Winging it

There is something ever so disconcerting when you realise it's already been two weeks since your last post but only feels like a handful of days. It's been a busy few weeks. The first week was taken up mostly with work on other projects that needed to get done but I still managed to do bits and bobs with regards to book marketing and definitely didn't waste any time. Amongst other things, I worked on and finished some promotional pictures which I'm going to use on social media that have some catchy/memorable quotes from my books. Here are some examples:

It wasn't until the morning of Monday 20th February however when the planets finally aligned and I was ready to get my books out there and by the afternoon, I'd done so much research and sorting that I even tweeted:

Are you more shocked by the statement above or the fact that I tweeted something? Yes, I have been tweeting this week and it feels good. Even though I wanted to use Twitter again for marketing purposes, to be perfectly honest, I've enjoyed using it again for me and for now, I'm going to do it just for me and see what happens, because sometimes these things need to grow in their own time.

Apart from that, I bought the Writers' & Artists' Yearbook 2017 which I plan on reading after I've finished #Girlboss and I have been doing LOTS of research on book marketing. On Monday I binge watched The Creative Penn's YouTube videos *here* (which I've already discussed before and am a fan) and also found interviews with top self-published authors on how they sold so many books. It's funny, but after a while, the more videos I watched, the more I realised that their methods, which worked wonderfully for them, just aren't right for me. For a start, most of the people I watched started marketing years and years ago when there was MUCH less competition and the likelihood of being seen was easier. One of the authors said 'Something had to be done when I was only selling six books a day' and all I was thinking was Girl, you sold six books a day without marketing?!!

Midway through the week I did some thinking and feel that if I want to really succeed in this already oversaturated market, I've got to come up with a different way of going about things - a new angle. The other reason for wanting to do things a little differently is that every author I watched treated their books like a business and not as a passion. I know that sounds dreadfully simple of me and I know I've talked about this before but it really does bother me that I've got to do all this stuff completely unrelated to writing and books, like build up a mailing list etc, to be successful as a self-published writer. I JUST WANT TO WRITE! I want to write when I want to write and not feel under pressure that I've got to produce X amount of books per year to keep readers happy and buying. I hasten to add I am not having a go at these authors - I like them and their books very much and totally respect what they are doing but I just want to be me. I want to write because I love it and sell books because people like them. I don't want it to be this clinical business where I start to resent writing.

As the title suggests, I'm going to wing it somewhat - try stuff out to see what sticks and probably fail along the way - but most importantly, keep a firm grip on three important, but easily forgotten, words: DON'T. GIVE. UP. I believe in my little book series and think they have an audience out there, I just need to find them. Easy...

Until next time.

Book Trailers, Animation and Harry Potter, oh my!

I shall try to keep this short but I felt it imperative that I update this little blog ASAP when I realised that on the 14th of this month, it would have been two months since my last post. As to why I haven't blogged, I have no excuse really but I will say that time is going so quickly that it's hard to keep up with everything. My blogging absence doesn't mean I have not been working on my books though - FAR from it. Since my last post, things have been busy to say the least. I spent the last few weeks of 2016 working like a madwoman on my website - nothing to do with books though. It's more a site that combines two of my biggest passions: writing and spreading awareness for the skin condition that left me housebound, along with a few other light-hearted subjects like Trichotillomania (the compulsion to pull out your hair). Work on my website continued well into January but when I had set everything up, I was finally able to move on to the thing I had been dreading since I self-published my WEIGHTING TO LIVE series back in 2015: book marketing. Yes, the time has truly come to put my heart and soul into promoting my book series but the abject horror of even the thought of it before has turned into an exciting challenge and now I think I am in the right headspace to really go for it.

The first job on the list was making a book trailer for WEIGHTING TO LIVE. Initially, I was just going to do the one but I got so into it that I decided to make two, along with another for CHANGES. As I have zero experience in filmmaking, I was a little unsure what to do for the best. To me, a 'live action' trailer was out of the question as I didn't have a good enough camera to make it look professional, nor the right props or scenery, so I went with what I thought was my only viable option: animation. I'm talking like I knew how to do that - no big deal, I'll just animate the next Lion King. I've never really done animation before - bar a project when I was in primary school and ate meals in lunchboxes - but I had an idea of how I could potentially make something appear to be moving, along with a bunch of pictures taken from my book covers, some (strained) patience, the YouTube Audio Library and Windows Movie Maker. At this point, I had a few thoughts of what I could do for the trailers but they didn't really take any shape until I started listening to potential music I could use via the YouTube Audio Library. Very quickly, all these ideas jumped out at me and I had a shortlist of songs and a starting point. The first trailer came together after about 2-3 days and by the time I had finished it, I knew exactly what I wanted to do for the second and in another 2-3 days that was done too.

With the trailer for CHANGES, I knew I wanted to take it in a completely different direction - less upbeat than the two for WEIGHTING TO LIVE - but again, it wasn't until I listened to more music from the YouTube Audio Library that I knew exactly what I was going to do. Armed with pictures from the original cover, I got animating. I feel it important to say they are not Pixar's answer to a book trailer but I am very happy with how they all turned out and put across the message and feeling I wanted them to. I enjoyed myself so much that I all I wanted to do afterwards was animate EVERYTHING. Here are the three trailers:

WEIGHTING TO LIVE Book Trailer #1

WEIGHTING TO LIVE Book Trailer #2

CHANGES Book Trailer

And so, that is where we are now - the book trailers are up and I suppose my desire to keep animating is more to do with my reluctance to get on with the nitty gritty of book marketing than anything else. I have a list as long as my arm of things that need to be done and from now on I am going to be blogging regularly as I try to navigate the world of book marketing that still leaves me feeling slightly nauseous. I obviously want people to buy my books but not at the expense of being pushy or becoming one of those 'book entrepreneurs'. Essentially, I don't want to lose the love of writing to be successful - the end goal is to write for a living, and not sell my soul in the process.

In other news, remember when I said that after I had finished my draft I could finally read Harry Potter and the Cursed Child? Well, I did that so naturally, I bought the book and was VERY excited to read it ... but as I was so busy setting up my website etc, I didn't have a chance to read it until the start of January when I came down with an awful cold and forced myself to rest. And what did I think of said book? To be perfectly honest, I think I'd find it hard to be an objective reviewer for something like Harry Potter as, let's be real, anything from that series I'd have given 5 stars BUT I did enjoy it. More than anything it was an absolute joy revisiting characters that I love and essentially grew up with. I would (and will) definitely read it again and even though it's had mixed reviews, I'd recommend it. I will say that I am a little mystified as to why (the goddess) J.K. Rowling didn't write it herself but it's still worth a read.

And well would you look at that? My vow to keep this short has naturally meant I've written the next War and Peace so I'll say goodbye, for now, and promise to be back soon with more tales with the girl who hates book marketing.

Until next time.