Nope.
A Belated Update Day
Nope.
Hey everyone! I’m a bit quiet at the moment, mainly because wrangling the monster that is my social networking process into some semblance of order is taking A LOT of time.
So. What am I doing, you might ask?
Right now, I’m busy with sorting out my Twitter. The one most of you follow (@MishaMFB). To say the least, I have been awfully silent on there lately for one simple reason.
Ahem.
Buy my book.
“There was a time when a girl’s wedding day was the happiest day of her life.”
In Falside, girls are a rare commodity; protected, controlled, and tracked by the administration. They spend their days idly waiting to be married off to the highest bidder.
When the marriage announcements include Tale’s lover, Freda, the women will do anything to stop the match from happening.
Their relationship is forbidden, and as members of the resistance, they’re already risking everything.
But as their attempts to stop the wedding fail, both women have to decide what they’re willing to sacrifice for love.
BIO
Angeline Trevena is a British dystopian horror author. She was born and bred in a rural corner of Devon, but now lives among the breweries and canals of central England.
In 2003 she graduated from Edge Hill University, Lancashire, with a BA Hons degree in Drama and Writing. During this time she decided that her future lay in writing words rather than performing them.
Some years ago Angeline worked at an antique auction house and religiously checked every wardrobe that came in to see if Narnia was in the back of it. She’s still not given up looking for it.
Maysa Mazari is alarmed by her mother’s talk about arranged marriage. As a hijab-wearing Pakistani-American, she wants to find love on her own. Her judgmental Muslim clique has protected her from racist taunts, although the leader is turning on her as Maysa strays from the group because of her attraction to Haydee.
Haydee Gomez is a former gang member and juvenile detention student. Now living with a clean-cut aunt, she wants to turn her life around, even though one person will never let her forget her roots—Rafe, her abusive pimp. Haydee attempts to pull away from a life of prostitution when she develops feelings for Maysa, although Rafe isn’t willing to give her up too easily.
Finding themselves in danger from Maysa’s friends and Haydee’s pimp, it’s apparent their love disturbs everyone around them as they fight to stay together.
Hey everyone!
So lately, I’ve been thinking.
And thinking.
And thinking.
Yeah. I haven’t been able to write much, so it’s given me plenty of time to consider where my writing career needs to go and what I need to do in order to get there.
The main thing for me is my approach to social networking.
But then something happened that made me re-evaluate EVERYTHING. And I warn you, this is going to be a downer if you’re a self-publisher.
So… What happened?
It started with The Vanished Knight getting over 175k reads.
The pictures I used for its cover and for the one on The Heir’s Choice are creative commons pictures. I’m not really worried that I’ll get sued or anything like that but, you know… The more people read the story, the more nervous the free image idea makes me.
Besides that, the fact that I used two swords on the covers kind of limited the direction in which I can go for book 3, which I’m planning to publish later this year.
So. I started designing new ones. While doing that, I did my usual thing of going to Amazon and searching my genre (Epic Fantasy) to see how my covers compare.
And I noticed something very, very worrying.
Amazon now cuts off search results at 20k books. No matter what I did, I never got more than 25k books out of my search.
Maybe there’s a way, but I’m only a run-of-the-mill user type. You know, the exact type of person who’d be looking for a new book to read.
You’re seeing the problem, I assume.
Even if I enter the specific key-phrases into the search, I still couldn’t find my books, presumably because I’m not ranking high enough.
Which, as a person only barely starting out in the publishing game, is a nightmare scenario.
Yeah.
Major.
Major.
Major Downer.
So what’s a girl like me to do?
She puts all her chips on the table.
I’m doing really well on Wattpad. (175k reads for Fantasy is nothing to sniff at.) The Vanished Knight has its own built-in fan-base. But it hasn’t reached critical mass.
But it’ll get there. But to get there, I have to re-think my strategy.
So.
I’m taking a leap of faith and posting The Heir’s Choice on there as well. And I’m going to keep posting books on there for the foreseeable future. Because for me, Wattpad has something that Amazon doesn’t:
What is Patreon?
Basically, it works on a similar concept as Gofundme or Kickstarter except for one major difference. With Patreon, the point is for patrons to pledge small monthly amounts (that they can pick) that will be paid over to the artist every month instead of one big fund that is aimed at something specific.
Here’s a bit of a better explanation (but the video is about per-artwork pledges. I’m too prolific for that.)
Maybe you’d like to check out Patreon for yourself? Click here. (it’s an affiliate link. I get paid for people who join.)
But what does all this mean?
For one thing, I’m changing my focus. To me, it makes sense to direct traffic to Patreon, so it also makes sense to use that as a hub and branching all of my social-media out of it.
For one thing, Video gets better responses on Patreon, so starting next month, I’m moving over into Vlogging. I’ll still update this blog, but I think this is going to be the next step. I’ll still be writing posts here and there, though, but it makes sense to make sure that my time is spent on content that I can use everywhere.
As part of my Patreon rewards, I’m going to start hosting a weekly online hang-out, but you’re all invited anyway. I’m thinking that as my fanbase grows, it might be a great way to give my favorite writer buddies (I.E. you) some extra exposure.
There is also an All Posts page on Patreon where patrons can interact with each other and me, and I think this has vast potential as a different kind of social network.
So come on! It’s only $1 to get in where all the cool kids will be. Please do consider helping a girl out. Or just go check out the page and tell me what you think of it so far. 🙂
Any questions?
What about my new covers?
Well.
I’ll share the first two here now. The others will be revealed later in the year…
Hey everyone! I’m back again! Lots of news coming up this month, since I’ve decided to totally over-haul the way I’m going about my social media. But more on that later.
First things first, I’m welcoming Annalisa Crawford to The Five Year Project as part of the blog tour for her new book You. I. Us. Take it away, Annalisa!
Hey everyone! Today I’d like to welcome Libby Heily to The Five Year Project. She’s here to tell us about where her newest main character, Grape, came from.
Take it away, Libby!