The Breakfast Radio Diaries 074: Worth a replay

 

Like coming back to this page to read everything again (and again and again, thanks if that's you by the way!) some TV shows bare a second and even third re-watching session, possibly even a weekend binge. On top of that we discovered the appeal of an empty lake and I've made a big decision about some of my earlier writing work.

PLAY IT AGAIN, STAN

What would you re-watch? Yes there's a tone of new seasons and new shoes every single year but sometimes a series comes along that's just so good, it becomes repeat reviewing. Currently top of my list had to be Flyfly - which I originally watched thanks to a friend at work and a couple of burnt DVDs. Now I just loaded up Disney Plus and there was every episode, ready to go whenever I was. 

And while I haven't actually sat down to build the list, I can think of a few other series that would merit an entry into a 'repeat viewing list' and they include Sparticus, The Expanse (probably should finish it first actually, I think I got through three of the seasons and there's seven all up), Game of Thrones, Sopranos, Sons of Anarchy, The Orville (once I finish the third season), early Black Mirror, Black Books, Blackadder (have watched over and over many times now) and Red Dwarf all spring to mind. Not The Cape though, that was awful.

From the Facebook page the listeners got involved with their suggestions: 

-The West Wing

-A country practice (Haven't seen it in decades, can still remember part of the theme tune though)

-Seinfeld

-Bones

-Blue Healers

-Scrubs

-Friends

And a shout out to Are You Being Served, which I didn't realise got revisited in 2016 with a new cast for whatever reason. I just came across this pic of the crew and wondered why I couldn't recognise anyone..

Wait, who are you people?

THE LAKE WITH NO WATER

That would be the currently drained Lake Mulwala, currently empty to root out some weeds and the perfect alien landscape for your next extremely low budget sci fi flick.

Thanks to the power of social media with a healthy dose of drone footage, it's become a bit of a hot spot for people near and far because how often can you walk through an empty lake? However if you're keen to step through yourself, you'll want to be quick. Apparently they'll start to fill it back up again in about a weeks time. 

TIME TO LET IT GO AND TAKE IT DOWN

Warning: This might go on for a bit.

It's funny those random memories your brain retains, like where I was when I went 'Yeah I'm going to publish a book this year.' It was on the balcony of a hotel in Broadbeach Queensland on a slightly stormy night late November 2016 and I was drinking apple cider. Flash forward to May and it was out on Amazon in digital format ready to take over the world: 

Only it didn't, no matter how much I was convinced that this was my key to incredible fame and vast fortunes. A few encouraging friends and family bought a copy and that's where it stopped and yet it was enough of a start to write the next one and the next one.

(I say write but like the first, all three of these books actually started out as posts on this very blog. Sometimes expanded, sometimes condensed, I put them together and turned the blog into book form. And then repeated the process two more times.)

'But it's hugely entertaining! And funny!' I tried to convince myself as I looked at a supreme lack of sales and/or interest month after month, even with that amazing cover my brother crafted me. And maybe it was but it still didn't stop it being more than a vanity project, occupying a tiny bit of space on an Amazon book server somewhere. I blogged about it, spent money on ads on it via Amazon and Facebook, I pimped the hell out of but it didn't shift. Earlier this year I even turned it into a free audiobook to just about zero reception. ('Maybe people want to hear it instead of reading it? Well okay then!')

As a book it was a fun project, as a business it was a complete failure. The second and third parts even more so. There ended up being quite a lot more in the loss column than could ever populate in the profit section. 
I learned the lesson the hard way that not every idea works as well as you hope it does, especially if you're pinning far too many hopes on it which I did. I also blindly ignored the advice of a few other independent authors who suggested 'This would be a tough sell.' 
Not just tough, the toughest. Sorry guys, I really should have listened. 

What really hammered home that point was the success that started trickling in when I changed gears and shifted directions completely, even if I didn't want to admit it. My first cyberpunk-ish horror demon book War Wagon that came out a year and a half later went through a few covers (because I kept changing things to try and find one that really worked) and had 3x the success of my comedy books. Which still doesn't add up to anything remarkable at all money wise (a pittance) but that wasn't the point, it was still doing three times better even though the comedy gear had been out for a couple of years by then.

One of the previous covers of War Wagon

Then 2020 hit, Covid came a calling and the rough idea I had jotted down at the start of the year was revisited as a writing project because suddenly I had a lot more home based time on my hands. In May that year Hack Frost was out and finally I was happy enough with the cover to leave it as it is. My enjoyment of it was so much too that it didn't take long to start working on the next or the next one after that, like I'd started out doing back in 2016.

And in that 2.2 years since then, it's had 18x the success of my first book and it's still climbing. Again, it's not Ferrari money (yet) but it's a marked contrast seeing sales just about every month while the other stuff has languished in silence. 

The train, building up some steam finally

Which leads us to the now and the decision I've made this afternoon to take down my first few books., removing them from the Amazon bookshelves. Because while they're a nice slice of my own history they really serve no purpose other than that. They haven't sold a copy in years, they're getting completely shadowed by everything else that came out after them and while they were entertaining to put together (and thrilling to publish something, anything!) I've since come to prefer writing action than comedy. (In book form that is, I still like the laughs from this blog so that's not going to change anytime soon.) 
Also this time I am listening to other authors who have suggested that if I want to be known and successful in a particular genre, don't branch off into a million other directions or styles as that will confuse the audience. 
(Apologies if you looked at all my work in one big hit and went 'Gah, too much difference in genres!' :P)

I certainly did appreciate the lessons they taught me though from publications, editing, formatting, advertising, promotion, sales tactics etc etc. And one day I might just find a place for them somewhere online (as a freebie perhapes). Hilariously I recall one of them did make a whole 20 cents from an online library borrow somewhere - I forget the where and the how but that might bare some further investigating as maybe they're a better library book than one gathering dust on a virtual shelf somewhere?   

But for now down they come. Sometimes you've got to admit that something isn't working then then use that fact to propel yourself down a path of something that is. 

God, what a profound Thursday it's been..

-Almigo