SITUATION UPDATE! Ebook Deal, Short Story Sale, and Embracing Shamelessness!

Been a minute, friends and fiends, but I’ve got some bits and pieces to share! If you’ve got five minutes to spare, hit the Read More link to check out what I’ve been up to.

First up, I realize I should’ve dropped this nugget at the top of the month (and I’ve got some thoughts about author marketing, which I’ll share below) but my novel THE NIGHTSHADE CABAL has been on sale for just $1.99 for the month of March. That’s the ebook, of course, but the price should be good on any platform/retailer you’re buying your digital reads from for the next seven days.

The best time to have read THE NIGHTSHADE CABAL was a while ago! The next best time is right now!

Books2Read LINK: https://zurl.co/jT9a

Second bit of news, I’ve landed a short story sale! My next story, “For Want of One Good Friend,” will be appearing in the anthology PRAIRIE DEVIL later this year. Edited by Stacey Kondla and published by the good folks at Prairie Soul Press, I can scarcely tell you how pleased I am to have been offered a spot in this book. I think this story is one of the best things I’ve written to date, and I’m looking forward to seeing it out there in the world.

Finally, some thoughts on author marketing and the writing community, and what I’m calling Embracing Shamelessness. I don’t have an endless budget (or any budget, to be honest) to hire out the marketing of my writing to a firm or freelancer. I make my own graphics and videos, and I run my own social media accounts. As a parent of a young child and someone who works full-time, I do most of my writing in stolen moments… and my marketing gets squeezed into even rarer moments carved out where and when I can.

I realized a while ago that many of the most successful creative people I know are not necessarily the most talented, the most skilled, or the most productive. They’re the ones who bust their asses every day to put their name and their work in front of as many eyeballs as possible. I’ve tried to put this into action this month, making multiple posts on both Twitter and Instagram about the ebook deal each week. The results have been, well, what one might expect… THE NIGHTSHADE CABAL has been in Amazon.com’s Top 100 in its category a few times this month. And that’s Amazon.com, not just .ca!

I’ve enjoyed great support from friends in the online writing community this month, as well, with several writers I admire the heck out of taking the time to repost and share my posts. Earning the respect of your peers is an amazing feeling! And when it comes to those marketing budgets, there’s something else about the importance of those boosts which cannot be overstated. I won’t get into the numbers here, but the cost of ads on social media is really a wash for many authors. In many cases, we end up paying more per clickthrough than we earn in royalties from the resulting sale… and that’s assuming the customer ends up buying the book.

Anyway, I am by nature someone who very much does not want to be a bother. I don’t like to impose on others or ask for help. When it comes to marketing my book, I tend to let this part of my personality get the better of me. I mean, I don’t want to seem like I’m spamming my friends by posting about my book all the time, right? Well, this month I embraced shamelessness, made my posts, and I can’t argue with the results. But more importantly, the support from my community I mentioned above? I wouldn’t have seen that if I hadn’t been making those posts about my book.

Seeing sales figures trend up has been nice. I won’t pretend it hasn’t been! But seeing my fellow writers raise me up to get there? That has been priceless.

CHRIS PATRICK CAROLAN is an author, editor, and hovercraft enthusiast, originally from Glasgow but now based in Calgary, Alberta. He writes science fiction, fantasy (urban and epic), steampunk, and horror, though he has also been known to turn to crime to make ends meet. Crime fiction, that is. His first novel, THE NIGHTSHADE CABAL, was published by Parliament House Press in 2020, and was a finalist for the Crime Writers of Canada Awards of Excellence ‘Best First Novel’ award. He can be found on social media as @cpcwrites but–consider this fair warning–it’s mostly wisecracks about McNuggets.

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