This weekend was basically a crash course in indie publishing:
Off to the races!
- Ken and I finished the book
- learned how to format it in Draft2Digital (love them)
- write a blurb
- load the book on Instafreebie
- sign up for a Sci-Fi cross-promo
- link it to our Mailchimp list, and
- set up the automation sequence on Mailchimp for the reader. Phew!
We have been hard at work to complete the prequel novella to our Cold War series, The Needle. If you love tales of alien invasions, first contact, space marines, then get your free book now!
Writing the blurb to The Needle was nearly as challenging as writing the Needle itself. It’s not Game of Thrones, but done is better than perfect.
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“The Ringhead aliens have arrived, and they are xenoforming the Earth, sending mankind towards a new Ice Age.
Year 2107. It’s the longest night of the year when they appear. Scientists are baffled by two alien constructs that have pierced the planet at each hemisphere. Keenan and his pack of Union Wolves are first in line to test their mettle against the alien invaders in a war that will determine the fate of the planet…”
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Reading Libbie Hawker’s Gotta Read It! – Five Simple Steps to a Fiction Pitch That Sells
1) Tell them who the main characters is.
2) Tell them what the main character wants the most.
3) What stands in the way of them achieving that goal?
4) What are they willing to do, or must do, to achieve that goal?
5) What is at stake?
In the end, I just stopped torturing myself about how to get the description for the Needle to match this formula because I wanted to have a brief blurb for Instafreebie.
The skill of blurb writing is one that is going to take me a little longer to acquire.
Thanks for posting such an informative article!
I didn’t talk about it in this post, but I see now that the most valuable thing I did was invest the energy to craft those automated emails. Each time that I have joined an Instafreebie promotion to grow the reader list, I now have a good filter in place. The ones that want to keep reading will stay for the 3 onboarding emails. The ones that unsubscribe are the freebie seekers that got what they wanted and now I have a cleaner list of subscribers.
Interesting approach. What made you decide to do that, rather than converting them if possible.
I think if they hadn’t unsubscribed, I would have eventually sent them an email to the ones who are not opening the messages to see if they would like to remain on the list. That way I could segment them and keep them engaged. But since they unsubscribed while I was STILL giving them free content, I can only assume they just wanted the novella.
Interesting, thanks for breaking that all down!