Amazon Giveaway in Progress

I'm running a giveaway over at Amazon for four free copies of Finishing Kick. I have no idea how this will turn out (though I suspect it will cost more money than I get back in sales), but thought it would be interesting to try it out.

The link is https://giveaway.amazon.com/p/f955d115882fed9f .

If I can ask a small favor, could you share this on Facebook, or retweet on Twitter, when you see it? Or, if you get this by email, think about forwarding it to one or two (please, not your whole contact list!) that might be interested.

For my author friends, email me in a week or so and I'll let you know what I think.

Making Decisions

People hate, hate, hate making decisions and will do almost anything to avoid having to do so. They find it so challenging that they will willing and enthusiastically allow others to make a decision for them. If you doubt it, wait until your spouse comes home from a hard day at work and ask him or her what they want for dinner. I bet the answer is....whatever, you decide. Anybody that is involved in sales recognizes this - the client who procrastinates on picking the house and wants to see one more listing, the car buyer who wants to try that red job at the corner of the lot that's almost exactly the same as the blue one he's sitting in, the child that can't make up her mind on which piece of Halloween candy she wants.

For the sales person, guiding this individual to a decision is part and parcel of the job. A good sales person will help you achieve your goal whether it's buying the right car (for me, the FJ Cruiser - a rig my wife still considers the second ugliest vehicle ever made) or what style to cut your hair. It's also a process that can be fraught with abuse if the sales person puts their interest ahead of the customer's.

Unfortunately, that doesn't work in most situations - there's no sales person to help you run every aspect of your life. And, in part, the way we live our lives is a problem. Many of us have careers that require us to make decisions, lots of them, every day. This process of making decisions wears us down.

They even have a name for it. Decision fatigue. It's real, documented in multiple studies and pernicious. Factor in the 24/7 nature of our world and the problem becomes enormous. The more decisions that you are required to make, the more fatigued you become and the actual quality of your decisions drops.

There are a couple of strategies to deal with decision fatigue that can be helpful.

First, for many routine things, right-size the amount of energy you commit to the process. Not everything was meant to be agonized about. Who you are going to spend the next 50 years with does not require the same level of intensity as whether to have dessert - or shouldn't.

Checklist can be handy and so can schedules. When I am doing an inspection, I maintain a mental checklist of all the things that I will be looking at and, in many cases, certain indicators lead to automatic responses. These trip wires relieve me of the constant decision-making process on something as simple as a drip from a faucet and allows me to focus on that odd crack in the foundation. Breakfast is a checklist item - eggs with tortillas or oatmeal with fruit, orange juice, coffee. I save the fancy breakfast decisions for Sunday morning when I'm relaxed and can dither over waffles.

Likewise, I set up a schedule to manage my decisions - which is why I've been writing at 2AM lately. It's on the schedule. I made a simple decision that I need to get more writing done. The problem is that I have a schedule that is totally swamped this month with cross country coaching two afternoons a week, helping with some of the meets, two training seminars on the far side of the state, a trip to Seattle for the Home Inspector Advisory Board and a trip to Spokane for the State Building Code Council meeting.

Somewhere in there, I have to work and make a couple of bucks to keep the lights on - plus, I like eating. So does the dog.

The solution was to build some dedicated time onto the schedule. Since I'm often up at 2AM anyway, I threw it on the schedule for writing. So far, I haven't needed an alarm and, by the time 4AM rolls around, I'm sleepy again. I grab another three hours of sleep and head for work.

Is it a long-term solution? I don't know. I doubt it but it is good enough for right now. Which is another technique to making decisions. Decisions fatigue often follows a desire to always make the perfect decision. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Save the perfect decision for the occasion that you really need it.

And remember the advice that your Mom gave you? To sleep on it and decide in the morning? Mom was right. You make better decisions when you're rested.

And now it's time for this sleepy guy to go to bed. I have lots of decisions to make tomorrow.

The Secret to Getting Appointed to State Commissions

I've discovered the secret to getting appointed to State Commissions. First, build a good reputation.

Second, volunteer to work for free, preferably at the tasks that no one else wants to do but that provide benefits to the community.

Third, get appointed to continue to work for free, still doing tasks no one else wants to do, keep providing value.

Fourth, do a good job.

More appointments will follow.

Note that nowhere in there did I mention making money. You might make money (honestly, that is - if you get on boards because you're expecting bribes, you ought to be thrown in the slammer) or you might not. Or not in ways that you expect. Life can be funny.

Something to think about for Monday.

Ps. It has worked for me. I'm a member of the State Home Inspector Advisory Board and a member of the State Building Code Council. The second one came from the first, a result of being effective and fair while we re-worked a few rules.

Discoverability

I originally posted the response below on The Kill Zone blog on an article by James Scott Bell about discoverability in an age of disappearing book stores.

***

 Maybe a question to ask ourselves before "how do we get discovered?" is "who do we want to discover us?"

The likelihood of being the next superstar author is rather slim and less a matter of good craft than capturing a social wave like pet rocks or hula hoops. Sometimes it doesn't even take good craft (or editing!) if my daughter's books are representative of the YA market.

I know very little about Amish fiction but I can take a guess that it is a closely defined romance niche in which writers are careful to maintain a certain level of decorum. I can also guess that the niche that reads these books are looking for a slower paced escape. The writers cater to this and some enjoy quite a bit of success.

The advice to write a great story, then do it again is great. So is the suggestion to have at least some public exposure. But to cut through the noise of the marketplace, we need to define who it is that we want to read our books. And it isn't everybody.

(Well, I'd be okay if everybody read my book when I am done with it but I hit lottery when I got married and had kids - expecting another lottery win isn't rational.)

My first book is aimed at 13-24 year old females that are runners. That's a niche. JK Rowling has nothing to fear because I could saturate that market and still not hit a tenth of her numbers. I can turn a very nice profit though and I have room to grow from there.

So the question becomes, what is your niche? Thriller? What kind of thriller? Who is the target audience? Why are they your target audience? Sci-fi? Hard science? or Fantasy? Human-good or human-bad? Each has its readers

Once you know who they are, opportunities present themselves on how to market your book. Since you are addressing a niche that already exists prior to your arrival, you can use the connections that are already built between the members. That's word of mouth.

I know that marketing is frowned upon by the better writers who feel that they are creating art but I have no delusions. The act of writing a book and placing for sale is an act of commerce. Marketing is simply a tool that allows the seller to inform the buyer of the product to be sold – in this case, my novel. I don’t want to sell them a lemon. I need to sell a good story that will exceed their expectations.

The art is in the craft and creation of the story. The sale is in the means and methods of the marketing. Targeted marketing is often much more effective than a scattershot approach.

How did I define my niche for the novel I just completed? I didn’t intend to write a novel of 13-24 year old females. I started writing the story that grabbed me and, after I got going, discovered who would enjoy that same story. I suppose you can identify the niche first and then write to it – many successful writers have done exactly that. Either way, now that I know the niche, I know how to market the book.

One cautionary note about niches, though - abuse that niche, monetize it without paying respect to the people in that niche and the word of mouth will go the other way. In other words, if you write just for the money, you’re likely doomed.

For all the business side of writing books, you still have to tell a good yarn or the reader won’t come back for more.

Remember the Name

Remember the name? You just were introduced to someone and, that fast, you forgot. My advice - ask for their name again. Names are powerful. This was hammered home to me when my wife and I took a long weekend together at the Bed and Breakfast at St. Gertrude's Inn. The Inn has a total of four rooms and each morning we met a few new guests as we had breakfast in the Monastery.

As we meandered our way back to our room, an elderly man wished us a nice day. He was travelling with his son and daughter-in-law to a family reunion and was dressed, as older men often do, in nicer slacks and button-up white shirts and blacks shoes.

"You too, Neal," I replied and walked ahead to my room.

As I put the key in the door to open it for Donna, Neal came out of his room and called down the hall to us.

"How did you do that?"

"What?" I was standing there with door open and really had no idea what Neal was talking about.

"You remembered my name," he said. "Why?"

Since I am in business - a small business that will never grow to a big business - I deal with people. If you work, so do you. If you don't work, you still deal with people. And one thing that I try to do is to remember the name.

There are also sorts of systems out there to teach you memory tricks to remember anybody. I don't use any of them but you might want to see if they would serve you.

Dale Carnegie - author of the timeless  How to Win Friends and Influence People - once said that the most powerful word in the English language is a person's name.

It is also the nicest word in the English language, something I knew but needed to be reminded of by Neal. When he asked me why, I floundered for an answer.

"Because it seemed like the right thing to do."

If you want to make someone feel good in an age where the bank and the doctor and the government are busy reducing people to numbers, remember the name. I promise that more people you ever realized will smile at you in appreciation.