Daily Science Fiction sent an acceptance for my latest to them today. I want to thank my technical advisors, Dylan Van Pelt, Samuel Van Pelt and Teague Van Pelt, who know a lot more about computer gaming than I do. “NPC” will appear sometime in the future. This will be my 17th appearance in DSF and 6th story sale this year.
Tag: Marketing
Most of the time when I sell a story, the magazine asks for a bio to go along with it. Writing a bio sucks, so I have a sort of harmless, generic bio that I’ve used a bunch of times. However, I’m doing a reading for the Colorado Mesa University Poet’s and Writer’s series next week, and the coordinator asked for a bio. I almost sent him the generic one, but a mood swept me and I sent this instead. I wish I could get into this kind of mood more often.
James Van Pelt grew up watching Sci Fi Flix and Creature Features Friday and Saturday nights. He gave literature a chance when he discovered Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” in the middle of the 4th grade literature textbook, a tome that was otherwise filled with the most forgettable prose ever contained between two covers. No wonder so many kids don’t like reading. He wrote poetry first because he heard Dylan Thomas’s “Fern Hill” read out loud. He took his love for language and the fantastic to the University of California at Davis where he earned a masters degree in Creative Writing. His mentor’s parting words to Jim were, “I don’t think you’ll have any luck in publishing. You’re too literary for the popular magazines and too genre for the literary ones.” Since then, Jim has sold 140 short stories to the literary and genre magazines and published four short story collections and two novels. He’s been a finalist for the Nebula Award and been nominated for Pushcart prizes. All Jim can conclude from this is that his university mentor didn’t understand the publishing world very well. He semi-retired from teaching high school English two years ago and has since devoted himself to really trying to get the hang of this writing thing.
Yesterday, Patrick Swenson asked me how my Goodread’s ad that I started in October for PANDORA’S GUN was doing. I hadn’t tried any kind of advertising campaign for any of my books before, so this was new territory for me. The Goodreads program was pretty simple. They gave me a template for the ad which I designed (it took five minutes–most of that time was deciding how to word the text to go along with the book cover) . Then I chose how much money to put into the ad buy. What I’m buying is Goodreads placing the ad on the side of pages that Goodreads users who have indicated an interest in books like PANDORA’S GUN could see. I’m charged fifty cents when someone clicks on the ad. As of this morning, the ad has been displayed 413,675 times, and I’ve spent $57.50 of my budget.
So, what to make of that? Has the ad resulted in $57.50 of sales so far? I have no way of telling. It certainly has not translated into hundreds of books being sold.
Would I have stronger results with a Facebook or Amazon ad? Do online ads work at all? Would I just do better by compiling a newsletter list (which often feels spammy to me)? These are questions I don’t have answers for.
My feeling is that in the small press world, the only things that truly sells books is word of mouth. In online terms, that would be people reading a book, liking it, and then sharing it with their online friends. If some of those friends also share the book, then you get the equivalent of a sustainable reaction. Lots of people are talking about the book and getting other people to read it.
Right behind word of mouth are reviews. Not just reviews in PW or Locus, but also on Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, etc. A well-planned signing can move books too, but in small batches.
The next tier of actions I could take: book marks, custom pens, flyers, tee-shirts, etc. strike me as a waste of money (although fun to do).
Unfortunately, word of mouth and the reviews are mostly beyond the author’s control. Author’s can’t make people talk about their books, and they can’t control the reviews.
So, to answer Patrick’s question, I don’t know how the ad buy at Goodreads is doing or whether it was worth it. All I can say is that I controlled buying the ad. Once the book was out, it was one of the few things I could control, and that felt good.