The decline of organic reach

I've been listening to a lot of marketing podcasts recently and one of the things I've been hearing about is the so-called decline in organic reach. What this is chimes very much with my own experience over the years I've dabbled in the Internet and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, it was really easy to get lots of traffic just by putting quality stuff on the Internet. The search engines and indexes noted you and sent traffic to you without any effort.

However things have changed. Though they look the same , things are very different. I've been puzzling about this sitting in my room and then what I was hearing from the podcasts reinforced my own experience. It seems the engines like Google and Facebook and other big big companies have finally decided to come more commercial in outlook. Once upon a time they gave traffic away, but now it seems that they are only going to send you traffic if you pay them.

The other problem with the Web is there is just so much noise out there now. Once upon a time there were only five quality websites for providing information and say on haunted hotels. That was my area. And now I find that there are thousands of pagess and so we don't scroll down more than one or two pages on Google so if you are down the page of that, no matter how good your website it is you just aren't going to get seen.

I've even written a little blog about Cumbrian place names which is a pretty specialist area. If I say so myself it brings a lot of learning and scholarship and research to it and I put up tens of high quality posts that will provide lots of information for people looking for that. But if I search for that website, I simply don't find it on on Google. So does that mean there are now a lot of websites about the subject? I don't think so. It's just stuff is harder to find.

So I think your days of putting stuff up and just hoping and actually succeeding are gone. There's so much noise out there that even if your product is top quality unless you promoted it using money and probably more clever marketing techniques, you won't get seen.

So that leads me onto my new endeavour – finding clever marketing techniques!

Emotion Machines

Recently become almost possessed by marketing. And I was thinking well what are we actually selling through the medium of stories? And clearly it's emotions. Now when you take that into account and you look at the bestseller list on Amazon – particularly the best selling categories, then that's quite interesting.

The bestselling category of all is romance with a R. So the emotion that the people who want to read those books are looking for is a kind of ... (I said vicarious but the app dictated carious love affair – I like the idea of the carious love affair - one that is full of holes. I've had a few like that. ) come to think of it though, looking for love through story sounds little bit insulting. But I don't mean it like that. I think fiction allows is to live lives and go places that we otherwise I'm free to do. However the fact that so many people want to read about other people's love affairs and thus create emotions in themselves suggests that there is an awful lot of people living without love.

The next best selling category is suspense/adventure. I guess hear this suggests that there are lots of people living quite boring lives would like to aspire to be a cop or a fire fighter or a jet pilot. Or even a spy.

And then there's erotica. I have even been guilty of writing erotica but not under my own name. What would my mother think! (I hope my mother doesn't read that kind of thing) what would I think if she did? Even so, I think my theory holds true. If people are reading erotica that suggested the kind of emotions and feelings that literature instills in them meets a need that they're not having met in their real life. 

There are lots of genres of course but I write horror. I have suggested that in writing and reading this kind of literature stories we are looking for an experience of the other – some kind of presence or intelligence that isn't human. But I guess it might be a lot simpler than that. It may just be people looking for some kind of entertainment. Because it is ultimately entertaining to have these emotions go through our bodies and minds in a controlled way. I may want to fantasise about being a jet pilot shooting enemies down and we never really want to do it. Or I may want  to imagine being in love with someone wonderful - a perfect woman or man but wouldn't really do anything about that because I'm very happy where I am. And  as for erotica I guess I may want to have those feelings and imaginings but never ever want to pursue them in real life.

I talked elsewhere about stories being a kind of inoculation. So it's about our fear of being predated being prey and getting eaten And it might be quite thrilling just to have a little bit of that but not too much. And I guess that's true about romance, suspense, erotica and all the rest.

I just want to have a dabble  at feeling things but not do them in real life and that's why they invented stories.

Amazon unlimited

I recently signed up for Amazon unlimited. It was the  month's free subscription that got my attention. You may have noticed that I have been a little bit manic this past month. And I’ve been devouring books about digital marketing. The trouble with these books is that the writers promote them fiercely and tell you that they're the best thing since sliced bread: their book is the one that’s going to give you all the secrets that will help you break through. Before reading them you can’t really judge. Many of them have hundreds of positive reviews and that might be genuine or it might actually be because they’ve paid people or influenced people to write a good review.

I’m going to reserve this blog here (Thoughts from the Microcosm) by the way from my thoughts about writing while my WordPress blog is the one I’m going to use for thoughts about the macabre bra (I left that dictation error in because I thought it was funny) and ghosts and alchemy and magic and haunted places.

Anyway, I was looking at all of these apparently indispensable books and thinking these books are going for $4.99 each. And there are lots of them!

And then Amazons advert caught my eye-and that’s what Amazon is really good at. Amazon unlimited is the answer-it’s £7.99 for a month but the first month it’s a free trial. You can have 10 books out at any time and this allows me to get any book out then I want and most of these books on marketing and writing are actually in Amazon unlimited.

I’ve also picked up a lot of criticism from writers about Amazon unlimited. Apparently they pay you half a cent  per page read so on average writers are earning half as much as they would from lending a book out compared to selling it. And a lot of advice from writers has been to  avoid Amazon unlimited. I can see this from a writer’s point of view however I think subscription services certainly have a large part to play in the future development of reading. So like it or lump it, I think we stuck with subscription services such as Amazon unlimited. That’s the view from the writer’s point of view however from the readers point of view  I think it’s wholly positive.

So I’ve been able to go through the books at great speed both  the good ones and bad ones. To be honest there are many that I wouldn’t have bought but when I read them I found I have some very useful information in them. I would never have got to see that without Amazon unlimited. Simply because I wouldn’t of shelled out 5 pounds for the privilege of seeing whether this was trash or valuable.

So I think it’s a good deal. You can actually get out a ton of books in your first free month without paying a penny and read what would’ve cost you a whole lot of money. So I would recommend that you sign up for Amazon unlimited and read as many books as you want for the first month and then if you don’t like it you simply cancel your subscription

You could even read my books!

And guess what I dictated this whole piece was sitting in the car by the side of a busy road. That’s not bad is it?

Lester Dent and Me

So this one was in response to people saying my previous ghost stories weren't scary enough. By that some of them clearly meant weren't horrible enough in a gory sense. I thought I'd write one that was, but of course you can be the judge of whether I succeeded. I was aware that this is a Monster in The House story, using Blake Snyder's genre typing. The main rule is "don't get eaten" which has an ironical meaning in this story. If you are familiar with Snyder's ideas, this genre is typified by someone being in a place they can't get out of due to physical or other impediments and a monster has been created by their "sin". They have to face their sin to resolve the issue.

I also wanted to try out Lester Dent's method for writing short stories. This is based on four parts each 1500 words each. I went over this word count in the rewrite by about a third, but I thought that was forgivable. +Karen Woodward  discusses this very usefully on her blog.  Dent was writing pulp action fiction so his is all about murders and fist fights. Clearly that wasn't going to work in a horror story where you don't want the monster to appear until much later, if at all - creating the atmosphere by hints rather than revelations. (Do revelations ever create atmosphere?). I also wanted to avoid laying too much pipe as Blake Snyder says - I didn't want much exposition at all. When I'd finished I found that I needed a little bit more.

I was also aware of +Michael Moorcock 's advice about dropping little bits of mystery in - even if you're not actually going to explain them at the end, though I think it all becomes clear. 

So, I did all that to the plan and I finished a story that I was 50% satisfied with. I wondered whether that was because it just wasn't tense enough to anyone, or it wasn't tense enough to me because unlike when I pantsed stories before, the story itself was a surprise to me and therefore tantalising or scary to me, I knew the bones of this one and so maybe it was too clinical?

I don't know. I'll wait for the reviews. My kids liked it anyway, but maybe they just wanted to sweeten me up so I gave them money?

Tony

A Mixed Bag

As time goes on and I get more reviews I realize what a mixed bag they are (I just spelled realize American so that somebody doesn't go "grammatical error!" on my ass (or arse). It's not even grammar it's spelling but it does seem to vex people. Some people go 'Wow! Brilliant!" and someone else says it's dire. I'm getting more ducklike with the water of criticism.

Someone left a review that went on a bit in a wordy, self regarding snarky sort of manner that said something like .... "There was the bones (sic) of a good haunting... of grammar - there was none, and much missed by it's (sic) absence."  Misused 'it's' for 'its' twice and had a disagreement about number with his verb then he criticizes me for bad grammar. I was so tempted to respond but I didn't.

I have a hangover this morning from being at a wedding last night and I am listening to Rush from way back. Great pleasure with a cup of tea. Bit too windy to go for a mountain walk in case I get blowed off (note my ironical mistake with the participle there).

I plan to trawl through old copies of the Parasychological Review for ideas. I was reading some good blogs about Lester Dent's method of writing short stories as exposited here by +Karen Woodward and then leading onto the Michael Moorcock method of writing adventure books in 3 days. Again herewith set out by +Ghostwoods Books  here - no here. Old Mr Moorcock's article appears elsewhere but this is the prettiest blog version. It even made me start reading the Corum books which is just as fun as it was. (You think I'm giving a plural subject a singular verb? No! 'it' here refers to fun. Haha! Gotcha!). I'm also reading Vogler's Writer's Journey Writer's Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers. I'm a long time fan of Jung and Campbell and I have actually read the Mysterium Coniunctionis - like twice - meaning I have known for a long time the secret of existence. I can also read the Latin too, decipher the Hebrew and have a good go at the Greek. So Mr bad review, stick that up your arse and smoke it. You fucking little cocksucking cunt.   Not that I'm bothered as I mentioned before. To me it's like a water/duck/back equation.

Of course I realise (see what I did?) that expositerize is not a real word but I can make words up here. I can do what the f*** I want with words on this blag (deliberate mistake too - very witty too I thought) because no one reads it!!! Haha! I win again!!

Of course I can't bring myself to write fuck  I have to write f*** instead, but that's my choice. And it's valid. That reminds me of a discussion I had with me (ex) wife (note the ex) where she said "Everyone is entitled to an opinion." and I countered. "Not if they're wrong..."

Not that I am. I'm off now to be ill.

Here's the new cover. I think it's better.