Kate Baggott's Blog: Cornfields of the Sea - Posts Tagged "love-from-planet-wine-cooler"

When I had my first professional blog, I was instructed to write 2 updates per day in order to keep my audience engaged.

That advice / instruction was nonsense then and it is nonsense now.

What matters is telling people you engage with, when you both find the time, the very big stuff. Some experts would tell you that bragging is never good. Luckily, the big stuff that happens to me is seldom good enough to be considered bragging.

It's just big.

Since the last time I wrote you, my children and I have moved from Germany to Canada. I'm Canadian and the kids are Canadian citizens, but this is the first time they have lived here. The transition from school class to class is difficult for young people. Imagine what it is like moving from country to county. But, just because we're going through difficult stuff, does not mean it isn't ultimately good.

Helping my kids through this big change has only been possible because I do the kind of work I do. Obviously, we are not living off the proceeds of Love From Planet Wine Cooler.

No. My dirty little secret is that I am a ghost writer. I write everything from newsletters to blog entries and advertisements to books for other people. In fact, I recently finished working on a book about new discoveries in skin health. My favourite work comes from helping scientific, medical and technological experts who can't write to translate their work, ideas and plans into books everyone can read. I stick to hard topics so I have less competition. Business and general ghost writing is more cut throat because more people can do it.

I work hard, most of the time, but I can leave my desk at 3 o'clock and take the dog to pick up my very own children. I don't have the flexibility to give into other distractions, but being there for the kids right now is important.

When I am not on project, I have to do things like update my web site, build my twitter following (I'm @baggyk by the way), manage my accounts and get my resumé into decent shape. These are the things all business people have to do and I have to get better at integrating them into my daily life.

That does mean I'm a bit slack about posting recent publications.

One of my Finnegan Stories was recently Published in Suddenly Lost in Words Volume 3.

And, one of my Dry Stories has been published onWild Violet.

Being able to come to this blog, when I can, is a huge relief. My life might be chaotic to live, but when I can sum it all up into a monthly blog post? It really doesn't seem that difficult.

CONGRATS to Marianne who won the little Celebration little Contest I outlined below.

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It's summer in my part of the world and my little family and I have been enjoying ourselves with visits to weddings, pow wows, libraries and swimming pools.

I think it's time to share a little joy.

The first Kindle device, or Kindle app owner, to leave a comment below and email me with the subject line "I Am First" will win a copy of my eBook Love from Planet Wine Cooler. My email address is baggyk (at) yahoo (dot) com.

This contest is open until the first comment/email is received and closed when I update it with the winner info!

When I was 19 I had cancer. It was Hodgkin's Disease, which if you have to have cancer is the kind to get. Treating the disease was one bad year out of my life and, since then, I might have lived differently than others who haven't faced threats like serious illness.

Whatever life has to offer, I want to try it.

That does not mean it's all reckless abandonment, but I have taken some big risks.

I haven't been as careful with my career or guarded my future earning potential as carefully as other, smarter people. I have loved and created relationships based purely on that golden light of beauty and longing I saw in another, without ensuring that we had all the other boring components to go through life together with cooperation and care. I have indulged my children in their thoughts, feelings and impulses just because life is short and childhood is just a few seconds of being nurtured and held close unconditionally.

And, I've worked and written and taught and learned every moment of every day of my life. Once, I showed my resume to someone who said, "I see you do exactly what you want to do and nothing else."

That's not 100% true, but I wish it was.

Of course I have made sacrifices and compromises, but I have also never done anything I am ashamed of. Writing, teaching, consulting, editing and ghost writing all rely on the same skill sets and character traits. Doing all of them keeps me connected to every aspect of life and strengthens my connections to friends and family and colleagues.

I experiment. Sometimes I make entertaining mischief and sometimes I make mistakes. It's all part of the art of living. I'm not sure it's great for my development as a writer, as an artist, but if it strengthens my sense of community, my sense that there is a reason for everything, then I feel more complete and I think that is worth celebrating.

Speaking of celebrations, I recently got to read at the Toronto launch of Friend. Follow. Text. It was one of those moments in life that could have gone all wrong. I had to jump on the bus to Toronto immediately after work and, of course, rush hour traffic and bus company schedules conspired to make me late. I missed the other readings, I left friends I wanted to meet there waiting and the DJ had found the crowd's groove by the time I arrived. And still, everything worked out. Editor Shawn Syms stopped the music and told me to project, so I raised my voice and there, in the crowded Cafe, I used my story from the book to connect with everyone there. It was a moment that made me so happy to be alive.

And those are the moments I am always searching for. Whether I am writing about adopting our dog,or back to school shopping, or putting together a collection of short stories like Love From Planet Wine Cooler. It's all about experimenting until that connection with others is created and shared.

It's often said that you need to spend money to make money.

I'm not a gambler, but I do like the song and if there is ever a time to learn something from Kenny Rogers, especially via the Muppet Show, it's probably during this era of unrestrained hopefulness and rampant insecurity. Not that I am an advocate of casinos or any other kind of voluntary tax. In fact, I try to stay away from any business that might make organized crime another cent.

That said, I've started a $55 experiment on a Goodreads ad for Love From Planet Wine Cooler.

For most investments, self-publishing has been relatively risk-free for me. I had a lot of help from friends to do the cover and copy edit. Almost all of the stories had been published elsewhere before they appeared in the collection, so I got paid for writing them before I even tried to sell the book.

$55 is not a huge amount, but the difference between gambling and an experiment is writing down the observations and drawing conclusions based on those experiments. I will be sharing the observations about this experiment here on this blog.

To be honest, I have not followed the Goodreads ad best practices that they outlined in a Powerpoint slideshow I scrolled through.

According to their guide, I should have bid 50 cents per click-through and I only bid 11 cents. This will effect how often and at what time of day my ad appears on the site. I also put my own site, http://www.katebaggott.com as the destination of my click through rather than my Goodreads author profile. I will see how things go and switch to their way if things look really dismal.

I'm not sure if you can view my campaign dashboard, but as I write this, my ad had been viewed 13 times and has a 0% click through rate. Since it has only been up for an hour or two, that's not bad.

If any of the other authors reading this would like to share their experiences with a campaign like this, I would really like to hear them!

Here is the first report in my series on the $55 Goodreads Ad Experiment.

I did a little math. According to Goodreads, they have a click-through rate of 0.05%. That means one user per 2000 who view the ad clicks on it. As far as these things go, that is pretty much an industry standard. I have only ever intentionally clicked on an ad 2 or 3 times since I started using the Internet in 1995. My experience on Twitter is similar, statistically speaking. About one in 2000 "followers" actually buys my book (I've probably come into contact with between 2500 and 3000 followers over the past few years considering changing following/unfollowing patters).

My per-click bid of 11 cents meant that the ad for Love From Planet Wine Cooler was being viewed about 100 times per day. That means I could expect a single click-through after about 20 days. At that rate, the $55 experiment would last about 3 years. As interested as I am in experiments, if I had that kind of attention span, I would have a Phd.

A few days, I increased my bid to 12 cents and the number of views increased to 140-150 per day. Today, I increased it to 13 cents to see if the general click-through rate translates directly to my campaign.

What is more interesting is whether or not a click-through translates into a sale.

If you read my last blog post, you'll already know that my little family and I are going through some tough times right now.

Living under the threat of court appearances and legal fees doesn't dominate my every thought. There are lots of completely normal events and activities that fill our time in hugely meaningful ways.

One of the most normal events happening to me right now is the launch of Dry Stories with Morning Rain Publishing. This is what writers do. They write books and get them published. They share the links to KOBO and to Amazon so their fans (I have at least 8) can buy those books. Today, I have a completely normal task to complete in announcing the release of my new book.

It feels good to be normal.

There is also one way it feels good to be abnormal. When I was in elementary school and was being bullied every day, I never imagined that I would one day be surrounding by a crowd of loving and dedicated friends, but I am.

So, it is my great privilege to share with you the abonormal and remarkable list of people who populate the Dedication and Acknowledgements notes from Dry Stories:

"Dedicated to Brian and Mary Christina for taking me on every adventure.

"Acknowledgements become giant tasks with the expressions of love they invite an author to make, even when they are written for short books. To everyone at Morning Rain publishing, I send my thanks for the privilege of your attention and your hard work to make short books a big deal.

"I once got a fortune cookie that said: “Your greatest treasure is the friends you have.” No other form of divination has ever been so accurate.

"While I may have forgotten a name or two on this list in hurry and confusion, I have not forgotten your place in my heart. To Luna Kwan, Amanda and Judith Allan, Regina and Don Moorcroft, Cecilia Moorcroft and Annie Moorcroft, Karrie Porter and Karrie Bannerman, to Renee Frigault, Ali Hewison, Michael Prescott, Yvonne Young, Dawne Grummett, Shani Ferguson, Christina Zola, Jordan Christensen, Jennifer Mason, Joanne Clendening-Kasunic, Anita Windisman, L.Ward, Pete Bevin, Sylvia Degrow, Jane and Pat Dunphy, Elinor Hughes, Kevin Powell, Andrew Noble, Dondy Razon, Rhonda Sussman, Meshell Gudz, Laurie Smyth, Vanessa Stockton, Marina Zvetina, Margaret Wolfhart-Stoll, Sharon Kavli, Kristine Williams, Robin Hotton, Jennifer Bogart, Sarah Hagarty, Maral Maclagan, Elmar Kirchner, Ingo Saatweber, Marianne O’Neil, Alison Fraser, Rachel Kremen, Juliane Okot-Bitek, Leanne and Steven Cvetan, Tanya Fusco, Sandy Feldman, Allison Paige, Matthew Burpee, Jennifer Evans, Sonja Oldwin, Jill Hodges, Stacy King, Michele Marques, Suzanne Roberts, Allison Martin, Robert Land and Jean Bridge, Laurie Boese, Jocey De la Fontaine, Rebecca Morgan Quin, Kelly Peters, Yvonne Bobrowski, Bill Sweetman, Trevor Twining, Trishia DiFruscio, Cheri Raymond, Jenna Kane, Shawn Syms, Kirsty Alke, Gloria Gamat, Sean Sullivan, Anne Field, Gareth Hackett and David Carmichael I send my thanks for rescuing me from threats both internal and external. To you I send my best sense of obligation and my heartfelt promise to pay it forward. You have been my precious sources of strength and hope in times of scarcity and fear.

"To my brother Owen, my sister Sarah and our mother Cathy Baggott, I send my endless thanks for that special combination of chaos and security you bring to my creativity and to my heart."

Thank you. I couldn't have made this perfectly normal launch post without you.

There is a yellow highlighter glowing on the pages right beside my keyboard. I am sitting in an office downtown with a ghost writing assignment that is already late. It is sitting beside me while I write this post, reminding me that I have bills to pay and other people's brilliant ideas to translate into a language with universal appeal.

It is easy to dismiss ghost writing as something I do just to pay the bills, but it is more complicated than that. Other people's ideas, their work and their research is every bit as interesting as my own. When I think about what is going on in my own life too much, the opportunity to crawl into someone else's head for a while is a huge blessing.

Plus, other people know how to sell their own books to readers. I'm still struggling to find an audience for my books, but I'm not too upset about it. Reading is often a time and place situation.

And then there's the end of the famous author fantasy. Last night, while I was taking a break procrastinating avoiding the laundry and dishes not ghost writing, I was reading Blue Nights by Joan Didion whose work I've admired since I read Slouching Toward Bethlehem as a university student. It reminded me that, really, being a famous author protects you from nothing. You still have to experience tragedy, worry, loss and mortality. You can use the prettiest synonyms for all of those things, but eventually the text runs out for all of us.

Obviously, I need to start reading some cheerier stuff. Any suggestions?

Before I got distracted by municipal politics, the school board election, and wonderful global experiments involving three continents, I talked about writing and selling my books.

Mostly, I talked about not selling books. I tried different marketing tricks both on Goodreads and on Twitter. I had friends engage in virtual festivals of link sharing. At one point, I even said, "I am not asking you to buy my book, but I do hope a few of your friends will like the idea."

The truth is, as much as I prefer the elegant suggestion to the brash ask, the brash ask leads to sales...just not the way people do it on twitter.

When I was a girl, I worked with my parents in their antique business. I was good at sales and I have memories of favourite customers, like the Princeton professor with his exotic New Jersey accent who thought he'd tell me how to recognize hand blown glassware. Sure, that was the kind of thing my parents taught me in the cradle, but it was motivated by joy and excitement. And, he bought the hand blown glass bottle that had also been hand painted with violets.

But here's the thing, the professor was looking for hand blown and hand painted glassware. He valued it. It was an easy sell and I gave him $2 off because he loved it and I wanted him to buy it.

Books don't work that way. I don't think they can. Sure, maybe there is a similar model when an author is completely self-published and goes out to events all the time to meet people and talk to them. But, in publishing models there are just too many people who invest too much time and energy and need to get paid.

And that means we can't dance around making elegant suggestions that you might *love* my books. Instead, we have to find some way to be brash and say, hey, "you like to read AND you've got five bucks. Why don't you just go buy, Dry Stories or Love From Planet Wine Cooler"?