France – Page 2 – Phil Slattery, Writer, Publisher

Marketing Test

For at least the next few weeks, I will be testing advertising my works at various times to see how that will affect book sales. For example, you probably saw the same announcements for Diabolical and Alien Embrace at least four times (every six hours) each on a few days, sometimes in sequence, to see if that not only affects sales in the US, but around the globe as well. My followers in other countries occasionally purchase a work, but I have to ask myself if this is because of the difference in time zones and because I have been making announcements only once per day. For example, if I announce a book is available at 8:00 eastern standard time (EST) in the US, which is an optimal time to advertise in the US, that announcement reaches people in India around 5:30 pm, which may or may not be a time when the announcement will reach the most viewers.

What gave me this ideas is noticing that since I have started advertising my works once per day at 8:00 EST, my readership in India has picked up. Therefore, I am experimenting to determine the optimal times to reach a worldwide audience.

Unfortunately, this will clutter this website with the same repeated ads, so I will run these multiple ads only sporadically. I will not be doing this every day.

You will also start seeing the occasional article in another language as part of the effort to reach a global audience. This articles will be most likely be in German, French, or Spanish, all of which I can speak or read to some degree. A translation may or may not be provided.

Update: My Short Story “Bye-Bye” has been Accepted for Publication

My short story “Bye-Bye” has been accepted for publication at Fiction on the Web and will appear there on July 26. If you are interested in finding out more about them, follow this link to an Authors Publish review of their site. In their first paragraph, Authors Publish says this about Fiction on the Web:

“Fiction on the Web (FotW), was founded in 1996, which makes it one of the oldest online literary journals. In fact it is the oldest online journal that focuses solely on publishing short fiction. They have had hundreds of thousands of readers over the years…”

“Bye-bye” is a mainstream love story, which I feel is very poignant and says something about the better side of human nature. It is based on an actual event I witnessed, when I was in the Navy and our ship, the USS Enterprise, made a portcall in Toulon, France, in 1986. I never spoke with any of the characters involved and most of the story is fiction, but it has a kernel of truth at its core.

The story is unusual for a work of short fiction, because it uses footnotes to explain some of the Navy jargon. I felt I had to keep the jargon to keep the story realistic, though I tried to keep the footnotes to an absolute minimum, so as to interrupt the narrative flow as little as possible.

Please visit Fiction on the Web on July 26 and let me know what you think of the story. One excellent advantage of publishing on Fiction on the Web is that their stories normally receive a lot of good, constructive criticism from their readers. I find that very helpful in developing my art.