Filed under: Feedback, Marketing, Music, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Society
Well, as I noted the other day, we crossed the threshold of 10,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams sometime last Friday. This after a bit of a slow crawl the last couple of months to reach that number.
Of course, what happens this weekend? Another 500 downloads.
Because, clearly, 9,775 downloads doesn’t indicate that something is popular. But 10,000 does, and so other people want to check it out.
Man, I love marketing. We hairless apes sure have some funny quirks.
But thanks to all those who decided to check out the book this weekend. And, again, thanks to all who downloaded it previously and helped to spread the word about it.
Jim Downey
*with apologies.
Filed under: Alzheimer's, Daily Kos, Feedback, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Huh. It finally happened, a week after I turned 50. Over 10,000 downloads of Communion of Dreams.
I’ve posted a ‘thank you’ to both UTI and dKos, but I want to extend a personal thanks to all who follow the blog and have helped to spread the word of the novel. As I noted on dKos:
When I set up a website to allow people to download the novel early last year, I thought that I would just make it available until I got around to finding a publisher for the book. But then my life became completely preoccupied with the deteriorating condition of my mother-in-law (see my diaries here tagged “Alzheimer’s”, or go to my blog), and just didn’t have the time/energy for doing the legwork of finding an agent or publisher.
So the book remained available for download. And surprise, surprise, word of it spread. The most I ever did to promote it was to put a link in my .sig file here and a couple of other places where I post. The whole thing took on a bit of a life of its own, to be honest, and watching the numbers of downloads slowly climb helped to bolster my spirits during some very dark and depressing times.
OK, that’s not entirely true – I did start this blog with the goal of promoting the book and documenting the process of finding an agent and then landing a publishing deal. But the part about watching the numbers climb helping me through those difficult times of caring for Martha Sr are certainly true. The same for the feedback I have gotten through this blog. Thanks to one and all for your support, criticism, and friendship.
Huh. 10,000. That’s kinda cool.
Jim Downey
. . . to Communion of Dreams, you might hop on over to SFFaudio and check out some of the many other resources and reviews that they have. From their site:
We think audio is the best medium for Science Fiction literature and drama. We’re not against the dead tree, cathode ray, and celluloid versions, we just know them to be the inferior medium for transmission of story, mood, and ideas.
Before the creation of printed books, stories were told by the Greek aoidos, the Celtic bards and other poets of the human voice. After the printing press allowed for greater numbers of “novels” to be written, the families and friends in all the households that could afford to buy them would gather together and spend their evenings reading books aloud to each other. In the late 1970s the audio cassette allowed for the creation of a new industry, a new medium, the audiobook. Over the last three decades new technologies, CDs, MP3-CDs, and especially the portable MP3 player have made the audiobook even more popular.
Audio drama, too, is our passion. It goes by many names: audio theatre, audio cinema, and of course “radio drama” – the name of the place where it got started. We love this stuff. And if you’re reading this, we bet you do too.
Indeed.
Hat tip to Scot of OwnMade AudioBooks (who did the unabridged production of Communion available on my site) for the heads up!!
UPDATE: The folks at SFFaudio have added Communion of Dreams to their list of goodies. You can find the entry here.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Well, I just checked the stats, and according to my calculations we’re closing in on the elusive 10,000 downloads goal. About 110 to go, way I figure.
That’s really cool. I suppose I should go pick up a current edition of the Guide to Literary Agents or something. Rework my contact letter. Select a half-dozen or so agents and contact them, tell them what a great opportunity it would be for them to represent me and Communion of Dreams.
Or maybe not. Maybe I’ll just rework the homepage for Communion a bit, freshen things up in celebration. Because contacting agents has been so effective in the past.
Gah.
Anyway, chill the champagne, order the cake, let’s get ready to party!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Book Conservation, Fireworks, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Fairly quick post.
Delivered the first substantial chunk of books to the seminary yesterday – they were very pleased, sent back with me another 85 books. With a little luck, now that I am recovering further I’ll be able to get these done and back to them in 4-6 weeks.
Things are in chaos here, and having my home disrupted this way is extremely stressful. Why the chaos? Because we’re now to the point where my wife and her siblings have sorted out who gets what of Martha Sr’s household possessions and things are getting ready to be moved out. Some has already been taken, but the bulk of stuff is leaving today for California – lots of boxes everywhere, furniture stacked up and ready to load. I’ll be helping with that this morning, then trying to get some order imposed on the mess following. I’ve been looking forward to having all of this resolved, so that my wife and I can really get settled in here, but going through it is just painful.
And tomorrow is my birthday (additional downloads this week have amounted to about 60, so we have a ways to go to cross that 10,000 threshold.) So I may not get much of substance posted for another day or two – though I do have a number of items bookmarked I want to write about.
Well then, have a good weekend, enjoy some fireworks. You’ll hear from me when you hear from me.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
OK, I know that it’s a bit tactless to ask someone to give you a gift. So I’m tactless.
Last time I updated the count on downloads, we were at 9,500 (give or take a few). That was June second. Since then, we’ve had 160 downloads of Communion of Dreams. I don’t know if it is the summer doldrums, or what, but that is a big drop-off from the previous months averages of 500+ downloads a month.
My birthday is July 4th. I will turn 50. And I’m asking for a gift: help get the download count over 10,000. All we need is 340 downloads. I’ve had twice that number downloaded in one day, previously, when someone somewhere posted a link on a bulletin board or some such. So that’s what I’m asking – just help spread the word. If you belong to a SF discussion forum, or blog about books, or whatever, help me cross that 10,000 threshold. It won’t cost you anything, and it won’t cost the people who want to download the book anything. Just a couple of minutes of your time. And I’d appreciate it.
I never really thought that Communion of Dreams would get so much attention – but now that we’re so close to 10,000, it’d be a cool thing to reach that number before I cross a threshold of my own.
Thanks!
Jim Downey
Filed under: Amazon, Art, Astronomy, Ben Bova, Feedback, Marketing, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Space, Titan, Writing stuff
I discovered a couple of years ago that someone had created a Wikipedia entry for me. It was weird to stumble across that when I was looking for something else (I no longer remember what). Particularly since it seemed that the initial entry was made by someone for whom English was not a native tongue, and who only had some of their facts right. In other words, it wasn’t a friend who did it, laying the foundation for some kind of joke on me. My wife and I cleaned up the language a bit, got the facts corrected, expanded the entry to include stuff which had been missed.
But it is still a weird feeling.
And something similar happened again today.
This morning, I was doing my routine check on the stats for the download of Communion of Dreams, and saw that there had been another of the periodic spikes. As I have mentioned previously, when this happens I will sometimes check to see if there is a referring site where a link to the novel has been posted. I’m just curious as to how word of the book spreads, and whether someone has some commentary or criticism that I should know about. And this morning in the ‘referring’ stats was a link to a Wiki page titled “Titan in fiction“, explained by this simple single sentence:
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn. It has a substantial atmosphere and is the most Earth-like satellite in the Solar System, making it a popular science fiction setting.
And there, next-to-last in the ‘Literature’ section, just two entries after Ben Bova’s novel Titan, was this:
Communion of Dreams (2007), a novel by Jim Downey. An alien artifact is discovered on Titan that has strange effects on anyone who observes it.
I could quibble with the description, but I won’t. I’m too weirded-out by seeing it. With almost 10,000 downloads of the book, it is unsurprising that someone who has read it would think to add links in Wikipedia about it. Unsurprising, that is, unless you’re the one it happens to.
I do not have ‘false modesty’. I’ve got an ego, as any of my friends will attest, and I’m not afraid of a bit of self promotion. But in the face of repeated rejections from publishers and agents, it is more than a little odd to see that Communion is slowly creeping into the culture this way. It’s just plain weird – a touch of dissonance.
Well, anyway. As always, if anyone knows of places where Communion has been recommended, and now I suppose where it has been linked in another context, please let me know.
Jim Downey
My monthly update on some stats . . .
Communion of Dreams has now been downloaded over 9,500 times. I would like to thank the three people who have been busy downloading so many copies to make my stats look good. 😉
No, seriously, this is still really cool. Like April, May saw about 500 downloads – a little bit slower pace than in some earlier months, but still very heartening. Particularly since it still seems to be completely word of mouth. We should cross 10,000 downloads sometime this month.
The blog is now just under 20,000 hits, and the average is still running about 70 unique visits a day. Thanks to one and all who visit regularly.
And bonus points to anyone who can ID the source of the title quote without having to look it up.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, General Musings, Hobbits, movies, Promotion, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
Nah, other than a mild cold, things are going OK. But since it is the first of the month, thought I would post a quick note about how stats look hereabouts.
April saw just under 500 downloads of the .pdf of Communion. This continues to happen in clumps, for whatever reason. Comparing it to over 1,100 in March, you might think that things have slowed down – but that’s just the clustering effect, I think – there was a substantial cluster right at the end of March. Had it been a few days later, the stats for both March and April would have been almost the same. We’re now at about 9,000 total downloads.
About 50 people downloaded the MP3 of the novel last month, bringing that total to just under 100.
I still have a hard time getting a handle on how people find out about the book, or this blog. In March I signed up for some additional stats/information about the Communion of Dreams website, which gives me all kinds of data, but it still seems that the majority of people who find out about the book do so by word of mouth. Not a bad thing, just a bit odd. Particularly in that I get very little feedback or commentary from people – yet they seem to be passing on a recommendation to others to download the book. Goodness knows that I haven’t done anything remotely approaching a real effort at promotion, so something is happening of its own accord.
This blog is now at 18,000 total views, averaging upwards of 70 views a day. The somewhat odd thing is that there is a consistent bit of traffic to look at one post: Welcome to the Hobbit House from almost a year ago. That gets 20 – 25 people a day. I think that the secret to getting a lot of traffic would be to write about Hobbits. At least until the new movie is done and out. So, if you see me mentioning Hobbits just randomly in posts, you’ll know that I am just blog-whoring, trolling for hits.
But hey, Hobbits are cool. Right? Just saying the word is somehow comforting: Hobbits.
Uh, sorry.
Anyway, that’s just a brief look over the current stats. Something more meaty later, or tomorrow.
Jim Downey
Filed under: Feedback, Marketing, Predictions, Promotion, Publishing, Science Fiction, Writing stuff
In the month or so since I posted this, there have been more than an additional 800 downloads of Communion of Dreams. Meaning that we’re now approaching 9,000 downloads altogether. This tends to happen in ‘clumps’ for some unknown (to me) reason, where there will be a baseline of 5 – 10 people a day downloading the thing and then it will suddenly jump to a seventy-five or a hundred or a couple hundred downloads for a day or two.
Anyway, it’s likely that sometime in the next month or two, total downloads will cross the 10,000 mark. Going to 5 digits seems like a cool threshold, and I’m thinking that I should do something to note/celebrate/mark the occasion. But I have no idea what. So if anyone has any suggestions, leave a comment or drop me a note, OK?
Oh, and that contact of the agent mentioned in the post a month ago? Still haven’t heard back from them. Because of other things I’ve mentioned being busy with here, I haven’t gotten around to contacting any other agents. I suppose I should do that. Ah, well.
Jim Downey
Communion Of Dreams 