New scenes up for City of Angles //014! Milly vs. the Secret Government Conspiracy would be a pretty one sided fight. Let’s get her a tag team partner.
This chapter’s coming along quite smoothly compared to the last one. I had a better idea of what this one was about and how it’d flow when I was going in, mind you; always helps to have a roadmap when you jam the pedal to the floor and take off at 88 MPH, as you do when you’re writing weekly story updates. But it’s sweet relief to be able to get this stuff out without difficulty. Especially since I’m off to a family wedding next weekend and needed to prep as much in advance as I can.
That said, I have a Growing Concern. One I’ve whined about on this blog before, fair warning. When the writing’s coming this easily and I’m quite proud of the end results… it’s disheartening to see very little growth after months of investing so much of myself in this.
Over the last month, six different people (who are not my immediate family) have posted comments. I average about 25-35 visitors a day, spiking to MAYBE 40 on update days. There are stick figure web comics about fart jokes that draw a larger crowd than that. More importantly, every promote-your-creative-stuff guide I’ve read talks about how you need one hundred true fans in order to snowball into something greater, and I have roughly a third of that. Depressing.
Now, I’m not blaming you guys. The audience that I do have, you’re definitely true fans. If you’re even reading these words right now it means you’re so far down the rabbit hole that I am absolutely throwing a tea party in your honor. But I also need to grow the audience beyond this, to get more people reading the story and participating in it… and as for how to do that, I’m coming up blank.
I’ve got social media out the wazoo. I’m quite accessible on that front and I keep folks informed of the doings and goings-on. I upgraded my web tech to make participation even easier. I’ve asked folks to spread by word of mouth, and incentivized that. I’ve run advertising campaigns. I ran a Kickstarter. And… nothing seems to really help increase readership beyond 30-40 people. I can’t even get some of my own friends interested. I don’t know if it’s because “web novels” are something nobody really has time for, or because the writing itself is sub-par, or what.
Still, it’s a solvable problem. I have to believe it’s a solvable problem. And it’s one I need to seriously look at in the weeks ahead. Suggestions welcome and I’ll be brainstorming too.
UPDATE: After chatting with a few friends, an interesting trend’s come up… some prefer to read the full-length released novels, and NOT any of the drafts on the site. Could be that the low participation is obfuscating the real audience, which seeks offline copies? Although I haven’t sold a single copy of the vol//001 book outside of Kickstarter rewards. So either way I should look to growing the audience. But good to know there is a reason for some of the silence.
Something I noticed in 013:
“If the stranger was searching counter-clockwise, they could creep along clockwise, and never the two would meet.”
…I’m pretty sure that’s wrong. Consider: someone at 12-oclock, moving clockwise. Another person at 6-oclock, moving counterclockwise. The two would meed up at 3-oclock.
Maybe just use right and left:
“If the stranger was moving right, they could creep along to the left, and never the two would meet.”
Good point; that’s what I was aiming for. I’ll reword it accordingly in the next revision. Thanks so much!
Yeah, I’m one of those who prefers to read the final version, not look at authors’ drafts in the making. Kinda like how I eat sausages after their done, not before. (I also don’t do Betas of RPGs and the like).
Speaking of which, how’s that reformatting of the Kindle editions of Anachronauts going? I’m holding off buying the lot until that happens and I can just read them all at once, how they’re meant to be seen.
I’ve been a bit preoccupied with RL, and the Unreal Estate proofing/reformatting has also been taking up the bulk of my time in terms of stuff. First Age is pretty much in the can; Forsaken Shores was one I’d started before I started working on the original London’s Fog and Stars Fall books.
Also, I’ve got a Second Age compilation prepped for the most part that I think I wanna rework to look better on newer Kindles (it was originally compiled with a 3rd-gen Keyboard in hand; I have a Paperwhite now). Which reminds me I need to see if Zalgo works on 4th-gen stuff or if it wonks out (one might say it í̷̸̧̢n͟v̢̨ǫ̷̶͢͡k͜͠͏̢e͏̷̡́s̴͜͞ ̛̕͟͡t̷ḩ̴̵͞e̶͘͘͢ ͘͠h̸̷̡͞į͝v̶͡ę̵͞ ̧ḿ̢́i͏̶n̶̡̨̕͜d̷́́ ̶͘͠ơ͜͠͠f̢͟ ́͝c̨͞h̷̵͠á̵̡͠o̵͘s̀̕) the way it does on 3rd-gen devices.
Loopy, your tireless efforts have my gratitude. <3
I guarantee it’s not the writing quality, as you’re substantially better than most self-published and a considerable number of traditionally-published authors.
I think I may give some for Christmas. Does that count?
Absolutely! A sale is a sale and is also a new reader.
Part of what I think I need to accept here is that webbooks are different than webcomics. Webcomics, people routinely return to the site and are heavily engaged. Books, they’re a bit more distant… they’ll buy and read it and then be done with it. But in the end, they are still reading it.
Now, the metrics don’t back up that I have some vast unseen audience of readers for either the online text or the offline text quite yet. So I have work to do. But maybe I can’t expect engagement like I’m used to seeing elsewhere.
For the record, I only come here to stare longingly at the “print books” page and ponder grabbing them when I have some more funds.
So… yes, that’s me.
I’d be happy to send you an ebook copy meanwhile, to tide you over until that glorious day. Drop me an email.