended that I print it out and read the book out loud. This is just plain silly. Who reads a book out loud? My readers won't. I should have taken another few days, printed out an advance copy from Createspace (here) and read it as I expected my readers to read it. Next time I'll know better.

AAR Point #1 - I was way too fast in thinking that my novel was complete and completely edited. Won't make that mistake again.