So yesterday the Energizer Bunny’s battery ran out of juice…
How beat was I? Almost nonfunctional. 😀 Went to bed around 8:30 and am moderately revived today. If there was any question that trying to publish 10 bookoids a month was biting off more than I could chew, yesterday’s crash into a block wall pretty much settled it.
Today I took to updating the Camptown Races site, which I happened to notice(!!) was way, way behind. Decided to put only the most recent release in the front page’s sidebar, and have a link there and in the front page body copy to the “Books” page, which will list the entire inventory.
And I finally gave up the struggle to try to force that page to display the book cover images the way I want them to look. Phbphbhphtttt! Now they’re listed in toilet-paper-roll style, with each image centered over a blurb about the book. It’s kind of a pain to view because you have to scroll at infinitum. But it works OK. I guess.
While dorking with this task, I realized…holy shit! I’d failed to post a story that I imagined was online and had been for awhile!
Particularly annoying: the book is one of my better efforts. I really love it — while proofreading the .mobi file was chortling over the thing. And it’s pretty sexy, too. It’s the second Biker Babe book: Bobbi’s Secret Life.
In it, Bobbi gets to know BillyBob a great deal better and begins to appreciate the gulf between his blue-collar lifestyle and her academic’s milieu.
Yeah. This story is actually developing a real plot with real characters. In the next story, BillyBob is going to have to rescue her from a psychopathic ex-. Then we’ll find out just how…well, how psychopathic a biker can be, when pushed to it. 😉
Bobbi’s Secret Life isn’t live on Amazon yet…probably will show up there tomorrow or Sunday.
Meanwhile, what is live is this bit of exotica:
This is the first cover I’ve done with a vector drawing — well, make that the second: the Fire-Rider image is a vector drawing, but it’s custom commissioned. Ange & Billie’s cover is a piece of stock art by an artist billed as Sofia Shimanovskaia. The story is about a lesbian relationship that develops with startling speed and intensity.
Some designers inveigh against using anything but photography in cover art and advertisements. The theory, as far as I can tell, is that the Great Unwashed are too unimaginative and too hopelessly tasteless to be drawn in by anything other than a literal image…i.e., a photo.
Ohhhhkayyy… But Shutterstock is anything but imaginative when it comes to images that could illustrate the theme of two women finding each other. Their selection is limited and overall unoriginal. I was getting mighty tired of looking at it when this strange and fascinating image jumped out of the dreck. That is weirdly cool, thought I.
Love the wild maroon reds with the crazy contrast of her turquoise eye. Too amazing!
So I matched the eye color for the font and used an Edwardian script. This is a font I favor for Roberta’s byline but am not nuts about for coverlines in general. Couldn’t easily push the point size as large as one would like. But once posted on Amazon, it looks OK. None of the other fonts I happen to own rights to use create the same sensual, feminine effect. So I decided to go with it.
Meanwhile, other than that I’ve achieved virtually nothing. That is as in NOTHING nothing. The plan was to devote most of this month to marketing. But in fact most of this month so far has been devoted to loafing. I haven’t done a damn thing in the marketing department, mostly because getting myself up to do battle with Amazon and Goodreads is more than I can manage, and because I still fail to see the point of Twitter, Google+, and similar time-suckers.
What on earth do people seek on those sites? Why?
If I understood better who the audience is and what they hope to gain from Twitter and the like, I guess I could reach out to them more effectively. But right now all I’m seeing is other people pushing ads for their books in everyone’s faces and almost no actual content whatsoever. It’s truly puzzling.
And truth to tell, I’m still too tired to think it through.
Hm. I may have to see if I can wrangle the funds for the second Biker Babe installment. Really enjoyed the first.
I’ve just gotten into Twitter. I think it works well for those who enjoy it enough to hang out and goof off and attract a following. One I follow is John Scalzi (@Scalzi) who posts a lot of one-liners, some interesting discussion, and a few links to his blog and things he wants to promote. He’s, um, a very prolific Tweeter, though – I don’t know how on Earth he finds the time! I enjoy Twittering, but I’m not very good at it yet.
I definitely recommend slowing down if you can find a way to do it. Put out fewer bookoids and promote them more intensively – and set aside some time for your own writing. (Of course, I’m not really one to talk, as I’m behind in just baout everything this month!) But do build in some breathing room. It’s important.
Many Twitter users who are there to publicize books and other commercial enterprises either hire people to emanate “tweets” or use software that posts and reposts stuff constantly. You also can buy Twitter followers, inflating those “follower” numbers to absurd figures. I mean…really…who would WANT to be blitzed with twaddle from the 104,300 “followers” that one of yesterday’s new Camptown Ladies fans claims? There’s no way you could read all that drivel, most of which is nothing but advertising. If you can’t read it, you can’t identify the tweets that might be worth responding to.
Maybe there’s a way of filtering Incoming so that all you see is stuff from people you care to correspond with while still keeping the “followers” on the line. But so far I haven’t figured out what it is. If there even is such a thing.
Bobbi’s Secret Life is now LIVE at Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0189WSUC0
LOL! Glad you liked the first Bobbi & the Biker tale. This one is a little longer and does a better job of developing the characters as human beings.
I’ve been trying to write a lot lately but I got sick and just crashed. I was trying to do NaNoWriMo. Today is going to be spent getting healthier and I’ll try to pick things back up when I’m feeling better. Just a suggestion, I looked at your book listing and noticed that you didn’t write that it was a lesbian themed book. I feel that is a pretty specific audience so you might want to state that up front.
Holy mackerel! Thanks for that reminder!
ZZZzzzzzzzzz….
A suggestion – read “Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.” It’s one of the biggest blogs which focuses on romance and erotica. You need to get a feel for your audience.
This is great! So much better than the Literotica mode!!!! Thanks for the lead.