Walt and I were enjoying this morning on the lower deck just before the sun crested and seared us in our seats, talking about nothing in particular, when he asked how book sales have been. That's a really good question since my attention has been elsewhere this year. I've not been writing much which, as it turns out, is necessary so your followers don't give up and turn to a more interesting author. Rather like not returning your friends' phone calls and then wonder why nobody calls you for coffee. That sort of thing. Back to his question. Book sales have been fair. Sales of his video tutorials (which you can find here) have picked up, but aren't what we'd expected so in unison, we picked up our cellphones and checked YouTube for hits on our names and our products. Just out of curiosity, I searched "Vielklang Instant Harmony" and found that the company (Zplane) not only supports the videos we created 10 years ago, they still feature the teaser we created. The teaser alone has 87,000 views. My last blog post showed 22 views as of a half-hour ago. Perhaps I should have been a singer. Walt said not to worry, that even the Spice Girls are only known for what they want, what they really really want, and I get that. I suppose that's the question, isn't it. What do I want?
When I published "Heroes All," the goal was to raise money for the LST 325 Museum and the LST Association, and I did that. Huzzah! Now what? Well...I have the opportunity to write a play based on the book. Before I market that work with too much zeal and enthusiasm, I should at least finish the draft...but I have high hopes. It's a good story.
Then what? I've started another novel that spans the end of WWI, through the depression and dust bowl days, and follows the life of a young girl and the lives of German and Italian POWs that worked the potato farms on central Missouri. My goal here is to sell a lot of books and use the net gain to fund a college scholarship for kids graduating from the small town that's the subject of the book. Whereas the first book was written to honor my father, this second is to honor my mother. This one will be easier to market because its written from the heart. But just because it's easier to talk about doesn't necessarily translate into clicks and therefore, sales.
Marketing (and advertising) has been a bit of a black hole. I pour money in, but not much comes out. I like statistics and so look at hits on my website and FB. Interestingly enough, my posts on social media with the greatest number of hits tend to focus on my dogs, my tomatoes, and tee-shirt memes. Not sure I learned much of a lesson there, but engineers do like to test their work, so here's a picture of my dog. Let's see if this does the trick.
