Working on characters and illustrations

I have received feedback from friends and family that "Millicent Marbleroller..." needs illustrations. I did not illustrate the first edition (other than the cover) just because of the volume of work entailed. I found just doing the cover artwork to be pretty difficult.

The hardest part is visualizing the characters. Millicent was very difficult because I wanted to capture a very "every-girl" look without making her boring. This meant I had to be really subtle with the caricature, and yet not fall into the trap of typical illustration cliche's that make the character unrecognizable.

The easiest character to illustrate was the villain, Admiral Algernon Crackerhead. He is meant to be unusually tall and thin, with an arrogant, vain expression. I picture all the main male characters in the book having a very 19th century look about them - stylized hair, sideburns, pointed goatees, etc. Imagine a bunch of explorers sitting around an 1800's adventuring social club, or posing for pictures about on safari and you get the idea. The clothing, as well, is very late 19th century. I guess you could copy the look of the villain in Series of Unfortunate Events and you would have the Admiral pretty close.

I always had a pretty good picture in my mind of the General, but have found him difficult to draw. I picture sort of a cross between Teddy Roosevelt (think of the enormous grin) and Colonel Sanders, but throw in enormous mutton chop sideburns. There is a lot of 18th century advertizing art characters that fit the bill.

Mumbleskull is a pretty easy character to visualize. I picture him as a short, round faced man, balding on top, with wild white hair sticking out to the sides. His sleeves are almost too long for his arms. Pleasant, funny little old man face.

Nobbins is the one that gives me the most difficult. I don't even have a visual of him in my head. I can picture the body form (almost like Bluto in Popeye, or maybe a Paul Bunyon, John Henry style physique), but just cannot picture the face. My daughter Aimee says she imagines him looking like Jamie from the TV show Mythbusters (tall guy, bald, wears a beret). That might work, if Jamie had a large barrel chest and were a bit more gruff and scary.

I will scan my sketches in and upload a few as soon as I get a chance.

Moving the book via social network, friends and family...

Social networking via Facebook seems to be getting more traction than advertising. I am getting similar results from family. I am not so much surprised by the family thing, but the social network stuff surprised me a bit more so. Here are some examples:

Thanks Mom!!
I gave my Mom a copy of the book to keep. I gave everybody who came over for Thanksgiving a copy (well, one per household). I send her an email a few days later (I found something she left here) and in her reply she tells me she has sold the book already. Some friend of hers that teaches writing at the college she works for. Apparently, the guy even asked if I could come down and talk to his class about my experience. On the one hand, I don't know enough about publishing to really say much, on the other hand it would mean talking to a semi-captive audience about my book... which would create a little buzz and might even sell a copy or two. I told Mom I need to give her more books.

Thanks Sister-In-Law
My sister in law writes a blog that has a pretty steady following. She is also a manager at a rather large bookstore chain. She has given me some really great advice on how to get the book out there. She has a copy of the book (is buried in reading 3 other things at the moment, so has not read it yet) that she loaned to her children's section manager at work. Also knows other bookstore managers in area near me and said she could talk to them about a signing/reading and maybe carrying the book on consignment.

Previous Co-Worker on Facebook Network
First real online customer is a previous co-worker of mine in my facebook network. She bought three copies... one for her kid and the others as gifts to friends (I assume). Thanks!!!

Two Other Co-Workers... But Not In Network
I had two people contact me that saw my book on Facebook. One is in my manager's network (but not mine) and had noticed my manager had joined the fan group I created for my book. He immediately bought a copy. The other one was likewise in the network of someone in my network. He had read "Through the Looking Glass" and put it on his virtual bookshelf. After he did that, Facebook suggested he might enjoy reading my book. I do not know if that was from the ad I placed online (keyword matching, I think), or from the group... but it caught me by surprise when he brought it up as I had not really been talking about the book much at work.

I am still going to keep up the advertising just to see what it gets me, but I think I am going to put more energy now into the social network circles, blogs, etc. That, along with joining some forums, calling down bookstores and other manual stuff.

http://www.millicentmarbleroller.com

Losing my online advertising virginity

I have never advertised anything before. Other than a couple of paintings I placed on Ebay, I have never actually sold anything before. So, when I decided to self-publish my book (a decision based more on vanity combined with impatience than on anything else) I of course proved completely inept at getting it sold. Just having your book show up on search engines, or on Amazon does not get a sale. Nobody virtually "browses" the aisles of the Internet.

First thing I did was use my Facebook status to let everyone know I had a book. Generated 3 sales, all to one person. I guess my Facebook friends aren't in the children's book market demographic.

Then I tried taking out an ad on Facebook. Surprisingly easy to do. I went with a pay per click model just because it has no costs to entry, and because it is so cheap. I went for a really cheap budget just to see what happens. I posted several different ads to experiment with look, pricing model, etc. At first I just pointed to the storefront where the book is available for purchase. Then, on Thanksgiving, I pointed the ads to my website with a new page - better graphics, more explanatory text, sample chapter, etc. Then I tried posting ads on Google to same site.

A couple of observations:
1. your bid per click is a big deal - change the cost and exposure rapidly quadruples or more
2. the ratio of viewing to clicking seems to be about 3000/1 - although my ad with the weird "click the eyeball" theme generates more traffic than one with just a picture of the book
3. not one click has generated a sale - the new website has only been up one day (first day after Thanksgiving), so best to wait and see results
4. Google seems to achieve a higher click to view ratio than Facebook - although I have only run the ad one day
5. the value in advertising, if you have just one book to sell, seems pretty slim - the cost of the ads rapidly consumes all profit so long as nobody looking buys

I am going to let this particular ad campaign run through December and see what it yields. I have kept my budget pretty cheap, so no big loss if I get nothing of it. At the very least, I will have learned something.

Wrote my first book... and it is live...

It is a children's book titled "Millicent Marbleroller and the House of the Toymaker". You can find information about it at http://www.millicentmarbleroller.com/. It is available for sale on CreateSpace - https://www.createspace.com/3356688, Amazon, and Target (which is really just selling it via Amazon). I am not sure if it is showing up anywhere else.

It is somewhat odd seeing my own book available on the various retail outlets. I guess this is the essence of vanity publishing.