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GD Deckard

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9 comments on Overheard from the Sidewalk Cafe

Overheard from the Sidewalk Cafe

(The cafe where I can face Book Boulevard, of course.)

“If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by all the odd, sometimes counter-intuitive, often contradictory marketing advice out there, this blog post is for you!”

Throttling the Flood of Conflicting Advice


– Leland Lydecker, Author

“LOL – just saw a friend’s post. She mentioned she was rearranging her writing board. Someone asked what that was. One of her friends replied: ‘Like a conspiracy theory wall but for writing 😂’” – Francis LaLonde, Author, and Scholar of the Pnakotic Manuscripts (a fictional tome created by H. P. Lovecraft.)

“Scott Moon and I are doing a 12-episode serial. Each book is about 30k words. We publish every 18 days to make sure that we always have at least one book on the HNR and for half the month, there are two. We’ve made $4400 since December.” – Craig Martelle, Author

“You know you could just look at other book series and see how they’ve been done. I would tell you but I have GOT to get to bed!” – Barrington PI, Author

“I firmly believe my covers are selling my two novels. I haven’t spent a penny on advertising this month, or this year. But I made a thousand dollars in April.” – Elizabeth Grey, Author

“Statistics are like bikinis, they show the global and hide the essentials. :-)” – Leonardo Wild, Author, Director, Screen Writer

Listening to writers makes me want to trade my virtual cafe for a real one. Who hasn’t been envious of Montmartre in its artistic heyday?

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GD Deckard

Severely beaten as a child by a WWII hero and combat-induced-PTSD stepfather, the author, as a teen, faced the old man down with a shotgun and earned his blessing to join the military at the time Americans were learning about a country called Vietnam. The “lazy, no good son-of-a-bitch” opted out of combat and hard labor by becoming an Air Force medic, stamping out suffering and misery on Freedom’s Frontier at Clark Airbase in S.E. Asia and earning some kind of medal pinned on him personally by then Secretary of the Air Force, Harold Brown, for “Saving lives, etc.” There followed a summer in Europe ending in the first of happy marriages. Then graduation with University Honors, kids worth dying for and a career in business. Life is good. Author, The Phoenix Diary, Penguin, 2015. https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-phoenix-diary-g-d-deckard/1122175645 Founding Member, Writers Co-op. https://WritersCo-op.com Co-Editor, The Rabbit Hole anthologies. https://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-Hole-Weird-Stories/dp/1691225355/ref=sr_1_1 Founder, SciFi Lampoon Magazine. http://scifilampoon.com/ Contributing Editor, A Celebration of Storytelling https://www.amazon.com/Celebration-Storytelling-GD-Deckard/dp/1951716167 Current WIP: Code Blue and Little Deaths, stories from Clark during the Vietnam War. Recipient of the Psi Young award for Creative Biography.

9 responses to “Overheard from the Sidewalk Cafe”

  1. mimispeike Avatar
    mimispeike

    It is becoming very clear to me how exhausting the Promotion thing is going to be. And it will continue to be exhausting until your book takes on a life of its own.

    I’ll still be writing after I publish my Pied Piper episode, which is three chapters away from being done. I am going to publish my thing as a series of novellas. It’s a new strategy, to get something out there.

    I see now that if you don’t speak on Medium, everyone forgets about you immediately. Of course that would be the same everywhere. I’m afraid I understand the lack of participation here as a lack of participation everywhere. Am I right or wrong about that, you already published folks? We may regard talking to other writers as something of a dead end, in terms of building a fan base. That’s why I’m going to try the bumper stickers.

    Yes, this whole thing is discouraging arduous, but what else can we do?

    GD, I envy your energy.

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. Perry Palin Avatar
      Perry Palin

      If you’re asking me, Mimi, yes, my lack of participation here is the same as my lack of participation elsewhere. This is a good group, but I haven’t made the time, and that is on me.

      I’ve been invited to read a short story at the release of a literary journal next week. I’ll drive an hour to get there, talk to some real people in real time, and get a cup of coffee and maybe a donut. That’s not quite on a par with the love I’d get if I spent the time with my horses. But it still beats the rewards of any electronic promotion I have tried.

      Liked by 2 people

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  2. Perry Palin Avatar
    Perry Palin

    The most fun I’ve had this season was at a writers’ event that turned into a coffee roundtable. We had about eight published writers there, some unpublished writers, a professional painter who writes about the subjects of his paintings, some bloggers and magazine publishers. We shared experiences, advice, and jokes on ourselves, and when another group needed the meeting space, we all left as friends.

    No one had the one true answer for marketing. I liked talking to these guys and gals, but went away without any tricks better than my one-on-one, in–person contacts.

    An area newspaper food columnist has published a collection of his stories, recipes and jokes. He is selling his book evenings in area libraries and homes, where he tells stories, plays the guitar, and prepares and shares a meal with an audience. I’ve been to two of his events. He’s an entertainer, his Thai meal this week was great, and everyone had his book already or bought one after dinner. He won’t sell a million copies and he knows it, but he’s having fun.

    Liked by 2 people

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  3. GD Deckard Avatar
    GD Deckard

    This was just now posted, so, I copied it to share:
    “I’ve been lurking here for a little while, but I wanted to share something really awesome. I quit my day job 2 months ago, taking the leap of writing full time. Just did my quarterly numbers and I made what I normally would make from my books PLUS almost an entire years salary at the day job I quit. I didn’t expect to see the additional time spent writing and the extra books coming out pay for itself so quickly but I am so happy right now I could cry.”
    – Kyleen Neuhold, Author

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    1. mimispeike Avatar
      mimispeike

      Not to be a snot, GD … hell, I’ll be a snot.

      I see a dozen books by a K.M. Neuhold on Amazon, all with covers of muscled, bare-chested, heavily tattooed men, most of them part of a series:

      The Travel Boys, a series
      Sexy Nerd Boys, a series
      Unraveled, a series
      Many more.

      You want to go that route, have a ball. I’ll stick to my talking cat.

      On the other hand, Neuhold is laughing all the way to the bank.

      Liked by 1 person

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      1. GD Deckard Avatar
        GD Deckard

        🙂 I hear you Mimi. I am interested in what books are selling but I have no need to earn a living selling books.

        It does, though, indicate that once you find your niche market, it pays more the more you publish.

        Liked by 1 person

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  4. GD Deckard Avatar
    GD Deckard

    Good comment. Just saw it:
    “Consider that anything you publish is likely to have an audience, it’s more a matter of what will it take for you to find them.” – Douglas Benjamin Speck, Author (Pen Name: Nicholas Petrarch)

    Liked by 2 people

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    1. curtisbausse Avatar
      curtisbausse

      Yes – given the number of people who read, there’s almost certain to be an audience. It’s not so much a matter of us finding them as getting them to find us.

      Liked by 2 people

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  5. mimispeike Avatar
    mimispeike

    I have tried to find Elizabeth Gray, to see what her covers look like. There are several Elizabeth Grays, writing in different genres. I do see one who writes romance, and she does indeed have eye-catching designed-illustration covers that are fun to look at.

    Very nice use of type too. If ever I were inclined to read a light romance, these covers would tempt me. For they hint that what’s inside will not be same-ol-same-ol.

    I looked at covers for other Elizabeth Grays and saw nothing exciting. She must be the romance writer. She has four or five books, all covers in the same style, very professionally done.

    Liked by 1 person

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