BBS Authors: Details About Our New Direction
That last website we’ve been at for so long really needed an overhaul, and for a while I’d been stubborn about keeping it so I kept trying, each year, to modify it to keep it up with the times. In fact, I’d been stubbornly keeping to certain ways I’d been running Black Bed Sheet, so last December (2017) I came to the conclusion that we really needed an overhaul and to spare no expense doing it; the future of BBS depended on it.
So here we are now, the first day of the month of our tenth anniversary, and as usual I have a lot to catch up on, regarding authors and communication, and to get things moving forward.
Firstly, welcome to our new site. To fully take advantage of it, here are some this-n-thats:
- Your author page is like a min-website that will grow….we’ll exploit more of your reviews, videos, social feeds…..and what’s more, authors can interact with their pages by logging in and leaving comments much the way a blog works.
- I tried to maintain all of your accounts (for those who had ones) from the previous sites, but couldn’t. So please go to “Register or Sign In” in the gold navigation bars at the header of most of our pages, and create a new one.
- I’ve migrated to a really good server and hosting company so we’re starting fresh with top-of-the-line security and I have a good web team to go to with any issues that may arise.
- Contests, coupons, gift certificates, affiliate programs, and other incentives are all set up & will utilize beginning this month (October)
- FULLY RESPONSIVE AT LAST! And we don’t need any apps this time. PLUS we have a cell-phone-only menu we’re building with special extras that will sync with live events (and one-time deals at those events, cell-phone-users only!) For the first time in our history users can shop our store on their mobile devises WITH NO PROBLEMS!
- BBS online is now separate from my own website at downwarden.com
- This site is top-of-the-line with corporate-like super capabilities. Other functions are in the works like drop-shipping throughout the world utlizing Amazon, social logins (such as using one’s Facebook or Google account to log in) and more!
- ALL-INCLUSIVE! Having a homepage site, a print store site, a digital store site, a site for our children’s line (Blue Bed Sheet) and a (albeit disfunctional) community page site was more than confusing, don’tcha think? Now, kinda like the end of the movie The Dark Crystal, it’s merged together in one nifty entity. Click on an author’s book cover and you can buy the print or ebook right the heck there.
- I don’t know about you, but I like to fill things with color. The previous websites had plenty going on, but it was all confusing eye candy. Now everything’s neat and clean, and I still get to indulge myself because I just dig those new animated banners…..
I’ve been busier more in 2018 than I have with Black Bed Sheet than any prior year since its conception. Unfortunately (or fortunately, however you take it) it’s been largely behind-the-scenes. With allowances for my very distracting personal family life, I’ve had to maintain a stubborn focus once I set my mind to re-inventing BBS’ presence online and my tunnel vision was set to maximum until I could get it done and done. I felt that if I didn’t, and if this beast couldn’t get to where I wanted it by our 10th anniversary (Oct 2018), the future of this business couldn’t go much further. With all the setbacks, I was on a real journey into mental disarray, because the urgent necessity to get it all done increased with every passing day that it didn’t. But heck, here it is October 1 and there IT is, without a day to spare. The last day of my final final FINAL deadline.
NEW DIRECTION PARTICULARS:
- We’ve let go of more than a dozen titles.
- Updating contracts with all BBS authors who want to stay on board. Please be patient.
- Royalties will be calculated and sent out after the first of the year so we can pay attention to the actual sales themselves this holiday season. Really, being that I’ve been focusing on the overhaul, there hasn’t been much to report. That will change, because….
- The creative drive is to change the world with our stories. The business drive is to make money doing just that.
- We have an advertising budget. This means ads and promotion to a greater degree than before.
- I am seeking to make book/anthology deals with solid franchises in our genre.
- We’re expanding, little by little, our ebook-only line, particularly with short novella-length-type fiction.
- I’m pretty confident we’ll see a revival of Black Hamster TV next year, and available on devices such as Roku. One thing at a time…..
And as Austin Powers said more than a few times, “Okay now, I’m spent.”
Actually, I’m heading out to finish designing our huge Halloween 10th Anniversary event outside 😉
—Nicholas Grabowsky
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