My 2021 Assessment

This is an annual event here at Entertaining Stories. Before writing this, I read back through the last few years of assessments, along with business plans for coming years. What surprised me is how positive and professional they came across. That isn’t the case this year.

2021 can…

Most of this involves things in my personal life that I really can’t post about. Old What’s Her Face and I each had our own health scares this year. Hers is fine, but mine remains a bit of an unknown. I have a January appointment for follow up that I may, or may not, keep. There have been major changes in the workplace, and my father passed away on December 2nd. Recently, our grandson developed a major problem that isn’t completely solved yet. This stuff hits hard.

Most of this has been a lingering problem for the last two years. It all seemed to merge at once, kind of like one of those gigantic freeway crashes we see on the news every couple of years. There is nothing I can do about most of it, so I have to compartmentalize and deal with it as best I can.

Having said that, this used to be a writing blog, and this is a business assessment. My plan said I would only release two books in 2021, and I hit that goal. Both Lunar Boogie and Wreck of the Lanternfish are available right now. Lanternfish is still in the throes of a more demure blog tour as I write this.

Looks like this year was all about series work. I’m kind of proud of that, and frightened at the same time. I miss my stand-alone stories, and want to try writing another one of those eventually.

Publishing two, instead of three, gave me more time to experiment with other things. This was a 2021 goal and I achieved that, too. First came a summertime experiment involving two stand-alone titles; Grinders and Serang. Confession, Serang ties right into the Lanternfish trilogy.

This all stemmed from an invitation to appear on Fresh Ink Group’s blog talk radio program. I really didn’t do a lot of promo around this, but it worked out fairly well. I gave away a ton of free books, but only Serang seemed to gain reviews after the fact.

This allowed me to fine tune my plan. When October came around, I decided there are four volumes in The Hat Series. There were four weeks in the month, and a new plan got launched. I promoted each volume for a week, and ran free days for two of them. This worked even better.

I moved another ton of free books, but this time there was someplace else for readers to go. To be honest, I’m still seeing sales from the October push. It seems the crack-dealer method still has some life in it. A freebie leads to purchasing additional stories. I also combined my free days with a push by The Fussy Librarian. I can see the difference, and will probably use them again.

One of the other things I did was post more at the outer fringes of my circle. Let’s face it, my inner circle already hosted me when each volume was originally released. Since we tend to follow the same people, blog tours can become like listening to a broken record. (Wow, is that a dated statement these days.)

One of the things I noticed, and my inner circle confirmed, is that Amazon’s Pages Read seem to be where all the action is. It seems to have surpassed my actual sales, but Amazon pays me and the readers are getting to read for free. I don’t know what this means, or how to use it, but it’s an interesting observation. Maybe I can find a way to milk this like a prize cow.

With two book releases, and two month-long promo tours, there was a lot of promo. Every tour post was unique, so I was blogging, but it was all hosted elsewhere.

This final bit of December promo comes with an observation. The release of Wreck of the Lanternfish is showing an equal volume of sales for the previous volumes in the series. Could this signal that trilogies are more of a sweet spot than I anticipated? Are there a larger group that won’t start a series until they know it’s complete?

I managed to keep up with my Story Empire responsibilities, and feel like they were successful posts. Entertaining Stories suffered the most. I love this site, and want to stay in touch with everyone here. With all the life issues (particularly the life issues), combined with the extra promo, something had to give.

To be honest, I want to spend more time at the Writing Cabin and maybe even let the Research Sirens steal me away for a while. Until some things settle down, that isn’t realistic.

I have been less than creative for the last six months, but have dabbled with a side project. I don’t want to push anywhere until my personal life settles down. I’m taking life one day at a time right now.

I could be alone here, but 2020 was a better year for me. I don’t ever want to see another one like 2021.

Talk to me in the comments. I really love you guys and would like to get back to more regular interaction here.

A small update

I’m going to be pushing The Hat Series all this month. Regular readers will have noticed the reblogs for the first book. To kick things off, I made The Hat free for a few days, announced that at Teri Polen’s Bad Moon Rising event, and hired a push by Fussy Librarian.

Stacking events might be the way to go. I try to share results, both good and bad, but this time they look pretty good.

The Hat made it up to number four on the free lists, and I’m surprised it didn’t climb higher. This is because during the free days I managed to give away 1144 copies of the book. It could be a tougher genre than last time, but those last four notches must require another 400 copies each.

I took a photo, but I’m not sharing it. I want to share this one instead. This was early Tuesday morning when it first hit the free promo. It is a paranormal title, and I thought this was funny. Check out that ranking under Paranormal & Urban Fantasy. Ha ha!

During all this, my pages read really spiked. This seems to be across the whole series, so it must have something to do with the push. Those who understand the indie author’s life seem to get that Kindle Unlimited is still free for them, but I get paid a little something out of the deal.

There will be promo for the other series titles, and I’m also stacking one of those in a couple of weeks.

I mention these things, because some of you might want to try something similar. This time it seems to have worked. It’s October, paranormal titles, blog tour, give always, plus a small paid promo. This could work with the right titles at Christmas, Valentines, and more.

As the rest of it shakes out, I hope you’ll forgive the reblogs. I want to support my hosts as much as possible, and if I can drive them a little traffic, or introduce someone to their sites, they deserve it.

I also had the post over at Story Empire today. I started a series about Three Act Structure that some of you might enjoy. You can check that out here.

This afternoon, Old What’s Her Face and I drove to Twin Falls and met my in-laws. They bought two pigs, and we bought half of one from them. The small freezer is packed tonight, and I’m kind of tired.

Tomorrow, I’ll catch up on your blogs, check for comments on the sites that hosted me, and might even manage to write a chapter. I need to start hacking out my next Story Empire post as we move into Act 2. Then I need to look to my Lanternfish manuscript. It’s back from the formatter and I need to check it this weekend.

I have a hunch there is some ham for breakfast somewhere along the line, too.

Assessments and Updates

I owe you guys an update. About a month ago, I had an interview on Voice of Indie podcast. Here’s a link if you’d like to check it out after the fact. https://www.blogtalkradio.com/voiceofindie1/2021/07/22/voice-of-indie-episode-051

I scheduled some free days to announce during the show, and watched to see what happened. I gave away personal records of books, and both Serang and Grinders spiked in the best-givers lists. Rumor is they will continue to do well. Let’s take a look at that.

I moved a few actual copies in the subsequent weeks, but that doesn’t seem to be where the business is these days. Almost all of my action has been in “pages read,” by Kindle Unlimited members. I did pretty well over there. That seemed to last for two weeks, then trailed off.

Serang got reviews, but most of them were star-ratings only. Grinders didn’t get anything. I was cheering for Grinders since it’s one of my personal favorites. I moved a lot of copies of it, and got plenty of page reads, just no reviews.

Somewhere along the line, a guy has to stop. I know if I’d kept up on promo, I could have probably kept the train moving. There are just other things that need tending to.

Today, I traded Old What’s Her Face cars, then took her vehicle for service. She took my truck to work. The Toyota place has a great workstation, and I brought my iPad so I could work through critiques I received on Good Liniment. I brought plenty more to do, but a lube and oil only takes so long.

This is my short weekend, and I don’t know what I’ll do next. I’ll call my parents tomorrow, then might add words to my secret project. I’m also thinking toward some October promo and need to figure out what that might look like.

Ready for the weekend

Today seemed like it took forever. At least I had a visitor for a little while. This little buck stopped just long enough to pose for photos.

I got a ton of things done today at the office, and I’m beat. Tonight, I’ll probably have a beer and watch a baseball game.

The free day for The Hat is going well. With Don Massenzio’s post it seemed like a good time to try it. The highest rank I caught was #32 under the superhero genre. You have until midnight to get it for free.

Okay, it’s a lousy picture, but it’s out of necessity. This data does not display on my phone. The PC doesn’t save images to my private account. Therefore, I used my phone to take a picture of my PC monitor.

It could creep a little higher with a few more downloads. The book is free until midnight. You might want to grab a copy today, and read it later.

Tomorrow I’m going to hoist the colors and get back to my manuscript. There are two interviews I need to schedule, but if I get to them Sunday that’s perfectly okay.

I’m kind of excited to get back to my pirates, monsters, and adventure. Hope all of you have fun plans and a great weekend.