A Little Bit of This and A Little Bit of That

Summer is winding down in a lot of places and folks are gearing up for Fall. Pumpkins, Halloween decorations and even some Christmas décor is popping up all around. It’s still way too hot for me to think about Fall sweaters and hot spiced beverages but the folks in retail don’t really pay attention to the weather.

Kids are going back to school way too early in my opinion. Heck school started here in Vicksburg the first week of August! Not even in the double digits. When I was a kid, we didn’t start back until the day after Labor Day. Things in the world are changing whether we like it or not.

And, speaking of changing, I’m probably going to stop blogging at the end of this year. I realized just a couple of days ago, that last Monday, I published my 500^th blog post!! 500 people!! That’s huge. So why then am I stopping? Well, it’s mostly because my following has not increased and the number of people who engage is not enough to justify the time I spend working at the blog. I appreciate everyone who faithfully reads and comments, but I’m trying to streamline my time a bit more and not having to worry about a blog every week would help in that regard.

I’m really trying to focus more on my professional image and promoting me and my books, which takes a tremendous amount of time. It’s often frustrating, sometimes expensive, and I’m still not sure where exactly to focus the bulk of my energy. But I’m learning. Trial and error seems to be the only way to know for sure if something’s working or not. So, I have to keep trying stuff, which means a lot of learning.

That said, I’m asking my followers for a little bit of help. I’m trying to be more “visible” as an author in the cyber world. You guys can help me with that by a few simple steps if you’re so inclined.

One way you can help me stay visible, is by simply liking my books and following me on various book sites, Amazon being the biggest one. I think most people have an Amazon account. I’d appreciate it, if you’d please use this handy-dandy link: https://amzn.to/2QZ5udN and hit the little “follow” button next to my picture. (This can also be done on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple if you use those platforms.)

BookBub and GoodReads are other great sites that help authors get discovered and talked about. These two sites are exclusively geared toward books and authors and are fairly easy to use. They have great search capabilities and can help readers connect with their favorite authors, leave reviews, discover new authors, and find great book deals. You will have to sign-up at these sites, but you can make them as visible or invisible as you like in your inboxes by managing your settings to allow only what you might be interested in seeing to be delivered to you. Here are some links where you can “like/follow” me: (Before you click the links below, you should know that you’ll have to use the back arrow to get back to this post because the links take you out of the blog site [sorry I set them up wrong].)

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/18387469.Jansen_Schmidt

https://www.bookbub.com/profile/jansen-schmidt

From those pages, you can “shelve” my books as your favorites. Just add them to your appropriate list (ie “read,” “want to read,” “own,” “wishlist,” etc.) and that boosts my standings in the algorithms. You can leave a very short review, or simply check that you “own” the book or “have read” it. Easy peasy.

That being said, I am trying to boost my newsletter in lieu of the blog. Right now I send out a newsletter about 6 times a year. I’m hoping to increase that to once a month with the same types of material I blog about here. If you have not already done so, I encourage you to please sign up for my newsletter if you have any interest in staying in touch with me and my crazy life as an author, innkeeper, and all-around goofball personality. The link to sign up is right here: http://bit.ly/JansenSchmidtNewsletter

And finally, a little treat! Here is the link to the official book trailer for my newest release The Ties That Bind. Enjoy!

I’ve got more exciting things planned for the rest of year that only my newsletter followers will know about. I promise you’ll only get 6 newsletters for the entire year, so I won’t clutter up your inbox. Here’s the link if you want to sign up and be the first to know things: http://bit.ly/JansenSchmidtNewsletter

Word of the Day: Yataghan

Fun fact about me:  Being an author is really not as glamorous as most people think.

Original post by Jansen Schmidt, August 2022. Images by Google and giphy.com.  Video courtesy of YouTube (Literary Titan)