As my first post indicated, this blog was meant to be a journal of my self-publishing journey. when I started learning about indie-pub through blogs from Konrath, Hocking, and others I also started learning about the marketing practices. The standard advice was: "If you're not blogging or web-(fill in the blank) about your writing...start now, it's how Locke and Hocking did it!!!"
Sensible advice. You need to create a web presence to promote your work like the big successful writers have or to build a web presence for when your work debuts and, ideally, people will be waiting for it. So off I went into the Blog-osphere. I haven't been the best blogging author lately (again, for those future readers that will look for past content to read) but will keep the blog updated with important stuff.
Namely, I would like to welcome Embrach! I've seen you over at Joe's blog and I guess you've seen me. If you read this, thanks for joining as follower #1. If this Blog ever becomes something special you can say you were the very first here. Thanks for stopping by!
Oddly enough, as I'm starting to focus on my Blog more one of the big blogger's I follow, the incomparable Mr. Nathan Bransford, posts on how Blogging is dying down as a practice among popular publishing and writing bloggers.
Mr. Konrath is now on his widely known Hiatus, among many others it seems. The common trend is too little time to keep up with the universe of blogging activity present today and not only on individuals own Blogs, but with following others as well.
It's something I definitely understand. I'm constantly finding new worthwhile Blogs everyday and subsequently and going weeks without even looking at mine and noticing how boring and featureless it still is.
In all, the popularity of Blogging seems to be on a bit of a decline. Hmm, may be another party I came late to. Story of my life.
I plan to stay here however, at least until I have work uploaded and thereby can add something to the indie-pub discussion. On that account I'm in the final stages of drafting and revising what will be my first Novella available on e-pub channels. The Doomsday Door, will be a 20-30k word Novella about an aging soldier turned scientist battling in both the distant future, and in our time, to prevent an alien invasion that eradicates human society.
If I have something to offer for the, now widely discussed, Konrath "Indie pub guest post/article" project, discussed here, I imagine I'll be talking about the challenges of selecting a cover artist. In the hopes of at the very least starting a cover design discussion with an affordable designer I recently posted a Craigslist ad.
Results: It's been three days and I have over a hundred e-mail replies. Summary: virtually no one has a book cover design in their portfolio, they all want to sell me (because they're independent computer techies) web services, logos, branding and every other E service you can think of and no one seems to have a look or style that in any way is in the vein I was thinking of.
And I thought the biggest problem would be convincing the wife to spend 100$+ on a 700x1000 pixel image. So far, despite the hundreds of attached and linked images I've looked at this week, I seem to have gotten nowhere. Whatever solution I arrive at I'll be sure to share it.
Should be interesting and hopefully I'll be able to offer some advice for those who are steps behind me in the process.
In personal news, finally have been dragged kicking and screaming into 2009 and have a real no-shit smart phone. Not sure if I'm completely in love and will ultimately never knew how I lived without it...or if I'm actually terrified of its unlimited power over me and am only being deluded into satisfaction by all the pretty displays and touch screen buttons. In any event I should be Tweeting soon like all the other tech savvy types so we'll see where that leads.
On the gratuitous plug front: my new e-writing pal Summer Daniels will have her second volume of Summer's Journey out soon. Spicy adult fun so be sure to look for it.
Good times
Dave
