Today I attended a meeting at the City of Centerton, Arkansas—a simple preconstruction conference for a small project at First Baptist Church in Centerton, to add a baseball/softball field on vacant land next to the church. The contractor is a man who used to work for us; the engineer is one I’ve worked with for a long time.

As I drove to the meeting, I saw that I had two copies of Documenting America in the pick-up. When I got to City Hall I took a copy of the book. Upon seeing my contractor friend, I asked him, “You got a spare $10.90? I think you’ll like this,” and I handed him a copy of the book. He said he would take a copy, but that he didn’t have any money on him at the moment. His coworker also looked interested.

It was during the meeting that he said he didn’t have the money right then. So I took the book from him and gave it to the engineer, saying, “Maybe you’d like this.” She seemed impressed that I’d published a book, and said she wanted to buy one for her husband. When I told her it was available as an e-book for 1/5th the price, she said that’s how she’d buy it. I hope she follows through.

So I gave the book back to my contractor friend, and said he could pay me later. I kiddingly reminded him that I have to sign off on the project, and that he needed to pay me before I did the final inspection.

That’s the way book sales seem to go these days: one sale at a time, mostly at my efforts. Writing is a hard business, the sale of one’s writings harder yet. Yesterday “Too Old To Play” went live at the Kindle store. So far I have two e-sales of it, and it stands about 58,500 in the Kindle store, but will sink fast unless there are more sales. I’m okay with the start. The two sales probably came from people I know, somewhere, who bought it in response to my notices on my blogs, on Facebook, at Ozark Writers League, or at Christian Authors Book Marketing Strategies. I’d be shocked if they were bought by strangers who stumbled upon the title at Amazon.

So my sales and revenue for January 2012 stand at 7 and $6.36 respectively, with 3.5 days left in the month. I’m okay with that. I might get a boost on Monday Jan 30, when “Mom’s Letter” will be the featured short story at the Short Story Symposium. That may generate some sales, and if any of those buyers go to my Amazon page and see I have another short story in the series…who knows? I reached out to TSSS in late December, and am pleased it worked out.

One book at a time. That appears to be the rule in these early days in the brave new world of eSP—e-self-publishing. Will it ever move beyond that? I hope so.