Starting from Zero

Today's blog topics include: The differences I've learned between marketing for a company and marketing for myself; some more Crimson Soul e-book info (now just 99 cents!); Catherine and Marvel Anime impressions

Tim Cody is currently:
Writing: Crimson Soul II
Playing: Catherine (PS3)
Watching: Durarara, Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood
Feasting upon: Domino's bread bowl


For the last several months I'd been working as the Community Manager for the video game developer Sucker Punch Productions, with one of my primary job duties being marketing. My days were spent managing official Sucker Punch FaceBook and Twitter accounts and forums. We're talking tens of thousands of fans here, and a part of my job was wrangling more and keeping them interested. Organizing events, interacting with these fans in person and online.

So when it comes time for me to finally put these mad marketing skills to use for myself and my own work, it should be a piece of cake, right? If, as Sucker Punch, I can build upon and market to thousands of fans who are already in love with Sly Cooper and Infamous, I should be able to market, as Tim Cody, to fans who are--oooooh, I see the difference now...

Maintaining and managing the community of fans is the easy part--the ridiculously easy part. As long as they're buying what you're selling, then you're set. As long as you can keep the buzz going, it's smooth sailing on a sea of Followers and Likes.

Building that fanbase from the ground up is the true challenge, and I would imagine it's where many writers wind up falling flat. It requires more than collecting like-minded Twitter followers, it requires actually seeking out your demographic and getting them to read your book. This is my current great struggle. Reaching my target demographic (young adults, horror fans) is where the trickery lies--more on this as I continue to investigate.

"I'd buy THAT for a dollar!!!!"

The latest development in my marketing is Crimson Soul's lower e-book price point. I dropped it down to a mere 99 cents, I'm slashing prices all over! It's something I probably should have done to begin with; it's just a wise move for a struggling indie author with a fanbase of zero.

I'm calling the 99 cents price point the "Angry Birds Design." I haven't done any research to see if that's already a thing, but the concept is simple: Provide a product for just 99 cents, and people will buy it for various reasons. Whether it's an impulse buy because somebody liked the Gundam reference I made in a previous blog post, or if a horror fan is buying it because it's cheap. We've all done it. "It's only a dollar!"

Fingers crossed, hope to get rich! :D One dollar at a time.

Crimson Soul's e-book's listing is now on Goodreads:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12217643-crimson-soul

And finally, Smashwords approved it for its Premium Catalog. This means they should start distributing to Apple's e-bookstore soon, which means I should have all the outlets covered.

And now here are some thoughts on a few non-book things I've been doing lately:

Catherine and Marvel Anime:

Catherine is a pretty fun game, but every once in a while the puzzle stage is so hard it makes me want to hire a strong man to hit me in the back of the head with a frying pan until my eyes pop out. It's short, though, just nine stages--I've only got about four hours in the game, and I'm already on stage five!

I'm half way through the game, and they're still providing me tutorials for things I figured out fifteen minutes in. But I guess that's because they spaced their tutorials like you'd expect in a normal game, but since the game's so short, they're popping up near its end.

I watched Marvel's anime version of Wolverine. It's a different Wolverine than we're used to, so it seems like lifelong fans may be put off by it. The voice and character traits of classic Wolverine aren't exactly all there, it's really almost more like a reinvention of the character.

Though I suppose they did exactly what they set out to do: create an anime version of Wolverine. And an anime version of Wolverine, once you throw all the anime tropes into him, isn't your typical Wolverine.

In case you couldn't tell, I'm going for the record of times I say "Wolverine" in a single blog post. What's my count? I must be close to the high score.

That's that and marmalade.

-Tim Cody

P.S.: Go Wolverines!