About Launching A Book

What has happened with the recent launch of Fried Windows is fascinating to the publicist side of my nature. It is not entirely unexpected, but some things have been surprising.

Let's be honest. The initial response to the launch of Fried Window has been, in a word, underwhelming. As much as an author would like to sell hundreds of books on the first day and reach best seller status for a few moments in the spotlight, those things happen because a lot of factors converge at once. It is a false indication of the book's overall potential for success. A book is a success because of the connect it makes with the public, not because of how many friends and family member buy it on the first day. So it is dangerous to read too much into a launch day spike - or in my case the absence thereof.

The problem is almost never the book. Everyone who has read Fried Windows in advance has loved it. It has a great, attention-getting cover. Although some friends have told me it is startling and a little over the top the book is unusual. I think the graphic captures that.

The problem Fried Windows is having in the market place is the same as every other book from every one of the millions of obscure authors. It is a new book from what the public perceives as a new author. Readers are attracted to brand-name authors. They invest time as well as money in purchasing a new book to read.

My fan base response to Fried Windows has been lukewarm at best. That's what is disappointing in that I have worked a lot on building relationships with others over the past few years. But I also understand that launching a new book without a lot of fanfare is like throwing a frozen burger patty into a skillet before it's heated up. At first nothing happens. Heating things up a bit is all that's necessary but it takes some time. Sounds simple, except it's not quite as easy as turning a knob on a stove. As is true of nearly everything worth doing, there is a process involved and procedure to follow. The first step of that is finding out why promotional efforts in advance of the launch failed to produce the desired result - sales.

First of all, selling anything via social media alone - as was the case with this book - is difficult. People are online to be social, not transacting business. They tend to ignore direct pitches, especially since they are inundated with them. So despite FB's claims that you can promote your page for a few dollars a day and gain all sorts of followers through likes, that in itself is not going to sell a book. Also, in the interest of bolstering their own business model, FB has altered their algorithm so that your messages reach perhaps only 7% of your friends. Unless you buy FB services what you post on your page will not reach all your followers. So out of the thousands of people who might have seen my message about a book launch, only a few actually received the message. Each social medium has its limitations. I'm picking on FB because they are the biggest and have most recently been playing games with their programming that counters whatever users may be doing to promote themselves in a social medium.

Let's face it, people who will buy a book from a relatively unknown author have more than a passing acquaintance. And the mere fact that someone is a friend does not necessarily mean he or she will buy your book. For the moment, let's set aside the real goal of an author, which is to have others read the book and sing its praises to others through written and posted reviews or spreading the word to their friends. It is a fan base problem.

Growing the number of fans is an evolutionary process. It cannot be rushed because attention and awareness must be cultivated and reinforced throughout your process, otherwise a fan will forget that he or she ever was a fan. The best connections are personalized through memorable events - like book signings or chatting online. Others may be people you know at your day job. They may purchase a book simply because they know you - even if you are not close friends - but usually co-workers will not buy your book unless they know you well. Why should they?

Since most of my online friends are other authors, I have never expected a great number of sales from those associations. Why would I? Authors are busy hawking their own wares. Some have bought my book, though. Those tend to be people whose books I have read and reviewed and those with whom I have had repeated contact. Again, it is a matter of turning an acquaintance into an fan. With most authors, it comes down to quid pro quo and professional courtesy. I'll buy your book if you buy mine. I'll write a review for you if you'll write a review for me. Sharing blogs with other authors exposes one author to another's fan base. So it's worth having other authors as friends as long as the relationship is cultivated beyond mere acquaintance.

What about all those people you knew in school or wherever else? Counting on the support of people you knew in the past is iffy. It will depend on how well you got along in the past and whether your relationship continued or recently resumed. Even then, simply having contact with someone you know doesn't mean he or she will buy your book. However, if your book becomes popular and you become famous, that dynamic will change dramatically. People you never knew you knew will suddenly claim to have known you well.

The launch of Fried Windows has exceeded any of my previous work. That's progress and it's due to building my fan base. Once the interest in the book increases through other promotional efforts, the momentum will build as well. It may take months and the subsequent launches of my other books in order to stir the desired level of interest in Fried Windows but it will happen. The book is that good. Once someone reads it they understand that it is unique in many ways.

An Author's Friends And Family

I've decided not to overanalyze anything to do with the response to my recent book release. As there is nothing really controversial in Fried Windows I don't expect a lot of fallout from anything I have written. Maybe I stretched my imagination a little more than usual, at least as much as I bent the truth, but it's intention was mainly harmless fun. I'm not sure why my friends aren't flocking to read it, but that's okay. Mostly my friends never paid that much attention to anything I said before I started writing. So why should it be different now?

Anyway, part of becoming an authors is seeking new friends. They're called readers. The reason is not to discard and replace old friends but to acquire followers as a supplement to those who have known the author since before... Unlike old friends, the new friends find it easy to become fans. Why shouldn't they?  They know an intimate part of the author, what he or she writes. I'm not sure every old friend can become an avid follower and reader of an author. It may have something to do with being there in high school and knowing the real story. Old friends saw the stupid crap we did. They were the ones carrying our drunken asses to dorm rooms in college. They were the ones we confessed any number of things to here and there along the way.

Family isn't much better as as source of readers. There are exceptions, but most buy an authors book out of familial obligation. Few ever read the book all the way through. Those who do probably deserve a medal for perseverance. I get that.

You see, like friends, family knows us for our flaws and secrets. They know some things abut us better than friends because they share a genetic identity. They understand our special level of crazy because they were not only there with us while growing up together but also they have some of the same traits.

Like fiends, relatives hear a real voice when they read our words in print. Sometimes that is at least unsettling. I suppose it can be unnerving, especially when reading a fictional account that seems kind of familiar. Moreover, family is used to giving us advice, not necessarily hearing concoct long, convoluted stories that may actually make some sense - especially when those stories come pretty darned close to revealing things that really happened to this or that other family member.

In Fried Windows I have tried not to borrow too much from reality. But there are some situations that some might recall. The book is a fantasy, though. There are always pieces of an author's life that find their ways into a book. That why names are changed to protect the author as much as anyone else. The parts that borrow from real life distort the facts enough to be mostly idle fabrication.

On balance, I think I'll gain friends from having written the book. I doubt I'll lose any friends along the way - I hope not. I wrote the book to be a fun read and I think it accomplishes that. I wanted it to change the way every reader looks at the world around them. Maybe it does that. For those who will read it, please let me know what you think. And yes, there is much more of Brent's story left to be told.

What I Should Have Been Doing All Along

I'm not sure I ever intended to be where I was a couple of years ago. I could play the blame game - there was enough to go around but the tough times I was experiencing were largely brought upon myself. But that is not what this blog is about, anyway.

I've overcome a lot in the past couple of years. Some of it I did alone but for my basic surviving and needs I have to thank others, particularly my family. You see, I've been basically homeless for nearly two years - since my eviction. I'd be couch surfing had it not been for family support.

Artists go through period like I've just been through. It's nothing new. It was a strain on my relatives, though. I'm sorry for what I put everyone else through but not for the way things turned out. I am confident that had I continued in the way I was going a little more than two years ago I would be dead by now. I have far too many stories I need to complete to be about dying. So you see, I didn't have a choice then or now.

Along the way I applied for other jobs, but i was not willing to go back into a situation similar to what I was before. You see, once the kids were grown and I was divorced, I really didn't care how much I got paid as long as I could survive on it and continue to write. I have that situation now. It;s not idea but like an situation it;s temporary.

It's hard for people who don't write to comprehend living the way I do. I get that. Most people don't think of what I do as work and, frankly, neither do I. Over the years of working I have learned that it is tedious, stressful and wholly unenjoyable. Although writing can have moments when it is like work in those ways, generally it is a worthwhile experience providing a sense of accomplishment at its end. That has rarely ever happened whenever I worked for someone else.

Also, there's something to be said about writing as therapy. Most writers will tell you we're functionally insane on the best of days. We use the escape time that our creativity afford to gain a sense of balance and for me it is a daily battle. I used to drink too much in an effort to cope with the confluence of pressures surrounding me. Working 70 hours a week - if not more - with feet and back hurting so bad afterwards that I could barely walk or sit up in a chair. Alcohol numbed things at least And it also helped me slip into a creative state of mind for a brief while.

I'm not saying that I write better when half lit but I had some highly creative ideas - provided I was able to set them into words that a sober me could read, revise and edit. I played that game for a while. Yet, all along I knew it was incremental suicide. Every drink I took was killing me.

I struggled a lot between 2002 and 2013, the period I will label as 'between publishers'. I wrote quite a lot of material but never was it good enough for a publisher to pick up. I've always been a writer in search of a good editor, though I could never afford to hire one to transform my raw manuscripts into clean works of literature. So, I think when I checked out - quitting my job to write and being forced to scale back on my living expenses - it was purposeful. It eliminated the pressures and it also forced me to quit drinking. Oddly enough, I wrote Fried Windows (In A Light White Sauce) about a month or so into the sober period of my life. What was different about it was the author's voice I discovered writing it in first person. I had written about the main character, Brent, before but I had never actually tired on his skin to become him and see the world through his eyes.

Since writing Fried Windows I have written a few other new things but mainly I have been revising the older things with fresh sober eyes. Most of what I have written in the past was done in third person, which is fine. I'm just tweaking things, removing redundancies and correcting errors. I am determined to make writing my career, now. This is my life and it's what I should have been doing all along.

No Superbowl L

Wait! Before you have a panic attack, there will be a fiftieth playing of the world championship pitting the surviving and hopefully best teams of the two football conferences again one another. It's just they won't call it 'Superbowl L'. After forty-four years of using Roman numerals for designating the particular edition of the annual Superbowl game in American football, the National Football League (NFL) has decided to break with the tradition established inn 1971 and not to use the the letter 'L' to designate the fiftieth one. Instead the game will be officially called Superbowl 50.

I suppose they could call it Superbowl 5-0 but that would be confused with the TV show Hawaii 5-0. Perhaps if they held the game in Hawaii that might have made sense in a cute sort of way. Also, there is the stoma associated with the letter 'L' standing for 'loser', something popularized int he 90's by someone holding up the thumb and index finger of one hand to his or her forehead to indicate that someone else was a 'Loser'. We can't have something like that associated with the most watched sporting event in America, now can we?

Do they intend to to return to Roman numerals after this coming Superbowl, designing it LI? Well, I'm concerned that could be mistaken for a reference to Long Island. The game will not be played there. It was a gamble wight he weather and all playing it at the Meadowlands in NJ last year. I think most people in the league feel they dodged a bullet as a snow storm was bearing down on the east coast at the time and hit the event site the day after.

Maybe they should just scrap the Roman numerals altogether. After all, how many times have you had to explain to a kid what the letters meant. And then there is the whole matter of how Romans added subtracted multiplied and divided those crazy looking numbers and why western civilization adopted Hindu-Arabic numerals in lieu of the Roman ones. Who wants to go through that explanation? Eventually the roman numerals will be so long and complicated that it will be difficult to immediately decipher.  Superbowl MCDXCII is a few hundred years away, but every American football fan hopes there will still be games then so we can continue watching them from the grandstands in Football Heaven.

My suggestion is to just start calling the games by their serial number in standard, commonly used and understood numeral like 51, 52 and so on. It's not like you see Roman numerals on that many things any more, some analog clock faces, volumes of books, the copyright script at the bottom of some movies. Yeah, I think we could officially just do away with them. Let them go the way of cursive writing, forever forgotten and no longer taught in school. We have more important things to teach. Who cares about tradition and cultural identity?

It's all a little silly anyway, isn't it? Although I love watching American Football it always struck me as being rather odd that they used roman numerals for the Superbowl anyway. It was only for appearances, so it seemed more official or important in some way. Appearances is the real reason Superbowl L will be designated Superbowl 50.