S1E4: Life happens. Write anyway.
Welcome to Episode Four of Coffee & Real Talk for Writers, which I'm recording on Thursday, January 20, 2022.
I've got intermittent internet and I'm not feeling great, so going to keep this short. Ha!
Note: The following are the notes I took before recording the podcast, not a transcription. Content will be similar, but not exact, to the recording.
Writing & Marketing Weekly Update:
After last week's high, things went wonky. I've been asking myself if it's a weird way of self-sabotaging I have, or if I really am not allowing my brain access to the full range of types of projects it would like.
I did less writing than I'd like, but I still wrote almost 4,000 words so far this week. I will try to make that 7k by the end of tomorrow.
I'm also going to have to revamp my schedule on this a bit, I think. Stop planning for 12,000-word weeks and accept that it's just not happening right now, and that's okay.
That being said, I've been pushing extra hard on this editing project with the plan of finishing early so I could then focus more on the writing, which I like to do. I often find I'm just getting into it and ready to sprint ahead, but then my writing time for the day is up. I'd love to plan for six-hour writing days, but I rarely do that. Hmm, maybe I need to try just putting some of those in the schedule and see if I'm more productive.
My problem is, I like to stay doing whatever I'm already doing. I don't like task switching. But I also know that I get anxious if I'm not making steady, consistent progress toward completion of projects with a deadline. So these two feelings conflict.
Maybe I need to start looking at progress more on a weekly level than a daily level, which might allow my brain to schedule “focus days” instead of simply “focus time blocks” before switching. This podcast might help, because I've never had a consistent habit of looking back at my weekly progress before I started doing this. I'm going to think about this for a bit, and maybe experiment with it next week.
Anyway, when I am doing the actual writing (on Every Star that Shines), it's going smoothly. I've had fun “redesigning” parts of my town to work for my story, such as the local coffee shop, while painting pictures of iconic landmarks and beautiful scenery unique to this area. And I adore my characters and storyline, so it's all still so fun.
Back to how things went sideways:
They did so productively, just not in the writing.
My brain felt pretty mushy last Friday morning, so I opted to do accounting for the day instead of write in the morning. I usually do a little accounting on Friday afternoons, but I'm trying to catch everything up so I can submit taxes on time this year.
Anyway, at lunch, I listened to a fantastic interview on the 6-Figure Authors podcast about selling books direct from your website with author Katie Cross (SFA 115 - Making More Money Selling Your Books Direct with Katie Cross), and my brain exploded with new ideas. I'd already been reworking the knitting sections of my website to promote better direct sales, and I'd been tweaking the books section too, but this just put it into overdrive. I sat down and did some quick planning, and quickly realized there were some pain points in my current setup that I could easily address by reworking things with my current plan… and there are some that I can't because they are actual limitations of Squarespace's platform.
I'm on the legacy plan, but I would consider upgrading to their current commerce plan if it would solve some of these pain points, like no way for customers to leave reviews, among other issues. But those features simply don't exist on Squarespace yet.
They've come a long way since I signed up with them in 2014, and this is the first time I've really felt like I am ready to grow my platform faster than they are growing theirs. I looked into third-party plugins to solve some of these solutions, but I'm currently trying to decide if the price tag is worth it. In the long run? Yes, it would be. But I might have to wait for a bit to implement some of those changes.
However, I made what changes I could, making it easier for people to decide to purchase directly through my website.
As part of this, I tweaked my Intellection Property tracking formulas in Excel to help me determine my prices for both eBooks and print books. One of the frustrations of selling direct as a Canadian, or even of drop-shipping from an American Print On Demand (POD) printer (I use IngramSpark for all my books), is the high cost of Canadian shipping. For one of my books that I priced out on Canada Post to ship out from my house, I could ship the exact same book to the United States, France, the UK, or Australia for around the $10 mark. To ship that same book to BC, my neighbouring province, was $20, and to Nova Scotia, it was $25.
I was so frustrated, I almost ranted on social media. Instead, I ranted at Google, they reminded me of what I already knew, and then I grumbled some more and kept tweaking my formulas in my spreadsheet.
This does make it tricky to set prices, give deals, etc.
And POD books, if you plan to make any profit, just have to be priced pretty high. But I still regularly sell some. One of my author friends who writes middle grade sells most of her copies in print, which makes sense. But learning to price books as an indie author is one of the things that feels most like throwing darts in the dark, even with all my fancy formulas.
Especially eBooks. I actually raised the price of several of my eBooks this week, too. It was only two days ago, so I don't yet know how it's affected anything. However, my steady seller still seems to be selling steadily, so I'm hoping it means a slightly higher profit margin and no drop in sales for me. I'll have more information next week.
News:
Impromptu Writing Panel discussion on Stark Reflections:
Last night, participated in a round table meet-up for the patrons of Mark Leslie Lefebvre's Stark Reflections podcast, and had a great discussion. Will repost the link when he puts that up publicly.
Theme Music Coming Soon:
I also heard from the musician that I commissioned to write a theme song for the podcast, Josh Rickard. He was busy finishing up the score for a fan-made Spiderman film called Spiderman: Miles Behind. I was stunned by how good it was—the whole production.
Anyway, I hope to have actual theme music soon, and I'm thrilled I got to hire one of my college classmates to write it.
AI Narration:
A couple weeks ago, included the draft of Chapter 1 of my AI-narrated audiobook All I Want for Christmas. If you listened to the whole thing, you may have noticed how much the technology struggled with recreating verbal tic or other non-standard sounds, such as “mm-hmm,” which it pronounced “um-hum.” I'd also used “uh-huh” several times in later chapters, which it butchered every time.
To resolve this in the final cut, I simply replaced those sounds with the word “yep.” It's not ideal, but it was better than what was there. Overall, I have mixed feelings about the results of this experiment. In some ways, the results were better than I expected them to be from an AI-generated voice. In other ways, especially in reference to how it intonated certain parts of the dialogue, I was disappointed.
However, the results are not unpleasant. I'll still be offering this book for sale on my website, clearly marked as “Digitally Narrated”. But I'm not going to rush out and get any of my other books digitally narrated anytime soon.
In the future, I may consider it for non-fiction books, which I think it would do a very good job of.
"Write for the Win" Storybundle:
Curated by Melissa Snark and Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Available for the next two weeks (ends February 3, I think?)
For minimum of $20 USD (but you can give more), you can get ten amazing craft, business, and writer's mindset books:
Author Smarter Boot Camp by Michelle Fox
Playwriting: The Merciless Craft by Carol Wolf
Super Structure by James Scott Bell (one I recommend)
Taking the Short Tack by Matty Dalrymple and Mark Leslie Lefebvre
Wide for the Win by Mark Leslie Lefebvre (another one I recommend)
It's All Just a Draft by Tobias S. Buckell
Prosperity for Writers by Honorée Corder
Dear Writer, Are You in Burnout? By Becca Syme (looking forward to this one!)
Three Story Method by J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon (and this one)
The Heroine's Journey by Gail Carriger (and this one!)
Coupon code for your pick of one of three "Empower your Writing" writing courses with Margie Lawson
MUG QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
“Life happens. Write anyway.”
Professionals show up. So keep showing up, friend, and so will I.
Talk to you next week.
