Shalakoc2011
The big news is 'The hyper media Daily,' which is a paper.li paperless newspaper.
This is a system of link following and reposting in a format that somewhat resembles the old newspaper, but which more closely mimics what our local paper has online. By setting up another Twitter account, and then following selected twitterers we get a very personalized newspaper, or 'world-class newsletter' delivered to our inbox at six a.m. 'daily.'
By using my hyper-media account to follow my own @louisbshalako account, I can put my own stuff in my own paper alongside sources whose credibility scintillates with the glister of hundred-carat cubic zirconiums under a dental surgeon's worklight. The funny thing is that there are moral considerations, in spite of the fact that I could post eighty links on facebook in a day and no one would remark upon it.
On #wjcht Wednesday night, @girljournalist noted, 'I know someone who had their entire twitterfeed plagiarized,' and while it's an interesting discussion point, there was this one time when I posted my credit card and pin number on www.legitimatenigerianbusinessenterprises.com and some asshole bought himself a whole truckload of A.K.'s.
So; I don't feel sorry for you at all, and you're not on the feed anyway! If you would like to be included, please follow @hyperlouis and then DM and in twenty-five words or less indicate exactly what it is that you are bringing to the table.
So far 'The hyper media Daily' has three subscribers, and @hyperlouis has eleven followers on Twitter.
Another consideration was 'attribution' and 'link rot,' also concerning attribution.
If you're in there, your name is on there.
The paper.li paper is automatically updated every 24 hours, and if a source does not repost in that time, the same story might appear twice.
(The paper is of course archived by the Library of Congress and a number of foreign and domestic intelligence agencies...right?)
As far as I'm concerned, it is an interesting experiment, especially in terms of what sort of reaction one might receive.
By adding and removing links, which takes a few minutes per day, we've invented a pretty good little personal news service--which is all it really amounts to.
It is the creative, aggressive, and disruptive use of the thing, and the potential political impact of the proper use of it, by someone who actually knows what he is doing, that is most disturbing to the bourgeoisie.
I could create ten or twenty targeted papers in a day, if I chose--that's disturbing to the pulp and paper industry. I have no doubts about that, ladies and gentlemen.
Most invalid criticisms stem from unaddressed social tensions, often working from the mid-strata down. It's largely a matter of misperceived social status.
Thursday, March 17, 2011
Sunday, March 13, 2011
New Post: Promo Insights from E-Book Week
by Louis Bertrand Shalako
c2010
All Rights Reserved
The nice thing about Smashwords is that the author gets some data, which is easily understandable and accessible from your dashboard.
Over the course of E-Book Week Shalako Publishing gave free e-books to anyone who was willing to sign up for Smashwords. This is comparable to sign-up at any other electronic bookseller; and for the purposes of promotion even simpler because customers didn't have to provide credit or debit data.
Early on, I was promoting on Twitter to some degree, but over the last two days I let that rest, although naturally I still monitored the stream. Every day I put out at least one or two links to my pages on LinkedIn and Stumbleupon, and that sort of thing.
For the last couple of days it was mostly reminders; bearing in mind that Facebook is my biggest 'audience' or group of friends. On Goodreads, I gave a general update once a day in the morning.
Here are the peak numbers: Heaven Is Too Far Away, up to 80 hits a day.
Paranoid Cat and other tales,about 70/day.
Core Values (up to) 50/day.
Case of the Curious Killers, a nice 125/day.
The Handbag's Tale, about 100 a day.
Over the course of the promotion we gave away 130 e-books, with Handbag's Tale taking the checkered flag, followed by Heaven, Case, Paranoid Cat and then Core Values. The first three had over thirty each, Paranoid a couple of dozen and Core Values was the one that brought in a small donation. We also gave away six copies.
One thing I would like to know is the formats of each download--it would be nice to know exactly how many people took what format.
While this is a small sampling, it is at least as accurate as inteviewing rich people as they come out of Nieman-Marcus and asking them if they are hopeful about the economy.
By five o'clock on the last day I was getting incredibly tired, and perhaps a little slap-happy with the buttons. It is really something to put out a link and then watch page views climb...then the number changes up with another couple of book-freebies.
With little or no marketing experience, the week provided experience, and some new questions, which is always good.
A big thumbs-up to all of our new friends.
Friday, March 11, 2011
Marketing Notes for E-Book Week
by Louis Bertrand Shalako
c2011
All Rights Reserved
Without going too nuts for promotion, I have been using Tweetdeck to schedule about four tweets per night. Last night I gave away one book, which seems worth the effort. I posted one link on Facebook this afternoon and gave away ten books in the space of five minutes.
On the bottom of each Smashwords book page, down in the right-hand corner, there is a list of social media links. These include the usual Fb and Twitter, but also Google Buzz, Reddit, Delicious, Stumble, etc. When I post something to Google Buzz, I have no idea where that goes or who sees it. On Stumbleupon, I have maybe twenty followers. Yet by clicking on things and trying things, including MySpace, and a couple of others, I have given away almost eighty e-books in six days.
Honestly, I can't even remember stuff I did Monday or Tuesday, except talk it up all over the place. I posted a blog entry on Wednesday, (I think.) Someone made a donation, which must have been a copy of 'Core Values.' For some reason that book is marked as, 'Set your own price,' and it was worth a buck and a half to someone! Thank you.
I would have been delighted to give away a thousand books. It's important to set a goal, after all. As to how this will translate into eventual sales down the road, or if it will result in any positive reviews, is something only time will tell.
On Twitter, I lost at least one follower...and gained about five more for whatever reason. (Free stuff? Marketing savvy? My boyish good looks?)
On LinkedIn, I posted a link and only later noticed the statement, 'No ads please in discussions!" The funny thing is that someone took a book or two...I'm almost sure of it. Anyway, I hope you like them.
I need a shave and I lost a couple of pounds. But the marketing data is priceless, and I have no regrets about that. Simply put, jam out a link and the books move out the door. Stop promoting, and page views drop to zero.
It can't be that simple...can it?
c2011
All Rights Reserved
Without going too nuts for promotion, I have been using Tweetdeck to schedule about four tweets per night. Last night I gave away one book, which seems worth the effort. I posted one link on Facebook this afternoon and gave away ten books in the space of five minutes.
On the bottom of each Smashwords book page, down in the right-hand corner, there is a list of social media links. These include the usual Fb and Twitter, but also Google Buzz, Reddit, Delicious, Stumble, etc. When I post something to Google Buzz, I have no idea where that goes or who sees it. On Stumbleupon, I have maybe twenty followers. Yet by clicking on things and trying things, including MySpace, and a couple of others, I have given away almost eighty e-books in six days.
Honestly, I can't even remember stuff I did Monday or Tuesday, except talk it up all over the place. I posted a blog entry on Wednesday, (I think.) Someone made a donation, which must have been a copy of 'Core Values.' For some reason that book is marked as, 'Set your own price,' and it was worth a buck and a half to someone! Thank you.
I would have been delighted to give away a thousand books. It's important to set a goal, after all. As to how this will translate into eventual sales down the road, or if it will result in any positive reviews, is something only time will tell.
On Twitter, I lost at least one follower...and gained about five more for whatever reason. (Free stuff? Marketing savvy? My boyish good looks?)
On LinkedIn, I posted a link and only later noticed the statement, 'No ads please in discussions!" The funny thing is that someone took a book or two...I'm almost sure of it. Anyway, I hope you like them.
I need a shave and I lost a couple of pounds. But the marketing data is priceless, and I have no regrets about that. Simply put, jam out a link and the books move out the door. Stop promoting, and page views drop to zero.
It can't be that simple...can it?
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
The Big Challenge(s)
by Louis Bertrand Shalako
c2011
All Rights Reserved
With three novels in the can, the big challenge is time and patience. What feels like a hold-up can be a blessing in disguise.
I say this because my next three titles absolutely must have killer covers. While some ideas on that subject are afloat in the simmering fluid that is my brain-bucket, plans remain secret.
All will be revealed soon enough, or when I know it, or whichever comes first.
All three books must be re-written ten or twelve times each. When you’re talking your fourth novel release, you had better be hitting some basic minimum standards of literacy, that’s for sure.
During the formatting process, I’m pretty analytical, and keep spell-check and grammar-check turned on until the last minute. Uploading revisions doesn’t take much time, but all platforms have different time delays before the new one turns up for sale. All of them provide your previous version in the meantime, but it is ‘red-face time’ if someone spots an error.
You might run into some person who wrote their doctorate on your subject matter or something, and the scary thing is that they might not tell you! They will get a laugh out of it, though. They’ll tell all their friends, too.
***
Speaking of fact-checking and stuff like that, my working titles, which I must have simply for filing purposes, are, ‘Time-storm,’ and ‘Shape-Shifters,’ and then I have ‘Horse-catcher.’
Googling around reveals that one of my favourite SF authors, Gordon R. Dickson, has a book called ‘Time Storm.’ (1971.) He wrote the Dorsai books.
(I recommend ‘Tactics of Mistake,’ 1977. He also wrote ‘Time to Teleport,’ 1960.)
Gordon Dickson passed on in 2001. I don’t know about the Dragon books so much, but I wouldn’t mind a few dog-eared old SF paperbacks at the right price!
It’s a good idea to check all the titles, and figure out something different that still captures the essence of the idea. You really can’t copyright ‘shape-shifters,’ but I’ll bet there are a few movies and books out there. At Christmas, my nephew was playing with a toy—you guessed it, some kind of plastic ‘shape-shifters.’ It’s on the box, and kind of a service mark, which can be registered. It is an asset to its owner and they hate when you steal it. I’m not a copyright lawyer, but the words ‘shape-shifter’ are public domain and anyone can use them!
***
For a whole host of reasons my ‘schedule’ is pretty loose right now, and it might be time to set some kind of a deadline. Pick a project and just do it.
I’ve been shopping for cover art. I don’t know that much about art, but I know what I like—and I’ll know it when I see it. That Art Fundamentals course in community college might pay off after all! Just one of the benefits of a liberal, (and fairly cheap,) education.
***
My first novel, ‘Heaven Is Too Far Away’ would have been about 230,000 words without cutting, and it ended up about 180,000. This would not have been publishable by conventional standards without coming up with a trilogy or something, and I felt unable to cut it by 70,000 words. To come up with three logical endings for three volumes of 76,000+ words each, was and still is beyond my capacity to imagine. The book starts at the beginning and ends at the end. I must have read 150 books, mostly from the library, in order to write that book. At some point, I knew there was a possibility that a military historian or an enthusiast would read it.
If nothing else, I felt I could compete. While ongoing research into WW I will become ever more refined, if not even regressive or ‘bourgeois-revisionist’ in some ways, the basic facts are verifiable. For about a million reasons I have tried to write a few stories for a younger or less sophisticated audience in terms of science fiction.
What gets me time and time again is that I am essentially a comedy writer. That has its dangers, not the least of which is that it might be perceived as ‘mockery,’ which is essentially what it is anyway.
But it also makes it a hard sell, as I am finding out. I’m not afraid of a little research, but if I use sound, (and fairly simple) scientific concepts, especially the softer sciences, a really good writer might do well with a different demographic group.
Stories for youthful rocket scientists had better be good.
***
So my Smashwords edition of ‘The Handbag’s Tale’ had the same problem I talked about before. One small section had ‘squooshy’ text. The original file looked fine. I uploaded the correct file…I scrolled through every page of ‘Case’ in Kindle for PC and it looked fine. I would like to know what causes this problem. And it looks way worse in Mobipocket reader. Incidentally, Kindle for PC definitely ‘takes over’ every Mobi-type file in your hard drive. That can be a pain when you are testing files from other sources, because you never really know which one you are looking at.
It is irksome. All I could do was to re-upload that file and check it later, and of course I re-dated the file. When that didn’t work, I went back to the ‘nuclear option.’
1.) Take the original .doc file and save it as a .txt.
2.) Copy and paste into a fresh, blank .doc file.
3.) Re-format from scratch.
4.) Turn off pilcrows, grammar and spelling.
5.) Check front matter and re-upload.
6.) Check every page when it comes live.
7.) Cross your fingers and pray.
This worked beautifully, and so far I’ve given away nine or ten of them from Smashwords for E-Book Week, (March 6-12.)
c2011
All Rights Reserved
With three novels in the can, the big challenge is time and patience. What feels like a hold-up can be a blessing in disguise.
I say this because my next three titles absolutely must have killer covers. While some ideas on that subject are afloat in the simmering fluid that is my brain-bucket, plans remain secret.
All will be revealed soon enough, or when I know it, or whichever comes first.
All three books must be re-written ten or twelve times each. When you’re talking your fourth novel release, you had better be hitting some basic minimum standards of literacy, that’s for sure.
During the formatting process, I’m pretty analytical, and keep spell-check and grammar-check turned on until the last minute. Uploading revisions doesn’t take much time, but all platforms have different time delays before the new one turns up for sale. All of them provide your previous version in the meantime, but it is ‘red-face time’ if someone spots an error.
You might run into some person who wrote their doctorate on your subject matter or something, and the scary thing is that they might not tell you! They will get a laugh out of it, though. They’ll tell all their friends, too.
***
Speaking of fact-checking and stuff like that, my working titles, which I must have simply for filing purposes, are, ‘Time-storm,’ and ‘Shape-Shifters,’ and then I have ‘Horse-catcher.’
Googling around reveals that one of my favourite SF authors, Gordon R. Dickson, has a book called ‘Time Storm.’ (1971.) He wrote the Dorsai books.
(I recommend ‘Tactics of Mistake,’ 1977. He also wrote ‘Time to Teleport,’ 1960.)
Gordon Dickson passed on in 2001. I don’t know about the Dragon books so much, but I wouldn’t mind a few dog-eared old SF paperbacks at the right price!
It’s a good idea to check all the titles, and figure out something different that still captures the essence of the idea. You really can’t copyright ‘shape-shifters,’ but I’ll bet there are a few movies and books out there. At Christmas, my nephew was playing with a toy—you guessed it, some kind of plastic ‘shape-shifters.’ It’s on the box, and kind of a service mark, which can be registered. It is an asset to its owner and they hate when you steal it. I’m not a copyright lawyer, but the words ‘shape-shifter’ are public domain and anyone can use them!
***
For a whole host of reasons my ‘schedule’ is pretty loose right now, and it might be time to set some kind of a deadline. Pick a project and just do it.
I’ve been shopping for cover art. I don’t know that much about art, but I know what I like—and I’ll know it when I see it. That Art Fundamentals course in community college might pay off after all! Just one of the benefits of a liberal, (and fairly cheap,) education.
***
My first novel, ‘Heaven Is Too Far Away’ would have been about 230,000 words without cutting, and it ended up about 180,000. This would not have been publishable by conventional standards without coming up with a trilogy or something, and I felt unable to cut it by 70,000 words. To come up with three logical endings for three volumes of 76,000+ words each, was and still is beyond my capacity to imagine. The book starts at the beginning and ends at the end. I must have read 150 books, mostly from the library, in order to write that book. At some point, I knew there was a possibility that a military historian or an enthusiast would read it.
If nothing else, I felt I could compete. While ongoing research into WW I will become ever more refined, if not even regressive or ‘bourgeois-revisionist’ in some ways, the basic facts are verifiable. For about a million reasons I have tried to write a few stories for a younger or less sophisticated audience in terms of science fiction.
What gets me time and time again is that I am essentially a comedy writer. That has its dangers, not the least of which is that it might be perceived as ‘mockery,’ which is essentially what it is anyway.
But it also makes it a hard sell, as I am finding out. I’m not afraid of a little research, but if I use sound, (and fairly simple) scientific concepts, especially the softer sciences, a really good writer might do well with a different demographic group.
Stories for youthful rocket scientists had better be good.
***
So my Smashwords edition of ‘The Handbag’s Tale’ had the same problem I talked about before. One small section had ‘squooshy’ text. The original file looked fine. I uploaded the correct file…I scrolled through every page of ‘Case’ in Kindle for PC and it looked fine. I would like to know what causes this problem. And it looks way worse in Mobipocket reader. Incidentally, Kindle for PC definitely ‘takes over’ every Mobi-type file in your hard drive. That can be a pain when you are testing files from other sources, because you never really know which one you are looking at.
It is irksome. All I could do was to re-upload that file and check it later, and of course I re-dated the file. When that didn’t work, I went back to the ‘nuclear option.’
1.) Take the original .doc file and save it as a .txt.
2.) Copy and paste into a fresh, blank .doc file.
3.) Re-format from scratch.
4.) Turn off pilcrows, grammar and spelling.
5.) Check front matter and re-upload.
6.) Check every page when it comes live.
7.) Cross your fingers and pray.
This worked beautifully, and so far I’ve given away nine or ten of them from Smashwords for E-Book Week, (March 6-12.)
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
E-Book Week Promotion.
Our E-Book Week (March 6-12) promotion is going well.
It's pretty exciting to put out a link on Twitter or Facebook, and see that someone has actually taken a free book. I wish they would grab all of them while they're in there.
Some of the data (all of the data) is useful. For example, 'Core Values' has not been mentioned in any of my tweets, or recently on Facebook. Predictably, page views on the Smashwords site are running at about one per day. Even so, we've given away a copy of the book since the event began on Sunday.
On the other side of that coin, 'Heaven Is Too Far Away' has been getting over forty page views per day, at least today, and 'The Paranoid Cat and other tales' has similar results. As for 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' that book has had over fifty hits today so far, and it isn't even eight p.m.
Without going too 'spammy,' and bearing in mind I'm giving things away for free, the results seem pretty positive. If nothing else, customers are curious about what our product actually is, and now a few of them know. It shows that there is genuine desire for the product when I can give four or five books away in pretty short order, right?
The question is one of balance.
My early experience on Facebook is that even on the news feed, constant self-promotion can be self-defeating. At some point you have done your job, and the people deserve a rest! But honestly, on Twitter, there are people tweeting constantly about trivialities such as Charlie Sheen or whatever.
As long as I'm nice about it, and the humour isn't too outrageous, I think I can get away with it to a certain extent. A few times a day, not a few times an hour, and it seems okay so far.
Utimately it's not about me and it isn't so much about the books. It's about entertaining the reader. You can't do that if you piss them off and they go off to spend their time somewhere a little more pleasant.
It sure is interesting, though.
It's pretty exciting to put out a link on Twitter or Facebook, and see that someone has actually taken a free book. I wish they would grab all of them while they're in there.
Some of the data (all of the data) is useful. For example, 'Core Values' has not been mentioned in any of my tweets, or recently on Facebook. Predictably, page views on the Smashwords site are running at about one per day. Even so, we've given away a copy of the book since the event began on Sunday.
On the other side of that coin, 'Heaven Is Too Far Away' has been getting over forty page views per day, at least today, and 'The Paranoid Cat and other tales' has similar results. As for 'The Case of the Curious Killers,' that book has had over fifty hits today so far, and it isn't even eight p.m.
Without going too 'spammy,' and bearing in mind I'm giving things away for free, the results seem pretty positive. If nothing else, customers are curious about what our product actually is, and now a few of them know. It shows that there is genuine desire for the product when I can give four or five books away in pretty short order, right?
The question is one of balance.
My early experience on Facebook is that even on the news feed, constant self-promotion can be self-defeating. At some point you have done your job, and the people deserve a rest! But honestly, on Twitter, there are people tweeting constantly about trivialities such as Charlie Sheen or whatever.
As long as I'm nice about it, and the humour isn't too outrageous, I think I can get away with it to a certain extent. A few times a day, not a few times an hour, and it seems okay so far.
Utimately it's not about me and it isn't so much about the books. It's about entertaining the reader. You can't do that if you piss them off and they go off to spend their time somewhere a little more pleasant.
It sure is interesting, though.
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