Thanks for the shout out! Congrats again on winning the contest!
Hello, my dear animals! This will be the last update you’ll hear from me for a while, fortunately or unfortunately. I’ll be dialing down the frequency from twice a week to once a month. And this update in particular will go by fast, so don’t blink!
I shot (and heavily edited!) my last Reader-Raffle drawing earlier today. I got my kids to fill the starring roles again, and I could barely contain the chaos that ensued. I want you to know that after the 5 minute drawing, I had an extra minute in which I thank everyone one more time and then plug two inkshares books worth your time, attention, and money (including extra inkshares credits if you got ‘em!). They were “Deus Hex Machina” by Amanda Orneck - a book I have been really, really looking forward to since I first visited the website - and “Transilience” by Kevin Bragg - a book I just recently discovered and instantly fell in love with.
Look, don’t let your purchase of “The Animal in Man” be the only interaction you have with Inkshares. Get back to the website and check in on the hundreds of other books they offer. Great books by great authors who have great stories to tell, who are working really hard to get published. I know a great majority of my followers probably still have credits attached to their inkshares accounts, credits still unclaimed in their emails, and more still potential credits to earn by signing in and clicking “Recommend via Inkshares.” Why the heck wouldn’t you want to spend free money?
Finally, I want you to know I’ve been busy this weekend. I had kind of like a nesting instinct. My baby’s going to be born soon, right, so I rearranged the basement, I dug out my outline document, revised it a bit, and made a poster. Hung up a poster, a calendar. Most importantly I taped my favorite fortune cookie on the wall, the one I’ve carried in my wallet for three years or more: “Do Not Fear Failure.” This is where The Animal in Man will be born.
...also there’s a kid watching Frozen, again, in the background. Again. Please don’t think I’m staging that for cuteness’ sake. I’m really not. I. Am. In. Frozen. Hell. Writing this book might help me thaw my way out. Hopefully.
With less than a month to go and only 8 orders. I've decided on a different approach when I run the next pre-order for this novel. I plan on bundling all three novels in this trilogy so that if and when i do hit the 250 or even the 750 goal, the buyers will be ordering 3 books for the price of one. I would like some feedback on this from my wonderful followers. I'd love it if Inkshares could give the option of buying the whole trilogy, but then I thought that would be pointless if I try selling each one separately. I'd like some feedback on this move either here or email me at jdgriffith78@gmail.com. Wado!
Hello and Happy Saturday! Here we have a short video where we determine the winner of the McCall's Meat and Fish Company gift certificate raffle. So sit back and enjoy, especially the last seconds, which include an amusing directorial snafu!
As of today only 78 copies of "Women Like Us" need to sell and we'll have met the goal for Quill Publishing. If you're like me you want to hold this book in your hands, and we're getting closer every day. But there's only a month left, so please pre-order if you haven't, and if you have there's nothing wrong with having that back-up copy, just in case!
Finally, stay tuned for an announcement next week about one more beagle-freedom related raffle that you can get in on if you already haven't. This one involves a tattoo!
Tonight, and for one night only, I will be doing the unthinkable! I will not try to sell you my book or be promotional about it or myself in any way whatsoever, and instead will just let myself be entirely natural. I know I need the break, and the way I've been harping on ordering lately I suspect you all likely do as well. Mainly within the past few days I realized that this campaign is nearing both the 5 month mark and end date, and I've never really bothered to introduce myself or tell you about myself at all really, and that just feels a bit rude to me. I'll try to remedy my rudeness as quickly as possible with this update, though when being natural I tend to ramble so I apologize if I go overlong on this one.
I suppose I'll start with one of the chief elements which led my brain to the above thought, that being the number of times I've recently seen/heard remarks about how odd it is that there is such a significant difference between the number of followers for Exile, Magus and the number of orders placed for it. I'd thought the same myself at first, but I pretty quickly came to what I at least think is the answer: that I'm horrible at sales/marketing/promotion. This isn't a new revelation to me as I have pretty much always been my own worst advocate, and beyond that almost entirely incapable of creating anything resembling a sales pitch. This means that plenty of people think it sounds interesting enough to eventually check out so they follow, but then my lack of promotional ability ensures that I fail to draw them back to actually check out the project while also not driving them away and thus my follower count stays high without a proportional increase in sales. At least that's my theory, but I could be wrong.
With that being said, I have actually done far better than I ever expected to despite of my poor promotional skills. Admittedly, I have perhaps an overabundance of self-doubt so I may have not given myself enough credit going into this. Beyond my perceived promotional inability, I also saw my years of putting off even attempting a start at platform-building and my own somewhat extreme introversion to be insurmountable obstacles as well. I suppose to best illustrate the introversion I should point out that of my preorders only 7 have come from my own familial/social network, the rest have come entirely through pitching on Inkshares. With these thoughts in mind it may seem odd that I would launch the campaign to begin with but the reason for that is simple: I needed something to kick me out of a seemingly endless cycle(at that point it had been going on for 5 years since the completion of Exile, Magus' rough draft) of revisions(often very nitpicky & unnecessary ones), writing books further in the series, and writing then scrapping a now untold number of query letters without ever mailing a single one.
I'm sure at this point its likely seeming like this is intended as a negative/moody update, but that's not actually the point. Really the point of this update(and my own convoluted train of thought) comes down to a key point of the previous paragraph: all but a very small portion of the orders I've gotten for Exile, Magus have come from people who were complete strangers to me before I stumbled on Inkshares through the Nerdist contest this past August. Beyond that, of these strangers who I've gotten to communicate with many of them have shown what certainly feels to me to be quite a bit of faith in Exile, Magus, even going above and beyond anything I would ever ask/expect of them by reaching out to their own networks on my behalf. I feel a bit bad about not naming names here, but I'm trying for as much brevity as possible here and the list has grown quite large at this point. You all know who you are though, and if you read this know that your support and belief have been both humbling and heartwarming and I cannot thank you enough.
To come to a conclusion, and the full point of this update. It was only about 6-7 months ago when I was completing the most recent revision of Exile, Magus in preparation for writing a new round of query letters that I finally reached a point where I truly accepted what my primary beta reader had been trying to get across to me for years: this book is worthy of being published. Even with that realization I was still left with the doubt that there would be much of an audience for my peculiar tale - one which a person could describe as a mixture of teenage angst, human loneliness and the desperation it brings forth in a person, and the hopefully temporary and often unnoticed madness brought on by loss and survivor's guilt wrapped up and made palatable by the guise of high fantasy with an almost comic book style approach to action. Sure, it was perfected suited for me what with my own oddly nebulous points of interest/fandoms, but I felt certain that there could not be more than a dozen, maybe two dozen others the world over who would actually be interested in that sort of thing.
Well, now thanks to this experience and the people I have encountered(albeit only online) through it I realize that there is a larger audience out there. I've found far more of you than I ever expected to in a relatively short period of time, and this lets me know that I must continue digging to find even more like you. It won't be an easy task, especially since I will have to fight my own social anxieties every step of the way, but it will be worth every bit of exertion. It will continue to stretch my abilities and self in ways I hadn't before thought possible. Example: I'm not far from completing my first short story(kind of). Before they had always expanding out of control to be anything but short. Hopefully I can continue to create short fiction and maybe even write a non-rambling article or few to post on my blog and/or try to get published on other blogs/publications.
In conclusion, regardless of the outcome of this campaign, I couldn't be happier that I made the rather rash decision to jump into this Inkshares thing during the Nerdist contest. It was exactly what I needed when I needed it. And, at least as important, maybe more important, I can't thank you all enough for your time and support. Enough of this emotionalism though, I'm signing off here now. I'll see you all here again Saturday when I returning to my shameless attempts to get everyone to buy my book. Until then, be good, be safe, but most importantly – have fun!
It's been an amazing ride, hasn't it?
Hey there wonderful people
I just wanted to spread my geedines in the fact that I made it past 50 pre-orders! WOOOOOOT! I know it's not that much but you take your jollies where you can. I'm 1/5 of the way there and climbing. But we need to keep up the pace. If you like this fast paced, action packed, round house kick to your imagination give me a chance to entertain you and preorder please. And if you like it, you really really like it recommend it. Tell your family. Tell your friends. Tell your enemies. Tell everyone. We can do this!!
...maybe I should lay off the coffee and candy before I do this updates. Thanks for your time.
Kelsey Rae Barthel
