Review This

After ten weeks the results are in for World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas. We have ten reviews on Amazon and nearly 50 ratings on Goodreads and on both platforms we're averaging 4/5 stars.

It comes down to confidence.  We are very good at what we do. We've never written a bad book. We've written a book that didn't sell too well, but we've never written a bad book. And that's why, despite a horrid time writing, editing and fixing Three Seas, we pressed on. 

Growth With and Without

Overall sales have had an extraordinary couple of days. There's nothing to be displeased about. 

We're getting new readers, we know this becuase sales of Arctic Storm are way up, which means people are seeing Three Seas and realizing, wait, this is book 6? Where do I start? We call this organic audience growth.

For years now we've wondered how to grow the audience further. It's driving us crazy, actually. Yesterday we wondered if there simply isn't room for growth. Our corporate suit wife reminded us that that's impossible.

We've grown our audience with overseas advertising. That's how we got toeholds in the UK and Australia. We even did ads in a couple of Kraut magazines which we deem successful. Alert reader(s) will recall that we believe advertising no longer works. We do stuff on social media but people only seem to find us after the fact.

Ad Week: What We've Learned

It's advertising week here at William Stroock dot blogspot dot com. Gotta write about something, man? We like to think of ourselves as a combination of Baily Quarters from WKRP and Don Draper.

[We don't know who Baily Quarters is but we're swooning at the Don Draper bit]

Yes of course.

Selling books these last eleven years had been a long, hard slog and we've learned a lot. 

We've learned you can't advertise a book nobody wants. You know right away if a book is gonna sell or not, the As Seen on TV people will tell you the same thing, about what they're hocking, BTW. You can over-advertise. An ad's effectiveness diminishes by 50% with each run. One and done, run your ad and get out. 

We've learned that in this day and age, we (not you, we) don't need to advertise. After years of complex ad campaigns we got a hunch that by 2017 it was really the algorithm doing all the work. We were right. Since The Austrian Painter we've run no ads except for an occasional test and to make good with the guys that gave us deep discounts. 

We've learned that we are very good at what we do, or don't do anyway. This morning's Amazon rankings for World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas:

Saturday Updates

And away we go. 

World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas has finally taken off. It's the light blue. That amounts to a couple dozen kindle sales and several thousand KDP page reads a day. Interestingly it's hovering in the mid-40's ranking wise and refuses to climb. We think this is becuase Sea Lion Press has three or four new books out. They really like to flood the market. This is not an issue, the raw numbers are good and reading isn't a zero-sum game. If someone has to choose a Sea Lion Press book over a William Stroock book, it just means they'll get to William Stroock a little later. The great thing about a new book is it boosts the sales numbers of all the other books. At this point you just put your feet up and count the money.

Attack of the 50 Foot Communist is almost done. It'll be done next week. This clears the way for us to think about a second short story. To Defend the Earth? We dunno. So far, no ju-ju.

The Great Nuclear War of 1975 is 33,000 words. We got bogged down describing the new canal being built above New Orleans, to reopen the Mississippi. This week, The Battle of Prudhoe Bay.

From there it's really a matter of, ok, we've gotten through the winter, we're getting about half the oil we need (the Rockefeller Administration has reestablished trade with Saudi Arabia), what next?

World War 1990: Nederlandse has been reviewed by US Army Guy, US Navy Guy, Italian Guy, Canadian Guy, Dutch Guy. Next week Nederlandse gets it's final rough read before we send it off to Debbie. Maps and cover are already in production. As MC Hammer once said, let's turn this mother out.

May Day Friday Flag

Various: Nothing but Blue Sky

Things are strangely on track. World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas comes out tomorrow, Comrades.

The Big Giant Commie story is coming along fine. We might even title the entire compilation, Attack of the 50 Foot Communist, and other Stories.

Nederlandse continues to be almost finished.

We're making some fine additions to the opening 30,000 words of the Great Nuclear War of 1975.

Below, musical representation:

Commies Big and Small

We've started the Big Giant Commie story. This is about a cosmonaut with a lot of hang-ups who views the entire universe through the prism of Marxist-Leninist dogma.

Also, he smashes up a planet of Lilliputians, which is cool. Yes we watched all those Godzilla movies as a boy. Who among us didn't dream of rampaging through a city?...who among us?.... The Lilliputians are an advanced alien civilization that have opened up a rift in space in order to capture Ivan and experiment on him. Let's just say things go horribly wrong for them.

Speaking of smashing commies and generally blowing stuff up, World War 1990: Battle of the Thre Seas comes out May Day, Comrades.

Seas of Three Format Thee

So USS Miami makes a cameo in World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas. We realized that Tom Clancy gives us a tour of the Miami in his Submarine. We thought, we'll need to change that to Austin or something. Then we thought...

[Oh fuck no...-Ed]

Then we thought, three scenes a beginning, middle and end, on the Battle of the Bastion chapter.

Could research this weekend, write it next week. It's small enough we could edit it ourselves.

[At some point you just have to be finished and screw the rest -Ed]

We threw in the towel via-a-vis formatting and have contacted a company. This looks doable.

We're plugging away at the Nuke 1975 investigatory chapter and will have it completed this week. A meeting + three scenes. We don't have a third scene. We need something about someone checking things out.

We also did a scene in World War 1990: The Final Storm. Working on the Ruskis this week and all is well.

Three Seas is Here

And we finally have it:

We began reading right away.

Here's what Debbie said:

I think the quality of the writing is much better in this story. The vocabulary and sentence structure are commendable.

Which helps explain why this thing took so dam long. We just got pickier and pickier and did a lot of, you know, thinking and stuff. 

Anyway we don't like the cream color pages, we'll switch that to white.

At this point we're thinking April or May 1st. At this point we think by May 1st Nederlandse will be ready for production. And we just love that idea.

Saturday Updates

We will be breaking our no work Saturday pledge.

We haven't released a novel in a year.

Nederlandse is 75,000 words. End of the month for a rough (?).

Three Seas is in final production. The cover is being designed. Debbie has the MS. We'll need to read the proof. Either the first of April or May.

Oh, boy did we have a great, great, great idea for the short story compilation last night. 

Speaking of, we took a pair of beautiful blondes to the daddy-daughter dance:

Getting a haircut today.

Starting French over, we are now on French I lesson 20. Took us a month and we're totally getting it.

Splitting the running from the rest of the cardio we had a solid week of working out. Less time but used more efficiently. We spent an hour on the treadmill, holycrap.

Three Seas Cover

She's a beaut:

Three Seas Progress

We uploaded and formatted World War 1990: Battle of the Three Seas and it's looking good. This is a very technical and precise job and always a deeply frustrating process for us. But it's done. 

Now the cover. We weren't sure if we were going to design a cover ourselves, like Polish Storm, or hire someone to do it, like Arctic Storm. Given the reemergence of physical books, a bi-product of screen-fatigue, we're thinking of handing the job off to a pro. We're still in touch with the woman who did A Line through the Desert for us, so lets see if she wants the gig.

Will's Good Idea for the Week of 2/2/20

Order the Three Seas physical proof this week. Maybe add...

[No! Just no! Stop it!-Ed]

But mummy!'

[I said no. Bad writer! Bad!-Ed]

Can I have snack?

[One-Ed]

Okay...

What's Spanish for 'Hands up, Yanqui?'

The Granma scenes are coming along well enough, 'Freeze Commie!' said the small town Alabama sheriff. 

Formatting next week. 

Anyway, this should clear things up to begin anew work on World War 1990: Nederlandse next week. We'll dive back into Grote Tankslog, start at the beginning and get everything ready for the grand finale and suicidal yet glorious Dutch tank charge.

If the Fami de Stroock is actually visiting the Netherlands this summer, and there is a strong possibility we will, should we not hold off publication till after we have done so? We look forward to the pickled herring.

Three Seas...

...Is read.

We have to finish the Granma scenes, boy are they fun, figure out where they go, do chapter headings and write our introductory thanks and explanation. But the damn MS is read.

From there, formatting, cover and reading the final proof.

Don't get too excited because we're going to sit on it for a while.

[What the fuck?-Ed]

We want to get our other projects in the hopper first. We think Nederlandse needs two months.

[Your timetables are crap, you know-Ed]

We know.

You know, as long as we're waiting, maybe we can add...

[*chambers round* -Ed]

Three Seas no Pants

We're in the home stretch, got the ball on the goal line*, walking to the line for a free throw**, the count is 0-2***...choose your sports metaphor cliché. Extra time? In the ashes? Tea interval? I dunno.

Battle of the Black Sea looks good. We're on to the final chapter.

It's almost exactly like going to your kid's dance recital, she's in the third recitation, and now you have to sit around for an hour and a half till the recital is over and the Many Faced God proves he has a sense of humor because all the good looking moms are sitting behind you, including that Arab looking one in the shiny leather pants and boots and....

*NFL reference for you Euros
** NBA
***Baseball

One of Three Seas Read

Okay! We've read everything through to the end of the Battle of the Sea of Japan and so far we're looking good. We can't say we're pleased, we don't know that any author is ever pleased. We know this, the Battle of the Sea of Japan is as good as we can make it.

Tomorrow we'll do the Battle of Black Sea, bloody French and Italian navies. We expect the same result.

Three Seas

Done.

It's going to Debbie when she's ready.

It's still gonna be a while, guys.

Now off to Nederlandse, which is coming along fine. We think we have an interesting and slightly different way to describe the Big Armoured Battle. Don't worry, it's not art-house or anything like that.

Three Seaing It

Yesterday, for the first time in this long, turgid process, we read a chapter and thought all is well. The sub chapter is good. It doesn't really need anything.

All that remains is to write a few scenes and....

Well, there are still a few stray bolts dancing across the sky. We still think it would be fun to have something about a non-NATO ship or two in Task Force 60.

We had this problem with Blooms too. We wanted to explore a theme but just couldn't figure it out late in the process. 

But we are figuring out a thing or too about World War 1990: Nederlandse. We decided to do an openning blockbuster where Dutch I Corps is retreated west from Bremen and one armored brigade is holding open a corridor for them.

Battle of the Battle of the Three Seas

A good day. A red day. And the sun rises.

Heh.

Not bad. The chapter which we approached with great fear and trepidation is no longer feared or trepidated.

[That's not a thing, knobhead -Ed].

There's still a few things that...

[Really? Jesus H. Christ-Ed]

Actually one of our southern reader(s) was saying the same thing the other day. Both he and Ed are right.

We learned a long time ago that at some point you have to say, there I said it! One must sheath the quill. You have to step back so it belongs to the ages.

But if I could just...

[Oh for fuck sake-Ed]