Sooooooo much news today. New story! A fan podcast! Merchandise! Polls! Speak and be heard, because there’s a lot of feedback to give and decisions to make…
City of Angles //010 Begins
It’s the 80s! Do a lot of coke and vote for Ronald Reagan. Cleanup on Aisle 10, a story that’s been in the works since before the series even started, is now underway. It’s a bit of a high speed narrative, so bear with the initial craziness.
After reading, pop back here and let me know what you think. Glad to see a particular character’s return? Not glad? Like the new guy? VIP members, surprised to see a returning character? How’s it going? Etc.
One last bit of administrivia… I gave Ellie’s last name at the end of 009, but had to change it for Reasons. It’s been revised to Jørgensen. That is all.
EDIT: Something I added Sunday morning… it’s Gus Zero! In our artwork gallery. Thanks, Allison!
Read-Aloud Funtimes!
Long-time reader Omahdon, who has a YouTube series where he reads aloud from stories to test his oration skills, is dedicating a week to my stuff! Here’s what he’s got so far.
It’s been suggested I do a podcast audio book of my writing. Personally I’ve never consumed writing that way so I can’t quite grasp why, but who am I to argue? Maybe I’ll arrange it in the future.
Merchandising! Merchandising!
I’m looking into my options for selling City of Angles related goodies, but I’m not quite sure what I’ll release yet. What would you be interested in? For instance…
- Items: T-shirts, hoodies, mugs, keychains, stickers, magnets, buttons, mouse pads, coasters, playing cards (back design only). Which of these would you be most likely to want?
- Art: Any of the current characters, the Ghostwriter icon logo alone, Dave’s shirt glyph, or the CoA title logo alone. In the future, I’ll have the book cover’s artwork as an option and the upcoming couples artworks. Would you prefer I wait until those are available or is there something specific already up there you’d dig on an item?
Readership Poll Results!
I ran this poll for two weeks — 31 people responded overall, a pretty good turnout.
WHEN SHOULD STORIES RELEASE? Most said Sunday morning (the usual time), with a wide spread of runners-up across the weekend span. Few were looking for a weekday release.
I’ve decided to migrate to Saturday night as the official release. That way, folks tuning in Sunday mornings still get their Sunday morning fix, but the announcement rolls out when more people are online and others looking for a wider weekend release rejoice.
OTHER POSSIBLE CHANNELS? Most skipped this question. SMS text messages or e-Reader compatible releases were suggested. Not sure I can do e-Reader conversions every single week, though.
HOW CAN I FACILITATE STORY FEEDBACK? Embedding the commenting right on the story page was suggested — I’ve done some experiments which failed, but I’ll keep trying. Others expressed no interest or disinterest in commenting at all. Which is understandable; commenting means staying current, and to do that you have to really work to integrate regular novel reading into your life.
I’ve decided to add a better footer onto the draft stories, which lays out your feedback options right there. That should help, but also I need to NOT use feedback as a metric for readership… plenty of readers aren’t interested in drafts or feedback.
HOW DO YOU GET YOUR UPDATES? I got some very interesting results here! Most used social media primarily, or as one of their many options. But buite a few directly bookmarked the site or the blog, instead. Interestingly, many indicated they do NOT visit on update dates, but check back infrequently. Novels are something you read when you have time, it seems.
One thing this question didn’t ask, though… if you’re using my social media feeds, would you prefer I link to the blog post or link to the story itself? Right now I’m linking to the blog post, in hopes it’ll encourage feedback. But that does mean an extra click to get to the story. Which do you prefer?
Overall I’d say we’re in good shape. With some tweaks to my process and some tweaks to my perception, and with the upcoming launches of new artwork and merch and the vol001 book, things are looking up!
Have to feign ignorance there. I did it once upon a time, but the metadata rules change every few years. I don’t think my “SEO” google search would be any more helpful than yours.
Brad Callen’s a guy who sells a book about it. His posts were helpful sometimes, but I never bought his book. Hard-sell kind of guy.
You might want to consider some SEO. If you search City of Angles or Stefan Gagne, it’s hard to get here. Probably due to the obscurity of the term, if you search “Anachronauts,” you do actually land here.
I haven’t done too much in the way of metadata or anything like that. Any suggestions for where to start with SEO?
I actually did take that wallpaper pack. :)
Ah, right. You’re the only one who did, though. Nerts.
Anyway, I came up with a better visual design than just “Onna concrete wall!” so I’ll probably work on a new wallpaper set next.
May I request some Kelsey and Dave wallpaper, please? Or just Kelsey if that’s possible before the couples artwork comes in?
I had a pack of wallpaper up that anyone could claim if they commented in the blog three times. Nobody did, so I took it down. But I could probably get some free wallpaper up there now. The Kelsey/Dave couples pose definitely will be a candidate since it’ll be laid out horizontally; Kelsey alone I can do too.
was half the side it should be
was half the *size* it should be
From the last one, you left one. You actually corrected the one my spell-checker caught while I was copy-n-pasting the two lines.
They were announcements of fandom allegiance, positioned to declare self-identify visually to those who chat with you online.
They were announcements of fandom allegiance, positioned to declare *self-identity* visually to those who chat with you online.
I’m very much enjoying the story. It’ll be interesting watching the anachronism adapt.
Yah, I still need to do a pass over 009, collecting blog comments and performing a full spell check. It’s still flagged draft. Still, I won’t leave it like that too long — got into a bad habit in years past of leaving drafts in draft status for months because I was too busy on new stuff.
The 80s stuff is like, TOTALLY fun to write. Can’t wait until we get to the explanation as to what’s going on there, although longtime readers probably have it figured out.
I like the whole time loop concept thingy.
A ghostwriter hoodie would be cool.
I looked into this — I can do a Ghostwriter logo hoodie, but it’d have to be an emblem or centered on the front. I can’t get it printed on the sleeve like Marcy’s. Still, even if nobody orders one, no reason not to offer it (print-on-demand means it won’t cost me a thing).
link to chapter 9?
Whoops. Fixed!