Category Archives: books

books, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Writing

July 2013 Sales

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Here’s the book sales story for July 2013. Eight sales total. Seven of those were e-books and one a print book. That’s of six different titles. So that’s down from my 20 sales in June, but otherwise is way ahead of what I sold in February through May, and just behind the nine in January. Still not even thinking about bestseller lists.

I added one book in July: “Charley Delta Delta”, a short story. I’ll past in two sizes of my sales table, one easy to read and a smaller one of the size I have to use at my self-publishing diary at Absolute Write.

books, Operation Lotus Sunday

To Justify or Not

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One website/blog I monitor with some degree of regularity is Joel Friedlander’s The Book Designer. Joel is very big on taking great care in the interior design of a book. He encourages people to use a high-end program, such as InDesign, to create the interior. He does acknowledge, however, that the standard Microsoft Word is going to be used by many or most self-publishers, and so he has done some work with that.

One thing Joel encourages is that the book text be fully justified—that is, that the text be flush against both the left and right margins. This leads to decisions and action needed to avoid the odd spacing that comes from justification. When my dad set type for The Providence Journal, he would handle this with hyphenation and spaces of different size, all with a hot-lead typesetting machine. Today Word does a lot of that. You can set hyphenation zones, and you can even tell it, to some extent, how to adjust spaces.

Another caution Joel warns about is eliminating “rivers” of text, often called “ladders.” You probably know what I mean. This is when the white space between words aligns in a mostly vertical pattern between lines. It tends to capture your eyes and pulls you away from reading. This can be solved, says Joel, with careful attention to typesetting techniques, including adjusting word spacing, changing hyphenation from what may be optimum, and in some cases kerning or compressed type on a word or two.

Along the way Joel also talks about widows and orphans—not the people, but the single lines of text at the bottom or tops of pages that are cut off from the rest of the paragraph. You can fix those easy enough, but then you might have a “spread” (i.e. two pages of a book facing each other) with the last lines not aligned with each other. Again, techniques are available to solve the widows and orphans problem without creating the spread problem.

It seems to me, however, that all of these (except maybe widows, orphans, and spreads) are solved by simply not right justifying the text. Let it be a ragged right edge. What’s so awful about that? The spacing between words is constant, as it is between letters. This is the most comfortable reading. When spaces vary between words to allow the right side of the text to be all at the same vertical line, reading can be more difficult. It takes a very skilled typesetter to adjust those spaces and hyphens so that the text justifies and the comfort of reading is not diminished.

It further seems to me that the most important thing in laying out a book is to make the reading easy. Margins, text size and spacing, the presence of page numbers and running heads—all of these make reading the book easier. Right justification makes it harder. So why do we right justify?

My three print books so far [Documenting America, The Candy Store Generation, and Documenting America, Homeschool Edition), are all left justified, ragged right text. I did it that way because it was easier to typeset and because it is the most comfortable reading, with the latter reason being the main one. Full justification is possible with Word, but I decided against it. I don’t even hyphenate words with the ragged right text, which is possible, because I think hyphenated words detract from the comfort of reading. Joel would not approve.

When I was first making my decision concerning this, I made trips to both the library and Barnes & Noble to randomly check books for justification vs. ragged right. I found almost none that were ragged right. I found many that, with full justification, had awkward words spacing, hyper-hyphenation, and rivers of white space. They were distracting to read. The few that I found with ragged right were easy to read. And, to my eye, the text looked as attractive as fully justified.

So my question is why does anyone do justified text? My conclusion is that someone, possibly readers, probably printers, for sure typesetters, thinks is looks better that way on the page. Joel did a guest post at a blog and I asked that question. His answer: reader expectations. I’m not sure about that, however. I kind of think the readers don’t care all that much. Will they go to the bookstore, pick out a book for browsing, find the text ragged right, and put it down as something less than professional? Maybe, but I kind of doubt it. I doubt most readers will even notice.

This weekend I spent a couple of hours reading in Not A Fan, by Kyle Idleman. This is a book were are doing an all-church study in right now, with sermons and life group classes all using the book. I was well into my second or third hour of reading when I suddenly realized that the text was not justified: it was ragged right! With no hyphenation! I’m very attuned to that, and yet I was more than 50 pages into the book before I noticed it. If I didn’t notice it, I doubt anyone else did. This is published by Zondervan; it’s not a self-published book.

So how did Zondervan manage to typeset a book with ragged right, non-hyphenated text, and do it so well that it took someone looking for it over 50 pages of reading to notice? Why is this book selling tens of thousands of copies when it has what some would call an unprofessional layout? You can be sure I’m going to spend some time studying the layout and seeing what I can glean from it. I think I know what it is, but want to study some more before saying anything. The print version of Doctor Luke’s Assistant is in the mail to me right now, and the print version of China Tour is only about two weeks away from beginning production.

books, reading

An Evening at Barnes and Noble

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So I put in a lot of hours at work this week, about 50 through Friday, and I’ll work at least seven today and maybe five tomorrow. The work load demands it, the wife is out of town, and I’m able to do my writing for a couple of hours in the evenings, so why not try to get ahead of the workload curve? I’m not getting much recreation, and little exercise (though I walked at noon yesterday, ten minutes in 20-30 mph winds). Still, I’ve been eating well, my weight is falling, and I have little or no desire for snacking. Maybe giving up chips and soda for Lent is a good thing.

I decided to treat myself last night and after leaving the office at 6:00 PM I drove 2.2 miles out of my way, a true expense with gasoline at $3.459, to go to Barnes and Noble. I usually do this at least once each time Lynda is out of town, though didn’t the last two times she deserted me for the grandkid(s). I browse through the remainders tables, and sometimes find a bargain. I look through many of the aisles, looking at lots of books, and every third trip in have to buy one. I daydream that mine will be there someday, though I know the odds against that are astronomical. Eventually I grab a magazine or three from the rack, buy a vente house blend, and sit in the coffee shop and read. Normally I can’t do that for very long, for Sidelines Syndrome takes over and I feel I should be writing. So I leave halfway through the vente and head home and thence to The Dungeon to write.

But last night I was in the store almost two and a half hours and suffered not at all from Sidelines Syndrome. I didn’t buy any books tonight, though I found three that were tempting. The first was The Kennedy Detail, written by Gerald Blaine, one of the Secret Service agents assigned to JFK. Focusing much on Dallas, he speaks of how the agents felt in losing the man they were sworn to protect. I read in this for over an hour. Someday I’ll buy it, but not for $28.00. The second one was Founding America. This caught my eye because it is mainly a compilation of original documents from 1774 to 1791, with a few editor’s notes. The idea is sort of what my Documenting America is. We have no reason to be ignoring source documents in favor of historians’ sifting through them and in the process giving opinions. Read the documents; they aren’t difficult to understand. I didn’t buy Founding America, though I was sorely tempted, and the price was better at $12.95 (I think it was).

It seems to me much has changed in Barnes and Noble. I find fewer shelves of books and more display tables. These tables hold fewer books than the shelves they replaced did, and some have games, puzzles, or other non-book items. At the front, where latest releases were once displayed, is a Nook display. In some places in the store a major amount of shelves have been removed in favor of even larger display tables.

The teen book section seemed to be larger than before, the poetry section smaller that the even minuscule size it have been previously, if that’s possible. Reference books seemed to occupy fewer shelf-feet. Cookbooks even seemed to be reduced, as maybe were travel books.

These latter things people now get on line. Google for a reference. Google a recipe, Google a destination. Or Bing them. As a result B&N doesn’t need to stock as many books because they don’t sell. What will happen when Nook and Kindle take over the world? The brick and mortar stores are shrinking, and will soon be shrivelled. Such are the observations of an occasional B&N patron. And, as always, I set off the alarm as I left, even though I bought nothing and carried nothing out of the store I didn’t bring in except the vente. I warned the cashier that I always set it off, so was not arrested for shoplifting.

Oh, the third book that caught my eye? It was in the remainders section, on a lower shelf, a neat stack of perhaps twelve copies. When I saw it, I almost whipped out my cell phone and called good friend Gary in Rhode Island. The book was The Screaming Skull, & other Classic Horror Stories. The Screaming Skull? Who knew a college freshman prank, quite minor at that, in which no animals were hurt, no feelings were hurt, no one was bullied, no hate speech was uttered (except maybe by the subject of the prank) would find its way onto a remainders bookshelf in B&N in Rogers Arkansas in 2011? Maybe I should have invested the $7.95 plus tax just to say I had it. Gary, check it out at a B&N where you’re at.

books, Magazines, reading

Reading Magazines

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Last night, about 9:45 PM, I pulled a book off the reading pile and began reading, mug of coffee at the ready. I’m sure I’ll give a report on it, 510 pages from now. For the last three weeks or so I’ve been concentrating on reading magazines. On the end table between Lynda’s and my reading chairs, we each have a stack. Actually I have two. One is a stack of books; the other a stack of magazines and newsletters. I tackle each as the spirit moves me. Actually the stack of books is not my reading pile. It is the current book I’m reading, plus a Bible or two, and maybe a study book. My reading “pile” is actually out of sight, on a bookshelf in my closet.

The magazine pile is quite varied. I only subscribe to one magazine, Poets and Writers, and that’s a one-year experiment. I’ll see in February if I’ll renew it. But we get lots of other mags or newsletters. There’s alumni magazines from the University of Rhode Island, the University of Missouri, the UoM College of Engineering, and I think Lynda may get something from the University of Kansas. We get a magazine twice a year from our timeshare organization, every month from our rural electric cooperative, and one a month from AAA. They pile up.

Then add to that the newsletters: Prison Fellowship, New Fields Ministries, our water utility, Focus on the Family, the Bella Vista POA, the non-official Bella Vista newsletter (almost a mag), and a couple more. These pile up as well. Lynda gets a couple every month from various stock trading organizations, though those may be more “buy our service” type of ads rather than true newsletters. I also classify as “magazines” things such as annual reports from insurance companies and stocks. We get a few of those.

Then add the mags we pick up at thrift stores, yard sales, or the recycling place. That one is amazing. When the magazine box is full, you have your pick of hundreds within reach. Conversely, when they’ve just emptied the box, you can’t reach any. We normally come away from there with just about the same number that we drop off. The National Geographic I’ve read recently came from there—though we’ve got years of the Geographic on shelves downstairs, waiting for me to get to them.

I try to read them all. Why? I feel like I’m probably missing something if I don’t read them. They come to me to impart knowledge, maybe even wisdom on occasion. How can I simply trash them? Certainly what I pay for I’m going to read. Every page. Even the ads. Those that come free I might skim. Oh, wait, most of those I actually pay for. The cost is just hidden in the utility rate or the overhead of the organization. The ministry newsletters are always interesting. New Fields is an organization of Russian-Americans who provide a wide range of Christian ministries in the countries of the former Soviet Union. They do a great work, including much humanitarian work.

So for the last three weeks, when reading time materialized, rather than go to my reading pile I grabbed something off the mag pile. As of Monday night the mag pile was left with only two things it in. One was something from Blue Cross Blue Shield that I just didn’t feel like reading. The other was the timeshare org mag, and that is almost as much sales pitch. So I felt caught up and grabbed the book from the reading pile. While it’s a rather large book, it will feel good to get back into that kind of reading. At ten pages a night and a few more on the weekend, I should finish this around the end of September or early October. By then another ten to fifteen magazines should have piled up.

books, career

Books to the Dumpster

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No, not my books, but some CEI books. We will be re-locating to a new building the end of this month, and I volunteered to take responsibility for the library. Before I can back it up I need to delete duplicate and out-dated materials. Before I can know what materials are duplicate and outdated I need to organize it, for materials are scattered due to a faulty systems of original organization and to ten or so years of neglect. Before I can organize it I need to reorganize it to correct the original faults.

Last week I spent parts of four days on it, and managed to pull all the manufacturer’s catalogs and brochures together and alphabetize them. I say “all” because I’m still finding some hiding in places. The shelves the catalogs were on did not have enough space for them all, so I had to move them but first had to move some things to make room for them. Then I misjudged the extra space I’d need by about 40 percent. Hence I moved the catalogs beginning with “A” about five times. Last week I also mostly finished pulling all the Federal regulations together and the consensus standards.

Today I worked on State and local regulations and standards. These are the most difficult of all, for it was with these that the original filing system was faulty, IMHO. I won’t go into how it was faulty, but it was. I’m probably only a little more than halfway through this task, even though I worked seven hours on it today. I should finish tomorrow and get on to reference materials and project documents.

But this post was about discarding books. Even though I’m not ready to discard duplicates and out-dateds (coined a word), I’m still discarding things. Means’ construction cost data from 1999 is kind of meaningless now, so I’m tossing those in a barrel. Broken notebooks don’t make sense to keep, so I’m taking them apart, recycling what I can, and discarding what I can’t. A few other things are obviously unsuitable for keeping, so those are going. The discard barrel is close to full.

At noon today, instead of walking I decided to carry the 2004 Thomas Registers to the dumpster. I don’t know the distant equivalent. It took me four trips from library to dumpster, with about as many books as it was possible to carry. At the end I felt that I’d had an adequate workout. Even though these books are outdated (we have 2008 and 2009 ones), I was sad to see them in a common morgue with the garbage from the break room and the pencil sharpener dumpings from individual trash baskets. These are books, and deserve a better fate than a common morgue followed by a common grave in a dry-bed landfill, to sit there for a hundred years barely decomposing due to lack of moisture.

But we can’t keep everything. I’m almost thinking it’s foolhardy to even have a library, in this digital age. Surely we can do better than to kill trees for things that become outdated in a year or two. Oh, well, tomorrow I’ll begin carrying the barrel contents to the dumpster, before I begin crying over them. At least I get to keep all the textbooks.

books, reading

Book Addiction

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Last night we moved books. First we took them out of the bookcases. Then we moved the bookcases. Then we moved other bookcases into the spots where the first bookcases were. Then we put the books back on the shelves.

Well, the whole process is not yet done. We did get all the bookcases in their new places. One short one was replaced with a tall one next to another tall one, except those two didn’t match, and one of them (the one already in place) matched two or three on the other side of the room, and another bookcase in a semi-used state in a spare bedroom matched the tall one replacing the short one. Are you with me so far?

First, the short one went on a wall where there was no bookcase, under the high school graduation pictures of the kids. The same books went back in that one in the new location. Then I took the encyclopedias off their shelf and set that bookshelf to the side, for two other shelves had to be moved four inches first to increase some space for the encyclopedias. The tall one being moved to its two (or three) matching brothers, where the encyclopedias had been, went next, but those books were not necessarily going back on to it, so they had to stay in piles for a while. That all happened Monday evening, along with vacuuming vacated places and spraying for bugs.

Then yesterday evening I moved the unused one from the garage to where the short one had been, went to writers guild, came back from writers guild when no one else showed, moved (with Lynda’s help) the other matching tall one. We then unloaded two other tall ones and moved them four inches. Except that proved to be a little too much and so we moved them back one inch. Then the encyclopedia case went in its new home, right by the door into the Dungeon (as we fondly call our walk-out basement where all this was taking place).

Then the slow process of moving books began in earnest. Christian fiction, alphabetical by other first, then Biblical fiction also alpha by author, then secular fiction alpha by author and collating two groups, then non-fiction (Christian and secular mixed), except how to organize the non-fiction? Alpha by author wouldn’t work. It has to be topical. I worked on that some, until it was after 10:00 PM and time to wind down for the evening. The few remaining piles on the floor, and whatever the final look of the non-fiction will be, can wait for tomorrow.

All of which says: I have an addiction to books. It’s very difficult to pass any up at a sale. At least, to pass up any I’m truly interested in. The list of books I blogged about a couple of days ago had all come from used book sales over a month’s time. That’s too many books to be adding to an already over-stuffed collection. So as of now I am swearing off used book stores, thrift stores, garage sales, and even new book stores. The library? I’ll still go there, but only at times when that little used book store in the entryway is closed.

Now I have to read them, all 4,000 of them (my best estimate). It might take a while, especially with finding a couple of articles in every book. More on that tomorrow–if I’m not too busy shelving books.

books

Book Signing

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No, it’s not mine. One would have to have a book published to have a book signing, and I haven’t.

I went to Wal-Mart on Monday, after work, to pick up some file folders for my writing filing. The parking lot was more full than I would have expected at a little after 6 PM. Actually, traffic was awful, in every direction. All the roads I either drove on or crossed to get from the office to Wal-Mart were jammed in each direction. And the gas pumps at Murphy Oil outside the Supercenter were jammed as well, despite the fact that gas had gone up from $1.419 to $1.559. Perhaps many feared additional increases. But I prate.

Inside Wal-Mart, I encountered a good sized crowd. I saw a line of people in the main aisle between clothing and office supplies, kitchen stuff, etc. The line looked like one of those special lines they have the day after Christmas, for everyone to return the things they received but didn’t want. But then I remembered this wasn’t after Christmas but after Thanksgiving. And then I noticed everyone had one or two books in their hands. When I walked by the line I could see the books were all Growing Up Country. I diverted to the head of the line and saw this was written by Charlie Daniels, of the country singing group Alabama, and that Mr. Daniels was to sign books from 6 PM to 8 PM. I checked the time: 6:15 PM, and the signer’s chair was empty. Mr. Daniels was obviously running late. How long before the hundred or so people in line became irate?

Book signings are something I have not daydreamed, or even dreamed, about. If I am ever published, book signings will obvious come into my life. Most authors describe them as boring times, more waiting for people to come by the table than actual signing. Two hours for a handful of books. Mr. Daniels’ celebrity status made things different for him. And this explains why publishers will publish books by celebrities. I guess Daniels is actually more of an editor of this book than a writer, for he has gathered together “a slight collection of essays from 59 self-described ‘country folk'”. Probably he has writing of his own sprinkled through the book.

More power to Charlie Daniels, I say. People want to hear from celebrities; they buy their books; publishers oblige. It’s the system.

Bible study, books, memories, miscellaneous, Writing

Sidelines Syndrome

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I first encountered Sidelines Syndrome when I was in junior high, a skinny lad who loved both academics and sports but who excelled only at the former and struggled with the latter. I didn’t know what to call it then.

I experienced it mainly on Sundays, in the fall, and it continued strongly all the way through high school. We went to mass at 9:00 AM, and got home around 10:30 AM or a little later. Cereal and toast were consumed, Dad fell asleep either on the dining room floor or in his bedroom, and it was time to read, do homework, or watch whatever pre-game football shows they had on in the 1960s. Eventually the game itself would start. How great it was to watch the New York football Giants, with Y.A. Tittle and later Fran Tarkenton at quarterback, Homer Jones at flanker, and…others whose names I can’t remember. I think Frank Gifford may have already retired. But I prate.

However, by the end of the first quarter, I was tired of watching and wanted to be doing. So I turned off the television, went outside, and started playing basketball alone. Not sure what my younger brother was doing; perhaps he sometimes joined me in the wide part of the driveway, next to the detached, two-car garage, where Dad had put up the hoop and backboard. Within a half-hour, certainly before the end of the first half, my neighbor Bobby, same grade as me, would come out and we’d have a friendly competition. An hour later and we were throwing the football in the street. Other neighborhood kids would join us, and we started a pick-up game in the street. The “field” stretched three telephone poles, the middle pole being the first down. It was always Bobby and me against all the others, all much younger than us. Bobby was Fran Tarkenton and I was Homer Jones. The ten or fifteen kids we played against didn’t stand a chance. But again I prate.

Sidelines Syndrome, as I define it now, is the physical or psychological reaction of body, soul, and spirit to being on the sidelines rather than being in the game. As teenagers, SS caused us to have an overwhelming urge of needing to be in the game, not watching others play the game on television even if they were quantum leaps ahead of us in skill and ability. We had to be out playing, not watching. I’ve noticed that SS has the exact opposite effect on us as we age. Instead of wanting to be in the game, we are glad to be on the sidelines; it lulls us to complacency, tiredness, and an overwhelming desire to sleep through half the game. At least it does me.

Last night, I experienced my first case of teenager SS in years. After working late, I went to Barnes & Noble to read, relax, research, and drink that large house blend that I mentioned in yesterday’s post. I began reading Noah Lukeman’s The First Five Pages. I read about ten pages, then felt an overwhelming urge to be writing instead of reading about writing. I couldn’t concentrate. So I put that down and began reading in The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Writing Poetry. I managed to research one minor topic, then SS interrupted the neurotransmitters and I had to lay it aside. Next was a book about fifty skills a writer should have, or something like that. I couldn’t get past the table of contents. The same was true with “Poets and Writers” and “Writers Journal” magazines. Concentration was impossible. I had to be writing.

So I went home, fixed dinner, went to my reading chair, and began planning out what I think will be my next book, a Bible study, and doing some research on it. SS was satisfied, my brain fully engaged, and productive words and concepts flowed. As the evening progressed and way led on to way, I quit about 1:15 AM, a blog post made and three sell-sheets drafted for three future books. I was satisfied; my brain was satisfied, a teen-age type attack of SS fully suppressed, and a 5:55 AM alarm setting turned on. Hey, maybe I’m getting younger!

Don’t bother to look up Sidelines Syndrome in a medical book, or Google it, or check it in Wikipedia. It doesn’t exist as a clinically defined medical or psychological phenomenon. I assure you it exists, however, and needs to be dealt with in the right way. Maybe this post will spur those professions to get off their duffs and figure this out—quickly. I can’t take many more nights of less than five hours sleep.