Moving Forward

Hi! I need your advice. The initial push to sell the first book is largely over. I just cleaned up my desktop and put all the Melville stuff into its own folder. Sales are okay, but it will never be a living at this rate. Kristi and I don’t do the creative things we do for money. We both have jobs we don’t hate and the bills are paid. We do it for the connection. Someone loving our (Kristi’s) fudge, laughing at jokes in the book, or engaging with a conversation here are the reason we do it. In order to consider myself successful. I need to build a platform of about 1000 true fans. These are people who will read the stuff I put out, interact, and eventually buy stuff. I currently have nothing close to this. I need to grow this thing exponentially. I have no fucking clue how to do it.

There was once a time that writing regular, free, and funny posts was enough. People would check in daily, read, comment, and swap stories and jokes. When a book came out, they would buy it. Nowadays, I will write this and post a link to social media. Almost no one clicks through, less people are willing to read 1000 words, and those who do comment will go back to the Facebook or Twitter link and comment there, leaving this place a ghost town.

Some of my peers changed their format to combat this. Some switched to producing podcasts. Kristi and I developed a talk show format podcast, but never produced it because of time constraints and because it feels icky to me. Some of my peers switched to shorts/tiktok/reels. That feels even dirtier. It’s just not me.

I currently have three ideas for new novels that are good enough to produce. There are at least three more novels in the Melville universe. I have ideas for songs and a brand new guitar. I want to make cartoons again. I am full of creative ideas. I am also dying. I should totally get to work to get this stuff out of me before I am dead. Seriously…the clock is ticking.

Still, I am not going to make stuff and just chuck it into the void, hoping someone will find it after I am dead. I need people who are interested in receiving what I am sending out. I am willing to admit that I suck and no one wants to see it, if that’s the case…but I don’t think it is. I think enough people my age or older are out there and willing to be part of this community. I just need to find them. How do I do this? Do I buy ads? Beg on social media? Keep producing content and wait for someone to give a shit? Seriously, I need a hand here…

4 thoughts on “Moving Forward

  1. Cindy J.

    I have zero creativity so I don’t have a magic solution for you related to how to get noticed more. But I say keep being creative and writing!

    Reply

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