Calling a Book a Product

I’m pretty active in several social media groups. I’d been told that it would be a good idea for letting people know about my memoir, Becoming Alice. I’ve learned a lot in the process. I’ve met a lot of nice people who are doing the same thing I am, the only difference is that their book, or product as it is called, is different than mine.

On the various sites to which I belong, I’ve joined several groups, all related to my subject and interests on the internet. My friends in these groups all come to this marketing … oh, oh, I shouldn’t have used that term because we might all be kicked out of these sites … come to these sites from entirely different points of view.

I find that many of the members are selling themselves as experts in helping the rest of us to sell our products. Many more try to teach us to be successful by blogging. I’ve noticed that a lot of these products are things as diverse as beauty supply items to real estate sales services.

Some very small group seems to be promoting their books, also called products. This is where I have to register a complaint. Selling a book is entirely different than selling shampoo or insurance coverage.

I have read that we need to sell our books to target audiences. Okay, in my case that target would include many rings since the book has appealed to men and women, young adults, people interested in wwii, people interested in family relationships, people who are Jewish, or maybe not, etc. etc.

So, being unable to target my product anywhere specific, but rather to everyone, everywhere, I shall now go back to writing my next work and let the chips fall where they may.

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I Don’t Get It

I’ve been spending quite a lot of hours on my computer. Actually I’ve been spending those hours on the internet. There is a difference. If  I’d have been on the computer per se, I’d have been working on my next short story or novel, depending on how long it eventually became. Unfortunately I have only done about a dozen pages so far, and have rewritten them three times already. I get to them so infrequently, that each time I pull the work up, I have a different mind set and the whole piece changes drastically. 

But I really want to talk about the internet, especially as it relates to my book, Becoming Alice. I have gotten several reviews of my book, and luckily all of them have been positive. What I don’t understand is that each of them will give an almost complet synopsis of the book before getting to the last sentence or two in which tells the reviewer states what he/she really thought of it. That’s fine. I’ve even improved my original synopsis by stealing an idea or two from a review. I only worry that some of the readers who are checking the book out might be getting a little tired of reading so many synopses before getting to the meat of the matter. Hope I’m wrong!

Then there is the matter of checking my statistics, i.e. the number of people who are looking at my website, my blog, etc. Those charts look like the jagged line of shark’s teeth …up, down, up, down. Someimes they go way up and I get really excited until the next day when nobody checks in at all. One of the days with the highest activity was when a source in Brasil was visitng my website like crazy. I don’t get it! How’d they find out about Becoming Alice?

Not all the statistics are given in charts. For example, there is the Amazon book ranking that you can check. I haven’t figured that out yet. Last March it was somewhere around 190,000, by April 3rd it was 900,000 and on April 5th about 92,000. How many books do they need to sell to lower the ranking 800,000 points? Certainly not 800,000 books. More recently, last Monday it was approximately 1,500,000. Today it is 321,459. I don’t get it!

And another thing: It is clear that I love to write. I wish I had more time for my next work, but I can do a few paragraphs by blogging pretty regularly. Now, I have just found out that writers can get paid to do blogging for others. I don’t get it! Why would anyone want to have someone else say what only you can say in your own way? I don’t think that is what blogging is all about.

As to WordPress … I know I have to enter my Username and Password each time I get around to blogging. But why in the world do I have to enter my Password twice before it will let me into WordPress? I don’t get it!

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