A quickie update in the business plan re-evaluation: So far, so good

As you're probably aware, I'm in the middle of re-vamping and re-evaluating my business plan. I outlined my goals earlier this month, and I wanted to use this time with you to give an update on my progress.

So far, so good: I'm through the hard part, a series of deep edits to three books: Turning Back The Clock and A Galaxy At War, which I wrote under my old 00's pen name of John Fitch V, as well as to Royal Switch. When I wrote that initial post, I had already gone through TBTC and chopped some 18,000 words and some change from the original book, removed head-hopping, as well as passive voice. I did the same with Royal Switch and ended up chopping 4,000 words from the original text and massaged some of the prose there. I had intended on re-writing the entire book from scratch, but after review, I think it's better this way. And that opening to the book? Not as big of an info dump as I thought!

Galaxy, though... it was as I suspected. Much like TBTC, there was unpolished writing full of head-hopping, passive voice... just a really unrefined book, if I'm being honest. I've said it before, I'll say it again -- I really wasn't a great writer back then. Great storyteller, sure. I weaved a good tale. Did I execute it properly? Absolutely not.

That is why it pains me to relay to you that I cut over 32,000 words -- more than a third of the book -- from Galaxy's original word count, turning it more into a story the size of Zombie Showdown or Scollay Love more than anything resembling the AGENT series; it's like the old dime novels, with some beef to them. Still, my hope is that the book is better from this exercise, and I will re-read the story around Christmas to make sure it is just that. I will do the same with TBTC and Royal Switch, then re-brand with new covers. My hope is that all three books will be out for public consumption in March.

And speaking of new covers...

So far, Terry has come through with four of the six new covers for Obloeron. I've gotten peeks of what he has done, and it's amazing. At some point this week, I will make the refreshed cover for Scollay Love -- which should just be the old cover, resized for paperback -- and I will get back to my website and make sure I don't have the wrong links for Apple iBooks; some of them go to the Euro pricing, not the American. I've gone through the links in the bookstore to make sure I have no broken links.

Phew.

What's next? In looking at my list, I see there are many things I can do. Copy and paste the AGENT novels into specific three-book files for segmented box sets. I can do that. The same for Obloeron. I can sign up for BookFunnel to distribute my not-yet-written freebie; I still haven't decided if it should be a Jaclyn freebie, or something else. 

I can start doing additional research for Glorious Rise. I can look into more advertising. I can do this. I can do that.

Really, so much still to do!

But the fact that I've gotten most of the really hard stuff out of the way... yeah, I'm happy with that, and my progress.

We'll take the victories, however small, as they come.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

Re-focusing, Re-writing, and Reviewing My Outdated Business Plan

Over the last two weeks or so, I have taken some time to do something I've intended for the last three years: re-work my business plan in order to reclaim my audience. The last three years, it has been rather difficult to do that, whether it be taking on jobs that break up the writing week or ones that prevent me from writing, period, or not having enough money to adequately strengthen my reach via advertising on Facebook or Amazon.

That ends now. But I also end it with a mea culpa.

For most of my writing career, I've made many mistakes -- but I can safely say that I've learned from them and now want to put what I've learned into action. I've learned that some of my books, mainly my earlier ones, suffered from poor writing. I feel that I've grown as a writer, with my more recent books showing that my writing now is crisp, clear, concise. It's my intention to strengthen those books by any means possible and re-release them in 2021.

I've already done that with one book, Turning Back The Clock, one of my John Fitch V novels. When I started a deep edit on that book last week, the original novel was over 101,000 words. When I finished earlier this week, I had removed over 18,000 words, or the equivalent of 33 pages. I fixed the voice, I eliminated the head-hopping, and I just removed prose that simply didn't work for me not as the author, but as a reader. It's an 11-year-old book, but it reads so much better now with what I've done to it, and I hope the readers feel the same way. In all honesty, I fell in love with the story all over again!

The next book to strengthen is TBTC's follow-up -- but under my name -- Royal Switch. Again, something I messed up on, even though I've said that I did it for momentum reasons: I published Royal two months or so after I published Model Agent, and I wanted to take advantage of that momentum. Suffice it to say, that didn't happen.

I've known there were problems with Royal for some time -- in fairness, I thought way back then that I needed an info dump right at the beginning of the story; I've since changed my mind and earlier this year made the decision to re-tool that section. But not only that... in starting to re-read the book this morning, I've found amateurish, crap writing that is, to be sure, thoroughly embarrassing to me as a writer. No wonder the book foundered and has barely sold (11 copies since January 2015!).

What to do about that? Well, I'm going to completely re-write the book, all 75,000-plus words, almost from scratch. The story is sound, but the way I executed the book... I failed at that. My intention is to make the book better with stronger writing than I showed in 2011.

I also want to do something similar with another JFV novel, A Galaxy At War -- a book just as old as Turning Back The Clock. I have yet to print out and read the story, but I'm sure I will encounter the same problems that I have with TBTC, Royal Switch, and the Obloeron novels. It's another book that barely sells (5 copies since January 2014), and that could also be due to the mistake I made with the cover: it's relatively bland and doesn't scream sci-fi. I want to invest in this book not only with the writing, but with the cover art. I'll be talking to fellow author Daniel Arenson about his cover artist for his Earthrise sci-fi novels and Matt Verish for his stuff, as I'd like to improve that incredibly important facet. It will cost me a pretty penny, but as I've said, I can't be afraid of the cost.

What else do I need to do to regain the audience? A new cover for Scollay Love, new Obloeron covers -- Terry C. Simpson is working on those for me -- plus paperbacks for all of the above. I also want to pen a new 30,000-word novella that I'll give away as an enticement to join my mailing list, something I've failed at doing over the last five years; my hope is to get that taken care of by Christmas. My whole focus was on writing stuff that will inevitably sell, when I should have taken a longer look at the bigger picture. If I'm going to continue doing this, I need to do this correctly, and I need to grasp the bigger picture. I need to give something away to my fans. I need to spend money to gain my audience back. I need to do this. I need to do that.

In time, I will get that done. It won't be overnight. This is a marathon, not a sprint -- but I can't let years pass without doing anything, like I have since I first recognized the problem. If you want a problem to go away, you have to do something about it. You can't just ignore it.

The time is, as they say, now.

Thanks for not giving up on me.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

A First Look (Kind of): Cover reveals for Persuaded and Scouring

One of the things I promise readers who sign up for my newsletter is a first look at everything--and that includes cover reveals.

Earlier today, I sent out three.

Wait, what?! Three?! What do you mean by three!

Yup, three. 

In continuing the story of Det. Ricky Madison in Persuaded By The Reflections, which is coming soon and if you're on the mailing list, you'll be among the first to know that it's available, I would need to update the cover to his first book, The Long Crimson Line. That'll brand any future Ricky story (and quite possibly there will be a third), and will give David a template with which to work.

So without further ado, here are the covers to Persuaded and TLCL:

The hope is that I'll get everything--the new cover, ebook and wraparound for the TLCL trade paperback, as well as Persuaded's ebook and trade paperback--uploaded by Thanksgiving. And just so you know, you'll see Facebook ads from me in the next two weeks giving away The Long Crimson Line in .mobi and .epub format in an attempt to grow my newsletter coffers.

Of course, if you want to buy it, I wouldn't be offended.

And that brings us to the third cover reveal for Scouring Agent, the next Jaclyn Johnson thriller. The plan is to release Scouring in the first quarter of 2018. It's at third draft right now, and it's a tight novel. 

So... who's ready for some releases?! They are coming soon.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

The Paperbacks (well, some of them) Are Coming

You may recall that in the days before last weekend and the turn of the calendar, I posted my list of writing resolutions for 2017. One of my resolutions, right in the middle, was to learn how to do wraparound book covers for paperback books through CreateSpace.

As I wrote in that blog: Honestly, I should know how to do a wraparound.

Of course, there's a reason why I didn't, and as always, I'll be honest with you: I was scared. Scared to fuck up what is supposed to be one of the most important parts of a book. I can tell you that looking at the specs in order to create a cover--and this was before I discovered they had templates to do your wraparounds--I easily felt my rear end pucker with fear.

So with that known, I decided to outsource my paperbacks to people more competent in PhotoShop. First Trish, then D.W. Bruce gave me an awesome cover to Zombie Showdown. They delivered quality work, and I was proud of what they easily created.

But as my own PhotoShop skills increased, I felt I needed to learn how to do them myself, especially after last year's local Comic Con--July 29th, this year--made me realize that I needed more on-hand product. And as I wrote in early August, I wanted the product out in time for this past Christmas sales, but that didn't happen: the interior files I did that week, but I couldn't do the wraparounds. I sat on them. I decided just before the New Year that I needed to watch a tutorial on YouTube--seriously, there is a tutorial for everything on YouTube--and learn how to do it.

I found some time for the tutorial this past Friday, and right after that, I got bold: I did the wraparound cover to The Lone Bostonian, a book I've wanted to get into paperback for a while. It took me about half an hour or thereabouts, and I managed to create a solid wraparound.

Still, I wanted to puke afterward.

Saturday afternoon, I did the wraparounds for An Invitation To Drink... Or To Die: A Murder Mystery Novella and Scollay Love: A Romance, the latter under my D.L. Boyd pen name. The novella went through without a problem. Scollay Love, on the other hand... I didn't use the .psd for the front cover, since I deleted it a while back, and I found out earlier this morning there were bleed issues on the ebook cover version, which I used. As soon as I can afford to re-download the cover, I will re-do the .psd in order to get the paperback out there. So right now, Scollay Love is on hold for paperback.

And this morning, I did the covers to the Small Town P.I. series' individual books. Those went like clockwork, and probably took an hour of time. I'm expecting those five finished paperbacks, three novels and two novellas, to be available for sale by the end of this week.

I'm holding off on a few of the last books I need to do for now: Royal Switch, like I wrote in the resolutions blog, is on hold until the summer: I want to do a full revision on the story and move a few things around, quite possibly after I write the first draft to the ninth Jaclyn Johnson novel. In addition, I want to improve the cover and see what I can do with it.

In addition, the Obloeron novels aren't ready for singling--i.e., I don't have individual covers yet--so there are no Obloeron paperbacks at present. There are also no Obloeron single ebook versions yet, either. One thing at a time.

Still... getting these five books out is a great relief.

Now... about getting certain books out in hardcover--we're working on that.

www.seansweeneyauthor.com

Spring Cleaning, Spring Changes: New Covers

Ahhh, Spring is here (although you wouldn't know it by the air temperature). The time for change. The snow melts, replaced by warmer air and green leaves. Windows get thrown open after the winter doldrums, houses aired out. It is a time of renewal more than anything.

For yours truly, it is a time of change, as well. This morning, I pulled a razor across my winter growth, cutting the bristles away for the first time in months. My face feels clean, and I don't have the urge to pull my mustache away as I try to eat something with topping. It also reminds me that until October, I'll have to shave at least twice a week to let the sun down upon my skin.

But Spring is also a time of change for several books. Call it a Spring Cleaning.

With the help of author pal David Wood (we co-authored FREEDOM, a novella set in David's Dane Maddock series), we've played around with the covers for the Jaclyn Johnson series, and I uploaded them this morning. There'll be some lag time as they propagate on the Internet, but I'm hoping that within three days, the new covers will be up.

Authors do this on occasion to freshen up the book and give it new life, with the hope that a new cover and a new brand will spur sales. My old covers were good, and Trish did an incredible job with them.

Were my books selling? For the most part. With the addition of the feminine silhouette to the covers, it gives the cover a harder, thriller edge. I do lose the witty, boob-alicious tag line, though. But with change comes sacrifice. If anything, it'll keep me from having to come up with a new tag referring to the girls.

Hope you like them!

www.seansweeneyauthor.com