Shining the light of God's word into our confused world.

Month: December 2012

Hush-a-bye

This post is going to be kind of random. I’m currently lying on the couch, nursing what is apparently some sort of stomach bug while my husband is getting ecstatic over a Broncos game. I’ll spare you the details, except to say that this morning it was pretty horrible. Now it’s mainly just weakness and chills. Hopefully it will pass quickly. My appetite’s starting to come back, so hopefully that’s a good sign.

There’s a box full of paperbacks destined for Indiegogo campaign funders sitting in my office that needs signing. I was going to be really excited about that, but between this bug and the sheer weight of recent events, I’m finding myself surprisingly unmotivated. I need to work up the gumption to take care of them at some point today, though, because they need to go in the mail tomorrow.

I don’t normally blog about politics or current events. I’m feeling compelled to say something, though, just to acknowledge what happened, because my last couple of posts over the past couple of days have seemed so out of place. But I don’t really know what to say. What can you say? It’s awful. It’s tragic. It’s heartbreaking. It’s hard to wrap your brain around that kind of evil, and it sucks to feel so helpless against it.

It’s also frustrating to be on social media and see so many people who think they have the answers to why and how to prevent it from happening again, when nobody really knows anything, and the facts have yet to fully come to light, and I realize that grasping for answers is part of the coping process, but all of the debating and finger-pointing and name-calling that I’m seeing is simply not helpful. Now is not the time to promote our pet agendas. Now is the time to process and mourn.

For the knitters and crocheters on my list, there’s a Ravelry group I joined, 600 Monsters Strong for Connecticut, and the goal is to make huggable plush monsters to give to each and every one of the surviving children affected by this tragedy. It’s the best way I know how to help, how to step up and do something to not feel so helpless, to let these children know that they’re loved and that there are still good people in the world who care about them.

Also, this link has been making the rounds. If you haven’t seen it yet, you should take a look. It will help you feel better: 26 Moments That Restored Our Faith In Humanity This Year

I’ll probably be scarce the next few days. Possibly the next few weeks. I have a lot of projects and deadlines, and I haven’t even started to deal with my Christmas obligations yet. I’m still trying to squeeze in sporadic time to work on Eucha Falls (although I doubt I’ll get the next scene done by Tuesday), and I’ve got my Wednesday spotlight slots filled for the rest of the month, so there will be some posting. It will just be sporadic. So let’s call it a semi-hiatus through the end of the year.

Love to all.

Holiday Blog Hop – Day 4

The Holiday Hop is still going strong — you’ve still got all day today and all of tomorrow to visit all of the participating blogs and enter to win a ton of prizes in addition to the grand prize. As for my giveaway, I’ve extended it until midnight on Friday! So if you haven’t already racked up all of your entries to win a free e-book copy of Dominion of the Damned, along with an amigurumi zombie hand-crocheted by the author, there’s still plenty of time to do so. The winner will be announced Saturday.

So get thee hence and like, tweet, comment and follow to be sure you get all of your chances to win!

Indiegogo Campaign Results

My Indiegogo book pre-sale campaign wrapped up the other day, and for those following and learning from my marketing efforts, I thought I’d share the results, along with a few observations.

Because Indiegogo won’t let you set a goal lower than $500, that was my “official” goal; but my unofficial goal was only $250, and I beat that by $5. Sure, in my wildest dreams I hoped that it would take off and get over-funded and actually serve as a source of income this month, as well as covering additional promotional costs, but I didn’t really expect that to happen, and it didn’t. Still, it accomplished the primary thing that I set out to accomplish, which was to raise enough to cover the costs of finalizing the cover, so all in all I’m calling it a success.

It did offer a few surprises, though. Where I expected to sell a lot of e-books and thought I’d do well to sell one or two paperbacks, what actually happened was that I sold several of the signed paperback packages and only a few e-books. The majority of my funders were friends–no surprises there–but I did have a couple of strangers buy some copies. I will say that I had hoped for more participation from friends and family helping me spread the word by sharing the link with their networks, but, eh, people are busy, and writers, like prophets, are rarely appreciated in their hometown, so I didn’t really have high expectations in that regard. The ones who did pass on the link, though, have my heartfelt appreciation, and have moved to the top of my list of favorite people. Just kidding about that last part. Sort of. ;p

I think my biggest takeaway is that for this sort of campaign to be wildly successful, one needs to have an established fan base full of people who will not only spend their money on your work, but also evangelize it for you far and wide. I do not yet possess such a fan base. But I do, thankfully, have enough people who believe in my writing and are enthusiastic about it enough to support me in order to get a cover funded, and that’s a really good start.

So would I recommend doing an Indiegogo or Kickstarter campaign to a newbie indie author? It depends. If they’re looking for funding to write their book, then no. But if they have a small goal to match their small readership, I do think Indiegogo is an excellent way to take pre-orders in order to cover publishing costs. My main advice is to keep your goal small and your expectations low, and expect to do the main work of spreading the word yourself.

My other main takeaway is that I really need to find a way to get my work in front of more and different people, because I think pretty much everybody within the reach of my network has been told about it. To that end, I’ll be focusing the bulk of my marketing efforts from here on out on getting book bloggers and reviewers to review Dominion in the hopes of reaching new people. I know that there’s an audience out there for this book, and I believe it’s a sizable audience; despite the fact that there are people who are sick to death of vampires and zombies, there are also still plenty of folks who can’t get enough of either genre. Now I just have to get out there and find them.