Happy New Year!

Happy New Year, dear readers

I can say with certainty that 2019 has been a difficult year for me personally, as well as for Alex Stargazer Books. Since I decided to self-publish Fallen Love on that fateful mid-summer day, I have been kept continuously busy—I’ve been working with my designer to create the covers for both Fallen Love and the Vampire Eirik; with my consultant, I’ve been mastering MailChimp and my mailing list; and I’ve been writing too.

I published the Vampire Eirik in December, and Fallen Love is coming January 7th (I was forced to delay for various annoying reasons). Moreover, starting with the first day of the year, tomorrow, I will have my work cut out for me promoting the book.

So to all my readers: I wish you a peaceful 2020. May you live in comfort and peace.

Fallen Love Publication Delayed to January 7

Hello readers!

I am announcing today that I am delaying the publication of Fallen Love to January the 7th, 2020 (which is one month from now). This was not an easy decision to make—I deliberated for some time—but I feel it is the right decision. I’m going to explain why. It boils down to two things: personal and business.

The Business Reasons

I’ve read a very helpful book called Amazon Decoded, and the author, David Gaughran, explained how successful book launches are supposed to work. Essentially, it’s about selling as many books as possible in a relatively short amount of time—a sustained period of five days where sales increase day-on-day.

There are a number of ways to accomplish this—including advertising—but the best way is Bookbub, mailing list promotions, and lots of exposure. At the moment, I don’t think I have enough in place to do that on December 10th. And there are a variety of other good reasons why launching it in January is a better idea.

Reedsy Discovery. This platform—which is run by Reedsy, the company I work with to hire designers and editors and marketers—can help me in two different ways. Firstly, they pay me $50 for every reviewer I refer, and thanks to you guys, I have people who can do this and earn me a bunch of money. Secondly, I have paid them for a launch and have over 250 followers there. But: the earliest launch date available was January 7th. No co-incidences here!

YOU CAN HELP: Sign up to the mailing list on the right-hand side and I’ll send you a reviewer referral link.

WHSmith and Waterstones. I have been in touch with the managers in my local (Glasgow-based) WHSmith’s and Waterstone’s, and I have high hopes I can get Fallen Love on the shelves of at least one of these stores. The potential for exposure is huge. Once again, the earliest available opportunity is in January.

Other funding opportunities. I am looking into the possibility of doing a crowdfunding campaign.

Reviews. I don’t have a huge number of reviews yet, and I am expecting more to come in.

The Personal Reasons

My personal life has been chaos these past three months. I’ll spare you all the gory details, but there are two immmediate things that make a December 10 launch extremely difficult: I will be travelling to Romania (by car) on December 15th. Moreover, I am currently exploring the possibility of going to study for a Master’s in the Netherlands on February 1st.

The uncertainty in my life is very difficult—extremely difficult—but I can’t dither and delay forever. January 7th was the best compromise based on the available knowledge.

To receive automatic updates on Fallen Love, the sequel, promotions and free books, sign up to my mailing list.

Fallen Love is coming December 10th

Hello everyone!

I have some important news to share with you all: Fallen Love will now be released on December 10th. This is for personal rather than marketing reasons—I won’t be able to work on the book’s launch during December 15th–21st. I don’t like changing the release date yet again, but it is the way it is.

I can also announce that my 2nd proof copy of Fallen Love has arrived, and it looks pretty good. I may or may not make one final adjustment to it before it goes to press.

If any of you Magical Realm readers would like to review a free ARC copy before the book launches, now is your time to ask! Every little helps. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must go and discuss my launch strategy with my marketing consultant.

A Commentary on Book Reviewers and Target Markets

Hello readers!

I am pleased to announce that I have received my first proof copy of the Fallen Love paperback! Now, I won’t be sharing any photos yet, as some things did go wrong—the colour management software messed up the colours on the cover. I have corrected the problems, and ordered another proof, which will arrive next week. I promise to show you photos then ;)

At the moment, I am planning on releasing the paperback version at approximately the same time as the ebook—on December 15th—though it may be available a few days after that date (Amazon has to check everything and ensure quality). I am working through any kinks before I hit the publish button.

I am also devising a launch-strategy in co-operation with my marketing consultant. At the moment, I think I will be relying heavily on Amazon advertising, which, in 2019, seems to be the best bet for getting book sales. I have excluded BookBub promotions as I will be releasing Fallen Love exclusively to Amazon (and the Vampire Eirik, being a short story, is also unlikely to be selected). Facebook advertising is a possibility, but its extreme complexity—and personal doubts about whether Facebook users will actually buy my books, as opposed to just following my personal “brand”—leaves it second choice.

On Reviews...

In any case, the subject of this blog post is actually something else: book reviews. Some of you may know that, a few weeks ago, I submitted my book to a site called BookSirens. The jury is still out at the moment, but I have a feeling I will withdraw Fallen Love from their platform.

Why? To put it one way, they’ve got the wrong bloody readers. Let’s start with some statistics: the company claims they can show my book to about 1250 readers. As of today, they’ve shown it about 1400 times. I managed 216 clicks out of that (a remarkable CTR) but only 10 readers have actually chosen to review the book. This suggests that I have an excellent cover, but that readers aren’t converting after the initial click.

And this is probably because of genre. To put it bluntly, their reviewers read some weird crap; I’m talking really niche, genre fiction—alien romance, the omega/alpha shifter stuff, etc. It’s the kind of fiction that has a hardcore following of readers, who will gobble up anything in the genre, but don’t much like anything else.

Then there are the reviewers who read the wrong genres, but are mistakenly lumped together with a totally different bunch of readers. No other category better exemplifies this than romance. One of these reviewers enjoys regency romance a lot—a sub-genre that might has the words “romance” in it, but has bugger all to do with Fallen Love. For those of you who don’t know: regency romance is full of tropes about manly earls and plump maids, and they’re usually set in Victorian (or perhaps Georgian) England.

I have nothing against people who read regency romance, of course (whatever floats your boat and all that). But I definitely will criticise regency romance as a social force: these books embody the worst kinds of social values—the words heteronormative and patriarchal only scratch the surface. They’re retrograde and rose-tinted as well; they portray Victorian England as a pleasantly romantic place, but the truth is, the Victorians were dirty, sick, poor—and bigoted.

I didn’t write a futuristic fantasy novel about two gay characters just so I could have it reviewed by people who think the effing Victorians were cool.

What About Targeting?

You may be wondering what this has to do with ads, and the aforementioned strategy. Actually, the relationship is very fundamental. The trick with reviews is the same trick as with ads—you have to identify your target audience, and hone in on it.

For example: the people who have liked my books so far have loved Cassandra Clare’s books as well. This is exactly what I expected. Cassie’s books are similar to my own, not in a superficial way—aside from the genre, they don’t really share all that many archetypes or worldbuilding features—but in more in the kind of stories we write. I’m so confident of this similarity that I’m willing to spend a fair amount of ad money targeting Cassandra Clare’s fans.

Another one of my reviewers read Eragon, which is, again, one of my favourite books. Other authors that I think would make excellent targets are:

1. Lauren Kate, author of the Fallen & Rapture series.
2. Becca Fitzpatrick, author of Hush, Hush.
3. Charlaine Harris, author of the Sookie Stackhouse books.
4. Patricia Briggs, author of the Mercy Thompson books.
5. Karen Marie Moning, author of Darkfever.
6. Jeaniene Frost, author of the Night Huntress books.
7. Alexandra Adornetto, author of the Halo books.

Obviously, this list will be whittled down—I’ll run various ads, and choose the ones which perform best. Nevertheless, you can see the connections here: these are all urban fantasy books. Some of these have gay characters—Charlaine Harris is famous for this, and I think Jeaniene wrote some gay characters too. And I should also add that quite a few of these books are multi-million copy bestsellers.

What don’t you see on this list?

1. Bodice-rippers, regency romance, M/M shifter books, contemporary gay novels. Nope, none of that has anything to do with my book.
2. Dystopian scifi like the Hunger Games. I like dystopian well enough, but my book is not actually a dystopian novel! I will be explaining this in a later blogpost.

The trick, then, is to target in such a way that’s not too broad, but also not too niche. The problem with niche readers, as I’ve argued, is that they only want to read the same, familiar stories. The problem with broad targeting is that you will be selling to readers who don’t have a huge amount in common with what you write.

Okay, that’s enough from me, folks! Till next time.

Promotions & Christmas

Hello readers!

It has been awhile since Alex updated the Magical Realm—and for this Alex is sorry. You see, yours truly has been rather busy as of late: with the release of the new Necromancer, he has been highly preoccupied obtaining reviews (he is still looking for more!), promoting the book, and of course he still has academic commitments to assuage.

In any case: the topic of this post will, alas, be relatively brief—but I hope informative. I will speak primarily of my efforts in promoting the Necromancer, and some remarks about the process as a whole. I will also touch on the Ark—for some progress has been made there as well—and on other, more miscellaneous matters.

So without further ado...

Promotion, Promotion, Promotion...

Promoting a book is no easy task. There is a reason why many an author is keen to attract the attention of a publisher—and why professional markets can charge significant sums of money for their services. Alas, Alex does not at present have the resources on hand to buy full-page ads in the New York Times, or to hire high-end professionals. Therefore: Alex employs his creativity in other guises.

An important part of promotion is reviews; they are taken into account by retailer algorithms (such as Amazon), they’re used as a measuring stick by promotion companies, and they help the reader decide whether a book is worth their time. It is no surprise, then, that a book needs reviews—and while those reviews should be mostly positive, even less positive reviews can sometimes be to a writer’s benefit.

Alex therefore re-iterates: if you are interested in helping him promote the Necromancer, then please do review his books! Every little helps.

Another key part of marketing is exposure. Now: exposure is a complicated thing, with many different elements. Alex will address two here. The first is categorisation; this helps readers discover your book when they seek out particular kinds of books.

On Amazon, the Necromancer is filed under Dark Fantasy and High Fantasy, and has several pertinent keywords (e.g. ‘Elves,’ ‘Thrones’ and ‘Magicians’); on Goodreads, the book appears in lists like Schools of Magic and Necromancers (duh).

Speaking of which: Alex would appreciate it if you could vote for the Necromancer on the following Goodreads lists: Schools of Magic; Fantasy & Scifi Books with Strong Female Characters; Necromancers; and YA Epic Fantasy 2016.

Another important part of exposure is Amazon rankings. The mechanics of this are a whole technical topic in themselves; the abridged version is that Alex benefits from you reading and reviewing his book on Amazon, and that he benefits increasingly more the more his book is read & reviewed.

I must therefore ask one more favour of you: if you know friends who are interested in fantasy—then please do direct them towards the Necromancer!

What About the Ark?

Although very busy, I have not been entirely inactive with regards to the Ark. For one, I have found another beta reader: she has read the book and is extremely supportive so far.

I have also been thinking, in great depth, about where I want the Ark to go—and what kind of story it is that I’m trying to tell. You may remember that this is a topic that I discussed with the editor; indeed this is a topic that has troubled me since the inception of the book.

I will reveal the results of my thinking at a later date.

Final Thoughts

It has not escaped me that Christmas is approaching. So, I’ve made two plans for the future. Firstly—the Necromancer will be featured on another blog! (Likewise, I shall be hosting other Indie authors here on the Magical Realm.) The event will run from the 1st–24th December; do keep an eye out!

And of course, I will be heading home to my parents. We have not seen each other in, I believe, four months; you can imagine that this is somewhat overdue. There I shall discover Glasgow, our new house, and perhaps I shall also have the opportunity to questions some Yes voters.

Until then—keep following. Much is will be going on...