This is a good time to stop and look at how the site is doing. We’re halfway through the book, and the site has been up for two months now with pretty regular updates. I’ve promoted the book on forums I’m on, and I’ve created a Facebook page for the book.
My goal for this site remains; build an audience for the book. I feel as though Geoff did a tremendous job getting a theme that maximized readability. I have friends who loved the book and have helped me promote the site.
I planned on paying an artist to do some full-color illustrations for the book, as I feel like showcasing some great art is an effective way to hook potential readers, and I planning on recording an audio version of the book. All these things were planned for from the beginning.
But the site is not doing its job. It’s hard to tell from the analytics how many visitors are humans reading the book and how many are bots crawling the site, but it seems like the site has about 30-50 readers.
Having 30-50 people reading the book makes me happy. I love those 30-50 people. 
But the goal of the site was to build an audience that grew. To regularly attract new readers. It’s likely that I am gaining new readers every week, but not at a rate greater than that at which I am losing readers, and not more than 1 or 2 a week.
So in that sense, I must conclude things are not working. The Facebook page has about 30 fans, but most of those were Beta Readers and they all read the whole thing before I even created this site.
To compound matters, there’s been no response from anyone who was not a Beta Reader. Ok, so people tend not to comment, I understand that. We’d need 100 people reading each post, on average, before we got 1 comment. I think it’s safe to assume that someone visiting the site and reading each update likes what they read. But it would be nice to hear from the readers. Though silence is better than “this is crap!”
So what next? I’m not sure. I had two options in mind;
Plan A: Put the whole book up, make it as easy as possible for everyone to read everything, comment, link people back here. Build a community.
Plan B: Put the first 3/4th of the book up, then put the whole thing on Kindle for like $5 (maybe less, price points are tricky).
I’m leaning toward Plan A at the moment, as I think that’s probably the best way to maximize the number of people reading the book. And if I ever get to the point where I’m talking to an editor or agent, having not tried to sell the book myself may count in my favor.
The only problem with Plan A is that I still need to take an editing pass to the last thirty chapters. Up until now I’ve been editing 2 – 3 chapters at a time in order to get the chapters up here for people to read. So I’m considering stopping the updates for the nonce, and just finishing this “ready for the web” edit. Obviously I have earlier drafts which are readable, but they’re not ready for the general public. Even this draft will require the work of a pro familiar with the genre to get into publication shape.
I’m still planning on getting some art for the book and I’m about to try and record a test chapter for the Audiobook and see how people react to that. So the updates may stop for a few days, but the site and the book are still moving forward and there’s a good chance that soon you’ll be able to read the whole thing, all in one go, with just a click of the mouse.
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Alrenous · May 19, 2010 at 4:32 pm
Yeah I don’t have much constructive to say.
I put the site through wordle and got a very characteristic profile. I’m beginning to think of the thing as an excellent tool.
Yours was HEDEN so big that some of the other words fit inside the D and H. You seem to be flirting with the idea of Heden flirting with Aderyn, and indeed at the time Aderyn was the second biggest word. Brys is winning now, though.
It reinforces my impression that those are the two most significant non-Heden characters. ‘Course, I’m regularly wrong about stuff like this.
Halfway? It seems pretty short, then.
I do have one impression that might be helpful. You built up the Wode a lot, but it just seems like a background to the knights at this point. If this were a game, I would have put the knights off and gone exploring around the Wode. (…after trying to kill the knights at least once.) This is mainly because it seems like you might get magic right. (I like your prayer model.)
Lately it’s been hard for me to find magic that’s doing things that are actually physically impossible. Instead, it just seems like most people write (or program) magic just to be a way to do certain technologies on the cheap. It narrows the difference between SF and fantasy until the difference is whether your wand is made of transition metals or wood.
Other than that, stuff is good. For instance, Geoff really did maximize readability.
(Also, I don’t know how to write short comments.)
Admin comment by Matthew Colville · May 19, 2010 at 5:06 pm
Alrenous, you have the distinction of being the first person to comment on the book, as opposed to the idea of the site, or catching a typo, who was not previously a Beta Reader! I wish I could put a little star next to your name.
Probably Wordle only sees the front page, which is the last nine chapters. That explains why it has (to me) such a weird idea of which words are important.
Your point about the Wode is one I fretted over for a little while. I have a document called “Fixing the Book” which includes a note that the reader should have a direct experience of how dangerous the Wode is, but in the end I punted on that for a couple of reasons.
First, most of the action is yet to come. And come the end of the book, none of the Beta Readers suggested that the Wode be made more dangerous.
Second, I don’t think the average reader is either reading primarily because he wants to see the forest eat someone, or would put down the book when it doesn’t. So I focused on the characters.
Lastly, while it’s a valid point, there’s an inertia building I have to respect. Earlier in the book, I feel like a reader is more willing to put up with an interlude or two because they want to know more about Heden and what he’s about. Now, however, it’s time to get the plot moving in earnest.
Of course, a better writer would find a way to do it all, and I may yet get there, but it seemed like the kind of thing I’d be safe letting an editor chime in on, before I made any more changes.
P.S. I’m always wary of responding to comments because I feel like some readers might be scared off. Some people like interacting with the author, some people are turned off by it. But I figured: what the hell?
Alrenous · June 7, 2010 at 9:14 pm
I found the book through the rpg.net forum, which I was idly surfing. I also enjoyed the Altimate Rewrite, if you’ve seen it, which is by another aspiring writer.
I’m pretty sure ‘what the hell’ is the right philosophy.