On one of the linkedin author chat groups I participate in some brave soul finally asked – has anyone had experience getting book sales from their facebook page?  Guess what the answers were?  That’s right – not one person could document a single book sale as a result of having a facebook author page.

I have done numerous google searches for data on book sales and facebook.  I have not been able to find any data.  Then there is the question of buying advertising on facebook to sell books.  A number of my linkedin colleagues experimented with facebook advertising.  It’s not cheap.  Again, there was no hard data to link facebook advertising with book sales and even if there were, the cost effectiveness is murky at best.

I don’t intend to be crass and demand or have an expectation that an author facebook page generate fabulous sales.  It would be beneficial to be able to demonstrate that there is some correlation between facebook and book sales.  As an author I need to allocate my time.  Is a presence on facebook a good use of my time?  I wonder?

There is one question no one has asked.  Are those that participate in the various forms of social media readers?  If your limit is 144 characters my guess it’s unlikely you could handle more than 144 pages.  Some may argue that social media people purchase e-books.  Again, where is the data?  An e-book is only a change in format – you still need to be a reader.  While I don’t have any objective data, my guess is that if you spend a great deal of time (more than 1 hour a day) on social media, you’re not a reader.

I already have a webpage, linkedin and twitter and I’m thinking about having an author facebook page, at least on Amazon.  My solution is simply to devote the minimum amount of time to each.  If I don’t spend time working on my novel anyone finding me in the social media world won’t have a book from me to read. 

The right division of time for me is, 90% novel writing and 10% everything else – until someone can SHOW ME THE BEEF!

If you have any objective data on the relationship between book sales and social media – PLEASE – respond to this post – for now I’ve used up my 10%. 

                 

Generally I am a creature of habit.  Habit is where my comfort zone lies.  Like many novice writers I struggle to create a pattern to write consistently.  It isn’t a matter of lack of desire, or lack of time, or procrastination.  It’s a matter of habit.

Graham Greene was once asked if he wrote my creativity or routine (or close to that).  His response was that he was fortunate in life in that creativity found him at 9:00 am every morning at his typewriter.  Greene touched on the key.  Inspiration and creativity don’t strike a writer out of the clear, blue sky unexpectedly.  It happens when we work.

Recently my content/development editor suggested I needed to add two chapters to my manuscript to further character development and set up events that occur later in the novel.  Intuitively, I knew his suggestion had merit but I didn’t have a clue where to start.   The lack of self-direction became the perfect excuse to delay working on this project.

We agreed to meet for lunch and for some reason I told him I would have the chapters for him when we met.  This promise became my deadline.

The deadline did the trick.  I sat down to write and I fell into a natural pattern.  Write four hours in the morning.  Take an hour lunch break.  Work for two hours after lunch.  Quit every day by 3:00 pm.  It worked!  I completed the chapters after about three drafts each and was able to deliver them when we had lunch.

I discovered that I had hit my stride, a pattern of work that fits for me.  I’ve been looking for this for years.  I’m so relieved I finally found it.

Share with me your story of how you hit your stride – or didn’t.

Back in March I learned what happens to a person when your blood sugar soars to four times the normal level.  You can’t get enough water, which results in – well – you can guess.  That means you don’t get very much sleep because you’re up 15 times a night, so you are also always tired.  After doing the weekly grocery shopping I needed a two hour nap in the afternoon.  You are always hungry, especially for sweets.   The miracle is that you lose weight – fast.  I lost 8 pounds in two weeks – a new lifetime record for me.

I had been “pre-diabetic” for six years and able to manage life with good diet and exercise.  Then, overnight everything changed.  The doctors and nurses can’t tell me why it happened – it does so your energy is best spent learning about your new lifestyle.

I didn’t need to change diet very much and because the high glucose wracked my body I was ordered to stop exercising until after my blood sugar was under control.  When I was allowed to begin exercising again it was at a snail’s pace, five minutes of walking a day, three days a week.  The plan I was given increased the exercise over an eight week period.

With spring/summer about to break in Wisconsin at my house it means gardening and yard work.  I’ve decided to turn the clock back and mow with a manual lawnmower.  Fiskar’s makes a high tech manual mower that sharpens the blades as it mows and the grass forward rather than back so the grass gets mulched at the same time.

 I’ve divided my lawn into three mini-lawns and it takes about 30 minutes to mow each.  I get work on legs and arms by manually mowing and even work up a sweat.  So, I call this my Fiskar’s Therapy.        

The Strange Case of the Missing Visitors (to my website)

I receive detailed monthly statistics from my website provider, Ipage.  In particular I keep track of the number of visitors.  In April I was a member of the Success Panel at the UW-Madison Writer’s Institute and I provided by website to everyone.  With over 300 attendees, I expected a spike in the number of visits to my website.

To my shock and chagrin there were 251 LESS visits in April than in March.  How can that be?  Can I conclude that my participation in the Success Panel was a failure in attracting conference attendees to my website?

I freely admit that I don’t understand where all my visits come from.  Since June 2012 I’ve averaged 1216 visits per month.  In April 2013 I had 489 MORE visits than my monthly average (the initial 4 months of 2012 were bleak).  Taking that view April doesn’t look so bad.

What’s the right perspective?  Can anyone in Social Network Land (SNL) help me out?  Should I be tracking other data such as:  number of pages or number of hits?  And what happened to 251 visitors?  Anyone who can help me out with this will be greatly appreciated.

  

I believe, if we are honest with ourselves, all artists would agree that creativity is a mystery.  For centuries the common belief was that creativity was something external to the human being and the lucky few were visited by the external power more or less on a regular but whimsical basis.  We can site the Muses for the Greeks, the concept of genius for the Romans.

 Jung gave us a different view with the concept of archetypes and the collective unconscious.  As I devote more time to creative endeavors I find that the unconscious kicks in especially when I sleep.  While on vacation we’re having the living room painted because it requires skills I just don’t have and am not interested in learning, especially because the project involves painting a stair case.  To prepare for the project everything must be moved out of the living room and all the artwork taken down.  When the job is finished there will be a great opportunity to re-organize both the furniture and the artwork.  One evening I actually dreamt of how the living room could look if placement of the furniture was radically changed.

Maybe it doesn’t sound too dramatic but it’s the process that is important.  I viewed re-organizing as a puzzle to be solved and then let go of it so solutions could bubble up.  I use the same technique when I write.  Recently my editor suggested two significant changes to the plot by suggesting two characters be introduced earlier and given more back-story.  His concern was that the characters were a bit like cardboard and one dimensional.

Both characters are critical to the story since once is the protagonist’s best friend and the other is his lover.  I “slept” on the editor’s suggestion and developed two new chapters each based on one primary scene to introduce both characters much earlier in the book.  To make sure I on the mark with the suggestion, I e-mailed my editor with a very rough synopsis of the two new chapters and he confirmed it was exactly what was needed.

How or why does this work?  I really don’t know.  I have learned, however, to pay attention to it.  I would like to learn how the creative process works for other writers.  Reply to this blog and share how the creative enters your work.

  

Several years ago at a Writer’s Institute Conference I was convinced of the wisdom of having one or more beta readers for my novel.  The first person that had the job I didn’t know.  It was a relative of a friend I met at the conference who swore by his sister-in-laws skills at reading and commenting on fiction.

Several weeks after submitting my manuscript to her she sent me a three page, scathing e-mail that ripped my manuscript and me apart.  It was very personal and disturbing.  She closed her written critique by stating she hated historical fiction and felt she had wasted her time in reading my manuscript.  My friend was embarrassed and I felt I wasted my time in letting a stranger serve as a beta reader.  Lesson learned – ask someone you know and trust to be your beta reader.

I asked my friend Rob for his help.  He was thorough and insightful and helped me with theme and timeline but he insisted on telling me what the title of the book should be.  In fact, he obsessed about the title and would even call me for weeks with his latest rendition of what the title should be.  That should have been a warning to me but I didn’t heed it.

After getting a galley back from the publisher I parted ways with in February I asked Rob to serve as my beta reader again.  Again, he took about three weeks to give it a good read and took copious notes and made many notes in the manuscript.   I also gave him a copy of my latest version of the back of the book blurb.  When he called me to arrange a time to meet to review his comments he proudly announced that he had re-written my back of the book blub.  What?  

Making comments, suggestions, having a discussion is fine.  But re-writing just isn’t acceptable, it crosses the line.  My friend is a song writer and we discuss his songs, I make comments and suggestions but I’ NEVER re-written the music or lyrics to one of his songs.

He also claimed I had a number of misspellings.  One he constantly corrected was Midleton (one d) a city in Ireland east of Cork and the location of the distillery making Ireland’s finest single malt whiskey.  He corrected everyone to Middleton (two d’s).  He didn’t take the time to ask me about the spelling or research it himself, he was arrogant enough to correct me.

So, as you might imagine, I’m searching for a new beta reader.  Anyone interested in being a beta reader to help a writer? 

I’ve always been a person who begins all relationships with trust.  For me, it is the civil approach, to just expect that you can trust people.  I have had friends (people I’ve trusted) tell me that I am naive and leave myself vulnerable to be both disappointed and hurt.  Their advice is that trust must be earned over time.  The problem is, I’ve never figured out what the criteria is for earning trust.

In the real world there have been a few times when my friends are right.  I had a contract with a micro publisher for my debut novel since April 2011 which I terminated in February 2013 – only 22 months.  My initial reason for terminating the contract was their refusal to schedule a publication date for the novel in 2013 after making promises to publish in April and then November 2012 and failed to do so.

For most reasonable people, I believe, that would be sufficient cause to terminate a contract.  However, after reflecting on my experience with the publisher, I’ve decided the real reason was that we never developed trust.  Without trust any relationship is doomed to failure.

I also have a beta reader that I trusted, until recently.  I gave the reader the latest draft of my novel along with a draft of the back of book blurb.  Rather than commenting on the blurb, discussing it with me or making suggestions – he re-wrote the entire blurb.  I was offended.  I considered his attempt to re-write the blub arrogant even though he thought he was being helpful.  No writer needs that sort of help – so in this case – trust was shattered and can’t be repaired.

The lesson is simple.  To help you create your book or whatever creative writing you undertake is careful to work only with people you would trust with your life.  You’re writing is the purest expression of yourself so share the creative process with only those you trust.  

What 20th century author would you have dinner with, if you could choose anyone living or deceased?  For me it would be Ray Bradbury who died last June at the age of 91.  Bradbury had a unique creative genius and a gift for storytelling that sucked you into a story and then lead you to believe the most incredible, surrealistic things.   I suspect that most boys, at some point, have an obsession with Bradbury, mine started in high school and lasted until my mid 30’s.

At dinner I would ask Ray how he imagined stories such as Fahrenheit 451 and the Martian Chronicles.  Although Bradbury’s reputation rested on science fiction and dystopia societies, I like the “down home” books like:   Something Wicked This Way Comes, Dandelion Wine and I Sing the Body Electric.

Bradbury was a self-made writer, didn’t attend college and didn’t attend writer’s conferences or have an MFA.  Bradbury took Faulkner’s advice, “Don’t be a writer.  Be writing.”

Who would you have dinner with?  

I am new to freelance writing for income, it’s just been three years.  I like to freelance because it gives me an opportunity to research and write about the “real world” things that matter to me like; farm to fork issues, organic gardening and other green topics.

I talked with a friend who is a retired Journalism professor and he advised me to send out a ton of queries and develop a portfolio of “clips” that I could use to build credibility and some authority in my area of interest. He told me that initially don’t expect to be paid but with each publication I had reference material for the next query.

After a year I decided it was time to get paid for my research, time and writing.  I targeted regional publications because I thought it more likely to get published versus a national publication at this stage of my freelance career.  I received a phone call from the owner of a regional publication after sending a query about a friend who raises heritage Belted Galloway cattle.  The article and five pictures were accepted and published in the February 2011 issue.  I received a copy of the publication but no check.

I sent several e-mails but never received a check.  Later that year I received an e-mail asking for submissions to the same publication.  I sent an inquiry.  Again, my inquiry was accepted.  I responded that I would submit an article only if paid for the first article.  The owner assured me that I would receive payment for both articles.  My second article was published in Jan-Feb 2012 issue.  Guess what?  No payment.

In mid-December 2012 I received another e-mail asking for submissions.  Again, I responded I would be happy to submit if I received payment for my previous TWO articles.  Then I was asked to submit an invoice.  No problem, invoice submitted.  I waited.  A month went by – no check.  Two months went by- no check.  Finally on March 6th I received an e-mail that a check would be sent soon plus copies of the publication my articles appeared in.  I waited. 



The check arrived on March 11th and I cashed it the next day – you can’t be too careful.  My experience is getting paid for freelance work is a roulette wheel.

   

The theme for the readings the Winter Session of my book group TUESDAY MORNING BOOKTALS IS “Unhappily Ever After”.  One of three books in the series is The Living is Easy by Dorothy West.    One reason for being a member of a book group is to get the opportunity to read books you generally wouldn’t chose for yourself – not out of bias – out of ignorance.

Dorothy West was a member of the famous Harlem Renaissance.  The Living is Easy was published in 1948 but sadly went out of print.  West didn’t publish fiction again until 1995 at the age of 85 when The Wedding was published.  Oprah Winfrey turned the book into a TV mini-series.

The Living is Easy tells the story of a middle class Black family in Boston at the turn of the 20th century.  The family matriarch and protagonist Cleo (Cleopatra) runs a household of sisters, children and her husband with a unique maternal vision, gile, lies, conniving, ingenuity, and improvisation.  For me, Cleo will be one of the most memorable characters in literature.

While successful for many years, Cleo’s husband, Bart Judson, loses his fruit importing business and moves to New York City to find a job and send money home for the family.

The book raises the themes of intraracial oppression, assimilation into a white society and how marriage can be suffocating.

I highly recommend reading The Living is Easy, it will change your world view.

If any readers have ready Dorothy West,  I invite you to post a blog on this site.