I hope you all enjoyed Chapter 1 of See These Bones! I’ll post Chapter 2 next Tuesday, but today, I wanted to take a quick detour and discuss the making of our live-action book trailer. If you haven’t gotten a chance yet, you should watch that trailer… otherwise, none of this will make any sense….
As I mentioned last week, I’ll be counting down to the November 5th release date for See These Bones by sharing chapters from the book. Chapter 1 is a short one, but I think it gets everything started on the right foot.
“The trailer’s the thing, by which we’ll prick the interest of the potential readers!”
-Hamlet, sort of
In last week’s cover reveal, I talked about a cover’s importantance in attracting potential readers. That’s not a bold or divisive statement, by any means. Unfortunately, a good cover on its own is rarely enough. Thanks to modern technology and digital storefronts like Amazon, there are a lot of books being published every week. Many of them even have cool covers, because… again… everyone knows how important that is.
So how do you make your book stand out even more? Well, that’s where marketing comes in… and where I start to flounder. Author interviews, book reviews, give-away contests, calls-to-action for your 50k+ Twitter followers… it’s all designed to get the word out about your book and to convert some of those people into new readers.
A picture is worth a thousand words. A cover is worth way more than that.
The irony of being a first-time author is that some of the most important keys to a successful launch have nothing to do with your writing at all. It’s not enough to write a good book… you have to convince people to actually read that book too.
Worse, you have to convince them to pay for it.
Late August is upon us, and if there was any good and justice left in the world, I’d be unveiling the cover for See These Bones and talking about the forthcoming release.
Narrator: There was no good and justice left in the world. Both had taken an ill-timed vacation to Mars. Don’t nuke Mars, Elon!
Instead, I’m still where I was last month, which says dire things about my anticipated fall release. In lieu of shiny book-related treats to share, I decided to instead whip up a guide to self-publishing, leveraging my vast stores of non-existent experience and a passing familiarity with the general concept of humor.
With literal hordes of grasshoppers descending upon Las Vegas like a biblical plague (minus the destruction), one thing is abundantly clear:
It’s time for another status update.
So let’s get to it!
As one of the many residents of “Writer Twitter”, I participate in a fair number of writer-centric hashtag games. Some are great ways to introduce yourself to fellow authors, some provide an opportunity to dig into what makes your manuscript work (or not work), and others are just there for silly fun. Last week, #TheMerryWriter…
Hello everyone, and welcome to (the last day of) April! I had plans (big plans!) to share a post today about character and finding your voice, but those plans were scuttled by the arrival of a long-awaited email from the agent I’d been talking with about See These Bones.
Long story short: she decided not to offer representation.
Instead of spending this post weeping into my (non-existent) beard, I wanted to share a timeline of the experience, from initial contact to ultimate rejection.
As 2019 seems to be the year of epiphanies, here’s my latest: moving is a pain in the ass and unconducive to productivity.
One very mad month later, we’ve fully moved in to our new house, if you ignore the small piles of boxes in certain rooms and the multiple-item-checklist of found issues that we’re still waiting for our builder to address. Despite the craziness of vendors/trades constantly dropping by unannounced, I feel incredibly fortunate to be in this beautiful new house.
The next step? Actually furnishing it. 😛
I don’t want to blow anybody’s minds this early in the year, but I recently had an epiphany: February is a short month. Like… 1-3 days shorter, depending on the year and the month you’re comparing it to.
Crazy, right?
This particular February has felt even shorter, at least partly because I’ll be moving next week. In lieu of a stand-alone article, and given how quickly March is bearing down on us, I thought this would be a good time to check in on my 2019 writing goals.
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