A Personal Appearance

I’m getting excited! For the first time in a lo-o-ng time, MoonPhaze is sending both of its authors to make an appearance together. That’s me and my husband, John Lars Shoberg. Both of us. At the same event. Namely, Necronomicon in Tampa FL.

We were supposed to go together to Gainesville in January, to sell our books at a bookfair that’s held there annually. Unfortunately, John’s health at that time was pretty poor, and I went without him. It wasn’t the same at all. He’s the one who can talk to just about anyone, on a large variety of subjects, so I usually rely on him to help break the ice with potential customers. I tried to engage people in conversation, but I’m just not as good at it as he is. I was completely drained by the end of the day.

This time, his health still isn’t very good, but he’s going with me. It will be up to me to sell the books, while he will wander around, attending panels and making new friends. We are on 2 panels together: “How I Do My Job (Writing)” and “What Inspired Me to Do This Job (Writing)”. They were the suggestions I made when the person doing the panel scheduling told me he had been informed that it was not acceptable to have authors who are not The Guest of Honor do readings. That’s so different from Mid-West cons. So that’s what I came up with off the top of my head. And the scheduler said, “Great! Let’s do them both!”

If you come to Necronomicon this weekend (Sept 22-24, 2023), look for the MoonPhaze table. I will be manning that. And watch for John among the other attendees. We’d both love to talk to you. Feel free to browse through our books, and I won’t be averse to sell you some. Or if you prefer e-books, I have a bunch of coupons I’d like to hand out this weekend. You can get the ebooks for 50% off or for free, and not have to carry books around with you all weekend. And we don’t charge for autographs, if you want one of those!

Yes, I’m getting excited. Which is different than being nervous. Nervous is me at a table, trying to sell books or at least talk to people about books. You’d think I’d get used to it and not get so nervous anymore. Here’s hoping the nervousness isn’t as bad this time.

One Important Step in Marketing

Most of you know that I publish books that my husband and I write. It means I wear a lot of different hats. The most difficult job, out of all the jobs that I do, is to try to convince potential readers to give our books a chance. Quite frankly, I don’t know what I’m doing, in that respect. I’ve taken classes, I’ve read books, I’ve gone to seminars, and I still don’t really know what I’m doing. It’s very frustrating.

One thing I did a few years ago was to set up website for my company. And last year, I set up a second website, just to deal with the e-versions of our books. That 2^nd website worked well enough to get me the beginnings of an email list, but even when I ran some ridiculously priced sales, I never sold any ebooks from that site. I finally figured out why; I had never set up the ‘accept payment’ part of the website.

It had a well-known e-commerce software package ready to be used, but I had never activated it. This spring, I spent the better part of a month trying to jump through the hoops to get that software activated. And that was with plenty of help from the support team of my hosting company. Trying to follow the instructions was as bad as trying to read a legal document. I was so confused!

But I got it done. At least, they tell me I have.

But it made me think… Had I ever set up the ‘accept payment’ part of my first website? I did not know. I knew I should look into that, and the sooner, the better. But a broken arm got in my way, and I couldn’t really do much on the computer. When the arm got better, life in general intruded… okay, I procrastinated, because I was afraid it would have the same well-known e-commerce software package attached to it, and I didn’t know if the support team for that hosting company would be as helpful. I very much cringed at the thought of going through that same confusing set-up process.

But, I’m happy to reveal, I took a deep breath earlier this week, and I tackled my original website. I did not find that dreaded e-commerce software when I looked at my website’s dashboard. I contacted the support team to find out how I do it. The chat bots didn’t understand my question, but I finally got a real person, who explained how to set it up and even gave me the website for doing so. Sounded simple, but was it really? I am here to report that it was as easy as setting up a Paypal account, and I got it done within half an hour. Hooray for me!

Now, how do I get people to buy something? That seems to be my perpetual question.

By the way, the original website is www.MoonPhaze.com, and the website for ebooks is www.MoonPhazeBooks.com. One needs a drastic overhaul, and the other needs a firm tweaking. Those will keep me busy for the next several months.