M.R. Leenysman's Blog, page 7

It’s a question which comes up on Facebook and Twitter all the time, so I figured I would capture my answers to one of those posts and create a blog post about it…

If you haven’t already heard about it, Scrivener is software designed for writing books, with a whole lot of features, which you can use or choose not to use. Not everyone likes it, but for those who do, we come to depend on it.

The main benefits to me are:
1) Ability to easily divide the project into Chapters and even separate books in a series; Folders can have their own text, to serve as a header. Everything can be drag/dropped, to re-sequence if needed.
2) Selective export based on those divisions. Export just one chapter, one book or an omnibus version, without altering the project at all. Definition of page breaks is done based on these divisions at export time, rather than in the text itself. With increased emphasis on serialization (Radish, Vella, etc), being able to export each episode separately is more important than ever.
3) Export to multiple file formats. I sometimes produce exports to .rtf, .doc, .docx, .epub and .pdf, for the same book. If I’m exporting subsets, too, it remembers the settings for each subset/format combo. Amazon’s .mobi is included, too, but I don’t use it much, preferring to import .docx into KDP and let Amazon generate .mobi for me (Smashwords and Streetlib do so, too, although Smashwords wants to import .doc and Streetlib starts from .epub).
4) The separate Research area, which is project-wide, but never part of the export, so you don’t have to worry about avoiding that.
5) Ability to import the book’s cover into the project and include it in the .epub export. For a multi-book project, I can include ALL of the covers and select which one to export, per book.
6) By having a template which contains all of the initial structure and some content like back matter, I save some time setting that up and can get into writing quicker.

I don’t often put out requests for reviews, but today I will. Not for reviews at Amazon or Goodreads, but at the other sites where my books are for sale which allow reviews, but for which I rarely or never get any, such as Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, Streetlib, Google, Kobo etc. If you’ve read one of my books and liked it, please consider dropping some words of encouragement at one of those sites. I could really use the positive energy right now.

For the second month, total traffic to the site rose, but only back to the levels in March/April, after a low in June. August 2020 had been my peak month that year, so I’m not too surprised, but it might also mean September will be lower once more.

After thinking Books2Read was the main culprit behind a traffic decline, it has only received about 500 total clicks since March, when the difference between August 2020 (my highest month of the year) and August 2021 is more than 600 all by itself. So, clearly something else is causing the traffic to go down. But, do I focus more on writing my current WIP or on rewriting promo blurbs for my existing books, to fix it? I think I’ll do the former and keep my fingers crossed that September is another rise.

Yes, indeed, MR Leenysman now has a Patreon account.

Read more – Newsletter #33
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I actually sent this newsletter, about “Walking in on Love”, last week, but forgot to create a blog post about it… Whoops.

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The good news is July’s traffic numbers increased above June’s low. The bad is that it didn’t improve on any other month in my history (since moving to BlueHost). I’m well aware that implementing Books2Read links back at the end of March diverted traffic away from the blog, so comparing numbers before that is pointless, but July was still lower than April and May numbers.

Despite the increase in traffic, sales declined after the boost provided by releasing “Package Deal” in June. Not even the Smashwords Sale increased units sold for older titles, while sales on the new book predictably declined.

And I had NO sales at Amazon at all. Summer doldrums? I’m certainly feeling them, too. Time to bear down and get some words written on my WIP.

I’m seeking feedback for the first chapter of a new book, provisionally titled, “Daddy’s Loophole”. Please respond here on the blog, via email or on Facebook or Twitter. Thanks in advance.

Newsletter #31
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Traffic to the blog declined in June, even while sales were up at Smashwords to the highest level since July of 2019, due to a new book being released. We’ll see if this year’s Smashwords Summer/Winter sale tops those 2019 numbers. And whether traffic to the blog starts rising over the summer.

Just some miscellaneous news this week, in Newsletter #30.

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Newsletter #29 focuses on one of my sci-fi + incest stories, titled “The Meteor Flu”.

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