Hello dear Patrons!
Kate here. Two of Tao's audiobooks have (finally) appeared on Audible. Please check your messages and reply whether you need UK or US codes!
I want to give you codes :D
2020-05-02 14:49:26 +0000 UTC View PostHar.
So, I've been a little lazy, a little sick and a little too creative. And because of that, instead of doing around 3k a day which is what I figured I'd be doing, I've been running around 2k. Which is decent...
But then I got creative. And this book went from the usual 90-100k book. To right now sitting at 110k (with backmatter. So around 100k without). And I'M NOT DONE YET.
... 2020-04-30 03:58:18 +0000 UTC View PostProduct is what you're selling. Without a product, you have nothing. Without a product, whether it's a course, a non-fiction book, your Youtube channel or a paperback, there's nothing to say.
Now, since we're talking about book marketing...
Craft
I'm setting aside the obvious side of 'product' for writing, which is the quality (i...
2020-04-29 21:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostA while ago, I wrote a self-depreciating post about my business posts, about how you should take everything i write with a grain of salt. To test what I say against what you learn and to test it on your own books.
I've recently realised one thing I forgot to write about was how to evaluate who...
2020-04-23 06:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostThe idea behind product lifecycle management is that each product - in our case, we can look at it as either a book, a series or a genre - has distinct phases.
The Product Life Cycle
Basically, there's 3 assumptions made when we look at a product lifecycle :
I'm already beginning to regret a little bit about offering to play publisher. *sighs* As I think of the work involved.
No worries about my writing getting affected (that will get priotised always). I also probably will just focus on the two major series rather than bouncing around all the time. #Probably.
Thus far, I haven't seen that many works that I'd consider doing ...
2020-04-22 03:33:02 +0000 UTC View PostHello!
Kate here. I wanted to ask your opinions regarding future chapter updates - and when I adjust earlier chapters to lower tiers access.
I did a little experiment today: when I adjusted the access for ch5 & ch6 to be available for Advanced Class (ch5) and Advanced Prestige Class (ch6), everyone is supposed to get an e-mail. (Or at least that's how I think it works.)
My...
2020-04-18 11:45:26 +0000 UTC View PostOkay, reminder - read the previous Marketing Plan : Pricing article first before you read this one. There's a lot of data there, and while I have another post I wanted to do (not marketing plan based); I wanted this tackled before people forgot.
Or I forgot.
So.
We discussed a bunch of common pricing strategies. But here's more to look at:
Promot...
2020-04-16 05:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHi guys;
Welcome to the Patron. Thank you for sticking around and supporting me, even when things are tough as I know it is for many. We're releasing chapters from Stars Asunder right now.
This is looking to be a big(ish) book. Which means nothing, as some of the other patrons might tell you since I'm utterly useless at estimating. But I'm at... 70k or so, and still have at le...
2020-04-14 18:00:06 +0000 UTC View PostHello Everyone,
Kate here again. Let's celebrate the upcoming holidays with some freshly generated codes!
The audiobook is The System Apocalypse short story anthology, like last time. Codes can be redeemed on audible US and audible UK.
Send me a message via this patreon page if you'd like a code, and please be patient, because I've scheduled this post, plus I'm probably in a d...
2020-04-11 01:00:07 +0000 UTC View PostOr something like that. Kate here.
I think Tao has already mentioned that he has a few short stories from his early years as a writer. Now he dusted them off, polished them and asked me to share these with you!
You can download them here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1bJKYc5kI7...
2020-04-10 14:31:45 +0000 UTC View PostSo, we talked about KPIs earlier (key performance index); but I just had a conversation about what kind of data to track. I thought I'd mention a few things that happens when one ends up in the digital marketing arena and things to watch out for.
Information Overload
In comparison to traditional advertising, one of the biggest advantages of digital advert...
2020-04-08 18:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostLeft a writing update on the website. Feel free to ask questions there or here.
2020-04-07 23:21:34 +0000 UTC View PostHello, Kate here.
I wanted to let you know now we're back to normal schedule with the chapters. Updates will be on Tuesday & Saturday, as usual.
Right now these chapters are available:
ch 1 - Advanced Class
ch 1, 2 - Advanced Prestige Class
ch 1, 2, 3, 4 - Master, Heroic & Legendary Classes
Enjoy :)
2020-04-04 15:13:51 +0000 UTC View PostPhew, that was a long title! Kate here.
Tao left me with a mission: find people who would like to listen to the short story audiobook - and then give them an audible code so they could get it for FREE.
US & UK only. Please send me a message via Patreon (to Tao's inbox, of course) for your personal code. I'm also sharing the news at other places, and I have a finite number of cod...
2020-04-02 13:29:55 +0000 UTC View PostLet's tackle the one we all like talking about first.
Pricing.
How much should you price your book at? What's the best price?
I. Don't. Know.
It really depends on your strategy and your goals. However, make sure you read my longer post about pricing on my blog first<...
2020-04-01 23:00:02 +0000 UTC View PostHaven't had time to go into a lot of details about writing business posts, so I figured I'd use this to provide people data points for use. In particular.
I recently ran a UK Bookbub. Details here:
Direct sales on Life in the North = spike of another 96 or so books in UK over 2 days (came in last da...
2020-04-01 18:00:13 +0000 UTC View Post
Yeah, there's really not much more to say than that. Woot!
Time to see how we do.
Covid 19 has hammered the world. Like, seriously, just put entire economies to a stop, put at least 20% of people out of work. Taken lives and forced a LOT of people to risk their lives, sometimes for not a lot of money.
Canada has done really, really well at helping people out. Or will be once the website is up. I'm super happy with our government, which is something I have heard from mo...
2020-03-30 18:12:30 +0000 UTC View PostHello, Kate here.
Tao has asked you earlier about his dilemma of posting chapters on schedule but using a rough version, because the dictating software is still learning OR wait a little until he can properly check the chapters.
And I wasn't sure what to do and then ended up posting the first chapter for Master class and above before Tao got a chance to properly fix stuff. Sorry. 2020-03-26 14:08:19 +0000 UTC View Post
Alright, this is what I call my 10% rule.
Take your budget (marketing, production, whatever). Split off 10% of it.
That's now your 'fun project' budget.
Why?
The basic idea is that the vast majority of your budget should be spent on doing the things you know work. For us indie writers, that's mostly producing ebooks with good covers and good e...
2020-03-25 22:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostHi guys. Tao here.
So, I'm currently working on Chapter 7 of the book. However, to save my hands, I've been switching between typing and dictating. The dictation software is having issues since the System Apocalypse uses a lot of weird names, and thus accuracy has dropped a lot. Just like A Thousand Li in the beginning. I expect that it'll get better in a few tens of thousands of words bu...
2020-03-20 18:40:31 +0000 UTC View PostHello Everyone,
Kate here. I help Tao with his Patreon page.
I wanted to give you an update, since Master class and above have already reached the end of The First War.
So what's next?
*drumrolls*
Stars Asunder!
The schedule remains the same, meaning you can start reading book 9 this Saturday and expect the next update
Interrupting the usual posts about building a marketing strategy and random other business side posts to discuss the Coronavirus. It's 3/18 when I'm writing this. At this time, Canada's restricting international travel and we're going to go into lockdown further in the next 2 weeks.
Some things to note:
- we double infected cases every 6 days
- anything we do TODAY is going to...
2020-03-18 18:42:04 +0000 UTC View PostAlright, in our previous post, we talked about Marketing Plan Development and you did Goals and the Environmental Analysis.
Next step - putting it together.
Using the Information & Some Cavaets
This is kind of put together because your goals are going to have to change a little based off your budget and your analysis. Again, a lot of this is go...
2020-03-11 15:00:03 +0000 UTC View PostI know there's a few people wanting to know about / write for it / read the next SA Anthology.
I'd love to do it, but there's an issue.
The Short Story Anthology 1 is still running at a loss. At the current rate of return, I expect to make back my outlay (since I paid my contributors for their shorts and paid for editing) in about another 14-15 months. That's assuming sales don't dr...
2020-03-10 16:00:00 +0000 UTC View PostA while ago (December) I heard from another author who updated his website with the Brave website token information to make it more compatible with the browser.
For those that don't know, the Brave browser is a block chain browser that protects your privacy and blocks trackers. There's a bunch of other things, but it also le...
2020-03-09 15:30:16 +0000 UTC View PostI'm on the start of chapter 3 of Stars Asunder.
It's about 10k in. Giant chapters.
Haven't written much in the last few days since I'm getting settled after my long trip and catching up on admin. That includes reading the co-author project I'm doing. It's good. Like, really good (in my opinion).
Once I get caught up with that, I'll be full bore next week on getting more ...
2020-03-07 18:23:06 +0000 UTC View PostBuilding a marketing plan is a big, involved process. It's more complicated than most people think, and really, I'm sure I'm going to miss or lose aspects here since I'm going to try to simplify it as best as possible.
Goals
We've talked about Goals before. Your own personal goals will dictate your marketing goals which will dictate your marketing plan. Becaus...
2020-03-04 18:00:04 +0000 UTC View PostAlright guys, you might have read my post about the anthology workshop. Of the six stories I wrote, 4 of them are currently spoken for. I want to rework the other short a bit and maybe see if I can sell it to another anthology since I think it's workable with some minor editing. It'll give me a chance to get my name outside of our usual circles, which is a good thing (I think).
On that no...
2020-02-27 05:33:08 +0000 UTC View Post