"What's the Plan?"

"So what's the plan, anyways?"

by Dusty Miller

My new story, Throwing Chocolate, is now live on Smashwords, soon to be followed by Kindle and OmniLit, all in various formats.

Love is all about making the connection. How Mommy and Daddy actually met, all those years ago, really is a cute little story. 'Throwing Chocolate' has a romantic Valentine's Day theme. A short story.

***

So I write, big deal.

What is the plan?

Until you’ve actually written something, you don’t need a plan. However, my first really good story, Project: Passion, clearly led somewhere, and thus it spawned Rendezvous and Escape from Bondage. That’s still only three novellas.

However, a few sales showed that there is some potential here for someone interested in writing or any home-based business. With the internet and the rise of digital publishing for everywoman, the potential to at least make some money, maybe not big bucks or anything, is clearly there.

So I had some funny little idea and I basically just wrote it up.

Voila.

Four stories, or ‘products,’ if you care to think of it in those terms. I think that was Selena’s Escape.

Notice the elegant dress, the hair, the makeup. That's clearly not The Sasquatch Sex Tapes, right?

That one also allowed me to escape from the naked butts and go for something a lot more tasteful, more aspirational for the target readers. 

(No honest effort is truly wasted.)

However, it really is true that once you have a few titles, each one is somehow less significant, but then, just think about it—your first book or story, or maybe a poem, really is a big thing.

It’s an important event in your life.

Ah, but for the true professional writer, it's all in a day’s work.

***

A short story is nice and easy to format, and the reason is because it doesn’t take too long—with a ten year-old running around, and some sort of frickin’ crisis around here every day it seems sometimes, that’s important because writing, editing, making images, even simple uploading, requires tight focus on detail. The less time you spend on routine tasks, the better off you are because there are fewer interruptions…(yeah, that’s what I said.)

Put those energies into the creation of the works.

***

You want a good cover, even if you do it on the cheap. Don’t let the cost deter you—learn how.

Once you’ve done a few, it rarely takes more than a few tries to sort it out, and you get an eye for the potential layout of a cover before buying an image.

That’s what my buddy said, and I think he was right. Now he’s telling me that lately my covers are better than his. (He might even be right, and I concede that so rarely with males these days.)

So the novella serial trilogy, (whatever,) has the first book for free. That sucks ‘em in. However, any promotion, even perpetual freebies, grows stale over time.

Ah, but now I’m up to ten or eleven products. Why not write something specifically to give away?

It doesn’t even have to be a 10,000-word story.

Throwing Chocolate is themed for Valentine’s Day. It’s less than 2,500 words.

And, I can give it away for two weeks, maybe a month, then set the price thereafter, and hey, presto!

I have another story up for sale, and oddly enough I might be able to give it away next year.

This is where the marketing goes into subtle levels. They all build on one another in terms of exposure, attracting new readers at minimal cost in time and money, creating simple awareness of the brand or author name. It builds sales overall and supports priced products that are presently out there.

Now, my buddy, who shall remain nameless, says all of this is cumulative.

The effects of all this builds up gradually over time and at some point it gathers its own momentum.

The more you write and publish, the better your chances of success, which he described as a graph, with a vector, traveling a set distance over time. The only thing sales can do he told me is to bend that vector.

It can go up or it can go down…

My plan is to make it go up.

It’s crazy enough, it just might work.

I love you all. 

I hope you'll take the time to check out and maybe download a copy of ‘Throwing Chocolate.’ 

Enjoy the story.

(Smooch.)

Bye, y’all.

End