Well, let's start at the top with Powers Squared and Monday. I dutifully did as I said I would last week and reached out to my contact at comiXology trying to get feedback on Issue #6. Don't look too shocked but no word back. I won't go through the litany of reasons why, just that I have not heard back.
Meanwhile, work continued on the new issue. Later that day, Nina sent us the first four pages of issue #8. It's all looking good. I haven't sent them on to Trevor for lettering yet, as he's still working on Issue #7.
On Wednesday, we received pencils from Rachel for pages 9 through 12 of the same issue. We had a couple of comments but nothing major. It's always interesting to see things develop and the words on the page come to life, so to speak.
Later in the week, we got our quarterly accounting from comiXology on sales. While I'm happy to report sales were up 350% from the previous quarter, sales were still pretty miserable, considering all the work we've put into it and all the publicity we did receive around the release of Issues #3-5. Let's just say all that work amounted to less than two dozen sales over the five issues. Very disheartening.
Now, there are three ways to approach this. Either I/we could fold but that wouldn't be fair to the story. I really like the story and hope that it would eventually find its audience, so that wasn't really an option, though it did cross my mind. I like having a creative outlet that at least reaches people, even if those numbers are small.
The second option, I/we could continue the same thing and hope things would just turn around. That would be wishful thinking on my part.
So I took the third option and tried to change the way we present ourselves to the world. To begin with, I updated the home page on the website to make it easier to buy the books and how to communicate with us, i.e. join the mailing list. I also updated our Facebook page, activating a Shop Now button. I also followed the marketing advice from Comic-Con and advertised on Facebook, boosting one of the more recent posts. I didn't spend very much but we do seem to be reaching more people and have added several new page likes. I know that seems shallow, but you got to get the word out.
I'm also exploring options with media, including press releases and the like. More on that as it materializes.
The planned-for weekly video didn't come to fruition. We had technical problems connecting with Nina on Google Hangout.
Continued to post on Instagram, which does generate content on Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. Rather than publishing the same images over and over, I try to find a theme or something for the posts. This week has been first appearances in the story, rather than in flashback. Most of the artwork, so far, is from the first issue. Trying to build up to more recent first appearances in the comic book.
Nina also posted an image from our website on Instagram, one I had posted as a preview of Issue #6. That was unexpected and pretty cool. No one has ever posted anything about Powers Squared because they wanted to, so that was a new experience.
In other writing, I did finish the review I mentioned last time for Christopher Robin, which we published on Saturday morning on Trophy Unlocked. During the week, we also published a review for the video game Epic Mickey 2 written by Trevor and just today Sharknado: The 4th Awakens prior to tonight's final installment of that wrung out TV movie franchise. We had been reviewing them but had overlooked this one for some reason.
On the rewrites, I'm continuing to work on the rewrite for Getting Even. I've read and edited up to page 451, so I think I'll be finishing that next week. Okay, I said I would contact my editor about Familiar Stranger and I didn't do that. There never seemed to be the right time. Unlike the contact at comiXology, I don't think I can just send him an email and hope to get a response. He will take a phone call and unlike the guy at comiXology, I feel like I can call him up, it's just that I never had the opportunity at the right time. So, that's something I need to do next week.
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