Declan Stanley » Web Stuff

Two Girls, One Sub

Declan — Wed, 20 May 2009 22:43:43 +0000

Here’s a little video from our friends at Playboy.

This is why I stopped eating my lunch in the park. If I pay for 12 inches I’m dam well going to take all 12 inches!

Seth Godin – Tribes

Declan — Wed, 13 May 2009 23:30:03 +0000

Lost Generation

Declan — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:47:54 +0000

Cory Doctorow

Declan — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:58:56 +0000

Doctorow Law: Anytime someone puts a lock on something you own, against your wishes, without giving you the key, they’re not doing it for your benefit.

Is this the future of books?

Declan — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 20:52:10 +0000

Here is a video of an Espresso Book Machine in action.

As an indie. author I have embraced a business model based on Print on Demand(POD) technology and web 2.0 social networking so it is exciting to think that machines like this could allow readers to get, almost instantaneously, a copy of my my book into their hands. No more waiting days for Amazon or CreateSpace to send you a copy in the mail.

Getting Famous on the Internet

Declan — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 11:02:02 +0000

Ok, So I am trying to get famous, because I have a couple of books coming out soon and I want to sell lots of copies and make some money.

So the benefit from my point of view is that I might make some money out of my fame. The benefit from your point of view is that the more money I make writing the more time I can justify devoting to my writing and so the more stories and novels I will produce.

But would I go so far as to take a college class in becoming “Internet famous”?

This would be funny if it wasn’t for real!

EDIT: I was trying to embed the video in this post, but it is not working for me so here is the link.

Writing Update

Declan — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 16:17:28 +0000

I spent most of December working on Alice. I almost have a finial first draft finished. Then I want to put it aside for a little while before going through it again and polishing it up.

I am also trying to get a paperback version of Alexandra available. Hopefully, if all goes well, you will be able to buy Alexandra in paperback sometime around April or May.

I have a bunch of short stories that I have “almost finished”. That is they are at least half way finished. So in January I will concentrate on these.

I have a habit of starting things and not finishing them. So in February I will start work on either A Job in the Country, Justine or Terminal Singularity. I plan to get all three finished this year. (And hopefully in paperback by early next year.)

I have also started to twitter.

Download Free eBooks

Declan — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 15:29:57 +0000

I am releasing all my novels and stories as ebooks. The first file I have uploaded is the text version of Alexandra. You can download it here Alexandra (Text) (4145). I plan to add more file versions such as PDF, Word, RTF etc. I just have to get the formatting worked out. (I write all my stories as plain text in a text editor, not a Word Processor).
These eBooks are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike license in the hope of getting the widest distribution of my work and spreading my fame far and wide across the internet.

Shop Now Open

Declan — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 16:26:35 +0000

I have spent the past week implementing a shopping cart/e-commerce system here on my blog. I have added both PDF and RTF version/formats of Alexandra which you can now buy.

I spend a week installing and configuring the new e-commerce system which means that I have written a grand total of 670 words of fiction this week – quite a bit short of my target.

But hopefully loosing a weeks worth of writing time will be compensated by the fact that now I am a fully fledged independent author selling my own books straight to my readers.

Site OK Again

Declan — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 18:57:18 +0000

OK I am not too sure what I did but some time in the past two days I managed to fix the problem I was having editing my pages in WordPress. I think I know the general area of the website where the error occurred, but I’m not too sure what caused it, nor which of the many things I did to “fix” it actually made the problem go away.
I now no longer trust WordPress 100%, but then maybe I shouldn’t have in the first place. But at least at the moment I can update my site once more.

Too Much Video for a Writer

Declan — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 23:20:39 +0000

OK, the videos are nice, but where are the stories? – more importantly where are the new stories?
Yes I have been distracted for the past few days making and uploading videos, and then further distracted viewing videos.
“But I need to watch YouTube videos it’s market research, honest,” I whine plaintively.

The idea behind making YouTube video/podcasts was to market myself and my work. But I’ll have nothing to market if I don’t write anything new. So I will take a short break from making videos and return to my main job on this site of writing new stories.

First Parts of Alexandra Reading Videos Uploaded

Declan — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 00:17:19 +0000

I have finished uploading the first 3 videos of me reading Alexandra.
Uploading videos takes about 10 times longer than downloading them!
Here’s another Vlog/Video Podcast/whatever of myself.

Status Update

Declan — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:24:20 +0000

January I started the new year with a burst of quality work, on both Justine and Terminal Singularity.
However in February we moved house and that was a little bit of an interruption. To say the least. I kept working on both novels, but I keep changing my mind about which one I should concentrate on. Justine is the more interesting, and personal, for me. But Terminal Singularity is fully plotted and 25 percent of the way through it’s first draft. So logically I should work on that. But I keep getting great ideas and character insights into the story of Justine.

I also implemented another new plan for success. Since I can’t make money at my Ideal Job, I have decided to continue the tradition of novelists having a wide variety of jobs by starting my own blog network to try to generate an income from advertising and affiliate sales. If you want to stop smoking read this blog.

Another Form Of Writers Block

Declan — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 00:47:43 +0000

I just looked at the date on the files that I have for my new novel Terminal Singularity. The latest date is 11th Dec. It is now the 29th. That is 18 days without working on my novel. OK, you might say, given the dates involved(i.e. Christmas) I might be excused for not writing while I have been busy preparing and then indulging in the pagan celebration of winter solstice( transposed a few days later, because Christians can’t get anything right).
But basically in over two weeks I have not found even 10 minutes to change even one comma or full stop in any part of the novel.
I can’t use the excuse that I have been busy writing blog posts, because I haven posted anything since the 6th.
I have had the time because I have chosen to play computer games, watch movies, etc when I could have been sitting at my computer writing.

If I can’t bring myself to write I can at least bring myself to administer my web site. I’ve just noticed that there is a new version of WordPress available to download. But, you know, I am not going to do it.

This is another form of writers block where one can distract oneself for ever doing “very important” other things (Taking out the trash, washing the car, walking the dog) and never find the time to actually write.
I will have to stop waiting to find the time to write and decide that some of those “very important” other things will just have to wait because I have made the time to write. And I will be writing and doing nothing else.

How-To Spam Your Own Blog

Declan — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:58:20 +0000

The best laid plans of mice and men…
Thursday, Friday and Saturday real life intervened in my plans for becoming mega rich by writing/blogging and I did not get any writing done. On Sunday when I did make time to write I worked on my novel and so I do not have any posts for this week written, or even half written.
I needed to work on my fiction, if I don’t make the time to work on my novel it will take me five years to finish it. And as novelists only get paid once they have finished their novels (nobody buys a half finished work of fiction) I don’t think that I can wait five years before being paid.
However as I consider my blog my day job as I am establishing myself as novelist I was worried that I have not posted anything to my blog for nearly a week.
I was going to write a post about that fact that I do not have anything to post, when I realised that posting for the sake of having something to post was simply a form of self-spamming. I do not need to fill up my blog with stupid posts about nothing of any interest. I do not read any blog that has nothing of interest in it and I would not expect anyone to read my blog if it was full of what can only be described as self-spam. Although now I find myself posting about not posting a post about nothing
Most of the expert sources I read about making money from blogging (ProBlogger, Blog Profits Blueprint) state that you need to post every day in order to keep your readers coming back and make your traffic grow. But I am not so sure if that is necessarily the case. (Note: I have been blogging for less than one year and do not make more than loose change each month, so the people who do make money might be right.)
However I can find no coloration within my own stats between the frequency of my blog posts and the amount of traffic my site gets.
Some successful bloggers/writers say the opposite (Tim Ferriss – point 2 Post less to be read more) And some say blogging is a complete waste of their time (Morris Rosenthal).

The fact is that most people who come to my blog come to read my free novels and stories and not my blog posts. Looking at my stats I find that individual chapters of my novels get 90-100 views a day, by best blog post gets 4 or 5 views. So most people are not reading my blog.
So for the most part I am pretty much relaxed about posting only once or twice per week. Quality is much better than quantity. There are enough spammers on the internet, I do not need to spam my own blog in a furtile attempt to attract readers.

A New Plan for Writing Success

Declan — Fri, 14 Sep 2007 10:01:50 +0000

The good news is that my decision to spend most of my time this week writing fiction paid off big time. I have done an average of 1,400 words per day. The bad(?) news is that I have started a new novel.
I have decided to write a commercial erotic romance. I have done my research and I think I know what the market wants, that is what the publishers are asking for. I know that I can write SF and Erotica and I am a bit of a soft romantic at heart, so I think I will enjoy writing SF erotic romances. Or more precisely writing the proposals for SF erotic romances, since I want to do this professionally I won’t be writing complete novels until I know that I can sell them.
I will continue to write my own “literary erotica”, but I am not sure about the commercial variability of the stories that I “naturally” write. There is too much story for the erotic market and too much sex for the mainstream market, and anyway as we all know most writers do not make a living from writing.
Also I still want to pursue the possibility of generating an income from blogging. That is why I recommend reading the Blog Profits Blueprint.
The question is do I spend my time writing fiction or blogging about writing fiction. The answer is that I will spend the weekends writing blog posts and hopefully getting at least 3 if not 4 or 5 that I can then que to post on my blog every day. And weekdays I will actually write fiction.
Well this is the plan for this week. As you may know this blog is a log of my journey to learn how to make a living writing fiction and blogging. So I will probably have to try out quite a few plans before I find a combination that works for me.
Subscribe to my RSS feed(feed by Email) and follow my progress. Then you to can learn from my mistakes and adapt what I do to generate a second (or a first) income for yourself.

Post Every Day

Declan — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 14:38:27 +0000

Every place that I look for advice on creating a successful blog gives the same piece of advice – post every day. Every source be it the Blog Mastermind Program, or another blog such as Ten Keyboards, or even an article in a traditional magazine repeats the same advice – post every day.
It is something that I have not been doing. I am still trying to establish the discipline of writing every day. I go through periods where I do write every day, and I am always amazed at my productivity. But then I get distracted by “real life” and my discipline slips. I skip a day. I skip two days. Then I realise that I haven’t written anything for four or five days.
As a novelist I sometimes think that my blog might be yet another distraction. But I know hat writing something every day is a useful discipline, whether I am writing fiction or blog posts.
So now I am going to post every day. Hopefully I will find something useful and/or interesting to write every day. I don’t want to end spamming my own blog!

I’m not the only one!

Declan — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 11:57:24 +0000

I’ve just read this post from Rich Minx about her receiving her first Adsense cheque. She had been waiting since 2004 to accumulate the $100+ one needs before Google will write you a cheque(or does Google cut you a check).

I’m still waiting for my first cheque/check, and yes I put my first Adsense adds up on a web site in 2004 as well.

And yes I know that I should have been busy working on Chapter 2 of Alice, which I said over a month ago was nearly finished, insead of reading other people’s blogs. But hey I have added over 300 words to it this week, but I keep getting distracted by ideas for Justine.

PS now you see why it took me five years to write Celia, my first novel!

Advertise on Declan Stanley’s Literary Erotica

Declan — Wed, 22 Aug 2007 12:11:06 +0000

I have added a new page that gives details of how to advertise on Declan Stanley’s Literary Erotica.

Since I joined the Blog Mastermind Program and started to implement strategies to build traffic, I have experienced a huge increase in traffic to this site, going from an average of 27.5 site visits per day to 482.5 visits per day in under 3 months, and I fully expect the same type of increase in the next few months. So book your advertising now before the prices go up.

Site Breakdown

Declan — Mon, 16 Jul 2007 18:33:27 +0000

I am making some changes to the layout of my site and I have just broken all my permalinks.

All the links to my stories in pages and posts no longer work. The links in the sidebar do work.

I will work my way through the pages and posts to update the URLs of the links.

In the meantime you can use the links on the sidebar to navigateÂ my stories.

I am writing this post rather than fixing the problem as I have to leave my computer for the next few hours and do stuff in real life. But when I get back to my computer this will be the first thing that I do.