This Week's Happenings

Strange how what seemed like a good idea at the time now feels incredibly stupid. About a month ago I went a little crazy signing up with free (or nearly free) promo sites. That was fine as far as it went, but I'd forgotten about Voracious Readers Only, which didn't have any open dates until today. Truthfully, that promo wouldn't have even crossed my mind had I not received a reminder email. 

VRO ostensibly finds an author twenty reviewers for their book, thus the "20-book giveaway". I do know how that goes. Fourteen people won my LibraryThing giveaway and only about seven of the winners actually requested a copy of it. Last I checked I'd gotten two reviews. (I am no longer checking, because I don't go trolling for potentially bad news.) One author who worked with VRO noted that he received four reviews, so "20" is rather misleading.

I wish I hadn't signed up with VRO, even though the promo was free, because I'm simply over it now. It'll be a hopeless, possibly soul-crushing exercise. I get it ~ some people will like my book, some people won't. I don't need to be hit over the head with it. One plus factor, I suppose, is that those who sign up to receive a free copy agree to being added to the author's mailing list. And everyone knows what a smashing success my newsletter has been. 🙄

I still have one more promo yet to run, on March 23. I don't care about that one, because these little sites I signed up with don't have much of a reader base.

 

Speaking of newsletters, I played around with my April edition a bit. This time I'm including a book quiz, with a prize for the winner. Of course, no one will partake in the quiz and thus no one will be eligible to win. My reader engagement is "awesome". But I have to include some type of content, at least until I just do away with the newsletter experiment once and for all.

 

BookBub emailed me to let me know that my pre-order of Whispers in the Dark has been added to its database, and that my one follower will be notified. Honestly, I would prefer to keep this particular novella a secret. It's not good. This is the one that began as a full-length, horrible novel that didn't improve much with trimming. This'll sound dumb, but I only published it to expand my library of works. I certainly will never promote it.

I've neither continued work on my latest story, nor re-read what I have so far. I wanted to re-read it, but I also didn't want to re-read it. My writing sixth sense is pretty keen, and I'm exhausted by perpetual disappointment.

 

To sum up, nothing much is happening in my writing world right now. I've gotten zero response from the stupid little Substack note and Goodreads blog post I did, and that's fine. They were simply time-killers.

I'm feeling a bit directionless.