MUSINGS
Ben White is the editor of Nanoism, which I think is one of the best markets for Twitter fiction, and every night he posts a new story via his Twitter account Midnight Stories. Today he and I talk about extremely short stories, both twitter and hint, as well as Craigslist fiction and how Scrubs is the most accurate medical show ever. Enjoy.
In Which Ben White And I Talk About Very Very Very Short Fiction
Are newsletters effective in today's digital age of Twitter and Facebook? Hard to say. Just as Twitter and Facebook get updated constantly, people's email inboxes get flooded, so what are the chances a newsletter will have any more effect than any other social media? The reason I bring this up is because earlier this week I sent out my very infrequent newsletter with news of The Inner Circle’s upcoming release. Last year, I never thought a newsletter would be worth it, and who knows, maybe it still isn't. But then around the holiday, when my sales started picking up, and more and more readers started contacting me, I figured it wouldn't hurt to start a newsletter. So I did it the old fashioned way -- I created a form on my website where people could put in their name and email address and click submit, and then I would get an email notification, after which I would manually add their name and email address to a special address book in my email client.
As you can imagine, it wasn't my best idea. I knew there were several options for newsletter providers, but the trick was finding the right one. Most of the newsletters I get are for magazines or journals, very few author newsletters. And the author newsletters that I do get ... their quality varies drastically.
Anyhow, after much consideration, I ended up going with Your MailingList Provider. They seemed to provide just what I needed in a basic email newsletter. Initially you can sign up for free, but it's a limited service. I soon upgraded, though my upgrade wasn't by much (the price of the plans increase by how many email addresses you have on your list).
How does one get on my newsletter? By simply signing up. I know some authors will just add people to their newsletter if so-and-so emails them, but I've never liked that approach. Just because I email such-and-such, doesn't mean I want to be put on their newsletter list without my permission. So if someone does email me, I usually encourage them to sign up if they want to be the first to know about upcoming releases (or to have the option of getting advance copies of certain titles, such as The Inner Circle -- see what you missed by not being on my newsletter!?).
I'm sure many of the newsletter providers have some really cool features, and I'm sure they're basically all the same. The newsletter I sent out earlier this week was actually my second newsletter of the year, so I haven't really utilized the features much. Like, it tells me how many people actually opened the newsletter, how many clicks there were per open, what links were clicked and how many times. Even more, it tells me where in the world the newsletters were opened. The United States and United Kingdom and Canada are the top three, which weren't surprising to me, but apparently I have subscribers in France and Japan too. Say whaaaat? Finally, I can also tell what email programs were used to open the newsletter -- Yahoo, AOL, Outlook, even if the newsletter was opened on an iPad.
My point in mentioning all this?
Because it's friggin scary, is why. Talk about Big Brother. Only this is for some silly newsletter. Imagine the other tools used to spy on people on the Internet. I have Google Analytics running on this website, but I haven't checked it in over a year. I remember being fascinated by it, though. Like how it can give the location -- sometimes very specific location -- of vistors, and what kind of browsers they used, and whether they were on DSL or cable modem or mobile. Like I said, scary stuff.
Anyway, so far I'm quite happy with YMLP, though again, my experience is pretty limited. I am curious to know, though, does anyone think newsletters really work better than, say, Twitter or Facebook? Or even posting updates on this blog? Discuss.
As a writer who designs his own ebooks, I am always curious to see what kind of formatting the major publishers do for their various books. So I download a lot of samples. Sometimes I even read the first few paragraphs of those samples. One first line in particular has always tickled me. I read it weeks ago and I still get a kick out of it. It's by a crime writer who has published many novels with different major publishers. A writer who has even won awards. A writer who really should know better. Or wait -- maybe his editor should know better? Maybe I'm wrong and the first line in question is amazing. Either way, from now on when I come across a particuarly great first line, I'll do my best to share it. For now, enjoy:
Hobbled by a flat tire, Ashlynn's fire-orange Mustang convertible limped to a stop on the main street of the abandoned farm town.
Remember, traditionally published books = quality.
I haven't written or published much flash fiction for awhile. In fact, it's been over a year. Obviously my attention has been elsewhere. This isn't to say that I won't get the flash fiction bug again one day, but right now my workload seems to be novel- and novella-length works. Because, you know, I have bills to pay.
Anyway, the point of all this is I'm excited to tell you I have a new flash piece over at Matter Press. It's called "Our Father, the Music Teacher." I hope you enjoy it.
I wanted to include some audio here of me reading the story, but quite honestly I just don't have the extra time. If you've noticed, I haven't really been keeping this blog going as regularly as I used to. For a few weeks I was reading chapters from The Inner Circle and posting them every Friday, with the idea of posting a new chapter until the novel's release. But then I missed a week, and when nobody said anything, I got curious and let another week go by and then another week. As much as I enjoyed reading the chapters, time has become more important than ever to me right now, so I figured if nobody was listening to them, I wasn't going to waste my time. (Believe it or not, despite the short length of the chapters, it can take between a half hour and an hour to read it, edit it, get it uploaded, etc.)
Anyway, hopefully one of these days I'll be able to keep up with the blog. Until then, read the story, why don't you?
