Hello everyone, this post will be a rant. Now is your opportunity to skip to the pretty picture and move on to read or do something more riveting. I was supposed to write about my cover art and pre-order status, but other issues snuck in. I was meant to start with the sentence: “I’m up and running,” referring to my business side of things been handled. Except while I have been setting up my company, making my book ready for pre-order (I hate keywords, they are the torment of my existence) and writing the second novel for the series I have been neglecting marketing, especially Goodreads.
It seems like not everything is up and running. I’m still in a child’s shoes with networking with readers and writers. I have grown an appetite for (moderate) social interaction and would like to be part of an active community. But I find Twitter to be a too superficial tool for that. Like I have said before Twitter is like jungle drums, everyone beats their own without hearing each other. Or that is just me finding hearts and retweets passive enforcing and a tool for ego boosting. But I admit they are effective changers of popular opinion even when they cause little or no real ponder about the subject passed on. But enough about my disdain for the machine I have subscribed in, and thus look like a hypocritical fool when saying these things aloud.
About my inability to connect at Goodreads: I’m not sure why I keep pushing it aside. I give my tiredness as an excuse, but fear and lack of knowing how to interact is more likely the reason for my inability to be active there. Okay, I have improved a lot when I started. I’m beta-reading a book for a fellow humorist. That is a start, and I’m happy to read someone else’s work. But where are the group hugs (picture puppies pilling on you) and late night chats about books and about writing and reading (and about life)? Am I I expecting too much from others and unwilling to put effort to be at the bottom of that Golden Retriever pile? The short answer is yes. The longer answer is yes as well. But it includes advice with some finger-wagging to make me take all said more seriously while I try to find escape routes out of the conversation (yes, even if I have one with myself, but then I will leave out the finger-wagging because that would earn me a one-way trip to the local mental hospital).
All these activities efforts to connect and communicate started as a book marketing as I wasn’t willing to go with the bombardment routine of marketing I see all around me. I can’t help but wonder does bombarding book advertisements work? Do people buy books which have been left on forums in a hit-and-run style? I guess they must work as repeatedly seeing something familiar will influence our buying behavior. Even if it might be useful, I’m not willing to do such marketing.
Because I’m unable to go along with the bombardment, I haven’t been doing what I’m supposed to do, and that is mention I have my book on the pre-order status on Amazon. I haven’t even tried to make you fall in love with the book by creating interest around it. There’s a possibility that my inability to do that is caused by the underlying fear of not getting a positive response or response at all (instead I finding something shameful about marketing) and that my creation holds no value. However true that might be, I still think the current hit-and-run style advertisement doesn’t work. We all are saturated with it and I’m sure general nausea will spill over at some point.
But this is a good time to show you something pretty. Here is my cover:
My artist Sol Devia (http://soldevia.cl/tagged/front) did an amazing job with the cover. It was like she reached inside me and pulled the image out without me realizing it was there. I described her the scene in five or fewer sentences and she instantly picked up the mood and tone. Throughout the process of making the cover, we went over my concerns about it being originally too brownish and other minor issues and she always knew what to do and how to change them. I found working with her easy and could trust her to make any changes the best she saw fit.
Now the rant has come to its end and nothing has been concluded. Outskirts of everything being semi-done the thought I should be doing more with my pre-order status haunts me. I know I should drive up my sales and thus improve my ranking on Amazon, but how should I do that without acting like a nincompoop? If you know how to do that, please let me know!
Thank you for reading!
K.A. Ashcomb 
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