The Writer's Journey - Log 3: Where's Waldo? Er... Where's Aaron?

 

My stomach is tense, and I can feel the adrenaline pumping through my body as I hit the publish button, committing money I really can’t afford in order to begin advertising. We’ve come a long way since my last update, and now that the ads are done, it’s time to look back.

 

Where’s Waldo? Er… Where’s Aaron?

When I started this blog, I had very high hopes of posting much more frequently than I have. Unfortunately, the realities of life don’t always care about things as trivial as our wants and hopes!

Looking back to June, the sweltering heat and lack of air conditioning had drained me. Sleep was difficult to attain, and it was even harder to hold on to. The heat inside the house itself reached into the 90s, and inside the booth was even worse. At one point, the heat inside my little makeshift booth had reached over 100 degrees. Thanks, blankets!

When I finished recording, it was hard to focus on much of anything at all. My mind was as foggy as the mind of my new main character’s in The Stygian Odyssey. It was difficult to even function at my part-time job. I even caught myself about to give way too much change multiple times. It was a bad state, but after a few nights of good sleep once the AC was fixed, I finally returned to normal functionality.

Even in that dazed state, though, I pushed forward, and the editing process for the audiobook went incredibly smoothly. I had a good system set up, and the process made things a great deal easier. It was a huge relief. I had been dreading the editing, since I’d such issues with it while doing the other books. It was always easier than the recording, but it was never easy.

This time it was. It was still very time consuming, keeping nearly all of my attention for several days, the publishing date looming. There were a few areas that had STILL scratched past me to that point, only coming to my attention as I listened back to the audio. So, with just five days before publishing, and just hours before the manuscripts were needed by Amazon, I had to make several minor edits. Thankfully, that’s all they were, too: minor. Necessary, but minor.

It was like that moment in old high school movies. The kid is scrambling to finish the test, his/her eyes focused on the clock, sweat pouring down their foreheads, and their legs shaking. That was me. I kept one eye on the clock, literally counting down the minutes as I finalized those edits. When they were finished, there was a mere 24 minutes before the submission window closed. It was a heart-racing moment, as the last thing I wanted was for readers to get a copy of the book that still had facepalm inducing errors. Despite it all, everything was done. The book was finished and finalized.

I spent the following day re-recording those fixes and editing them into the main audio, which again went smoother than expected.

Since the release, I have been building out the ads and the ad creatives to get this story out there. I have tested out several, but none were converting. The basic strategy of sending people to Amazon with link clicks just wasn’t going to cut it. I needed a new strategy.

With the ability to host the audiobooks directly on my site and to get them directly to the reader, I decided to focus on that. After all, I’m quite proud of the audiobook, and I don’t want this one to sit in the ether like the last two have. With that in mind, I brainstormed several possible ideas, finally settling on a video of a boat wake, the prologue playing over it, and key words being highlighted.

It took no time at all to find the video, using Pixabay for free-use content, and after 24  hours, the ad has been created. To give it a real chance, I also decided to up the ante. I don’t have much money, so $5 a day is a lot for me to spend on advertising. But this needed more. I can’t really afford it, but I set the budget to $10, and with my adrenaline pumping at committing more than I know I should, I published the new ad last night.

So, that’s where I’ve been! I do still plan to go back to all of this later and dedicate specific posts to each part of that process! We’ll definitely do one on the editing of the audiobook, no matter what. I have video and audio to show you the entire process, so that should be coming soon!

 

Why So Serious?

Why is it that my fingers shake, and my legs grow restless when I think about the coming weeks? Why is it that my chest grows tight and I feel like vomiting is a real possibility? Why does it feel like the world relies on the outcome over the coming weeks?

My body reacts that way and it feels like the weight of the world because, in many ways, it is the weight of MY world.

During all of the editing and publishing drama, I had also had a very good run of three interviews for a job with a company I used to work for. Things were shaping up nicely, and I was relatively confident I would get the position. After all, I had several current and previous employees vouching for me, and I even knew, and had worked with, those interviewing me. Unfortunately, my run of luck continued, and I didn’t get the job.

At that point, I looked around, and I realized I was running out of options. I’ve applied to more than 1,000 jobs over 18 months, and before this last run, I’d only had four interviews that entire time, two of which ended up not even being real jobs or companies. Now that my best opportunity had fallen short like all thee others, I didn’t know what to do.

The only thing I had, and still have, left is my writing, are my stories.

I turned into the editing, and that helped to contribute to my manic-like dedication to perfecting the details and zooming in on the ads.

In a way, it felt like the universe was trying to tell me something. Why were friends and coworkers staying unemployed for only a couple months? Why are so many others getting interview after interview? Why can’t I get anything at all?

Maybe, I thought, it’s because that isn’t what I’m meant to do.

I have put everything I have into the website, ads, audiobook, and ALL three books over the past month. I’m spending money I can’t afford because I believe that my stories will resonate if I can get them in front of people. I’m spending time editing and building and fixing instead of looking for work for 12 hours a day because I believe that what I am doing and building here will mean more, matter more, than anything I could do in the corporate world.

But time is the enemy.

Working just a part-time job bringing home $1200 a month, money is one of my most precious resources. I hate that it is that way, as I think making a life about money is a sad way of life, but it’s the reality. Every dollar spent matters. I have just a matter of weeks where I can actually SOMEWHAT afford to spend on ads. If things don’t show positive signs by then, things may slip back into a limbo state. My writing, my job, my income, my home, my sanity… They are all highly dependent on these coming weeks, and that is why my body reacts this way, why my fingers are shaking as I write this, thinking about all of the possible implications of yet another failure.

This may seem melodramatic, and maybe it is a bit, but it isn’t a metaphor. I’ve exhausted nearly every outlet for jobs, at one point having applied to every position I was remotely qualified for on LinkedIn and Indeed, and many I wasn’t qualified. Yet, not a single email came through. Locally, there are no opportunities for work, and even offering ridesharing services isn’t feasible in my BFE location. I’ve run out of ideas on ways to make ends meet. My mortgage is $1000 a month, and I make $1200. It simply isn’t sustainable, and I have tried everything else I can think of to get out of this. Putting everything I have left into my writing is my last idea, my last option, and if it shows no signs it will pay off, I legitimately have no idea what I’ll do. My life will be left in as literal a state of limbo as a life can be. It isn’t metaphor. It’s my reality.

 

What Keeps Limbo At Bay?

With all of that looming every single move that I make, I have set a single big goal to work toward, and many small ones along the way. If I can hit these little goals, I believe the big goal will follow.

I try to keep expectations realistic whenever possible, but with my situation, I have to aim big. I can’t let it creep, slowly building over months or years – though, in a way, since my first book is now over three years old, I have been building this for that long. I need to see results quickly. It doesn’t need to be successful right away, but it needs to show signs.

By ‘it’, I’m referring mainly to the advertising. It all kind of rests on that. If the ads do well, then I will see sales pick up. If they fail, I’ll waste money. It all hinges on them. To know what success would be, first, you need at least a brief idea of the setup.

Initially, I had been advertising with links sending people to Amazon. However, it’s impossible to optimize your ads for conversions when advertising to Amazon, so the results were never good. The numbers LOOKED good on the dashboard, with sub .08 CPC, but no one was buying the book. If no one is buying I can’t afford to spend. So, I have switched to focus the ads on the audiobooks.

On the website, I have a robust setup that has several integrations to allow free samples of the chapters and a direct download of the audiobook in Zip format. The listener can download it right away and listen anywhere, without having to download any special app. Not only that, but because it is all run and operated by me, Amazon isn’t taking such huge portions of the sales. Instead of having to sell dozens and dozens of books, if I can get to 5-10 audiobook sales a day, that would solve many of my current struggles.

I do not expect to get there right away, as I am still keeping some realism in my mind, but I have to try to get there soon.

For many indie authors, getting a sale a week is a big deal, and that was even the case for me in the months leading up to the release of The Stygian Odyssey, but I do think that there is a world where it happens. I truly believe in my stories, and I believe that if they can only be seen, they will speak for themselves.

Is my writing great, or even just good? I don’t know.

Is it smart to put so much into all of this? I don’t know.

Will people buy into the worlds I’ve created? I don’t know.

I don’t know the truth behind these answers, but I believe my writing is great. Smart or not, I believe I HAVE to put everything into this, and I believe that thee people will come if I do.

 

What’s Next?

What’s next? I don’t know, but I can assure you, we’ll find out soon enough.

 

I’ll be posting again soon, giving an update on how the results are going, and I’ll also give a breakdown on the more of the process it took to get to release!

Happy reading, everyone!