I announced my new book, The Experimental Notebook of C. S. Boyack II, first thing this morning. Presales hit hard for a little while. This doesn't surprise me anymore. Blog posts seem to have about an eight hour lifespan.
Amazon kind of changed my plan for the day though. I had the hours available, but couldn't dedicate them to my side project. Here's a list of what I worked on today instead:
- Modify my sidebar to include the two newest titles as linked images. This is always tough, because getting the image link out of WordPress is a pain. It doesn't like to highlight correctly to copy and paste. This took about 45 minutes to get right.
- Modifying my slideshow to include the new title was much easier.
- I wrote a post to ask my street team for some help. This will go live on Wednesday. That should give me plenty of time to get requests and custom write material for a friendly tour in September.
- Found a friendly librarian at Goodreads to add my new book. Any new adds are much appreciated and very helpful.
- Worked on plans for some October promotions I want to do. This only involved sending a few emails.
- Sent a request to the Rave Reviews Book Club to add my new title to their catalog. They have a couple of promotional features I'd like to start using, but I haven't seen the book show up yet.
- Spent a lot of time socializing on blogs, Facebook, and Twitter. There were a lot of well wishers to interact with.
- Made a new pinned tweet to keep the book in the public eye. So far eleven people have tweeted it out.
- I managed to re-read my Macabre Macaroni stories. Another one might come to me, but if not I'll go with these. One of them I really like. These are a little more Goosebumps than horror, and I'm okay with that.
- Used my Apple Pencil to cobble together a new banner image for the blog. I'll probably change it out on Wednesday when the street team post goes up.
- I still managed to add about 500 words to my side project.
- Otto and I played every day. Today it was all about tug of war.
Where I went wrong. The downloads came quickly this morning. I didn't check the book status until about 6:30 PM. It is in the low fifties on the short stories and anthologies list. If I had checked it sooner it might have been much higher. Either way, it hit one of the lists. A few more early purchases might help it stay there. (Hint hint.)
If it gets down to single digits, I'll try to get a screen shot and share it with you.
Back to the paycheck job tomorrow. All in all it was an extremely productive weekend. I feel good about it, and know that they won't all be like this. We've decided to go camping next weekend, and maybe I need that now. Talk to you all on Wednesday about the street team idea.
Glad to hear the sales were strong. Hope that keeps up.
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Me too. It feels good to have a weekend like this on occasion. I feel like I got stuff done. They won’t all be like this, but one here and there can sustain me.
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Same here. You really need a few of those good days to keep you going. Just have to be patient.
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True, and I hope as the catalog build’s that will help too.
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A bigger catalog definitely helps. I always get something even if it’s in the UK Market or somewhere.
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Please send the screen shot when you can, I would love to help you out!
Plus, I’m always down for a good read.
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I hate that WordPress image link too. Glad I’m not the only one that takes forever to configure the widget š
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The link you want isn’t the obvious and easy to copy one. It takes a long time to miracle the code out.
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Indeed!
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Congrats on a productive day…and on getting in some puppy play with Otto.Did the glasses just show up in the banner image now, or did I overlook them before. Either way, nice job!
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You overlooked them. Those were in back of every comic book I bought as a kid. They’ve been up for weeks.
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Duh! I’m so observant!
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I was always intended to be a side thing to keep people looking.
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I have the worst time trying to add Widgets in my sidebar. Images, especially. The worst are the ones that hyperlink. It’s part of the reason I don’t like doing awards as much as I used to.
I’m glad you had a good day and I hope you won your fair share at tug o’ war š
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Some days, tug of war is the best part. I have an advantage now, he’s losing baby teeth.
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WordPress Widgets are frustrating some times. I hate adding a new one.
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I thought maybe it was just me, but that seems to be the consensus.
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You never know weather it is “image” or what?
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All in all, it sounds like you had a productive day. š
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It was a great weekend for productivity. Camping this weekend, and that has its own benefits.
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