Triberr | C h a z z W r i t e s . c o m

06/09/2014 • 7:25 PM 3

The book marketing tool! (That’s a five dressed up as a nine?)

Every marketing guru will tell you to build your mailing list because that’s where the money is. They’re not wrong and I’m no marketing guru, but here are some deeper considerations, past the hype:

1. It’s gotten much harder to build that mailing list. The tools are there. I use Mailchimp on my author site (AllThatChazz.com.) Aweber is another good mailing list management tool. It’s lovely to be able to announce your latest book launch to a huge mailing list of eager fans. It’s also much more rare than the marketing gurus pretend. Everybody’s got a mailing list and they aren’t all equally special.

2. You need a really great giveaway to entice someone to subscribe to a mailing list: free fiction, a useful white paper or some other shiny thing. I offer free mentions on the All That Chazz podcasts, but through Facebook, Twitter, my blogs, Triberr, enthusiastic readers and my rebel writer allies, I’ve got a much wider reach.

3. If people are subscribing to the mailing list just for free stuff, will they keep that subscription after they’ve scooped up said free stuff? Periodically prune your mailing list by asking if your subscribers are still into you. Wise list owners seem to ask if you wish to continue receiving mailings annually.

You can check open rates and find out when interest has waned. A huge mailing list boosts the ego. However, if they’re mostly disinterested and cruising on momentum, that big list can cost you money and, worse, it won’t help. Better to have a smaller list of people who can’t wait for your next mailing.

4. Are your blog readers more interested in your latest blog post than your pestering through the mailing list? I’d rather be a destination blog than an obligation blog. By that I mean, it’s great when people make a point to come here or follow my posts.

Mailing list subscriptions are often ignored or deleted. Test your mailings and ask your subscribers what sort of material they want. It may be that all they really want is to know what your next book is and when and where they can buy it.

5. Subscriptions get deleted or ignored, especially when they come too fast and too furiously. Sure, you’ll mark it to read for later, but when the email is rolling in too often, it’s easier to delete it.

6. I’m currently following many blogs officially. Unofficially, with as many as 200 emails a day or more, I tend to stick with reading destination blogs. In other words, there are certain blogs I feel I have to check out and I don’t need a subscription service to remind me to go look.

7. If you’re producing material for a mailing list and for your blog, too, you’re doubling your effort. True, we all hope email subscribers are more invested in what we do. However, the folks who come to ChazzWrites just because they’re into what I do (which is to generally inform in a more entertaining fashion than I’m doing today)? They might be much more invested than those on the mailing list. Mailing lists aren’t quite as hot as advertised.

So my suggestions are:

Keep in touch with mailing list subscribers, but don’t overwhelm them.

I’m far behind on Seth Godin’s blog, but at least his posts are pithy and short. I’ll never get to some I’m subscribed to. If that describes you, save time and unsubscribe. Deleting posts each day as they come in is a time suck.

Content is king. Yeah, yeah, sure.

Lots of bloggers repeat that mantra, but they all think their content is great so it’s kind of an empty slogan. All I can add is, don’t post unless you have something to say. If you’re straining for a topic, you’re working too hard. Rest it. You’ll get more hits the more you post, until it feels to the reader like too much good content too often or too much drivel. Blogging is a high wire act, isn’t it? (And if all your content is that good every day, sell it as a book, instead.)

Take the opportunity to promote someone else’s excellent content instead banging your own drum.

Not feeling inspired for a blog post? No problem. Write your books instead or reblog. Point to other great content. You don’t have to be brilliant every day if you’re an excellent curator. Scoopit is another tool you can use to curate content and build a following.

Ease back on the throttle sometimes.

We talk a ton about getting out there and marketing books like mad and spreading the literary word. However, lots of readers appreciate us more if we know when to shut up.

I’m shutting up.

~ Chazz is preparing to release This Plague of Days, Season 3, on Father’s Day. The full TPOD compendium will launch then, too. Find out more about the zombie apocalypse with the young, autistic hero at ThisPlagueOfDays.com. It’s much more than a single zombie apocalypse. It’s your future.

Filed under: author platform, book marketing, Publicity & Promotion, publishing, Aweber, blog curation, blogger, blogging, book launches, book marketing, MailChimp, mailing list, marketing tools, newsletter subscribers, readers, Robert Chazz Chute, scoopit, selling books, subscribers, This Plague of Days, Triberr

10/06/2013 • 10:18 AM 5

How to ignore your blog and still get lots of traffic

Season One of This Plague of Days is the siege.

I have six blogs and two podcasts. I admit that’s insane, but let’s move on from that briskly and let me tell you about the nice surprise that spurred this post.

I did something that, in the podcast world, is frowned upon. Until last week I hadn’t put out a new show since August. (Letting a show dwindle like that is called “pod fade”.) When I looked at my time management issues in the prep for the launch of This Plague of Days, something had to be deleted from my schedule. I pulled back the throttle on podcasting temporarily.

Just like with blogging, the less you put out into the universe, the less you get back. It’s smart to send up flares and broadcast signals frequently so we can escape anonymity and indifference.

Here’s the surprise.

When I published my All That Chazz podcast last week, I didn’t want to look at the numbers. I clicked on my stats, prepared to wince. Listenership had dropped, but it wasn’t the dreaded flatline I expected. I also know why.

Here are the usual tools for signal amplification for any blog:

Season 2 is the quest.

1. Write great headlines.

The words “how to” and “review” are particularly strong link bait. Have a look through my blog for headline ideas. They aren’t all killers, but generally I think they’re pretty sexy.

2. Write great content.

Everybody says this, but it’s not very valuable advice. Lots of gurus in the “content is king” crowd don’t write great content. Nobody sits at their keyboard planning to write lousy posts. My suggestion is more specific: Be useful or be funny. If you can do both? Even better.

3. Triberr.

Being on Triberr definitely helps me get the word out. I know there are detractors. The detractors typically get less traffic. It doesn’t pay to be too shy and helping others always helps you, even if you don’t grok the kind karma connection immediately.

4. Overshare from the heart and get lucky.

It’s better to write more, of course. When you fire more shots, sometimes you get lucky and hit a distant target.

I wrote a post about the frustrations of publishing and the joys of writing that got picked up by The Passive Voice last week. When a big site reblogs your work, you’re introduced to people who have never heard of you. I got my best stats on that blog by writing this post: This is the post I shouldn’t write. I shouldn’t, therefore I must.

5. Give people what they came for.

Posts that are too short feel like a cheat. Posts that are too long aren’t read. Posts that drag out the suspense too long are irritating, so here’s what you came for:

Tweet Old Post is a plug-in that works while I’m sleeping. There are over 1200 posts on ChazzWrites alone. The plug-in pulls old posts up and tweets them to the universe. That’s how my podcast was still alive when I came back to it. I had 81 episodes of All That Chazz still firing through Twitter and getting retweeted because of my headlines. (I’ve also got a lot of really nice followers on Twitter. Join us @rchazzchute.)

With this plug-in, you can post by category. Sometimes dated content slips through my filter. (Try tweaking your categories so the evergreen content gets fed to Tweet Old Post.) More people find me because of this plug-in. If you have a lot of posts on your blog, they can still keep working for you long after you’ve forgotten about them.

Here’s the description of Tweet Old Post:

“This plugin helps you to keeps your old posts alive by tweeting about them and driving more traffic to them from twitter. It also helps you to promote your content. You can set time and number of tweets to post to drive more traffic.”

Go to your blog dashboard, search the plug-ins for “Tweet Old Post” and install it. Ta-da!

I wrote a post about book formatting frustrations and time management any writer who follows this blog will want to read. For that rant and my time management strategy, click here now.

~ I am Robert Chazz Chute. I write suspense and horror. Episode One of Season Two of This Plague of Days is available at Amazon. You can begin eating this delicious serialized story of an autistic boy versus the end of the world with Ep. 1.

I recommend you cave to my charm and guile and just grab the complete seasons of Season One and Two, but whatever. I will possess your minds, my pretties. I love you for your minds, among other things. No one wants to be loved for their minds alone.

#NSFW #Podcast: The Fugitive Edition (allthatchazz.com)
The Writing Life: Big Changes and New Ventures (allthatchazz.com)
7 Easy Ways to Get More Traffic from Twitter (bizsugar.com)
The Art Of Guest Blogging: How To Hit It Right With A Strategy? (benchmarkemail.com)
This Plague of Days: Season Two, Episode One is now available (allthatchazz.com)
What to Do With Your Content After You’ve Written It (benchmarkemail.com)
One to read. One to hear. One to love. (chazzwrites.com)
Bring Your Blog to Stardom by Amplifying Your Site Traffic in 6 Ways (business2community.com)
7 Easy Ways To Drive Reader Engagement Using Social Media For Your Business (benchmarkemail.com)

Filed under: author platform, All That Chazz, Amazon, Blog, blogger, blogging, book, book launch, get more traffic, how to get more blog traffic, Passive voice, Podcast, Robert Chazz Chute, This Plague of Days, Time management, Triberr, Twitter, useful plug-in

07/24/2013 • 4:49 PM 2

What should I get upset about today?

I was somewhat amused to find that Goodreads has just about doubled its membership to 20,000,000 members in the last year. They reportedly added 4,000,000 in the last four months!

This post is not about the success of Goodreads. It about perspective and resistance to change.

When Amazon bought Goodreads, remember the wailing that GR had sold out to the Devil? Some threatened to cancel their GR memberships. A few actually did so. I wonder how many have quietly returned?

In a related story that doesn’t look like one, the guys behind Triberr invented a new button for the site a while back. You hold your cursor over the button for a flicker of a second and the post you’re about to share is approved. Soon after, someone complained about the improvement. What did these guys think they were doing? Why can’t we just click? If we don’t go back to the way things were, dogs and cats will live together!

Today? What was different and strange and scary is not so scary. New normals can be dangerous, but not all new normals are equal. Buttons and Goodreads? Not a big deal compared to all the serious problems. For instance, we live in a surveillance state yet most people shrug and ask, “Well, what can we do? Pass the mashed potatoes garnished with cynicism, helplessness and ennui.” Puts a bad book review in the right light, does it not?

I’m not saying we can’t complain. I’m saying that some problems require louder complaints, and action. The Gatling Gun of Despair is firing constantly. Choose your targets wisely.

Related articles

Anthony Ha: Amazon-Acquired Goodreads Says It Has 20M Members, Doubling In Less Than A Year (techcrunch.com)
The Bookworms Are Replicating: Goodreads’ Membership Has Doubled to 20M (betabeat.com)
Social Reading: Goodreads Grows to 20 Million Users, Doubles Membership in Less Than One Year (infodocket.com)
Goodreads Added 4 Million Members in 4 Months (the-digital-reader.com)
Amazon book lovers social network Goodreads doubles membership to 20M in 1 year (geekwire.com)

Filed under: Amazon, publishing, Triberr, Amazon, amazon book, Amazon Kindle, Amazon.com, books, Goodreads, new normal, perspective, Triberr

04/14/2013 • 8:28 PM 5

Triberr: Problems and Solutions

A kronosaurus, the prehistoric sea monster, ate my blog traffic. Many blog subscribers will already have seen the wonderful and helpful posts listed below (even if I say so,

Kronosaurus queenslandicus (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

my own damn self). However, due to some technical glitch with Triberr, a lot of people missed these ChazzWrites.com posts (and crucial extras, like links to my new book sites, ThisPlagueofDays.com and onlysixseconds.wordpress.com or tap the grooviness at CoolPeoplePodcast.com or hear a reading at AllThatChazz.com).

Disaster

I discovered the other day that my Triberr marketing teams haven’t been retweeting my blog posts for quite some time. Curses! Foiled again! What to do? And why is Triberr so important for bloggers, marketers, authors and, ultimately, readers?

Woe

My blog traffic and Twitter mentions had slowed remarkably. I blamed myself for a lack of awesomeness at first, of course. I mean, self-loathing? That’s just what I do! However, I put my head down, close to the keyboard, and tried to double up on the awesome. When that didn’t work, I began to look for other reasons for the aching distance between me and the popularity of Dos Equis’ Most Interesting Man in the World. Perhaps the new cologne wasn’t working out? Then I discovered the Triberr problem.

Frustration

I’d been diligently retweeting the best of the tweets from my tribes (and I’m in awesome tribes with wonderful bloggers and writers). However, my blog posts weren’t getting sent out to their followers in turn.

As soon as I discovered the problem was somewhere in Triberr settings, I tried to solve it myself. Result: Failure.

Then I asked for tech support from Triberr. I received no response.

I waited several days, became impatient, sent another plea for help and…still didn’t hear from tech support.

Then I figured out what was missing and finally fixed it myself yesterday.

However, I come to praise Triberr, not to bury it.

This is not an indictment of Triberr, but when it didn’t work recently, the social media marketing tool certainly showed me its value. Good posts get more hits, anyway, but they get even more traffic with a boost from Triberr. Without Triberr, I’m not spreading the word as effectively. With Triberr, my reach is, theoretically, 6 million people plus whoever the 6 million retweets to. That’s a lot of eyeballs coming here to taste my flavor, fall in like, buy some books and tumble into full-force love.

Now that the problem is fixed, my traffic stats are bouncing back up. My Twitter connections are ablaze again. Soon, this very post will be sent out through the cyber-ether by my tribes and who knows where it will land, or how many new subscribers and Twitter followers I’ll gain? (Crosses fingers, strangles a mime for good luck.)

People appreciate value and boy, do I try to give it. However, hiding our lights under cliched bushels and waiting for it to happen magically and organically doesn’t help new readers discover us quickly. Triberr gives more people the chance to fall in love with what we can provide. Where else are you going to read about publishing and mime-stangling? See? I’m so unique.

Triberr helps.

And usually? Triberr works

.

In case you missed my redesign of this blog, thoughts on optimizing books and sales, podcasts, announcements and changes in publishing strategies, here are some those articles. Also, please enjoy the odd mime-strangling. (Don’t do it every day, though. If it’s every day, it’s not a treat.)

Odd and Unfamiliar Literary Genres

Book Marketing Problems and Solutions

Amazon Goodreads. Mostly? So What?

How to End a Chapter: Shorter Chapters, Better Books

On Writing Well: The Challenge of the Slow Open

Ebook: What Makes a Good Cover? What Makes a Bad One?

Rebelmouse: How I got all my blogs and podcast on one glorious page

The All That Chazz Podcast: More Fury

Amazon Throttled

Getting a Bigger Boat: Adapting to be a More Effective Publisher

Writers: Shorter is Better

Blog Comment Rules and How to Become Batman

What Jedis Know About Fear

Author Platform: Problems, Solutions and Stuffed Speedos

Triberr Poised to Take the Blogging World by Storm (business2community.com)
WTF Triberr?!? Why I Love and Hate You So Much! (openviewpartners.com)
Get More Readers with Triberr (joelcomm.com)
Triberr: Blog Building for the Magic Middle (swordandthescript.com)
The Positive Site of a Community, part 2: Triberr (rogiernoort.com)
3 Reasons to Quit Triberr (blackanddarknight.wordpress.com)
Social Media Marketing: Five Ways to Raise Your Social Media Profile (digitalsurgeons.com)

Filed under: blogs & blogging, book marketing, ebooks, publishing, Rant, Triberr, Writers, writing tips, Blog, bloggers, blogging, book promo, books, Marketing, Online Communities, Robert Chazz Chute, social media, social media marketing, Social network, Technical support, technology, Triberr, Twitter, websites, writer, writing

01/23/2013 • 10:13 PM 5

What gets clicks

You could check your blog’s site stats and wring your hands over SEO keywords, but no one really wants to do that. The most fun thing about blog stats is discovering the creepy search words people use to stumble upon your blog. (For me, it’s often “Cheryl Ladd”.) You could ask your readers what they like, but that probably won’t give you a representative sample with hard numbers. The easiest way to figure out what lights up your blog’s readers? Triberr.

Go to your Tribal Stream page. At the top, click on “My Posts”. Naturally, you’ll see a list of your blog posts. Each post will show stats for Shares, Clicks, Comments, Up Votes and Reblogs. Go down the list and see which sorts of posts got the most clicks, shares and up votes. Those were the most successful posts.

If you’ve got enough of a track record, you’ve just defined your blog’s current niche. The sorts of posts that get the most shares and clicks on ChazzWrites.com include: book marketing and promotion advice; posts about the micro-publishing experience gone wrong; tech tools to assist writers and publishers. Stuff on writing and editing is popular, too. This tells me that I’m on target with the audience I shoot for here. Like you, I want to achieve two things with my blogs: I want to write what I’m passionate about and I want to be effective.

My posts about blogging better to reach more readers also do well, so this post just got meta. For more posts that smack you between the eyes and hit your brain’s dopamine lever of happiness, check out the “Related Articles” below. They’re the most popular recent posts on Chazzwrites.com.

Stuff not to say on your blog (chazzwrites.com)
Seven tips about book marketing very few will heed (chazzwrites.com)
TOP TEN: Reach more readers with these blog tweaks (chazzwrites.com)
Amazon sales secrets you’re probably missing (chazzwrites.com)

Filed under: blogs & blogging, book marketing, Writers, All That Chazz, Blog, blogging, blogs, books, chazzwrites.com, Crack the Indie Author Code, ebooks, Robert Chazz Chute, Search engine optimization, site stats, tech for publishers, technology for writers, Triberr, Write Your Book, writers, Writers Resources, writing guides

09/26/2012 • 8:46 AM 2

Book sales on Twitter: One click doesn’t work

I’ve changed the way I use Twitter. I’m not about making rules for how people use social media. Twitter Narcs are

English: A pie chart created in Excel 2007 showing the content of tweets on Twitter, based on the data gathered by Pear Analytics in 2009. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

annoying. However, by the end of this post, I hope you’ll vary the way you try to sell your books. We’re drowning in the sameness of “Buy my books!” We have to sex up our tweeting.

Most book sales tweets have a crippling weakness that’s hurting sales. Twitter is so awesome everyone is using it to sell books in the same way. That makes it anti-awesome for your book sales. Using a one-click approach, sending me straight to Amazon without providing enough information or value, is not working.

What doesn’t work well:

Title of book. Go buy it. Here’s the link.

What’s only microscopically better:

Title of book. Review: “Scintillating!” Here’s the link.

The problem:

Too many tweets are trying to make sales by just telling us to buy.

We’re so flooded with ugly tweets, it’s too easy to ignore them all.

What I’m suggesting:

Be more clever and change up the ask. Sure, promote however you want, but give me more to go on than generic messages like: “Great book!” “New post!” “Another new post!”

We need more showing, not telling, in those 140 characters. Give me a clue or hashtag the genre. I want to like you, but dress up a little and show me you care about me. It’s not about you. It’s about us.

Best:

Please pull me back to your blog and seduce me.

I’ll buy, but I need more to go on to make that first click toward falling in love with you.

On World Literary Cafe Tweet Teams this week, I didn’t try to send people straight to Amazon. I provided links to my blog posts, a cool graphic, and my podcast (where I’m giving Bigger Than Jesus away for free one chapter at a time). There’s added value to my audience that way.

Examples:

RT RChazzChute Hear the #thriller Bigger Than Jesus as a #podcast. http://bit.ly/TkBSGs #WLCAuthor (Or buy the book http://amzn.to/Nm6xj4)

RT @rchazzchute It’s a meme, baby! Self-help for Stoners #excerpt & #inspiration http://bit.ly/NNhBDI #suspense #fiction #WLCAuthor

RT @rchazzchute Hear all the suspenseful #fiction & #comedy #podcasts http://bit.ly/OBRMeT #WLCAuthor #whatwaitsinlocker408

RT @rchazzchute #Thought for the Day: #Creation. http://bit.ly/TUTtVX and The Value of #Writing & #Reading http://bit.ly/Pd1JfN #WLCAuthor

RT @rchazzchute Just working on the next instalment in The Hit Man Series. (Excerpt of the hook to Chap.6) http://bit.ly/SPU7on #WLCAuthor

RT @rchazzchute Did Han shoot first? Catch 2 chapters of Bigger Than Jesus for the explanation. http://bit.ly/S8JgDm #suspense #WLCAuthor

RT @RChazzChute WIP Sneak peek! 1st there was Bigger Than Jesus. Next comes Higher Than Jesus. http://bit.ly/S5dHGT #crime #novel #WLCAuthor

RT @rchazzchute Quote Trailers http://bit.ly/OF1YPp & Quote Art http://bit.ly/NlwJM1 promote your books. #WLCAuthor

More content and seduction is why Triberr works:

On Triberr, everyone on your tribe retweets your blog post summary (assuming they’ve read your post and have no objections.) Information spreads. Something in the summary captures the tweetosphere’s interest so they come to your blog. They find you helpful, funny, sexy or useful. Do that enough and maybe they’ll get smitten, click on a book link to the “Buy with one click” button.

True, if you don’t send me straight to Amazon, it’s more than one click to buy. However, too many tweets that look the same get ignored because it’s an overload of data without enough information or value. Will there be exceptions? Sure. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with announcements of book launches. I’m what you call, “pro-reading.”

But, please, join me in the campaign against Bland. Bland is so Beige and, as we all know, Beige is the Mitt Romney of the colour spectrum. It seems to be everywhere, but no one’s excited about it.

Triberr… Want to give it a try? (iamareadernotawriter.blogspot.com)
How Bloggers Can Grow Each Others Readership (stevefarnsworth.wordpress.com)
Blogger, Twitter, Triberr (soulati.com)

Filed under: publishing, Amazon, Bigger than Jesus, Blog, blogging, book promotion, book sales, fiction, Hit Man Series, Podcast, sell your book better, Social Networking, Triberr, tweets, Twitter, writer, writing

02/14/2012 • 12:32 AM 10

Review: The highs and lows of a book promotion campaign. What works?

Suspense, parables, inspiration, surprise.

Last week I wrote about my campaign to drag Self-help for Stoners into the world’s consciousness. If you’re new to the blog, long story short: I wrote a book of suspenseful fiction with a self-help twist dedicated to director Kevin Smith. When I had the honour of handing the book to my DIY hero at a comedy event simulcast to theatres across the US and Canada, I felt I had to take advantage of this unique opportunity. I tried an experiment with a press release distribution service called PR Web. For more on that review of the troubles I had getting the press release accepted for wide distribution, check out the original post here.

Soon after the press release went into wide distribution, I got a small increase in traffic, but not, it seemed, in the way I’d hoped.

Murder might solve your problems. Two brothers go hunting. Only one will see home again.

A fellow on Google+ was complimentary to me (I have balls!) but thought the money ($240) was wasted. He wasn’t being unkind…at least I don’t think he meant to be. He just thought there were better uses of my time and newer, more innovative ways to spread the word about my book’s existence. I’m always interested in learning more and I’m particularly interested when people have ideas about what to do instead of what not to do. (More on that in another post after I conduct more field research.)

Imagine my chagrin when I read a post by Dead Wesley Smith who decreed that spending money on book promotion is a waste of time and money until you have 50 books for sale. That’s right. Fifty! I double-checked to make sure it wasn’t the cloying cloud of depression and stress headaches obscuring my vision misleading me. Kurt Vonnegut only wrote fourteen novels in his lifetime. If Dean Wesley Smith is right, is there any place for book promotion for most of us? Maybe I struck the iron too early, but given the scope of the simulcast, my press release appeared to be a now-or-never opportunity.

My speed of production isn’t near as quick as Dean Wesley Smith, but how many of us can write (good) books that fast? Maybe I should write faster, but even at once every three months, I wouldn’t be gambling a promotional penny to let the world know I exist until 2024. Will I even live long enough to ever have to bother with book promotion at that rate? Hm. That would be a great solution except for the part about me being dead. I do agree with Dean on one point thoroughly and I’ve said it many times myself: your best book promotion idea is to get to work on the next book and I’m certainly doing that. I’ll be coming out with three books this year (so that’s one every four months, though I confess that two and half are already written and I’m mostly in the revision stage.) I’m not as skilled as Dean Wesley Smith because I’m not up to the pace he’s setting. I honestly wouldn’t have confidence in the end product if I pushed that fast. No worries or apologies on that score. We’re all just doing the best we can. (For more on what indie production actually costs, check out Dean Wesley Smith’s post here.)

But what you’re wondering is, what did the PR Web press release actually do and could that work for your book? It’s too early to tell, so once again, my results are

Don't argue over parking spots with strangers. Or else.

preliminary. The cycle of Google analytics is 28 days long, and what follows is just the first week of results. (However, isn’t it already old news now that the event is over a week stale?) I can tell you that PR Web’s marketing guy sounded very pleased. He phoned me yesterday morning to say that I’d worked the SEO right (five links maximum was how it worked out with my word count) and he said the response to the press release was “great.”

“How do I quantify ‘great’?” I asked. I’m sure I whacked him with a heavy note of skepticism but he seemed no less bouncy at my glorious prospects. He told me how to get the analytics for the press release. Apparently, the number of people who read the release, liked the headline and read to the end of the article was impressive, perhaps even unusual. Nice, though I wish I liked the press release more. (For more on that, once again, refer to the original post.)

8,027 media deliveries boiled down to 49 “interactions” (where a link was clicked or a pdf was downloaded) and eight “pickups”. The report contains a sample of Web sites that picked up or syndicated my story. It’s apparently not the full list, but media outlets included: Hollywood Industry, Mac DVD Pro, Digital Journal, San Francisco Chronicle, Corporate Media News, Yahoo! News, and Consumer Electronics Net.

But these aren’t the numbers you really want to know. Has this press release helped sales? Sadly, not much so far that is measurable. I saw a bit of a bounce up on my Amazon sales, but that settled quickly. And the truth is, since I’m doing several other things, I could easily attribute that blip to the success of other marketing tactics. But before I draw conclusions in this review, see if you can follow the roller coaster of author thrust and bureaucratic parry that has brought me to my sad current state.

Here are the highs and lows and forays

of my marketing campaign for Self-help for Stoners:

High: I sent out several press releases about meeting Kevin Smith to CBC shows and to my local paper. These forays cost me nothing.

Low: CBC didn’t call back. The local columnist who showed enthusiasm seems to have lost my number. Or he’s sick and not at work. Gee, I hope he’s sick.

What if God gives you what you want? What if you win an argument against God?

High: Kevin Smith has a cult and for a shining moment I was in front of them. I paid $200 for a one-minute ad to run on Smith’s Smodcast network the day he got back on the mic. I figured since he hadn’t been on the mic for such a long time, the first day he got back on the show would have high ratings and many downloads. And maybe they’d remember said shining moment from the broadcast of the Live from Behind Show in Toronto.

Low: The ad didn’t run on schedule. There was a communication breakdown. Despite my best efforts at keeping in touch with the ad guy at Smod, it didn’t happen. It’s supposed to run today (February 14th on Smodcast Internet Radio. I’m sacrificing a goat to Thor, hoping it happens this time. Don’t worry about the goat. He’s suicidal.)

High: I did two podcasts about my Kevin Smith experience, before and after. They’ve been well-received by those who have heard them. “One and a quarter hours of narrative gold,” said one, Thor bless him. Bliss. (See all the podcasts here.)

Low: Though they may catch on in the long term, not many people have actually heard them! I screwed up the metadata so, on Stitcher, the first words that show up in the tiny window that give the podcast summary are not Chazz Meets Kevin Smith and Jay Mewes. Instead it reads: Show notes and podcast details… That won’t get anybody new to check out my filthy jokes and stream of consciousness trips in order to find me utterly delightful and worthy of their love and bucks.

Twisty and twisted. Click the pic for more.

High: I thought KDP Select might be my salvation to really get things going. Amazon told me all I’d have to do was tell Bookbaby to withdraw from all other platforms to meet the exclusivity caveat. Any other action might risk duplication on Amazon’s site.

Low: BookBaby disagrees. I got a nice email (eventually—BookBaby seems awfully slow to respond to me of late) saying that they would have to withdraw the books from all channels, it would be permanent, and I’d have to enter my books into KDP Select myself. With no confidence in how long that might take, I don’t want to risk not having any books for sale anywhere, especially with all the promotion work I’ve done. I replied to BookBaby that rather than risk a screw up and no availability of my books for an indeterminate amount of time, I’d keep my books where they were through BookBaby and just get the new books straight into KDP Select without them next time. That’s a loss all around, I’d say, but I’m the one who will feel it most.

There are a lot of tragic starts and stops to this tale, aren’t there?

The word “thwarted” is pushing into the centre of my brain like the capricious thumb of an angry god.

High: I tried to organize a Buy X Get Y promotion for my book on Amazon.

Low: Amazon Advantage said they couldn’t do it because fulfilment for my paperback is through CreateSpace, which is POD and they’d need stock on hand. After a light scolding, they told me to go to CreateSpace for a similar promotion program.

Are we ever free from our secrets? Find out here.

Lower: CreateSpace said they’d call back. Then they sent me an email instead saying they have no idea what Amazon is talking about. (Note that CreateSpace is owned by Amazon, too, but never the twain shall meet, I guess, even if the plan would have made a buttload of money.) Once again, Chazz hurts moms. So much so, he begins to write about himself in the third person. With loathing,

Lowest: As I write this, I’m feeling a bit emotional and teary. The sum of the message so far is: Nobody knows me, I don’t matter and as good as the book is, it still doesn’t matter if I can’t convince anyone to try it out. And a fresh pile of bills arrived yesterday. There isn’t an author on earth who hasn’t felt this way, yet the lash feels equally new for every person every time.

Clawing and climbing out of the mire: So there are a few things I am doing which I’m more positive about. Writing and revising the new stuff is going well. (Three new novels this year! Whoo, and also hoo!) The Writing World will run an interview with me in early March. My friend Eden Baylee will also run a saucy little interview with me soon. I’ve sent out a couple more copies for book reviewers and will continue to seek out reviewers for all my books. The Self-help for Stoners podcast continues weekly and I had a clip broadcast on Succotash, a popular comedy clip show. I think I’ll have an excerpt from Self-help appear on the next The Word Count Podcast, in support of #IndiesUnite4Joshua (fun and a great cause.) I’m also getting quite a few nice mentions on other podcasts, like Logical Weightloss and The School of Podcasting.

But wait, Chazz! How do you account for that blip where sales came up a bit? It could be my promise on my podcast to gain converts individually by tying each new reader up and torturing them with sexual delights to gain converts. It could be that some new people I met lately have checked out my books or some found me through the Kevin Smith event when I was on

Get Vengeance and get surprised.

camera. Maybe the press release had some effect, but I tend to doubt it, at least until more evidence arrives through Google analytics.

So what have we learned about promoting our books? So far? We need more data.

I’d say I’ve learned this much:

1. Triberr has helped me get more new traffic to my blogs than anything else. I can see that clearly in my stats and my Twitter feed.

2. I have to find more innovative ways to get the word out. I’m working on that. (More later.)

3. I have to get more reviews. I have had excellent feedback on much of my work, but even when people are enthused, it doesn’t necessarily translate to reviews. I am soliciting reviews as my writing schedule allows.

4. I have to remember how much I believe in my books, because in the beginning, no matter who you are and no matter your experience, you’re just another schmo until you’re discovered. After you’ve made it, you’re a genius. Until then? Schmo. The writing awards and all the experience don’t matter. Yet.

Most important?

Did I mention I have more books coming out?

That will be what counts more than anything.

I have to provide a larger target for my readership to find me.

My people are out there. I will find them. They will find me.

UPDATE: In keeping with the theme of getting thwarted, the Smashwords website is down at the moment, so the links from the short story covers are directed back to the author site until Smashwords is back up. The links in the The Dangerous Kind, Self-help for Stoners and Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun & profit) covers work fine. You can still get everything I write across most digital book platforms, of course, (i.e. search Kobo and there they are) but as long as Smashwords is down, you can’t grab the short stories directly from that site. I will update as soon as the Smashwords server is back up. It’s all very…consistent with today’s theme, isn’t it?

LATEST UPDATE: SMASHWORDS IS NOW BACK ONLINE AND THE SHORT STORY COVERS NOW LINK BACK TO THAT SITE. Find out more about these short stories here.

~ Robert Chazz Chute is the author of Sex, Death & Mind Control (for fun and profit), the novella The Dangerous Kind, Self-help for Stoners and several suspenseful short stories with gut-punch endings, available at Smashwords. He’s in suspense, figuratively and literally and his comedy podcast, Self-help for Stoners, airs each Friday on Stitcher and iTunes. Visit the author site, AllThatChazz.com, for updates on Chazz’s fiction and to download the podcast.