Should I have a Facebook Page?

On my ever growing list of things to do, I have Facebook near the top. I'm not a heavy Facebook user. I barely ever log in. I know other writers have had success with Facebook, and I know a lot of readers are probably on it, but I don't know how much people would like this addition. I don't know what would happen if I did add a Facebook page. I've looked at other authors who have pages. I would definitely announce when projects were coming out, but being pithy and sharing links looks unlikely. Being pithy takes a lot of work. If you have an opinion, or if you don't, please take my poll below. It will help me know what I should do. Thanks!

Should I have a Facebook Page?

P.S. I've also added a "Subscribe by email" widget to the sidebar if anyone would like to get posts in their email. It is handled by Feedburner.

My Review of The Seventh Tower: The Fall

The Fall by Garth Nix

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Garth Nix creates amazing worlds in his fantasies, and the first book in the Seventh Tower series is no exception. I teetered between giving this three and four stars because I felt some of the fantastical elements were rather rushed. He throws out brief two sentence descriptions of all these unknown beasts, and they seem to be there purely to identify what the form a shadowguard assumed rather than truly adding to the story, and since none of the animals have familiar names, it's hard to keep track of them and what they're supposed to be.

The magic system is intriguing being based on light in a dark world with a strict color heirarchy for the society with those in the red tower being lower than those in the orange and so on. Finding out more about this world would be interesting. I will try to read the next in the series, but I'm not rushing out to get it. The book is listed as being for nine and up. I feel like maybe Nix was light on details to keep the younger readers interested, but older readers will be left wanting when they crack open the book. Because it is the first in a series, nothing is resolved, and Tal is no where near his goal. This is rather dissatisfying. Nix, at least, didn't leave off at too taunt a cliffhanger. I think he would've lost a star on this review if he had.

View all my reviews

New Things with Blog

Hi Everybody,

Well, it seems ye olde Blogger has been making some changes, and I've finally become aware of them. First, commenting is now threaded. It was begun by default on this site, but seems to still be off on the story sites. I'm not sure why that is, and I'm still not sure if I like threaded comments better than flat. (I just realized that the story sites may stay flat since they were posted before threaded was an option.) I'll keep comments threaded here until I see compelling evidence to stop it.

Another new thing is mobile view templates. I'd turned on mobile view a while back for this blog. I liked that there was a mobile view, but I didn't turn it on for the story sites. I didn't like the mobile view THAT much, but now they've updated it, and I think it could work well for the story sites. I've gone through and turned it on for them now. I think the chapters are too long for mobile view, but I can't shorten them without the changes affecting the full version sites. The main reason I changed them is because the text is A LOT easier to read on a smart phone with the mobile view enabled. I've made some small adjustments to try and make the sites functional in mobile view without changing the full web version sites too much, but have not done any hard testing. If anyone has any opinions or insights let me know. One odd thing that I've found is that if I swipe my finger across the screen, Blogger decides that I must want to go back a post or something, which is rather annoying, but I can't see how to fix that. I really don't know how many people stumble across my stories with their mobile devices, but I would like to make the sites as accessible as possible.

And yes, I picked the book template for the mobile view because I'm a nerd, and I really didn't think anyone wanted to look at the pink stripe version for longer than five seconds. I hope nobody was looking at the sites with their smart phone while I was mucking about. I changed the template a gazillion times as I tried stuff out.

Measuring Success

As I obsessively check sales figures, I'm trying to decide if what I'm seeing is good or not. (Reading articles about Amanda Hocking doesn't help.) How do we self-pubbed authors determine if we're successful? And I realized I never really set a bar for myself. I hadn't defined what success would be beyond a hazy concept of being able to quit my job and write full-time.

When I set Unicorn Bait and Scary Mary for free, I had no expectations. I knew I would get some downloads, but I had no idea what the numbers would be. (I'm going to use only Amazon data in this post because it is the most up-to-date and accessible.) My books were initially .99 on Amazon. They stayed .99 for a few months, and I wasn't seeing much in the way of sales. In the first month, I sold zero. Then I sold 1 the next month. I sold 84 copies in the next nine months. Then Amazon finally made Scary Mary free like I wanted.

And then my socks were knocked off. Scary Mary was downloaded 16,125 times in one month. I was beside myself. I couldn't believe just how many people were downloading Scary Mary. I was sure this was some sort of sign. And it is a sign. A sign that free is the perfect price for a lot of people.

As of today, Scary Mary and Unicorn Bait have been downloaded over 110,000 times on Amazon. If I add up all platforms, their total downloads are north of 150,000. That's amazing to me because I did no promotion outside of my own website. I've had some reviews on small indie blogs, but I know the driving force behind that six digit number is the free price tag.

Considering how well the free books did and how many people have read Scary Mary, one would think Stalking Shadows would be a great success. I mean at least 50,000 people have downloaded Scary Mary, and it appears a great many enjoyed the book...so Stalking Shadows should be a best seller, right? Um, no. Stalking Shadows was released in late October of this year, right before Halloween. At this time, it has sold about 600 copies. Don't get me wrong. 600 is pretty damn good, but when I compare it to 50,000, it seems kind of well, paltry.

So I'm having to adjust my perspective. Selling 600 copies of Stalking Shadows is GREAT. I'm very happy with that number, but I've got to accept that nothing will ever beat free. I mean look at this--Scary Mary has been downloaded 12,000 times this MONTH on Amazon.uk, and Stalking Shadows has sold 220 copies. Comparing these two numbers and wondering why there was such a disparity could drive someone insane. Someone could wonder if maybe 11,780 people read Scary Mary and didn't think it was good enough to read the sequel. Someone could wonder if she can really hack it.

Or someone could take a deep breath, stop refreshing the reports screen in Kindle Direct Publishing, and write the freaking sequel to Unicorn Bait. Someone thinks that's what she'll do.

Selling Out

I've been struggling with something that feels a little sacrilegious. I've been thinking about switching from free to charging for Scary Mary and Unicorn Bait. I would most likely leave the free versions up on their websites, but I would charge for the ebook versions, and any updates I would make to the stories (in most cases grammatical) would only appear in the ebook version. My thinking is purely monetary. My current dream is to make enough money where I could reduce my full-time job from 40 hours a week to 32 or less (while still keeping my full benefits, I would just be paid less). The ultimate goal is to support myself solely by writing, but I know that isn't likely anytime soon. I just want to reduce my schedule by one day right now.

I know if I switched both books to .99 that the downloads would take a nose dive, but they wouldn't stop completely. I would possibly make fifty bucks a month or something but that would help me get a little closer to my goal of reducing my work schedule. That's not a guaranteed dollar amount, but I feel it's very likely, especially as a lot of reviews have been generated, so new readers may be willing to put down .99 for a book that a lot of other people have seemingly liked.

In my mind, one of the hiccups to changing to .99 is the free online versions. I worry that readers might resent the fact that I charge .99 for the ebook while giving it away elsewhere, but I've been told by some readers (they email me directly) that they would've happily paid for the story. This is wonderful to hear, but I worry that other readers may not feel that way. I've also seen some other authors charge for their ebooks in one location while giving it away elsewhere.

If I did begin charging for the stories, I would at least make another pass through them to fix any errors I found. (I just realized that somehow the first piece of dialog by Mrs. Boon is not italicized in Scary Mary's ebook version. I don't know how that happened.) But I wonder about adding any other content to make paying for the story worthwhile. I could add a sneak preview of Stalking Shadows to Scary Mary. That's a no brainer, but I don't know what to do about Unicorn Bait. I could add a sneak preview to (OMG, this will be first reveal of the title to the sequel) Dragon Prey. BUT that is still being written. I'm not even sure the first chapter will stay the same, and I would need to indicate when the sequel would be available which OMG (again), I have no idea about.

And I don't know if anyone really reads these posts so I may be typing into the wind, but if you have an opinion pro or con, please feel free to leave a comment. Even if no one comments, typing out my thoughts here has helped.

ETA: Well, this is ironic. It appears I was just featured on GetFreeBooks.com. Never fear, I'm not making the books for sale this instant. I'm just thinking about it, and I'll need a little time to read back over the stories to polish them a little more, but I am seriously considering charging, especially as I look at getting professional cover art for Dragon Prey. Dragons are expensive!