What's a fair price for a 500-page trade paperback?

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Buster's Uncle is giving you great advice... and for free. I know some consultants who would charge for that kind of advice

For the heck of it, I'm going to point out that I'm actually not at all badly qualified for this on paper, and not just in reality; my resume includes a B.S in communications, a short period after college as an actual full-time newspaper reporter, (which technically made me a Professional Writer) the bulk of the last decade doing all the publicity/promotion for the Hickory Chess Club -all of it free media stuff, RW print and online- with some success, and AC2, which is kinda playing on Transcend/Deity level to make it live at all. (And I've repeatedly tried to share my hard-won expertise with 'poly for 'poly's own good - and had Oerdin listen.) I do know better than to let my innate arrogance out to play openly all the time where people will see it, but yes; I do know what I'm talking about when it comes to flacking the free media PR/marketing...

[Elok]

The help is appreciated. Do the hashtags make the page show up for people who search for related things, or who click on related things?

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Related? I have no idea, actually. All I know for sure is that if I click on a tag, it takes me to a page with posts having that tag. I don't even know how to do a tag search without clicking on one already on a post, so I don't know how it interacts with Facebook's internal search engine. I noticed sisko using tags on something on the AC2 Facebook page one time, and have worked out the rest with trial&error and deduction.

-But Facebook is a huge complex of scarily astute deductive software when it comes to rifling through the email you gave it and figuring out stuff about you that you didn't want Zuck to know, so I think it's safe to assume a basic level of competence and industry in the search engine AI code so -working this out as I type- I assume the answer is probably yes.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

As for the thanks - sir, I am genuinely your friend, not least because there's evidence you'd bother to lift a pinky to save my life, which I've found rare online and IRL. I want you to succeed. -There's also some pragmatic self-service going on, seeing as if you were to become the next Steven King, it would be good for AC2, and some of those comments yesterday as my two promotional pages didn't do their SEO a bit of harm - I'm a big fan of Everybody Wins tactics, y'know...

[Elok]

N35tor: An inline glossary popup is probably not in the cards for the Kindle edition. Would having the glossary as a separate file be more useful than having to leaf back and forth? I can probably finagle that, and either e-mail it to you or put it up on Smashwords or somewhere. The latter might be slightly tricky since I'm signed up for Kindle Unlimited and I've agreed not to publish the book anywhere else. I don't know if that applies to small chunks of the book.

Tried a game of Hakamyette with my five-year-old (who's pretty good at chess for his age). It went pretty well, until he bumped the table and the little beans we were using as soldiers scattered everywhere. Alas. Also the game favors defensive play as it stands now; a sufficiently long straight line is hard to crack, and if you ever get a complete straight line across the board it's invincible. Will need to modify the rules to encourage aggression.

[N35t0r]

N35tor: An inline glossary popup is probably not in the cards for the Kindle edition. Would having the glossary as a separate file be more useful than having to leaf back and forth? I can probably finagle that, and either e-mail it to you or put it up on Smashwords or somewhere. The latter might be slightly tricky since I'm signed up for Kindle Unlimited and I've agreed not to publish the book anywhere else. I don't know if that applies to small chunks of the book.

Tried a game of Hakamyette with my five-year-old (who's pretty good at chess for his age). It went pretty well, until he bumped the table and the little beans we were using as soldiers scattered everywhere. Alas. Also the game favors defensive play as it stands now; a sufficiently long straight line is hard to crack, and if you ever get a complete straight line across the board it's invincible. Will need to modify the rules to encourage aggression.

I could have it open in my cell phone (like I do with the map), although thinking about it I might be able to do so through the Amazon app directly, so please do not do anything that might get you in trouble. In any case, I'm starting to slowly learn the language ;-)
Thanks for the effort anyway.

[Aeson]

The thing that sucks about Facebook pages is they will filter your post out of most of your follower's feeds ... intentionally and without prompting from those people ... as a way to make you use their "remarketing" capability. By "remarketing" they mean, pay us so we will show your post to people who like and follow you.

It's still useful. Just not anywhere near as useful as it used to be. I have a page with 111k followers and each post gets seen by 1k to 2k only. I know it's not showing to most of the people interested in the post, because tens of thousands of them end up going directly to the site or Google and searching around to find the new content. It costs $20 to get seen by another 2k to 5k. If you have a good sales pitch it can make sense to advertise and remarket still.

[Aeson]

The help is appreciated. Do the hashtags make the page show up for people who search for related things, or who click on related things?

It will be (or at least could be) in a feed when someone searches for the text of that hashtag. My experience with using hashtags is it's a good way to get a lot of bots posting spam on your page, and doesn't lead to much discovery by actual people.

[Aeson]

One way to market that can work very well is posting it in relevant Facebook groups. Join any groups which might have people interested in your books. Find ways that work within the group's rules (ask the admins if in doubt) to share your page or mention your book there.

[Elok]

I forget if I've mentioned this here already, apologies if so: one of my posts to my FB page a month or so ago got an "exposure" rating (or whatever) in the 600s. I had maybe thirty people like my group at the time. The post in question was simply my crude map of Corban, with some explanation. Nobody shared it or commented, other than me; I think one or two people liked it. Previous and subsequent posts with greater interaction got nowhere near as much (less than 200 for the next-best). Do you have any idea how that happened? The only thing distinct about it is that it offered me a $30 credit to boost "a post like this." I clicked it, figuring what the hell, as long as they don't expect me to give them credit card info, but lost interest and clicked out when I didn't see a way to use said credit on a more marketable post. I noticed the 600 count within a day after that. They claim it was "organic." Is FB playing mind games with me?

Edit: huh, now a more recent one has jumped to 400 reached. But BU and I had an enormous conversation in the comments for that one. I don't get how this works, but I guess if it were that transparent it'd be a lot easier to game.

[Lorizael]

Have you fallen into the bottomless pit that is tracking the subtle, inscrutable changes in your Amazon rank yet?

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Aeson isn't wrong at all - mark that last piece of advice well, and the example of our conversation boosting a post. If you simply get into conversations about anything that will be seen outside the circle of your usual suspects, self-promotion will have taken place. You have a mature, thoughtful, gentlemanly way of expressing yourself, that isn't just everyone's cup of tea, but will almost never make you look bad, or UNlikeable. Try to comment as your author page and remove a degree of separation - but it wouldn't matter much if any followups, you didn't bother and replied as your default personal account.

So one thing to try is to 'follow' a few groups/pages relevant to your interests, and comment on what pops up in your timeline when you feel like it. I dunno, there ought to be non-trivial numbers of SF fans among enthusiasts for Orthodox and/or Byzantine history and such. You're clearly widely-read with a broad range of interests and will think of a lot more... That could easily acquaint more potential readers with the existence of you and your book than some of the more obvious places like writers' groups, and without the hassles and embarrassment of overt promotion.

---

In other news, when I linked "Scientists say DNA tests show Viking warrior was female" yesterday, I included a #GurlPowah tag. Got a 'like' from a woman not one of the usual suspects - couldn't say how she found it -looks to be geeky, so more likely another way- but maybe the tag...

[Elok]

There is a group/sci-fi convention for Orthodox spec-fic nerds. It's called DoxaCon. Problem is, my book itself isn't particularly Orthodox. I meant it to be, but I played it too subtle because I always hate it when authors shout the subtext. Two Orthodox Christians have read it and neither noticed any OC message. It might be of interest to people with some kind of . . . orientalist bent? Dune fans? I don't know.

Have you fallen into the bottomless pit that is tracking the subtle, inscrutable changes in your Amazon rank yet?

Not much point when it's just variations on three millionth, methinks. I occasionally check to see if anybody besides JM has written a review yet, otherwise leave the page alone.

[rah]

T I occasionally check to see if anybody besides JM has written a review yet, otherwise leave the page alone.

Well once it's verified, there should be 2 now.

[Elok]

Thank you so much! I'm a fifth of the way to being able to use promotional services!

(Oddly enough, it says "1 customer review" at the top of the page, but yours is sitting right there under JM's at the bottom. Weird!)