I’ve been blogging for quite a while now, beginning at my other blog way back in 2003. I posted my first book a chapter at a time over there, where thousands of readers read each weekly chapter. When I published the book, I looked forward to great sales and promotional help from those thousands of readers. Sadly, I got little. True, they’d already read the book, so why buy a copy? But still.

I’ve pondered that result for years and wondered what I could do to get a following that felt more invested in my books to the point where they would take an interest in spreading the word – a “street team” in book marketing gobbledygook. Rolling out the “Friends of Frank” program was my effort to achieve that end.

But lately, I’ve been having second thoughts, and now I’ve decided to put that program on hold, at least for the time being. The good news is that I’ll still be posting a chapter a week here at the regular Tales of Adversego blog, and will start by making the already posted chapters visible here as well. 

The immediate reason for icing the FoF program is that I’ve been having site problems. People aren’t getting the new blog post alerts, and the sign-in for someone registering as a FoF has sometimes conflicted with their earlier registration to leave comments. Partly, that’s because my original site designer put the FoF sign-in form “below the fold,” way down in the right hand column where it’s easy to miss. I apologize for any annoyance this may have caused.

I’ve now found a new web designer who can sort out these problems, but while deciding what to ask them to do, I gave a rethink to the FoF concept itself. Should I keep or kill it?

Part of the answer was obvious: only about 40 people have signed up to become a FoF, and most of them were dedicated fans already. So all I’ve accomplished to date is to erect a barrier that makes it less likely that blog readers will become enthusiastic fans.

So here’s my hope: that by posting each chapter of Book 5 and sharing my weekly back-story thoughts; taking suggestions and working good ones into the book; and otherwise inviting you to peek in on the creative process, you’ll be inclined to do three, extremely helpful things:

  • buy the book for $0.99 when it comes out in final form, which will help the book get off to a good Amazon rank start
  • post a review, which will help give the book credibility and make it easier to list with promotional newsletters and
  • spread the word to your friends

You can be sure that the final version will be worth a second read, as much will change between the first draft you see on-line and the more complex and polished version that will finally go live at Amazon.

So with that, I’m about to start shutting down the FoF tabs and exposing all chapters to date. One last apology, this time in advance – those of you who do receive new-post alerts may get spammed as the book chapters cross over. If that’s the case, I hope that the fun of catching up on Book 5 will be worth the inconvenience.