Author Marketing - 2018 and 2019

It was a typo :frowning: I meant to say 3 times per week.

http://blog.nulou.net/best-times-to-post-on-social-media/

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Lol, I thought that didn’t sound right. :yum:

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lol I was thinking, “Damn I don’t see Jim on Twitter THAT much, do I?”

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I don’t know too much about marketing (it’s not something I’m too concerned with at this stage) but here are the various bits and pieces I’ve gathered from the web novel arena, which probably has a fair amount of overlap with interactive fiction. Don’t take any of these points as gospel – they’re merely my observations.

  1. Like @JimD says, you want to find new readers and retain the ones you have. You also want to show people that you have X amount of readers simply because there’s this idea that readers don’t want to waste time with a ‘bad’ story.
  2. From what I’ve read, there’s very little point in advertising. The returns on advertising across every major format for web fiction is pretty abysmal and isn’t worth it. The best advertising is, IMO, word of mouth. Some of the more successful web novel authors flat out say do not bother with marketing – write more instead. That way, people advertise for you.

Are you marketing your stories?

Are you marketing yourself?

Are you using your real name?

Are you using a pen name?

If you use a pen name, how did you decide on it? Is it tied to a genre? To interactive fiction?

Not particularly.

No.

My real name is not hard to find (it’s in Paradigm City). I like using a pseudonym on forums and posts, but I’d suggest having your real name somewhere simply because it implies (to me) a willingness to stand by your work. My username is a dumb pun based off my surname.

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One thing I would recommend for authors is to try and not to tie themselves down with a specific release date for a game, especially in the early days. It is easy to have a productive month, and then real life might make the next one hard to get any progress. Obviously, you have more leeway if you aren’t locked into a contract with something.

Along these lines, it can also make some vocal fans (though usually in the minority) mad if something isn’t released on a date that was given. Most people are understanding of delays, of course, but if it happens too often, it can rattle the confidence of people. Better to be somewhat vague, especially since most people who make things are both writer and coder…each takes time.

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From what I notice though, it seems the authors are not informed of the release date based from what we have experienced before. =/

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nods When something is put into the queue with Choice of Games, it will take time, especially if it is of large size…though I’m sure you’ve noticed a time or two a fan got mad as well, and it was definitely out of the author’s hand.

The circumstances I was more thinking of was if a writer said, “I will have this out in 6 months” and a year goes by.

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I see. XD Sorry I misunderstood your initial post. ^^;

I admit that I was probably unclear. However, in the case like the CoG queue, it is a good idea for the author to let their fans know that such things will also cause delays. Once again, most people will take it in stride as long as the author remains in contact (one of the main points @JimD mentions above).

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Speaking from experience, managing expectations is a vital skill to develop. There are always going to be an issue or two that crop up. Murphy’s law is a reality for any creation and this includes games and novels.

When you have hundreds of people expressing their happiness at your game being released, there is no better high available. I’m sure all the published authors here will confirm this … but when these fans of yours start losing the faith, things can become very viscous.

The only reason I kept people on my side when my game project failed completely was that I kept the promises I made - I was the only one on our development team to do so and people remember that, even years later.

If there are issues, you’ll want to keep honest with your fans - this doesn’t mean you need to tell them all the gory details but be honest with whatever you do disclose. Try to keep expectations real - @Seraphinite’s release date is a perfect example - things happened and she was honest about not knowing exactly why and then she kept interest up by showing off storyboards and such. Diversion only will work for a limited time, so if there is a major issue the best you can do is give periodical updates - even if they are still “no change yet”.

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@Lys and @Eiwynn, speaking from experience, I burned myself many times over the last 12 months when I was pressured into giving estimates for CCH2’s completion. I have learned my lesson. No more estimates ever! Ever! Not until at least I have something in the publishing queue. And even then, it’s impossible to know a timeframe. We just don’t control enough of the process to give anticipated release dates. And even if we controlled the whole process, any of us could get hit by a bus tomorrow. (if anyone gets hit by a bus, call me)

And I think I’m going to go with this tagline: Fiction by Eric Moser: Fearless Heroes, Endless Thrills It puts my name out there, and both CCH and TC do indeed feature fearless heroes (and hopefully, lots of thrills).

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I like the look of it; what template did you use?

I think more like the Stoic story (which I intend to e-mail for shortly after writing this) is always good. Fan artwork is another great filler. The FAQ might be even better; fans like inside scoops, and other writers love tips. The Meteorfall developer’s blog entries have been extremely educational and helpful to me, and you could easily do something like that.

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The “About The Author” section seems like it talks more about CCH than about you–I think just mentioning it as your first published writing would be plenty, and navigation looks super clear and easy so curious visitors don’t have to look too hard for more info on it. But I really like the look and the layout! You might wanna move Merch to be right under About the Author on the sidebar, though–as that list of projects gets longer you’ll probably want “place to spend money” up towards the top. Or you could categorize your project pages a little more? “Traditional Fiction” to Talon City, and “Interactive Fiction” to the CCH series? I don’t know how much control you have over the layout, but if you could put those in as drop-down menus that have the full list of projects that’d be cool. And you might wanna consider putting the CCH series as one page, rather than three separate ones

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Maybe add background information about characters. About Stoic for example, what was she like before going to Speck and why did she become so stoic in the first place.

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I agree with @HomingPidgeon, I think you could spend a bit more time talking about your journey - people want to get to know you as well, not just what you have accomplished - expand a bit more on your personal life and be creative with it. I think this is a great place to show who you are as a person and have that character.

“His most famous brushes with celebrities include touching Hulk Hogan’s arm in the mid 1980s and (almost) touching Gavin Rossdale’s shoulder in the summer of 2016. Not many celebrities visit Louisville.”

^Something like this was gold.

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The forum ate my post for some reason.

Link is here: http://fictionbyericmoser.com/

And those are all great suggestions! I just had a few hours to work on it today, so I just worked on the basics. Even though the site is live and published, I haven’t told anyone about it (other than you folks), so I can make some changes without many folks seeing it. I will roll it out officially (announce it on social media and put a link from the cch site) in a few days after I tweak it a bit more.

I will definitely edit the About section and add a Fan Art tab. And yes I should play around with the menu pages as was suggested. I’ll post another update after I get to play around with it some this week.

The template is simply the “Author” wordpress theme. It’s pretty basic-looking, but honestly a lot of the themes are sooooo busy and cluttered, I found that my eye didn’t know where to go. I swear I looked at 50 themes today before I just decided to go with a simple one.

The good thing is that I can always change the theme down the line I want, and all the information is saved, so it’s not like starting over.

Oh and @hustlertwo, the Stoic story has been well received, and it’s resulted in me adding about 300 people to my mailing list. I would recommend this approach to anyone; readers appreciate a little supplemental info. That’s really the goal; to provide some free content and build long-term relationships with readers. I am 99% sure I will write a free Crook short story this year. “By Hook or By Crook” There are lots of ways I can approach that one.

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Are you planning on keeping up the CCH site separately or transitioning everything over to the new one?

This looks awesome! Must read that short story! :blush:

I really should make a website too. Can I ask, what program did you use to make the site?

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That site looks really nice. I really should be getting around updating mine, it really is far too out of date.

Edit: love the tagline!

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Updated this morning with new fan art/art contest page!

@HomingPidgeon, no I will let the cch site die. I will keep the domain name though. I think I have hosting paid through May, so I can start routing traffic from cch to my new site this spring before the old one dies. There’s no point in paying to keep two sites going.

@Avery_Moore, I just used Wordpress and selected the “Author” theme. It took me 2-3 hours to play around with it on Sunday and get a handle on the basic features. There are lots of plug-ins I have not tried yet.

@malinryden, Thanks! And my old site was out of date too, and the setup was not conducive to me making updates. It was more of a landing page, and not nearly as friendly as Wordpress. With this more bloggy approach, I can easily crank out a ten-minute post once or twice a week. And I thought long and hard about the tagline, something that could tie together the stories in my head.

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