Another Friday Night
Over The Years…
I think it is a total miracle that I have not missed on this blog on a Friday night. Some of you know I tended bar for 17 years, and just about always on a Friday night. So back in 1987, when I went freelance with writing and editing and publishing, I swore I would never spend another Friday night or another New Year’s Eve in a bar. But for some reason, after 35 years of not going anywhere on Friday night, the itch to go out and do something on Friday night is still there. I never want to do anything in reality, but it is still there.
Just damned weird. I have been freelance twice as long as I worked tending bar, yet it still has a faint haunting to it.
So what happens is that I tend to just rest, not think about much, do fun projects on Friday nights. Like tonight I was reading more of Kris’s new Fey novel until my eye gave out, then I came up here and worked on covers for the short stories I wrote in January so I could get them loaded to Patreon next week. Fun stuff.
But I was thinking about heading to bed to get a good night’s sleep and I remembered this blog. A couple times on Friday nights I have had to get out of bed and write a blog just to keep the streak.
So other than to remind you of the fantastic RESCUE ONE Kickstarter campaign for my Seeders books, and all the great stuff there, I got nothing tonight. The campaign is doing better than I had hoped, honestly. So thank you, folks. I got a hunch that by the time I get up tomorrow, it will be past the third stretch goal and everyone will get not only another book, but also another writing class. And that’s inside two days time. Very fast.
And Kickstarter helped by giving the campaign a PROJECT WE LOVE designation. How cool is that?
And how fantastic are these covers?
2 Comments
Mihnea+Manduteanu
Since it’s a slow night, I have a question. In most of your workshops, like the Publishing 101 or Magic Bakery, you mention that magic number of 20 major works as the threshold for discoverability. So that’s when I should make my website, promotion, etc? 20 major works meaning novels + collections? Right now I have 6 novels,7 collections and 30 standalone short stories published. Is it time to start doing something?
Also interested in how other writers here did it, when they started working on discoverability.
dwsmith
You can promote at any point. The 20 books (including the entire conference 20 to 50) is built on a standard advertising structure. When a reader finds one book, they need more to buy if you did your writing correctly and told a good story. If you have no more, no amount of advertising is going to help.
Think of your books under one name as a store front. If a customer walks in, sees mostly empty shelves, they leave. 20 books is a minimum to keep a customer in your store and maybe buying more.