Experiments

Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lucas Podolski celebrating. Posted here for the adorbs.

For some time I’ve been concentrating on my other genre projects and keeping my own “brand” (heh) on pause. I’ve been thinking for a bit on how to restart things, and then I fell on the idea of a short story I had in the back burner. World Cup Hook Up was originally published on Wattpad, and re-reading it one day, I thought it was cute and worth trying to get non-Wattpad readers to see it.

So I added it on Amazon and on Kindle Unlimited, offered it as an advanced review to willing reviewers, and added a couple free days too. In the end I had a fair number of free reads, a surprising number of KENP read and a bunch of interesting reviews too. Which told me a few things:

1. I thought I’d have to start from scratch, getting-the-word-out-wise, because I’d been so inactive for so long. But my writing has its own spin, and the people who liked that were still interested in something new that I had to offer, even if I’d been away for a while.
2. Despite that core of interest from people who were already familiar with me, I still worked hard behind-the-scenes to get the word out beyond that core (something that I admittedly did not really think too much about when I started independent publishing.) Self-marketing is generating your own heat, and most of the time I had the feeling of being back in the Girl Scouts and trying to start a fire by rubbing two damp sticks together.
3. I did a marketing plan though based on WCHU activities, and now I’m trying to replicate it with another genre project. Will it be easier to replicate or will it work for a completely different target audience? That I’m waiting to see.
4. Finally, feedback from readers tells me that you like what I’m putting down! (Feedback is valuable – I know, right? Who’d’ve thought? #captainobvious).
   1. Readers liked WCHU, but the length was not entirely satisfying. Action point for me to ensure that my next reads hit the satisfaction mark, or, be up front and call a short story a short story.
   2. Some liked the ending. Some wanted to know what happened next. When I first wrote WCHU I was thinking about a sequel. Worth a re-think? Hmmm….
   3. I’m restarting a project I’d left in the backburner when I started the genre stuff. I’m excited to get this done and see what you think!