Epic Fail? Yes, it Was Awesome! Plus ROW80 Check-In, Crossover Karma, and more!

At the Wat Chan Temple

Well, checking in from the People's Democratic Republic of Laos, where I've been traveling for the last few days. Tomorrow it's onward to Vietnam, first stop, Ho Chi Minh City (still commonly referred to as Saigon!)

First, a big thank you to anyone who supported my first Indie Crossover Karma artists, the rock/rap group 7LIONS - after the millions of votes were tabulated, they came in a close second in Macy's iHeart Radio contest - so, while it's unfortunate that they won't be headed to Vegas in September to play that big festival, hopefully the fact that they beat 22 other bands and solo acts from around the nation will help move them closer to getting a big recording contract, and it's certainly helped showcase their music!

The Final Analysis

I am also happy to report failure in my attempt to break into the Amazon Kindle "Top 100 Free" with my latest short fiction release, and also the failure to give away 1000 free copies of Lethargica. Why am I happy? Because we learn more from our failures than our successes, and I learned a lot with this latest release, all of which I'll document for the benefit of others in a future post.

Another product of the week that will get more discussion in the future was the creation of a Social Media Plan - something that every self-published author needs, and that I now (finally!) have...

Meanwhile, what about those darn ROW80 goals?

WRITING

- Wr0te Another Chapter of The Notorious Mister Wickham - yes, I know I'm supposed to be working on Charming, The Artillerists and Merry Christmas, Mister Washington, but it's bad form to argue with your Muse!

PUBLISHING

- Publish German Translation of Happily Ever After - I sent a follow-up note to the German lady who has offered to do the translation - she's very busy, so who knows? (FYI, I'm looking for a French translator, too - so, if you know anyone, leave me a comment!)

FITNESS / LANGUAGE

- Sigh... this keeps falling through the cracks... Between a shoulder injury, lack of a fixed schedule, and lack of gyms in the little towns in which I keep finding myself, I'm finding this hard to stay on top of. But I am trying to send as many SMS messages to my French-speaking friends in French, and am studying off and on... Bad me! Will try to do better and have something useful to report next Sunday.

NETWORKING

- Stayed caught up on the Author Karma Facebook Liking List...

- Wrote a guest post for Nicole Basaraba's Writer's Uni-Verse-City on the topic of short stories...

- Created a Social Media Plan

PROMOTION

- Ran the last of my target KDP Select Promotions!

ADMINISTRATION

- Create a “Short Story Contest” website Cancelling this goal... Maybe next time!

So, that's what's new in my neck of the woods... Will look forward to reading about what other folks have going on, and happy to entertain your questions or comments.

Best always,

Edward

ROW80 Update, New Release, Cover Art Preview, etc...

Hello there, everyone, and thanks for stopping by.

It's been a big week for me in many ways - just back from Australia, I spent the week getting my visas and other stuff done for the big Cambodia - Laos - Vietnam - China trip on which I'm currently embarked (sitting in the airport in Kuala Lumpur, waiting for my connecting flight to Phnom Penh right now).

Put my life back in boxes and shipped it off to the U.S. on Friday, and will be living out of a backpack the next month as I fly, float, and ride trains all around Asia.

Saturday was a big rugby day - a 10s tournament that my team hosted in Jakarta, 24 teams, 80+ games... My squad went all the way to the semi-finals, and then lost a tight match against the Singapore Wanderers, but I absolutely played my best rugby of the year in that final game and can honestly say I was happy with my own performance (and that of my awesome teammates) although not the final score.

While all this was going on, I also managed to get my latest short fiction, Lethargica, up on Amazon, and will be setting up a KDP Select "Free" promotion this coming weekend to launch it.

WRITING
No goals accomplished this week. My focus for the coming week will be to work on The Artillerists and Merry Christmas, Mister Washington, thus completing the war-story quartet that will comprise my first short fiction collection, along with the previously-published Seven Lives to Repay Our Country and Lethargica.

PUBLISHING
- Publish Lethargica - Done!

ARTISTIC
- Bonus! Completed the draft cover art for The Notorious Mister Wickham... Comments are much appreciated!

FITNESS
- I think my 80 minutes of hard-hitting rugby on Saturday fulfilled my quota for the week!

LANGUAGE
- Didn't quite get in an hour a day, but I did work on this... Sadly, my language studies have turned out to be one of the most difficult tasks to stay focused on in the midst of my travels.

NETWORKING
- "Author Karma" - all caught up on FB page "likes" - will start working on other items this week!
- Off track on my goal of building my “Core Group” to 25 people - so will commit to sending out 10 invitations this week! Would you like to join? If so, send me a note or leave a comment and I'll get you added in... Advance copies of my latest works - who wants some?
- Bonus! Built my Klout score to 49, and gave out all my +K's for the week.

Well, that's enough for now - time to use my laptop battery for some serious writing!

Best wishes to all for a happy and productive week,

Edward

Rugby, ROW80, and More!

Well, I'm back from my travels in Australia, just in time to lace on my boots and play a spirited game of rugby against a visiting team from Kuala Lumpur. That was Saturday, so after a long, hard game on the field, and then a long, hard night of drinking and dancing afterwards, being productive on Sunday, was, well, challenging.

But I did finalize the cover art and created a book trailer for "Lethargica", so that's a couple of items from the "Artistic" list that can be crossed off! 

As far as actual writing goes, a bit of quiet week; while I did get a very good blog post in, and did probably a thousand or so words on various of my works-in-progress, I actually got more done with plotting and historical research than actual writing. So, I now know what Regiment to put Ensign Wickham in (the 5th Dragoons) and have a better idea of how our anti-hero gets from Newcastle to Battle of Ballinamuck.

Last but not least, I finally buckled down and finished all of the "Facebook Likes" on the Author Karma page - which took some time as I had over 100 pages to visit. But that's done now, and I can focus on some of the other Author Karma lists.

So, here's the re-cap of progress made on specific goals:

ARTISTIC

- Create the cover for "Lethargica" - 100% complete

- Create the video trailer for "Lethargica" - 100% complete

NETWORKING

- Caught up on the "Facebook" aspect of Author Karma - Twitter, here I come!

- Added another person to my “Core Group”, so 20% complete!

Still not hitting the gym or the French books as hard as I ought to, but will keep working on both the fitness and language goals, and hope to have something better to report on both fronts next week.

Looking forward to spending my last week in Jakarta for a while, where I'll be busy packing up house (everything except 2 suitcases is getting shipped back to the US on May 4th) and getting ready for my next big trip, which will take me through Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam, and China.

Lots to do, so time to wrap up this post!

Best to all,

Edward

Social Media for Marketing: An Overview (Part I)

Since beginning my adventure in self-publishing, I’ve identified several key tools for creating a social media network that will help market your story. I’ll touch on each aspect briefly here, and then devote a full section to each one.

Let’s start with Facebook. As tempting as it is to think your hundreds of current family and friends will be an instant market and take your story viral as soon as you put up a post on your Timeline, I’m here to tell you that simply is not going to happen. You’ll actually need to create a unique presence with an Author page (see here for an example) build up a legion of followers (people who “Like” your Author page) and then use some very specific promotions to generate downloads and sales of your story.

This leads us to Author Karma. Founded by Emlyn Chand from Novel Publicity, Author Karma is an initiative that gets indie authors supporting one another on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, etc. It’s an invaluable network and the best way I know to rapidly build your following. That said, remember that these aren’t “real” fans. They probably will not download your story – remember, they’re writers first, and readers second, and they’re focused on building their own networks, not reading your great American short story. However, they have lots of their own fans and followers, who are readers, and who may well discover your work through them. And, sometimes they actually will download your story – I have discovered a few authors whose work I’ve bought through Author Karma, but it’s literally a one-in-a-hundred case for me. That said, I've also found some other excellent sites and resources by reading the pages and posts of these authors, so this is high up on my "must join" groups for indie authors.

Goodreads is Facebook for readers. Well, not quite, but it is probably the biggest and best of the websites where readers congregate to list their own digital libraries, recommend books to others, search for new material, join virtual book clubs, etc. It’s a key place to establish your presence as an indie author. 

LibraryThing is a similar site, although it’s a bit more technically challenging to negotiate, and seems to attract a more high-brow crowd. That said, LibraryThing offers you the ability to offer a “book giveaway” featuring your e-book; something Goodreads does not yet do.

Twitter is a great way for getting a short message out to a lot of people. A lot of people. The beauty of Twitter is how far and fast the extended network of “followers” can distribute your message. Here’s an example. When I was testing promotional methods, I sent a Tweet about a free download for one of my stories to 44 people. Out of those 44 notes, 21 were re-Tweeted – that is, the person I sent it to forwarded it on to all of their followers. I did a little calculation to see how many people that one note reached (assuming it was never re-Tweeted by any of the people who read it on one of my followers Twitter streams) – the answer? That one note, sent to 44 of my followers was read by 97,292 of their followers. It doesn’t take a genius to see that you don’t need a very high percentage of Twitter readers to actually click through and download your story, because even a small percentage, multiplied by a big number like 97,292 is going to result in a lot of sales.

Now, if you’re going to use Twitter, you definitely need to use Bitly. While it’s not a social networking site itself, it lets you take a long web address (like  http://www.amazon.com/Happily-Ever-After-ebook/dp/B006RQUZ3I/ ) and shorten it down to the more manageable http://amzn.to/JeTTfd. Completely free, and vital so you can make the most of your 140 text characters in a standard Tweet.

Another site that builds on the power of Twitter is Triberr, which lets you band together with other authors to share your blog posts automatically through Twitter. This does a few things; most importantly, it raises your social capital with people in your “tribes” because they see you reTweeting their posts, and will be more likely to return the favor; and their followers see your blog posts, which means (if you’ve set your blog up right) that they are being exposed to your stories, your writing style, etc. Again, case in point; my 4 tribes, which have a total of 30 members, has a social reach on Twitter of 24,824. That means every time I have a blog post, the title blurb is going out to 24,824 people. Again, even if only a small percentage are interested, that’s still a lot of traffic for my blog. Want to join a Tribe? Send me a Tweet to @E_H_Carpenter and I'll send you an invite!

OK, that's a start, and definitely enough for one post. But there's more. Stay tuned!

Best always,

Edward

Koala bears, Cover Art, and ROW80 Updates!

So, it's Monday in Australia, which means its Sunday on the other side of the world, and thus time for a ROW80 update.

It has been a moderately productive week; I finished one story, which has already received a few favorable beta reads and critiques, finished the cover art for LETHARGICA, which you can see here (and your comments would be greatly appreciated)

I also held a koala bear, fed some kangaroos and wallabies, petted a little lamb, and saw a platypus. So, life is good.

Things I haven't done as well with are my fitness and French study goals. I really find that for both exercise and serious study, I need to be living in one place, where I can get into a set routine. But since I'll still be traveling for the next month, through Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and China, I'll need to see if I can figure out a way to create those routines in the context of a fluid and ever-changing environment... Any suggestions?

WRITING

- Finished “A Matter of Honor” - 100% complete

- Wrote 0.5 Chapters of my “Learning Indonesian” book - 15% complete

ARTISTIC

- Created the cover for "LETHARGICA" - 100% complete

NETWORKING

- Spent 30 minutes this week on the “Author Karma” page getting caught up

- Got my Triberr account working

- Put out a post on how I'll be managing my Twitter account in the future.

Now it's time to pack my backpack again, and catch a flight from Brisbane to Darwin... A few more days in beautiful, sunny Australia, and then it's back to Jakarta to get ready for my next adventure. A bientot!

ROW80 Round 2 Goals...

Well, it's that time again, I suppose, to jot down our goals for this second round of ROW80. As I've mentioned before, this round is complicated for me, because I'll be traveling for about 60 of the 80 days; in fact, this post comes to you from the Sultanate of Brunei, which is where I'll be until Friday, when it's off to Malaysia on the next stage of my journey.

So, outlined below are my modest goals for this round. I'm trying to focus more on the writing, and less on all the secondary, distracting, and yes, eventually necessary aspects such as the publishing, promotion, and networking.

WRITING

- Finish “A Matter of Honor”

- Write 3 Chapters of my “Learning Indonesian” book

- Write 3 Chapters of my “Short Story Publishing” book

- Write 6 Chapters of “The Notorious Mister Wickham”

- Finish “Charming”

- Finish “The Welsh Mouse”

- Finish “The Artillerists”

- Finish “Merry Christmas, Mister Washington”

PUBLISHING

- Publish “Lethargica”

- Publish German Translation of “Happily Ever After”

ARTISTIC

- Create the cover for "Lethargica"

- Create the video trailer for "Lethargica"

FITNESS

- 20 minutes of basic fitness per day

LANGUAGE

- One hour of studying French per day

NETWORKING

- Spend 30 minutes a week on the “Author Karma” page getting caught up

- Build my “Core Group” to 25 people

PROMOTION

- Run 3 KDP Select Promotions

ADMINISTRATION

- Create the “Perfidious Mister Wickham” website

- Create a “Short Story Contest” website

So, that's it... Let me know if you see anything that particularly interests you, and I'd be happy to discuss in more depth.

Best always,

Edward