Category: Writing Process

Experiments with Advertising

On By Matt FraserIn Musings, Writing Process5 Comments

Most writers want to have their work read. After all, that’s why we write, no? Ok, some folks write purely for their own catharsis and don’t care if another soul ever sees it, or perhaps don’t even want anyone else to read it, and some write with the (elusive and probably misguided) goal of making money, but most of us write simply because we enjoy seeing others enjoy our work.

And for that to happen, we have to be noticed. People have to be aware that the work exists and know how to find it, or it won’t matter how amazing the writing is, how engaging the story. It will languish in the darkness of obscurity.

There are many ways to be noticed, some more effective than others. We’re all trying to find those magic keywords that will maximize our search engine optimization, or SEO, and somehow draw readers in out of the ether, and yes, we find some readers that way. We promote our work on social media, engage with others in hopes they’ll engage with us, and yes, we find a few more that way.

But unless we’re already famous, that rarely turns into more than a trickle of readers. In fact, being too aggressive with self-promotion on social media is likely to have a negative effect, turning off potential readers who just want to engage in friendly chat and not see what amounts to endless advertising all day.

So it may seem almost counter-intuitive, at first glance, that advertising may be a way to get over the hurdle of not overly aggressively bombarding our friends and followers with, well, advertising.

What do I mean by that? Well, at the time I write this, I have just barely over a thousand followers on Twitter, and just barely under a hundred on Facebook. It took me four years to get to that point, though some people seem to manage it overnight, but I refused to play the various “follow-for-follow” games, mainly because they turned me off when I saw them, so I presumed they would turn off other “real” engagements as well. If all I do on Twitter is constantly push my writing to my existing followers, I’ll probably start losing more than I gain. And in any case, most of them will never click that link through to my website, even if they like the post in which I share my latest scene.

Still, at first glance Twitter seems to have a ten to one advantage over Facebook in terms of my reach toward potential audiences. That is probably offset, however, by the nature of those who follow an independent, unpublished, non-famous author on one platform vs the other. The majority of those who follow me on Twitter are other writers, some published, some not yet, some represented, and others not. They are there for the same reasons I am, yes, to promote their work, but also to engage with likeminded people going through the same struggles they are. In other words… not the general reading audience, but more like a professional association.

Facebook has far fewer people following me, and while many of those are also other writers, there is (I think, it’s hard to be sure) a higher percentage of them who are “ordinary readers” who are interested in science fiction. Still, the organic engagement I get with a tweet vs a Facebook post reflects that ten-to-one split, and so I’ve tended to focus more of my time where the greater number of people reside.

A recent experiment might imply that I’ve been focusing on the wrong platform.

I ran an ad on each of the platforms to see what would happen. No, I don’t have anything to sell yet, so there’s no financial incentive for me in this. It was just to see what kind of engagement I could drive with my story as it develops here on these pages. I ran them separately, with about a week in between. I posted precisely the same link on each (this one, here: The Silence of Ancient Light), using the same language and same tags (#ScienceFiction and #WIP). I targeted the same countries (United States, United Kingdom, and Canada), and targeted audiences interested in Science Fiction and in Reading, but otherwise left the demographics wide open. I gave each an identical budget of $50. The Twitter ad ran for 5 days, and the Facebook one for 7 days (the defaults on each), but the majority of the results from the Facebook ad still happened within those first 5 days, so this was roughly equivalent.

Twitter Advertising

On Twitter, the ad received a total of 3,288 impressions, of which 2,670 were “promoted” and the remainder were “organic” (happened naturally, and would likely have occurred without paying for the ad). An impression is just the ad appeared before someone’s eyes, in their feed, whether or not they interact with it at all. Those impressions resulted in 90 total engagements, of which 83 were promoted and again, the rest were organic. That’s a 3.1% engagement rate, which by all accounts is about as much as you can expect. An engagement is someone taking any action on the ad: 32 people expanded the detail to see the full text, 24 people clicked the like button, 15 people clicked on my profile to learn more about me, and 10 people clicked on the link to follow through to this website. 7 people retweeted the ad, and I gained 2 new followers because of the ad.

Since “link clicks” was the real purpose of the ad, that means 0.4% of people who saw the ad clicked through to the website. Less impressive, perhaps.

Meanwhile, over here on the website, during the time period the ad was running, I saw those 10 views on the page that was the ad’s link, though only 9 of them were registered as being referred from Twitter. Overall, the entire site had 35 views from 18 unique visitors, and I received 1 post like. This implies I had almost as many organic site visits as I did promoted visits, which may partly be explained by me having posted a new scene to the site a few days before the ad began running.

The ad reached 2,670 people, and 0.4% of those clicked through to read the “title” page of the story. A small handful of those 10 people then clicked on to read one or more actual scenes of the story. So, that cost me $10 per reader, and they weren’t very engaged by the story. Perhaps the story is just bad?

Facebook Advertising

A week after the Twitter ad expired, I ran the same ad on Facebook, as I described above. With few exceptions, everything about the ad was identical.

The Facebook ad reached 12,812 people, of whom 12,807 were paid and just 22 organic. Right away, we see that Facebook seemed to have much greater reach, nearly 5 times as much. But what about engagement?

991 people engaged with the ad. I don’t have the split for paid vs organic on this number, but as I have very few followers here, and only a single-digit number who ever seem to engage with my regular posts, I feel safe in saying that the vast majority of this number was due to the paid ad. That’s a 7.7% engagement rate! More than double the engagement of the identical Twitter ad. Of those 991, 48 “reacted” (clicked like, mostly, though one hit the laughing out loud button, and I’m not sure what to make of that), 6 shared the post (1 of those was a share of a share, so while not exactly viral, that is how those things get started), 1 commented on the post (and it was a strange comment, so not necessarily a positive), and 934 clicked on it. Of those clicks, 367 were clicks on the link to this website, and 567 were “other” clicks (on my profile, perhaps? it’s not clear).

Back here on the website, I tracked 384 Facebook referrals during the time the ad ran, and 901 views from 333 unique visitors. There were 391 views on the promoted page, and 1 page like.

The ad reached nearly 5 times as many people as the Twitter ad, and 2.9% of them clicked through to look at the website, compared to 0.4% of those who saw the Twitter ad. Instead of $10 per reader, this campaign cost me 15¢ per reader. That’s much more effective!

There’s an even more compelling stat here, however. From the Twitter campaign, only a handful of people read anything other than the initially linked page. From the Facebook campaign, about two dozen people went on to read at least the first few scenes, almost a dozen read quite a bit more than that, at least through the first few chapters, and at least 3 people read the entire story so far published, all the way to the end.

That tells me that it’s not just the advertising, but my writing is engaging at least some people. Not all, perhaps not even a majority of those who look at it, but at least some are finding it worthwhile to spend several hours reading 80,000+ words.

It is curious, however, that no one from the Facebook campaign chose to become a new follower of either my Facebook page nor this website. They read through all the work, which is as yet unfinished, but did not click the link to sign up to be notified when the next scene is available. I’m going to presume they bookmarked the site in their browser and will just periodically check back — maybe? — but perhaps I need to investigate why people are reluctant to hit that “follow” button. I have some thoughts on this, but no real data.

Next Steps

Needless to say, this is encouraging. I’ll continue writing as long as anyone continues reading. For the sake of being thorough, I should also do an identically configured Google AdWords campaign to see how that stacks up. I haven’t yet decided if I’m ready to spend another $50 to find out, but maybe.

Otherwise, is there much point to advertising when I don’t yet have a finished book to sell? Obviously I have no way to turn that investment into any kind of revenue, not yet. However, it never hurts to generate some buzz around the unfinished work, so that people are eager for the final publication. I can’t say if I really achieved that, but I did get my work in front of quite a few more people than I ever had before. And, I have some thoughts about where to focus my investment when I do have a book to sell. Indeed, this experiment turned my expectations upside down, as I had been led to believe that Twitter would be the more effective platform, yet the reverse was true, and by an entire order of magnitude.

Other than more advertising, this experiment has encouraged me to post more often on Facebook and become more engaging there, whereas previously I mostly only posted there when new scenes were available. Twitter had been my “engagement” platform of choice. I will definitely still engage there, but I will broaden my horizon a bit.

What do you think? Did you see the ad? If so, on which platform? Did it cause you to click through, and is that why you’re here now reading this post about how I manipulated you into doing so? How many scenes of the story did you read, and did the story engage you? Will you come back to read more?

Or, if you’re another writer, have you advertised, and if so, what has been your experience?

I look forward to hearing from you.

header image credit: Photo Mix / pixabay.com via Pixabay License

Breaking the Silence

On By Matt FraserIn Writing Process1 Comment

My friends, I have some good news!

It’s no secret that 2020 has been a less than productive year for me as a writer. Indeed, it has been more than three months since I last wrote a sentence of creative fiction.

Until today.

That’s right, as of today, the muse has returned! And while the next scene is not quite ready for publication, I can tell you that it is well underway and you should definitely look for it to be available before the weekend is out. I know, I know, I left you on a cliffhanger three months ago, but of course I did! I want you coming back for more, don’t I?

So, rather than go into a laundry list of all the (very good, I assure you) reasons why I haven’t been writing, I far prefer to tell you that I am indeed writing again, and feeling quite good about it. Perhaps the break has even recharged my prose! We shall see. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Stay tuned, friends. Less than twenty-four hours…

🚀

header image credit: Matt Fraser, 2021

Breaking Radio Silence

On By Matt FraserIn Podcasts, Writing Process2 Comments

An eerie quiet has filled the halls and chambers over here. Like ancient abandoned alien space stations, orbiting planets no longer bustling and buzzing with technology, the passages have grown musty with disuse, where they aren’t emptied to raw vacuum. Like visiting starships, wounded and crippled, responding to desperate queries with nought but static. Like a city gone silent, cars no longer jamming the freeways, buses running empty, the denizens hiding out in their homes while an unseen killer stalks the streets and marketplaces, ready to take the unwary traveler.

But now it is time to break the silence, to put pen to paper and fingers to keyboard once again, and… voice to microphone? More on this in a moment.

Yes, dear readers, three (!!!) months ago I last wrote on these pages, and then only to speak of my despair, my crisis of confidence. Our world has changed since that last post. Little did most of us realize that just a scant few weeks later we would be living in lockdowns and isolation, quarantining ourselves from friends, families, neighbors, and colleagues in a desperate bid to halt the spread of a novel virus. We have shifted our work patterns — if we still have work — to spend nearly all our time within the confines of our homes. We have become experts at Zoom happy hours, and also grown weary of hours in front of yet another screen, yet another camera, putting on an upbeat attitude and smiling face.

Even when we are healthy, and still employed, it hasn’t always been easy for many of us to remain in a creative headspace. I entered the pandemic lockdown already concerned about the state of my writing, and the additional concern about the health of, well, everyone has not helped. This has not been a productive time for me. At least, not visibly so.

Now, however, we begin to peer out from under our shells, come out from behind our rocks, and tread (carefully! carefully!) across the sands to dip our toes back into the waters of life. We emerge into a changed world, perhaps permanently so, but we are humans, and that means at our core we are adaptable. That is our survival trait. We adapt. And creativity begins to return.

I am ready to write again, my friends. There are three stranded astronauts who need me. They are desperate to find a way off that rock I’ve marooned them on, and without me, they cannot do it. I cannot in all good conscience just leave them there, so I need to write them a way out of their predicament. Well, some of them, anyway. No promises they’re all going to make it!

I am also ready to speak again. I am ready to try my voice at narration. Do you like audiobooks? Do you listen to podcasts? As I write and publish new episodes, I shall also record those episodes, beginning with those already appearing in these pages.

It will be experimental at first. I’ll be learning the ropes of producing podcast-style episodes. It may take a few iterations before it goes smoothly. But for those of you who enjoy listening to stories, and who also hopefully enjoy my stories, this will be for you.

And for me, of course. It’s going to be fun!

And it just may be a trigger to further spark some creativity and break me out of my funk.

It’s time to write. It’s time to read. It’s time to speak.

Image by Pierluigi D’Amelio from Pixabay

Crisis of Confidence

On By Matt FraserIn Contests, Writing Process4 Comments

Lately I’ve been suffering from a lack of confidence in my story, and thus in myself as a writer, and it came about not because of any criticism or anything similar that came my way. It came about because of a writing contest, a contest I did not even enter!

How can not entering a contest cause me to lose confidence, you may ask? After all, this was (still is, in fact) a contest that specifically does allow unfinished works, so it would seem like a perfect fit for me, yes?

Alas, as with most contests of this nature, the entry requires a synopsis. Nothing particularly unusual about that, and every writer eventually needs to come to grips with producing the scary synopsis. However, typically for contests, this synopsis is limited to a single page, double-spaced, in 12-point type, with 1″ margins all around. Oh, and the first line really should be a heading stating “Synopsis,” so that’s one less line to work with. That means the synopsis is pretty much limited to somewhere between two-hundred and two-hundred-fity words, which is not a lot.

The typical five-page synopsis written for an agent or editor’s consideration has an opening statement about theme and genre, a closing statement about character arcs, and in between summarizes all the major plot points that impact and influence the main characters.

That’s impossible to do for a novel-length work in two-hundred-fifty words.

So, a one-page contest synopsis should instead focus on theme and how the character’s growth and conclusion illustrate that theme, and that’s about it.

Trust me, while it might be just one-fifth as many words, it is five times harder to write! And to give you an idea of what two-hundred-fifty words looks like, we’re at about three-hundred right here.

Still, this is a very good exercise for any writer to go through, and it should not be impossible. Indeed, it should be mandatory!

But describing how a character’s growth and plot arc illustrates the novel’s theme is difficult to do when you don’t actually yet know how the story ends, or even perhaps what theme you are illustrating, because you’re making the story up as you go, by the seat of your pants, in an episodic nature because you publish each scene online as you write it.

After spending an entire day struggling mightily, and ultimately in vain, with this one-page synopsis, I came to the conclusion that my story has deep structural flaws, because I’m currently unable to figure out how the main character’s plot progression drives, or is driven by, the theme! I’m not even sure if the story has a theme. Surely a contest loser.

I brooded on this for most of this past week, and a couple days ago came very close to stopping all further development of The Silence of Ancient Light and starting over on an entirely new story, one that would not be pantsed, but instead properly and traditionally plotted. Which, interestingly, is what I was trying to do two years ago when I started SoAL as an exercise to distract me from my analysis paralysis of developing a plot.

The good news? After two years of this distraction, I still really do want to go back to that original project. I still think it has fantastic potential, and I now have some better ideas for how to work out the plot roadblocks I had encountered. That project, by the way, was tentatively titled A Drive of Light and Shadow, but I will probably change that (but I love the title, so I’m keeping it, even if it ends up stuck on a different story).

The other good news? After two years, I still think The Silence of Ancient Light has promise, and I still like the story — even if it is devoid of any theme and the main character is flat and without growth. I know some of you are enjoying it, because you have told me so and I trust you when you do, but I also know that not very many people have read it, so the sample size is not large.

So no, I am not discontinuing SoAL, I will continue to churn out (or drizzle out, more likely) episodes for you, and I will try to figure out my own angst along the way. Perhaps I can pass some of that to Anna in the story to amp up the tension, although it’s not as if she doesn’t have enough on her plate to keep her angsty already!

Crisis averted. Though I have decided, for the health of my own stress levels, to pass on the contest this time around.

🚀

For SoAL readers curious about that original story from two years ago, there’s an oblique reference in a casual comment Anna makes to Laxmi in the 2nd scene. Yes, that’s right, these stories take place in the same universe. Can you spot it?

🚀

And for those curious about the contest I almost entered, it’s the Pacific Northwest Writers Association Unpublished contest. The deadline for entries is in about a week, so technically it’s still not too late! But no, I’m not ready, so you go right ahead.

header image credit: user:Free-Photos / Pixabay under Pixabay License

Telescope (WIP)

On By Matt FraserIn Alpha Reads, Serial, Work in Progress, Writing Process2 Comments

(The Silence of Ancient Light, continued)

🚀

The ship was not huge in the telescope view, but her shape stood out clearly. Anna could see the double ring structure of the Alcubierre drive, one ring forward and one aft, both tethered to the central fuselage much like the orbital ring was to the planet. She could almost, but not quite, make out the blister of the observatory on the nose of the ship, and the bay windows of the cockpit just above. She could see the hangar doors from which she had launched the shuttle, open wide in the belly of the larger ship, awaiting the return of the smaller craft, a return which now would never come. That shuttle lay smashed and abandoned in the lagoon of a forbidden island.

A sense of loss and of longing came over Anna, and her vision blurred a little. She wiped the moisture from her eyes, upset at her own emotional reaction when she knew she needed to remain laser-focused on survival, dedicated to the task of getting her crew and herself back to that starship, more than forty-one thousand kilometers away, no matter how close the telescope made her seem.

Read more at

Telescope

(2,000 words; 8 min reading time)

🚀

Did I say last week that this chapter was a little slower? Well, it’s not slower anymore. We’re going to end the chapter on a cliffhanger, one that makes it obvious that the tension is about to ramp right back up again as we head into Chapter 7. Of course, you’ll have to go read the scene to see what I mean!

Seriously, it will take just 8 minutes of your Sunday afternoon. Go read it!

Are you done yet? Because I want to discuss what you just read! What do you think the ending of the scene signifies?

You may have noticed a few devices I’ve been using all along to ratchet up the narrative tension. Almost from the beginning, there has been a time lock, a deadline by which Anna and her crew need to figure out their own rescue, and in this scene I gently remind the reader that this deadline is approaching. Many stories use either a time lock or an option lock to introduce tension, but in SoAL I’ve opted to do both. As the scenes progress, our heroes have their choices gradually narrowed down to fewer and fewer options, and there are plenty of hints that later there will be fewer options still. Remember how many space suits they have with them? Hmm, yeah, future problem brewing there.

If you were Anna, what would you do next?

header image credit: user:Free-Photos / pixabay.com under Pixabay License