Briefly, on the sale

On February 10, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing6 Comments

Not going into my usual numberwanking on this, just a few bullet points, mostly because I was teaching again today and I’m kinda tired and crabby and shot for other stuff to talk about. I’d like to promise I won’t mention writing again for a week or so around here but who the hell knows if I’ll hold to that. You got a poop post yesterday; quit whining. 🙂

In general: that went well. Sales every day, a couple of days down from others (the second and third day of the sale in particular) but it went well.
Interestingly, while I haven’t sold a copy of Benevolence Archives in a while, I had seventeen free downloads of that book from Smashwords during the sale. That’s impressive for that time period, so I’m going to say it was because of the countdown deal.
Amazon marketing appears to be literally and entirely useless, but more on this later.
Skylights also picked up a new five-star review during the sale, which was gratifying.
I also had my first day of more than ten actual sales. Even my launch days haven’t hit double-digit sales yet, although I’m fairly certain BA 2 will.
What did work? Twitter, believe it or not, and Facebook. A larger-than-expected number of my sales came about through good old-fashioned schmoozing. The other interesting thing is that while casting out sales Tweets generally doesn’t get you anywhere, people seem to notice and respond when they’re part of a narrative. My clickthroughs on my sales Tweets closely track with my actual sales. I had thought Twitter mostly useless for this; I may have to refine that viewpoint.
And, finally, I’ve made some sales today, so the end of the sale didn’t kill my momentum dead for a week, which I’d suspected might happen. The last day where at least one person didn’t download at least one of my books was January 26th, which is awesome. Also awesome: one more sale in February will make February a better month than January was, and it’s only the 10th.
I will moooostly be going quiet on the marketing front until April, at which point I’ll start ramping up for The Sanctum of the Sphere. So if you’ve grown tired of my yammering over the last week, I’ll be giving you a break for a while. 🙂

So, yeah. All told? I’m pretty pleased with that. My deepest thanks to anyone who downloaded, shared, RTed, or helped out in any way during the sale.

In which you don’t need to know this about me (again)

On February 9, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching8 Comments

I stopped at McDonald’s for coffee on the way home from work today, if that tells you anything about my day.

You may recall this post about my issues with the bathrooms at my current place of business. If not, I recommend reading it; it’s funny, in a terrible godawful why did you tell us that sort of way. If not, allow me to quote myself, if I may:

There are two adult bathrooms at my new place of business. One of them is a one-seater and is effectively a private men’s room for the office. That bathroom has two problems: 1) it is directly outside the principal’s office and 2) I am one of only three men who might ever use it, and one of the other two is frequently not in the office, so not only is there a theoretical chance that my boss might hear me in there but if I power bomb the place everyone is going to know it was me. This cannot stand.

It is my prep period. I am in my office frantically trying to get some of my own job done before I have to go do someone else’s for a while. I have, as it happens, already had a cup of coffee this morning. Now, for most people, coffee is a diuretic. For me, it has rather more… substantial effects, if you know what I mean and I hope you do.

…

Coffee makes me shit, is what I’m trying to say here.

So, yeah. As it works out, both of the other men in the office are not currently in the office, meaning that I can basically do whatever I want in My Other Office with no worries. I become aware of Impending Pressure and head off to do my business.

Meanwhile: the assistant principal is next door. We have recently had a very serious bullying issue on one of our buses that she’s been straightening out, and she’s been using varying levels of severity depending on the level of insistence of the various children involved that they had nothing to do with it. As it turns out, there is video. Fairly a lot of video. So each and every one of these lil’ motherfuckers is busted; it’s just a matter of how long they’re gonna lie before a hammer gets dropped on their heads. The kid currently in her office is being very insistent that he’s done nothing and said nothing and at the moment the AP is simply sitting there calmly categorizing his lies for use later.

This will, as it turns out, not go well for him.

So, back to me: I’m doing my business. I’m doing quite a lot of my business, as it turns out, and it occurs to me partway through that I ought to be really glad that there’s no chance anybody else is gonna be trying to get in here anytime soon.

I finish. I wash my hands.

Thank God I washed my hands.

Because when I open the door, my assistant principal is standing immediately outside the bathroom, with the student, who has clearly spent my entire time in there bawling his eyes out. I do not know how long they have been waiting.

“Go on in there and clean yourself up,” she says to him.

I have two choices at this point. This bathroom ain’t fit for human habitation, and there is no escaping the fact that I am the one who has ruined it. I can either admit it and suggest that the boy use the ladies’ bathroom (which, much like ours, is a locking one-seater) or I can just shrug and let this boy enter into the bowels (see what I did there?) of Hell, where the sulfur in the air will surely blind him before he’s able to wash the tears from his face.

Instead of doing either of those things, I just died of shame on the spot. This will be my final post; it is being typed by my spirit, which will remain bound to that bathroom for all eternity once I hit “Publish” on this post.

You gotta do what you gotta do sometimes, y’know?

Oh I’m Just SO Excited About Today

On February 9, 2015February 8, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized7 Comments

Yesterday was long and crappy and entirely unworthy of the title of “Sunday,” and I’m in the classroom all day today– 7th graders, no less– so I’m far from convinced that today will be better. In fact the entire week is not looking encouraging at all.

Blargh. Post some kittens in comments or something.

STATION IDENTIFICATION: Infinitefreetime.com

On February 8, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn WritingLeave a comment

Hi! I’m Luther Siler. I’m the author of Skylights and The Benevolence Archives, Vol. 1, both available at various online book retailers easily accessible from whatever magic rectangle you’re using to access this page. Skylights is on sale right now! You should check it out.

I run this as a service for new folks who might want to know where else to find me on the Web. Regular folks, if you see the STATION IDENTIFICATION tag, feel free to ignore it.

So here’s where to find Luther Siler on the interwebtron:

You can follow me on Twitter, @nfinitefreetime, here or just click the “follow” button on the right side of the page. I am on Twitter pretty frequently; I use it for liveblogging TV, yammering about anything that strikes me as yammer-worthy, and for short, Facebook-style posts. I generally follow back if I can tell you’re a human being.
My author page on Goodreads is here. I am accepting any and all friend requests at the moment.
I have a Tumblr! I don’t actually know what Tumblr is, because I’m old, but I’ve got one.
My official Author page on Amazon is located here.
Feel free to Like the (sadly underutilized) Luther Siler Facebook page here. It’s mostly used as a reblogger for posts here.
And, of course, you’re already at infinitefreetime.com, my blog. You can click here to be taken to a random post.

Thanks for reading!

On reviews

On February 7, 2015February 7, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Reading, Reviews17 Comments

So here’s a thing that, as far as I know, hasn’t happened before: I wrote a tweet and it inspired somebody else’s blog post!

Writerfolk! Which is worse: a two-star review on Goodreads with no text appended, or a two-star on Amazon with text?

— Luther M. Siler (@nfinitefreetime) February 2, 2015

The most excellent Julie Roberts Towe just put up an entire post on her blog to respond to this Tweet. And when I initially sent the thing out I got a fair number of responses. You should read Julie’s post; I more or less agree with it in its entirety.

The interesting thing is that it’s totally not where I was going with the Tweet. Here’s the story, for whatever it’s worth: I’ve gotten my first bad review, or at least my first bad review that wasn’t written by a crazy person who already knew me that was so obviously abusive that Amazon removed it. Short story even shorter: there’s a two-star review of Skylights on Goodreads, but it’s just the star rating, with no indication at all of what inspired it.

(Let’s make it clear that the reviewer is under no obligation whatsoever to either like my book or give me his reasons for not liking it.)

What actually generated the Tweet was curiosity about whether writers would rather see a two-star review with an explanation (which may or may not be useful to you as a writer) on Amazon, a site that gets immense amounts of traffic, or a two-star with no explanatory text on a less popular site. And the general impression I’ve gotten is that the vast majority of writers always prefer to see some text with their reviews, even the negative ones.

I have no idea why this person didn’t like my book. He may think I’m just generally a crappy writer. He may be a scientist of some sort who caught every single mistake I made. He may not have liked the way the book ended– and I can easily imagine a reader who loves the front half of the book and does not like the second half, or the ending specifically– or he may have just been in a crappy mood when he read it. Either way, he spent money to read my book (because Skylights has never been free, and I know exactly who the few promo copies I’ve sent out have gone to) and it didn’t do it for him. Which is too bad. I suppose I would like to know why, but again: he’s under no obligation to me at all.

And Julie’s right about something else: there’s no point to stressing out about bad reviews, although actually developing that thick skin takes some practice. If anything, the problem with this particular review was that it was somewhat poorly timed given some other things that were going on in my head at the time; again, not actually the reviewer’s problem. I want people to like my books, but I’m not going to stress if they don’t. There’s plenty of stuff I don’t like out there. If I can learn from their reviews, I will; if I can’t? Well, it happens.

Sale update: The book is $2.99 for another sixteen hours or so, and is actually doing quite well today, especially compared to the last couple of days. I’m crossing my fingers for at least three more sales today, which doesn’t seem unreachable, because that will break a record. That would be really cool.

REBLOG: RECAP: The Walking Dead, The First 5.5 Seasons

On February 7, 2015February 7, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn TelevisionLeave a comment

This week, over at Sourcerer, I recap the entirety of the first four seasons of THE WALKING DEAD. Check it out!

It’s time for a plague.

On February 7, 2015February 7, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy8 Comments

So, Knighthawk Armory, an organization I’d never heard of prior to today, just posted some fucking amazing pictures to their Facebook page. I’ll show you two of them; click through for the others. They made a Hulk out of scrap metal:

(CORRECTION: They didn’t do it, they just reposted the pictures. Actual artists are Old Steel Art out of Thailand, whose page is mostly not in English but whose pictures are amazing anyway.)