Monthly Archives: September 2015

by | September 20, 2015 · 4:20 am

Look who’s got a proper author page!

Actually, I now have three author pages…all part of my marketing ploy strategy. Here they are:

All complete with the new profile photo:

Ana Spoke official photo (2)

My previous profile photo took “profile” a little too literally. The new one was taken by my friend who just happens to be a brilliant professional photographer. Have a look at some other portraits taken by Rebecca Ramage.

Now, for some quick how-tos:

So, what do you do if you don’t have a photographer friend or a ton of money to spend on a pro? Try Starnow. It’s a website for all kinds of performance professionals – I’ve used it when I had aspirations of becoming an actor and have scored well over 40 film roles. I have also used it before to find a photographer – I simply posted an ad asking to collaborate with photographers and make up artists, and expressions of interest poured in. You see, photographers just starting out need to build their portfolios, so they are looking for models all the time. Spice up your ad by mentioning that you’re an author and watch your inbox explode! The cost is very reasonable, just a few bucks a month (I was on a 6-month subscription and it was $46 for the entire 6 months, the last time I checked. Don’t know how much it would be if you wanted just one month).

Creating Amazon’s page was easy, although you have to register separately with Author Central. For Amazon’s own guide, have a look at All About Author Central. Easy-peasy. There was, however just one little drama to report.

I wanted to link this blog to the page, but it turned out you can’t just use your URL – you need to use your RSS feed. Confused? I sure was. Thank God, it only took a few minutes to find this WordPress guide on RSS links. Don’t stress if the blog posts don’t appear on your page right away – once I’ve published a new post, they all came through.

Goodreads was just a bit more complicated. You can’t just sign up as an author – you have to sign up for a “regular” account first. If you are a first-time author, you will likely have a heart attack when you search for your book and find that it is not in the 300-million-plus database. Take a breath – you can add it, but ONLY AFTER waiting for about a day. You can, of course, send a crazed email to helpdesk, and they will do it for you after politely explaining the whole waiting a day thing. You will also have to apply to be upgraded to an author account and wait again for approval. Or send the crazed email, whatevs.

So there you go. I mean, go – get your Goodreads page started. Trust me, when the time comes, you won’t be willing to wait a whole day.

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by | September 17, 2015 · 4:28 pm

Shizzle, Inc.- Ana Spoke

Thank God for Twitter – otherwise I would have missed this amazing review by Arianna of The Dreaming Bookworm!

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by | September 15, 2015 · 12:30 pm

Marketing gimmick #1: spam, delicious spam…

Shizzle, Inc got up to #23 on the free Top 100 in Humor on the weekend! In fact, it stayed in Top 100 the entire time, thanks to you my dear readers and supporters. I was overwhelmed to see all the messages on the blog and retweets on Twitter – thank you so much!!

I couldn’t be more excited. I mean, I could be, of course. Like, if Cohen brothers called me and told me they want to make Shizzle, Inc into a film, I would totally lose it. For now, I’m just trying to function as a normal, middle-age adult, with a job and other responsibilities. Trying to get through my workday without giggling like an idiot has been a challenge. Also, trying not to turn every conversation into a discussion of self-publishing is proving to be nearly impossible.

Back to the topic at hand. Oh, the exciting times of marketing my novel! Most other writers blog about how much they hate this part of the writing-publishing projects, but I don’t get it. I can’t wait to implement my marketing strategy and see what results it may bring. Although, to tell the truth, I don’t have a strategy per se, at least not yet. All I have is a long list of gimmicks I’m going to test and blog about.

Which brings me back to the delicious spam. Ok, so maybe it’s not delicious, but I hope mine has been at least palatable. Ever since Shizzle, Inc was released on 4 September, I have been sending out 5 Twitter messages per day, each with a quote from Shizzle, Inc and a link to Amazon Kindle. My hope was that because they are entertaining, they will not piss off my followers. Here’s what a couple of them looked like:

Tweet 1Tweet 2Tweet 3

So, how did I do by spamming the entire world with these quotes and passive-aggressive attempts to get unsuspecting folk to buy my novel?

When I’ve looked at Twitter Analytics statistics, my first thought that the this particular gimmick backfired. Yes, the average number of views went up to 7,200 per day. Over 7 thousand views each and every day! In the previous weeks, my average views per day were around 4 thousand. So far so good, right?

Well, not exactly. These quotes/links did not get very many likes or retweets. In fact, the average rate of engagement dropped from my long-term average of 4-5% to about 2.1%. That’s an indicator of how many people have actually engaged with the tweet by either retweeting it, liking it, clicking on the link, or viewing my profile.

Quick math:

7,200 views * 2.1% engagement = 151 engagements

4,000 views * 4% engagement = 160 engagements

I stopped giggling long enough to consider abandoning this gimmick, until I checked how many “link clicks” I got. And this is where I finally saw some good news: the number of link clicks per week jumped from an average of 100 to 293. People actually clicked on the links! Considering that an average cost per click in advertising campaigns is $0.50, I’ve saved about $150 on advertising during the last week alone.

So I’ve decided to continue with this for now, unless you tell me that you’re sick of seeing quotes from Shizzle, Inc. In case you’re interested, I am doing it using a free version of Buffer – a website that lets you schedule tweets ahead of time. The free version lets me schedule up to 10 tweets and I can choose to send all 10 of them in one day, if I want to.

I’ve reduced the number of these spammy tweets to 4 per day – I will let you know what effect it will have on the number of engagements and link clicks. Most importantly, I will let you know the effect it will have on the number of sales. Stay tuned – I’m working on a post revealing exactly how many sales it took to get into the Top 100 list – the number may surprise you!

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by | September 13, 2015 · 10:46 am

5 stars for Shizzle, Inc!

I’ve been waiting for this milestone with bated breath – first independent review on Amazon.  Imagine the surprise of waking up to five gold stars:

image

The reviewer read the book in one night and “never laughed so hard in my life.” I’ve never squealed so much in my life 🙂 Can’t stop reading and re-reading it 🙂 Thank you so much, Dear Reader.

Have a great weekend, everyone. I gotta go read the review. Just this one last time…

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by | September 11, 2015 · 12:26 pm

Get Shizzle, Inc for free – my “thank you” to all of you!

Hi, everybody,

Thank you again for helping me make Shizzle, Inc happen – you’ve been with me while I was writing it, gave me advice when I was pulling my hair out during editing, and you even bought copies of my first baby, catapulting it to Amazon’s Humour Bestseller List within the first week (even if it was there only for a few hours).

I was wearing my fingers raw typing endless mad “thank you”s when I realised that no amount of exclamation marks, or even the cutest emojis can convey my gratitude. I also realised that the best way to thank someone is with stuff. Since I’m far away, don’t have much stuff to begin with, and really need the stuff I already got, I want to thank you with free copies of Shizzle, Inc. I’ve scheduled the promo to be on Amazon this weekend, although I’m buffled as to which time zone it will be. It’s a fair bet that on Saturday afternoon you should be able to download a copy. If you’ve already bought a copy, thank you double – and maybe tell your friends about the promo.

Thank you again, and please let me know what you think 🙂

Big, big hugs.

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by | September 11, 2015 · 7:13 am

Shizzle, Inc is on Amazon Kindle bestseller list!!!

Aaaaaa!!! I was just climbing into bed to start working on my blog tour spreadsheet and decided to stare at my Amazon link one more time. I’m tired after a full day of spreadsheeting and bullshitting at work, so I thought seeing Isa’s face would give me the much-needed boost. Then I noticed this:

Screenshot (13)

This must be some kind of a mistake, I thought. So I clicked on a link, which took me to Top 100 Paid Titles in Humour. And there she was, my creation, with a number 72 next to it:

Screenshot (12)

I’m speechless. Good thing that I can still type, so that I can “say” thank you to those who bought my book. Regardless of what happens next, you’ve made my dream come true.

Big, big hugs.

Ana

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by | September 10, 2015 · 11:22 am

Anyone wants to host my blog tour?

Hi, everyone,

With the publishing rush almost behind me (still need to fix a couple of formatting issues), I’m looking forward to the next phase – marketing and shameless promotion. On my list of things to do is a blog tour – would anyone be interested in hosting my guest blog or doing an interview? I would offer to host yours in exchange. Probably worth mentioning that I’m not interested in paid reviews, only the genuine ones.

Please let me know and thanks again for your support!

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by | September 10, 2015 · 5:09 am

Quick How-to: download a free Kindle app

Hi, everyone,

I’m so glad to hear that my little post on using an image widget to link to your Amazon book has helped so many people! I thought I would share with you how I’ve used the exact same process to make a link to the Kindle download page. Several people have asked me for a print copy of Shizzle, Inc because they don’t have a Kindle. I’m about to embark on a process of publishing a paperback, but you may not be aware that you no longer have to buy a Kindle. You can download a free Kindle app  for your smartphone or tablet.

I have put a link to the above Kindle download page into my sidebar as well, right below the link to Shizzle, Inc on Amazon.

Hope this helps too!

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by | September 9, 2015 · 5:59 am

Quick How-To: adding a link to Amazon from your WordPress.com blog

You may have noticed that at the top of this blog’s right-hand sidebar there’s now a pic of the Shizzle, Inc cover with an invitation to download. If you click on it, it will take you straight to Amazon Kindle (the American one).

You may also wonder why I haven’t done it to begin with, as soon as the novel was published. The answer is, I couldn’t. In my naivete, I assumed that there would be an easy-to-use widget like the one WordPress.com has for Goodreads, but there isn’t one. I don’t know why. Maybe WordPress and Amazon have had a falling out, Like Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie. All I know is that setting up this little link was a pain.

I won’t take you through everything that I had to go through – suffices to say that there’s A LOT of useless, outdated advice out there. In summary, THIS WILL NOT WORK:

  • Trying to insert HTML code, as per Kindle own instructions. This is probably meant for WordPress.org websites.
  • Trying to use Text Widget.
  • Trying to use any other widget, like Goodreads, and posting a url somewhere. (Ok, so it was a stupid idea, but innovative!)
  • Crying.

JUST DO THIS:

1.  Add an image of your cover to your media library (see Media in Admin sidebar).

2.  Add an Image Widget (go to Appearance – Widgets in Admin sidebar). The dialog box will look like this:

Capture of image widget

3.  Put a widget title in, if desired. I put in “Download Shizzle, Inc.

4. Now go back to your media library, find your cover image and double-click on it. You will see this:

Capture of image in image library

See the box in the top right corner? Copy THAT url (ignore the permalink or the “shortlink”).

5. Paste the url in your Image Widget.

6. Save and move the widget up in your sidebar (if desired).

7. Go back to your website and admire the results!

Hope this has helped or will help you in the future. It will certainly help me when I get to post my second novel, cause I’m guaranteed to forget it all by then.

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by | September 8, 2015 · 5:53 am

Post-launch update

Hi, everyone! Thank you so much for all the good wishes and support – and thank you triple to those who bought my book!!

It’s been quite a ride – the adrenaline rush of finally getting it there, the rush of checking and rechecking stats, details, replying to blog comments, and updating my family with blow-by-blow accounts of progress. I was so deep into the lala-land that going to work this morning was like waking up from a dream. And I wasn’t happy – if anything, these last few days proved to me that I want to be a writer and create comedies, not more spreadsheets and reports. It looks like Fate has the same idea, as I’ve already missed out on one of those two jobs I was so excited about, and it doesn’t look like I’m getting the second one either.

But enough about reality, let me have one more check of stats…here we go, the results of the first day or two:

  • Five books sold! And only two of those to friends or family – the other three bought in the US and Great Britain – thank you again 🙂 Here’s what the sales page looks like:

sales day 1

  • The initial sales rankings prove the importance of choosing just the right category for your book:

Sales rank - benchmark day 1

  • New record for the blog – 429 views in one day!

Screenshot (10)

I’ve also had a few issues/learned a few things:

  • Even though I’ve done page breaks, the text runs together, without any blank space to separate chapters. I’m not sure if this is actually an issue, or if that’s what ebooks look like (will have to check a few that are definitely not self-published). Also, I don’t have a real Kindle – how does it look on the proper Kindle device?
  • There was no need to worry about who the publisher would be – I’ve put Ana Spoke as a publisher, but it’s still “sold by Amazon Digital Services.”

Publisher vs sold by

  • The text lines in Kindle app are spaced too close for my liking – it seems that whatever spacing you choose in Word does not translate.

I’m so exhausted and emotionally wiped from the effort of this last weekend, that I could not bring myself to research any of those or attempt to fix them, but it’s a project for later on this week. Another project for this week is to create an author page and add a bio and a professional headshot – I have a photoshoot on Saturday with a friend who just happens to be a professional photographer. I will also post a review of Grammarly and results of my current marketing gimmick – stay tuned 🙂

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