Effects and Non-Effects of Publicity...

[seawasp]

Since Boundary was released and started selling, I've seen a few interesting effects:

Sales of Mountain Magic and Digital Knight have gone up. They're not massive bestsellers, but they had dropped off the notable radar some time ago -- dropped into the 500,000 range on Amazon. Now both of them are bouncing around in the 50,000 range. This still doesn't represent MANY sales, but it's a clear effect.

Boundary was "Instapundited" -- apparently the Instapundit blog is pretty heavily read. This did NOT seem to have a notable effect on sales. Of course, the Instapundit was pretty lukewarm in his mention, so that may also have an effect on the effect.

It'd be interesting, if I had any control over it, to select different apparent large venues for publicity and see which of them actually affected sales of books of this sort. And what KIND of mention would be interesting to study, too. I'd be interested to know if it's true, basically, that there's no such thing as bad publicity...

Comments

The long tail effect...

[murbin.livejournal.com]

Amazon is a primary example of the "long tail" effect. People are recommended your new book based on past buying history. They buy it read it, like it, and then look for more, which Amazon supplies for them. Wired had a good story on the effect a few months ago.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.10/tail.html

That reminds me. I need to log on to the Baen site tonight and buy an e-copy to read on the plane. The better half has to go to a meeting in Alpharetta, GA for a few days and I'm tagging along to play tourist and take pictures.

[(Anonymous)]

I bought your book after seeing Howard "Schlock Mercenary" (http://www.schlockmercenary.com) Tayler plugged it on his webcomic's page.

Well...

[seawasp]

... I plug his Schlock whenever I can, so that's good reciprocation. O'course, I think his readership is considerably larger than mine, as he's living on his writing, and I'm not living on mine yet.

[chaotic-nipple.livejournal.com]

I got "Digital Knight" in a care package while I was over in Iraq. It was pretty damned good, though it suffered a bit from "first novel-itis" (...so says the critic who's never written a book...). Are you gonna write any sequels to it? It'd make a good RPG setting, hint hint.

[shana.livejournal.com]

He's running a PBEM set in that world. Things have gotten INTERESTING.

Excellent!

[seawasp]

DK was, indeed a first novel, and a fixup of separate short stories written over a period of almost 20 years. It'd be surprising if it didn't have some rough spots. But overall I'm pleased with it, and if you managed to get all the way through it without your suspension of disbelief breaking, I'll never ask more of you.

I am currently working on another Jason Wood story, titled "Shadow of Fear", which I'll submit to Baen's Universe (Baen's new SF magazine).

RPG? Yes, basically it takes place in the same universe I run my RPGs in. ALL of my solo work takes place somewhere in that multiverse; my next solo novel, Demons of the Past, takes place in the deep past of Digital Knight, shortly after the Fall of Atlantaea. I often game out portions of various stories to test them, actually. :)

One nit...

[murbin.livejournal.com]

I started reading Boundry. One nit to pick. When you first introduct AJ he starts talking about wireless sensor networks and mentions two companies who were early players in the field.

I work in that field. One of the two mentioned isn't technically in the game anymore. They gave up protocol development and are just focusing on chip sales now, rots o' ruck, now that TI and Motorola are getting into that end of the market.

The two companies mentioned aren't the technical leaders in the field. They are the best marketed though.

Re: One nit...

[shana.livejournal.com]

This is a clear message from the authors that AJ doesn't know as much as he thinks he does. :)

Yes, he is as good as he thinks he is about the technical stuff. But other than that...

Re: One nit...

[seawasp]

Yes, I know. But at the time I did the initial research on this subject, they loomed largest, and that part of the book was written first. By the time I realized I'd failed to update that part, it was too late.

Nowadays, there's a lot of other players, potentially including the company I work for...

Re: One nit...

[murbin.livejournal.com]

Going back, oh say a year and half ago, which is a long time in this industry, I'll still stand by my statement of that those two were clearly the best marketed, and clearly not the technology leaders. They certainly did loom the largest in the trade press.

Given that, there is a good chance they might outlive the companies that had the better technology. There is a key business school lesson there...

I'll stop there, since I'm still in the industry, and MNSHO opinions on the matter are probably not best suited for a public forum. :-)

All this technology nit-picking aside, I'm still enjoying the book.

Re: One nit...

[seawasp]

Oh, I am not disagreeing with you. But when I started doing the research, I *ALSO* didn't know enough to tell the difference between the marketing and the reality. Now, I've actually done WORK in that area (our company is going to be starting Phase II of a very much A.J. -type project), and I can tell a lot of what's really going on, but c'est la vie.

Also, as you say, it's quite possible that marketing will triumph, and for someone like A.J. (who isn't even BORN yet) it'll be "who publicized it" rather than "who did it" when you're at a 30 year remove.

And I'm glad you're enjoying it. Besides, that's not even tech nitpicking, it's, um, historical accuracy nitpicking. Just to be nitpicky. ;)

Re: One nit...

[murbin.livejournal.com]

I freely admit beating a dead horse here, but...it does kinda irk me that while the two companies in question had either vaporware or were limited demo kits (that only had 10 nodes for very serious technical reasons), I was installing multiple hundred node adhoc, self-forming, self-healing, wireless sensor networks at paying customer sites.

To make it even worse, you're probably right about come AJ's time, they will be the names known by laypersons. AJ probably knows the names of the other players, but knows that nobody outside his field (and to his depth) would know of them.

Ok, I'm done venting now. Time to get back to actually finishing the book so I can post a review...

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

Hi there! I just finished reading Boundary, saw your blurb about LJ at the end, and felt the need to log in and let you know that I really enjoyed the book. I picked it up on a whim (I like Eric Flint's work, I like S/F, I kinda dig paleontology) and am very glad I did. Thanks for writing it!

Thank you very much!

[seawasp]

If you want to try my other stuff, it's available in the Baen Free Library (and if you like it, you can of course buy it!). I expect that Threshold will be coming out next year, so the story will go on. If enough people like it, we can foresee a fairly long series which will in some ways be unique.

Re: Thank you very much!

[xpioti.livejournal.com]

Ahhh, I knew I'd seen your name somewhere! I need to double-check, but there's a good chance I've already devoured er read at least one of your other works. (When I was under standing orders to "look busy but do nothing", industriously reading at the Baen Free Library was one of my preferred activities.) Good luck with Threshold; I'll keep an eye out for it. :)