On Facebook

On March 22, 2018March 22, 2018 By Luther M. SilerIn Geek10 Comments

Let’s put the tl;dr of this post right at the beginning: where do y’all stand in terms of how much you’re using Facebook nowadays? I killed my Clark Kent personal account … a month ago, maybe? and I haven’t missed it a bit. My usage of Facebook was always pretty idiosyncratic; I never let a post stay on the site for more than a couple of weeks, only rarely uploaded pictures, and damn near never played any of the quizzes or games that are getting them in trouble right now– mostly because I knew good and goddamn well that they were bullshit data-mining schemes from the beginning. I’ve always hated the site, even when I first set up my account; the only thing keeping me around was a small handful of people who I was basically only in touch with through Facebook, and I made sure most of those few friended Luther before I killed my account.

And right now I’m side-eyeing my author account, hard, and wondering how important it actually is in terms of actual sales and driving traffic to the blog. The problem is, the answer seems to be “pretty important”:

So here we see that in the last ninety days, Facebook is my #1 referrer out of search engines and WordPress itself. But it’s not a huge number; I could find a way to make up for 500 hits in a 90-day period if I wanted to commit myself a bit more to bringing traffic levels back up to where they used to be around here.

This is a bit of a bigger deal, though:

… yeah. If I look at all my referrers, for the life of the blog, Facebook is #1 with a bullet for driving viral content– in other words, anything that hits big is going to hit big is going to hit big because of Facebook pushing it. My #1 post in history has thirty-nine thousand Facebook shares. That’s a big deal! And it all started with people who have Liked the Luther Siler page spreading that post. I’m not certain that cutting off that audience is an especially wise move. I mean, I still have Twitter, but Twitter can’t drive traffic like Facebook can, or at least not in the same ways.

So. Yeah. Back to the lede: how are you using Facebook nowadays? More or less than you used to? Have you killed your account recently, or are you thinking about it? Let me know.

In which I defend myself against something no one accused me of, and other bits of nonsense

On March 17, 2017 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

510Cy7ZwEHL._SX338_BO1,204,203,200_ I watch a lot of Hulu, right? Lately we’ve been binging all of Scrubs, which means that generally if the television is on in my house and there isn’t some sort of childrens’ programming on that’s probably what we’re watching. Hulu’s been promoing this program lately that appears to be about a fat old rich white guy who gets accused of rape.

Be it known to the world at large: at this particular point in my life I find it really fucking difficult to arouse any sympathy for old rich white men accused of rape, and I sure as shit am not interested in watching television programs that cast said old rich white men as the victims. Can I just fucking watch Scrubs, please? Maybe advertise other light comedies? And not this show, like, ever again? Thanks.

A warning: this part of the post is going to be kind of ill-formed and unfinished, as it’s still a work in progress in my brain and I’m not at all sure how I feel about any of it, so don’t expect me to come to any conclusions. I had a dream the other day where a former student (and I am one hundred percent certain that she will both see this and know who she is) sat across a table from me and lectured me about representation and cultural appropriation in my work. I’ve been reading a lot about both issues lately (the recent spate of articles about the whitewashing of Nnedi Okorafor’s The Shadow Speakers is only the newest example) and as someone who has actually written a science fiction book and deliberately made sure to get the black woman on the cover it’s kind of an important issue to me.

So, yeah, here’s the thing: I’ve got two books in the works right now featuring women of color as the leads. The lead race in my fantasy series is matriarchal. And my short stories tend to feature non-stereotypically-western cultures. I’m not good enough about writing LGBT+ characters but when you come down to it there are precious few straight relationships in my books either for some reason.

I do not write this to be awarded cookies. I don’t want cookies. In fact, I’m starting to wonder if I’m approaching all this the right way at all. Do me a favor, and go read this, and then read this.

I’m torn as hell on this and still thinking about it. But it’s on my mind at the moment.

I leave for Denver in, like, three days. I am still not looking forward to it. At all.

In which real things are getting realer

On April 5, 2015April 5, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

The Saturday before my signing is Free Comic Book Day, traditionally the biggest day of the year for any comic shop. These are pack-in cards for FCBD; I’m making somewhere between 500 and 750 of them depending on cost. They will all be handed out that day pretty much no matter how many I make. This is alpha-level early, so if anyone has comments or advice I’d love to hear it.

The back side will be black-and-white; ignore the color logo.

Note: I’m not including the address of the comic shop on the cards because they’ll be handed to customers AT THE COMIC SHOP, who presumably know where they are. The store’s logo is on there twice to remind them if they forget. I’m planning on pricing the books at $10.00 for one or $15 for two; bringing the card will let you get one for $5 or both for $10. This still represents profit as my per-book cost is low. Do I need to find a place to put that on the card?

Casey Heying, by the way, owns the shop, so people will know who he is.

Whaddya think?

Okay that last post was sort of a lie

On April 3, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing5 Comments

I’ve been gaming, yes, but I’m keeping my eye on the prize this week.

How’s this look? In the real world it will be six of your human feet tall.

I’ve been teaching myself how to use GIMP…

On February 27, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing11 Comments

…because Adam Dreece got me thinking about how to be more effective (while, simultaneously, less or at least equally annoying) on Twitter. And these get MUCH more interaction than plain Tweets do:

Not perfect, any of them– I can tell I’m a nub at this image-creation game– but effectiveness is improving. Woo!

Amazon marketing services: an update

On February 22, 2015February 22, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing1 Comment

You may recall the post from a couple of days ago where I posted this image:

That 1414 number– which, remember, was over 2100 at one point– has jumped around repeatedly over the last few days, and was down to 27o this morning. Apparently I should have screenshotted it then, because now it looks like this:

Note that the click is gone and that they’re no longer pretending even to charge me the $0.25 they were charging earlier. That click has appeared and disappeared at least three or four times.

At this point I’m going to strongly recommend that authors avoid this service until it’s ready for prime time; this is ridiculous.

(7:45 PM check-in: the number is now 1122.)

Amazon advertising: beginning to suspect I’m wasting my time here

On February 20, 2015February 20, 2015 By Luther M. SilerIn Writing2 Comments

(Warning: Inside baseball.)You may need to click on that to make it legible. Not too long ago Amazon announced that they were creating an advertising program for books in their Kindle Select program. It read a little… hmm… I’ll say suboptimally designed at first. Amazon already makes money from every book I sell, right? They take about a third of my sales, plus a little bit more that they pretend is a “delivery fee.” Now, I don’t actually mind the cut that they’re getting; as my distributor, they’re entitled to a piece of my sales. I don’t find it unreasonable.

I do find it slightly unreasonable that they want to directly charge me for an advertising program that makes them more money if it succeeds. It feels… unkosher, somehow, in a way I don’t like very much. But, hey, Amazon’s a business partner, here. They’re not my friends. They’re allowed to try and make as much money for themselves as they want regardless of whether or not I like it.

I’ve run two campaigns with them (and, I should note, not actually spent any money yet, because they charge per click) and both have, thus far, been literally completely useless. The first time through, I timed it around Skylights going on sale and specifically targeted it to people who looked at certain other books– I had a list of about forty. This time, I’m targeting by genre and not by specific books.

The first time, I got 728 impressions and not a single click. This time… well, they don’t seem to be able to keep their numbers straight. I had 21oo impressions a couple of days ago, which fell to 820 this morning and now is back up to 1414, but never more than the one click… and that click also disappeared for a time this morning. (6:00 PM edit: I’m down to 1200 impressions, and the click is gone again.)

I have not sold a copy of Skylights since the sale ended. Scarily, this is still a really good month– even independently of the sale, the first third of February was stellar enough to make up for a genuinely crappy middle third. And I’ve had 2142 impressions through this “advertising program” that has resulted in (maybe!) one click, for a return rate of .047%. In other words, less than a twentieth of a percent. Industry standard is 1-5%.

“But Luther!” you say. “Maybe your ad just sucks! Maybe it’s not Amazon’s fault!”

Which could be true– except for the part where Amazon generates the ads themselves, and they all look exactly the same: the book cover, the title, author, and star ranking. Skylights has a decent star ranking on Amazon right now, so unless people hate the cover I can’t really blame the ad.

The only good news is that they charge by the click, and if they never get any clicks, I never get charged. I’m not going to cancel this one for a while, but they’re gonna have to find a way to pick up the pace if they really think they’re going to hit my advertising budget (or even come close) by April 1st.

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. 🙂