Happy Holidays!

All right, it's Christmastime, y'all, and I'm sleeping in!  Not gonna say much on my blog today except Merry Christmas, and may next year be fun, productive, and lucrative.

Happy holidays, everyone!

RPG Storytime: Star Wars!

Last week I wrote about my Star Wars fan fiction.  This week I'm writing about a different sort of fan fiction that I'm writing and producing.  It's the Star Wars role playing game which I'm playing, then making into videos in which I use miniatures to tell the stories.  I'm doing this with several different RPG games where I play it out with a group of people,then make the stories into little videos.  Over the next year I hope to do these games:

Star Wars
Star Trek
Dungeons & Dragons
Deadlands
Top Secret
Gang Busters
Pirates!
Outbreak: Undead

It's a lot, and I probably won't get them all made, but I'd like to do a lot of those.  RPG games are becoming the new staged readings, which excites me because I've always loved the idea of this sort of community storytelling.

Also, I use these as a way to bring in new readers.  People are more likely to watch something new than to read something new, so the idea here is to make videos that appeal to something a lot of people already enjoy, then gain their trust and being them into my own books.  It's been useful for me in the gaming world as I've gotten a number of gamers as readers over the past year.

My show is called RPG Storytime, and you can see it here:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGdeEs8YJtA&t=1s

Star Wars 2.0

I've been putting together a fan fiction version of Star Wars over the past year or so.  It went very slowly for a while because it's low on the priority list.  However, lately I've determined that if I'm going to do this, I need to freakin' do it.  So I'm getting it finished and set up.

The reason I'm writing fan fiction is because it's very difficult to get readers to look at something new, especially those who are into sci fi and fantasy.  South Park has parodied this behavior very well with their "member berries" where they keep remembering old things rather than appreciating something new.

Well, Relic Worlds benefits from being similar to two old, popular brands, Indiana Jones and Star Wars.  So, since people really like to read things about Star Wars, I figured I'd do my take on how the prequels should be done.

In fact, I've really enjoyed this because, like most people, I was disappointed by the prequels, and feel they could have been so much more.  So I've created this story about the two brothers, Anikan and Owen, both of whom have the force, but Owen has turned away from it, recognizing the hatred and fear that exists inside him.  Anakin has embraced it and become a Jedi, something that Owen, who has become a smuggler, thinks is a bad idea.

The story is continuing on fanfiction.net, and you can find it here: https://www.fanfiction.net/story/story_edit_property.php?storyid=11228268

Sweepstakes Results

Over the past year I've learned the importance of a mailing list, and probably the most effective means of building that list is through having a sweepstakes giveaway.  So I've done three sweepstakes over the past few months to build up those subscription numbers.

Each one has generated about 250 new emails.  It's important to note that when I initially put up the sweepstakes, I only get a couple dozen entries.  But when I do a little paid advertising, about $20 worth, the number jumps and I get many, many more.  So it's worth it to do that little extra.

I ran the giveaway on Shortstack, then made a post on Facebook and boosted it, and did a Google search on sweepstakes promotions where I found several sites that show ongoing sweepstakes and I simply found the button for entering my giveaway.

I lose about five subscribers every month due to attrition.  Therefore, it's good to do a new giveaway about every season.  This way the numbers grow faster than the attrition, and I'm not spending too much by having it every month.

The most important thing that I find in holding these giveaways is to have the prize be something that's relevant to my series.  This decreases the decaying numbers from the list because they're getting things in their email that they want.  The first giveaway I did was a Kindle Fire, and even though what I have to offer is book related, it's a specific niche.  Therefore, people were entering the sweepstakes who like different types of books and wanted a Kindle Fire for them.  Then, when they saw what I had to offer, they were less interested.  However, when the prize was a book about a fan film of Indiana Jones, they were more interested in sticking around to read adventures of an Indiana Jones-like character.

My next giveaway will likely be in the spring since I've had one for the summer, autumn, and winter now.