Marketing, Charming Stars, and Steampunk
November 13th, 2016
Forgive me father for I have sinned. It’s been two months since my last blog.
Two months! But I haven’t been idle, I’ve been busy with the sequel Star Charmer and turning the knobs on advertising campaigns.
Marketing, that God-awful boring sounding business has actually been a little fun. It’s really like a game with rigid rules but a lot of knobs to turn. I’ve tried two ads on Amazon and one on Goodreads. here’s what I’ve learned so far:
- On Amazon you select an “Interest” to target the ad. “Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction & Fantasy” performed better than “Science fiction” but not by much.
- On Goodreads you get something similar and choose between a set of authors versus a set of genres. I got 8.6 times more impressions using the genres than the authors. Maybe I chose the wrong set of authors. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ Your mileage may vary.
- Amazon ads got me a lot more clicks-per-impression(when an ad is displayed)
- Amazon charges when a user clicks but Goodreads charges for the full campaign up front (Min $100)
I wouldn’t call it fun by any stretch of the imagination but it’s interesting at least. As Kristine Kathryn Rusch says in her book Discoverability, “The best way to sell a book is to write another book.”
On that topic, the Star Charmer story is going great. I have 30,000 words and I’m not stuck yet! I just switched the ending and I’m not sure I’ll keep it but so far I like the new one. The story has a completely new set of characters but takes place in the same “Post-A.I.” universe as Brains In Chains where most humans have become lazy hedonists. Wait that sounds pretty good to me. I’d like to be a lazy hedonist. Where do I sign up? But of course there’s impending doom. What would a story be without impending doom? They got up and played games all day and went to bed. The End. I won’t say too much here but you can expect space ships and robots. Oh, and impending doom.
As a completely non-book-related diversion I’ve been doing a Steampunk themed project. I just got a new iMac and rearranged my desk. So, the mess of cables really started to bother me. Here’s a before picture:
...and here’s my first idea. It’s just a piece of white PVC:
It’s better I suppose. But I’ve exchanged clutter for a piece of sewer pipe. A lateral move at best.
Here’s the next phase (unpainted):
I think I’ll add some old-tyme switches that don’t do anything and maybe some Victorian era crystal knobs along the top.
The paint scheme I’m going for is this:
I’m usually terrible at painting so wish me luck!
I found a metallic paint called "Hammered" It's a little tricky to use but it does give a hammered texture.
