Category Archives: Documenting America

Church History Novels, Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, Short Stories

Hoopla “Sales”

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Three borrows in two months: it’s nice to have new readers for this oldie.

When I first started self-publishing, back in 2011, two organizations competed for authors: Amazon, which distributed e-books and print books to its own store; and Smashwords, which distributed e-books to a lot of retailers. I began by uploading my books to Amazon, but before many months passed I also uploaded to Smashwords.

Over the years, other services popped up. Barnes & Noble made it possible to uploads your books directly to them, bypassing the middle men. Another service distributing to retailers was Draft 2 Digital. I made the decision that it was hard enough keeping up with Amazon and Smashwords that I wouldn’t mess with D2D too.

In fact, I had very few sales through Smashwords, and didn’t bother to upload most of my latest books.

Then, a year or two ago, D2D bought out Smashwords. I waited a long time to transfer my books, but finally did early this year. I spent almost no time learning the D2D system. I had too much on my plate, between writing and household and health, to read up on how D2D did things.

In September, I received an e-mail from D2D saying my August sales report was available. That surprised me. I opened the report and found I found I’d sold 1 copy of Dr. Luke’s Assistant and one of my short story “Charlie Delta Delta”. The royalty for each was 32¢! That couldn’t be. I contacted D2D and learned that Hoopla was a different type of retailer. It’s more of a library service, and a “sale” is really a borrow.

Then, Wednesday I received an email from D2D saying my September sales report was available. I downloaded it, and learned I had five sales, all through Hoopla (so really five borrows. One of Documenting America Vol 1, two of Documenting America Home School edition, and two more of Doctor Luke’s Assistant. The problem is: how do I account for these borrows in terms or recording sales. Is a borrow a sale? or something less than a sale?

A borrow means a reader. A sale means a reader—or so you hope. So in terms of readership, a borrow is the same as a sale, maybe even more likely to result in a reader. So, at least for now, I’m counting each borrow as a sale. If that skews my sales number, I may have to rethink that.

Of course, with the delay in D2D reporting, I won’t know each month’s sales until almost a month after the last day of the month. But that’s okay. I’m glad for the additional readers.

Bible study, Documenting America, goals

June Progress, July Goals

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The changing of the month, once again. Time to see how I did on last months goals and to set some new goals for July, First, the progress.

  • Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. That’s starting to sound monotonous. Done, with a little help of scheduling posts ahead of time.
  • Make good progress on A Walk Through Holy Weeks, Vol 2: Temple Teaching. I’ll have to see if time will materialize for writing. If I had to set a goal, I’d like to be at least 70 percent done. No, did not make this goal. I was unable to write much on our trip to Texas—too much turmoil and too many responsibilities. I did get some done, and the books stands at around 60 percent complete. I had a problem with the structure of the book and took a couple of days working through the outline and changing the order of the chapters.
  • Continue with my scanning/formatting/e-filing of old poetry critiques project. This task is bigger than I thought, and will take a lot of perseverance to get it done. I think it will take three more months to finish. I got some of this done before we left for Texas, but none after we got back, so I would have to say I didn’t meet this goal. Not sure I’m even at the point where I can say I’m X% done with it
  • Begin to put together my book of our letters from Saudi Arabia.  The letters are transcribed and saved, the travel diary is only a day or two away from full transcription. I’d like to have the book mostly done by mid-July (for reasons that will be revealed in a future post). That means I need to be 2/3 done by the end of June. All transcribing is done, including a little proofreading. The letters and travel diary is assembled in a book file. I’m ready to write the introduction and commentary. I would have to say I slightly ahead of where I’d hoped to be at month’s end.
  • As with last month, I want to spend some time reading for the next Documenting America book, but it will have to be different material than I read in May. I have a book picked out to take with me and read on our next trip. May also get some in before that. No, I didn’t do any of this. My reading took me in different directions. Plus, I don’t really know which volume I’m going to do next.

So as you can see, it was not a great month for making progress.

Now, some July goals.

  • Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. That may not be possible due to some surgery scheduled in July, but I’ll make it a goal and hope to write and schedule some posts ahead of time.
  • Make as much progress as possible on Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week. It would be nice to have the first draft done before July 22.
  • Attend one writing group meeting. The two other meetings are cancelled due to venue problems during the summer.
  • Complete the Introduction and occasional commentary of the Saudi letters book.
  • Possibly complete and publish a short story I’ve been working on, the next in the Danny Tompkins series.

That’s all. Maybe this is achievable, maybe not. I’ll see if circumstances allow me to post progress and goals when July rolls into August.

 

Bible study, Documenting America, goals

May Progress, June Goals

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  • Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. Some of those I may have to write early due to schedule conflicts. Did this, including writing a few pieces ahead of time and scheduling them to post on day we were traveling.
  • Start writing Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week. I don’t have a specific goal as to word count. Just making a start will be sufficient. I began this! And it’s good to be writing again. As of this morning, I’m approximately 30 percent done with it. I had hoped for a little more progress, but am pleased with what I got done.
  • Continue to scan, format, and file old documents, specifically poem critique I did from 2001 to approximately 2012. I have done well so far, but have another ±400 pages to go. I have no specific page goal—just getting some done will be sufficient. I thought I finished this, but found another two notebooks, with maybe another 300 pages that need to be scanned. I’ll write a post about it later in the month—or possibly next month.
  • Do a little reading for the next Documenting America book. The problem is, as reported in a previous post, I don’t know if the subject will be the Articles of Confederation or Abolition. I hope by the end of this month to be far down the road in deciding between the two. I did a fair amount of research reading for this project in May. That’s the good news. The bad news is I found it very laborious, and am not sure I’ll be able to use it. I’ll have to think about this going forward.
  • One other major thing accomplished, thought not an official goal for the month, was transcribe the writing diary for our trips in 1983. Most of it had to do with the big Asian trip, but I also documented some other snippets. That’s now done. Will next have to format it and work it in to the book of letters for the Saudi years.

I still have one more day in this month, so perhaps I’ll get a little more done on the book and scanning.

As far as June goes, it’s difficult to set goals since we have a trip in the works and then a grandchild with us for a week. But I’ll take a stab at it. I can always edit the goals at some point in the month.

  • Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. That’s starting to sound monotonous.
  • Make good progress on A Walk Through Holy Weeks, Vol 2: Temple Teaching. I’ll have to see if time will materialize for writing. If I had to set a goal, I’d like to be at least 70 percent done.
  • Continue with my scanning/formatting/e-filing of old poetry critiques project. This task is bigger than I thought, and will take a lot of perseverance to get it done. I think it will take three more months to finish.
  • Begin to put together my book of our letters from Saudi Arabia.  The letters are transcribed and saved, the travel diary is only a day or two away from full transcription. I’d like to have the book mostly done by mid-July (for reasons that will be revealed in a future post). That means I need to be 2/3 done by the end of June.
  • As with last month, I want to spend some time reading for the next Documenting America book, but it will have to be different material than I read in May. I have a book picked out to take with me and read on our next trip. May also get some in before that.

That’s it for goals, subject, as always, to amendment.

Documenting America, self-publishing

Book Sales

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Selling more of this series than any other.

I believe most people think authors make a lot of money. Alas, it’s exactly the opposite. Conventional wisdom within the author community is a self-published writer is above average if they sell 50 copies of a book.

When you get to my position, with over 40 items for sale (novels, non-fiction, short stories, essays), you hope the sales start to add up. But again alas, that hasn’t happened so far.

The last in this series if doing OK in sales—better, actually, than the others did in this stage of their publishing life.

Amazon is an enigma. Several times in my 13 years of bookselling on their platform, I’ve seen sales start to increase. I get to the point where I think I may see a breakthrough, only to see them plummet after a few months of increasing sales. That’s happened three of four times over the years.

Now, I don’t want you to think that the ramping up period meant huge sales for a few months. I might have had sales go from 5 to 10 or even 15 per month, but then suddenly it dropped back to under 5. It’s frustrating. Since I started running ads on Amazon I’ve seen some increase, but not great.

The pattern seemed to repeat in 2023. After some decent sales—well, decent for me—the bottom dropped out  in September and stayed down the next few months. Last December saw a slight uptick and I was hopeful, while at the same time waiting for Amazon to change their algorithms again, Let me give you sales per month for the last year.

Or, to see it another way, here’s a graph of my lifetime book sales. The current month, May 2024, is obviously not complete yet, but is off to a good start.

Lifetime book sales. The blue line, which I keep forgetting to label, is sales per title, now at a whopping 37.3 sales per item.

So it’s not a lot of sales, but the number is growing. The recent trend upward is encouraging. And unexplained. Did Amazon change their algorithm in a way that’s favorable to me? Did they suddenly start showing my ads to people more likely to buy? Or have I reached some point of combination of past sales, ranking, and total items for sale that sales have become self-sustaining? I wish I knew.

My Documenting America series continues to sell best. It makes me anxious to get on to the next one. But I think I’ll stay with the schedule I’ve made: finish the Bible study series, write the next The Forest Throne book, then see what’s next.

 

Bible study, Documenting America, goals

April Progress; May Goals

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The end of April is upon us. Time to give an accounting of my writing time, and set some goals for May. My goals were modest because i expected to have several medical appointments. Those happened as expected, and cut into my writing quite a bit.

So, here’s my April progress.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. I managed to do this, though I was quite late one day due to not having planned ahead.
  • Attend two writers meetings. I’ll miss one due to the heart cath. I am the presenter at one. Did this. Actually, I sort of attended a third, when I met with one writer in our critique group to help her with her writing.
  • Make two rounds of edits on A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8. I did only one round of edits. I’ve decided that’s all I’ll do right now. It’s going on the shelf until early next year—an approximate timing.
  • Begin outlining the next volume to write in the Bible study. Maybe, if other things go faster than I expect, I’ll be able to actually start writing this. I did most of the programming of this volume.
  • Do some website upgrades. I saved this for the end of the month. As of this writing (Apr 29), I’ve made some but not all of the upgrades.
  • Continue with scanning old documents and saving them as e-files. I did a lot of this. In fact, I exceeded my goal as to how much I got done, completing one notebook. I have a lot to do, but I feel very good about how far I’ve gone.
  • One unofficial goal was to make major progress in transcribing letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I actually exceeded this goal, transcribing the last one on April 25th. Though, I’ll have to restate the progress on this goal based on new information. Stay tuned.

Here are my may goals. Once again, they are modest, as some things are going on this month that will severely cut into writing time.

  • Blog twice a week on Mondays and Fridays. Some of those I may have to write early due to schedule conflicts.
  • Start writing Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week. I don’t have a specific goal as to word count. Just making a start will be sufficient.
  • Continue to scan, format, and file old documents, specifically poem critique I did from 2001 to approximately 2012. I have done well so far, but have another ±400 pages to go. I have no specific page goal—just getting some done will be sufficient.
  • Do a little reading for the next Documenting America book. The problem is, as reported in a previous post, I don’t know if the subject will be the Articles of Confederation or Abolition. I hope by the end of this month to be far down the road in deciding between the two.

That’s enough. I will be very surprised if I manage to get all these done.

Bible study, Documenting America, History, letters, poetry

A Quiet Week?

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Initial sales of Run Up To Revolution are not bad. That’s not bad for me. Which means next to nothing as opposed to nothing.

Last week was busy. Two medical tests. Three doctor appointments. Two writer meetings. Plus a private meeting with a writer in one group. All of these appointments save one were in Rogers, a twenty mile drive each way. A couple of appointments I was able to have somewhat close together, but with some “layover” time between them. I had time to spend in Barnes and Noble and the Rogers Library.

I did almost no writing last week. Instead, I worked on the two special projects I have going on. That took up much of my time, but I made major progress on both the letters transcription and the critiques scanning and saving. I can see light at the end of both of those tunnels.

But on Friday I did some editing of A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8. Just the first chapter, through Word’s text-to-speech function. After having left this alone for a while, it felt good to be back at it. I’d like to edit a chapter a day using this word processor feature. That would have me finishing the editing pass during the first few days of May.

Then, what? I’ll either have finished of just be finishing my two special projects at that time. It will be the start of another busy time, something I’ll explain later. My plan has been to start on Volume 2 of A Walk Through Holy Week, hoping to finish it (first draft) in about ten weeks. That would be followed by editing and publishing Vol 2 and moving on to Vol. 3. Completing Vol 3 will let me move ahead with publishing all eight volumes.

But I’ve started to brainstorm what to do with the Documenting America series. This is my highest selling series (can’t say best-selling, because it’s not even close to that level). Perhaps it makes sense to write the next book in that series.

But what will it be? I had intended to write next about the abolition movement in America—something I’ve read some on, but which I’d like to know much more about. I have plenty of documents available to read, but I believe I’ll have to find more than I have to make a full book.

Lately, however, I’ve been reading in Thomas Paine’s writing. I already read Common Sense, which is about the American Revolution. A couple if shorter writings dealt with America under the Articles of Confederation. I’ve now moved into his Rights Of Man. To my surprise, the first twenty pages are all about Paine’s thoughts on the French Revolution and his countering the arguments of Edmund Burke. It’s not, so far, a treatise on the rights of man.

But this got me to thinking. Maybe the next volume I write in this series should be on the government of the colonies before the adopting of the Constitution. This was the time of the chaos of the Articles of Confederation, which defined our government during the Revolution and the six years after it. I have some sources for this period, though I think that, just as with abolition, I would have to find others.

Which would be better? Abolition captures my interest, but the Articles of Confederation, what I’m tempted to call the First American Government, seems to be something that has been written about much written about it. If I can find enough source material, it might be something that will stand out and will be more interesting than writing about the Revolution.

If I stick with my writing plans, I won’t wrote the next DA book until sometime in 2025. But that means I should start now to identify and start reading sources. I know that for Abolition I will have plenty of sources to choose from, but I’m not sure that will be he case for the Articles.  So I think some of my work this week, if the time materializes, if to start listing sources for both of these.

Why both?  Because whichever of these is next, the other will be after that, Therefore none of my research and reading will be lost. It might just be delayed for writing a book.

Bible study, Documenting America

March Progress, April Goals

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This was my publication in March.

Easter Sunday. Christ is risen! I write this on Sunday for posting on Monday, April 1, describing the progress I made in March and establishing some goals for April.

First, progress in March relative to goals set.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays. Did this, all with meaningful posts.
  • Attend three writing group meetings. Did this. Good meetings.
  • Make major progress on A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8. I hope to be about 90 percent done with it by month’s end. I exceeded this goal, being only one section of one chapter away from finishing the first draft. I may take a little time on Sunday to complete the last 600 words.
  • Publish Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. Very doable by early in the month. I did this, publishing the e-book on March 2 and the paperback on March 5. Had seven sales of it this month on Amazon.
  • Make website changes as a result to the new publication. I did this, making fewer changes than I thought I would. I’ll probably look at this again in April.
  • More source reading for the Documenting America series. No, I blew this off in favor of spending the time on the Bible study.
  • Consider changes to the covers for the AWTHW series, though still encompassing my granddaughter’s artwork. I brainstormed this a little, but did not actual work on it.

Well, what about for April? I will likely lose a little time due to a heart catheterization on April 2. But here are the goals I start the month with, as always subject to change as the month proceeds.

  • Blog twice a week, on Mondays and Fridays.
  • Attend two writers meetings. I’ll miss one due to the heart cath. I am the presenter at another.
  • Make two rounds of edits on A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8.
  • Begin outlining the next volume to write in the Bible study. Maybe, if other things go faster than I expect, I’ll be able to actually start writing this.
  • Do some website upgrades.
  • Continue with scanning old documents and saving them as e-files.

That will be it. Yardwork ramps up in April and I need to keep on top of it, so I’ll lose a little time each day to that. But it’s good to have ambitious goals.

American Colonial History, Documenting America, History

The Slavery Blind Spot

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I love studying history and learning things they never taught in history class.

In my U.S. history studies, I discovered James Otis Jr. and his writings early in the growing dispute between Great Britain and her American colonies. In his The Rights of British of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved in 1764, he wrote this.

That the colonists, black and white, born here, are free born British subjects, and entitled to all the essential civil rights of such, is a truth not only manifest from the provincial charters, from the principles of the common law, and acts of parliament; but from the British constitution, which was reestablished at the revolution [of 1688], with a professed design to lecture the liberties of all the subjects to all generations.

Well, so far so good. Rights are for both blacks and whites. Otis was far, far ahead of most leaders in the colonies in being against slavery,  in believing whites and blacks had the same rights. I’m not 100 percent sure he meant this for all blacks as opposed to free blacks, but he definitely was against slavery.

But Otis also exhibited what I call a colonial blind spot concerning slavery, for he also wrote this:

We all think ourselves happy under Great Britain. We love, esteem and reverence our mother country, and adore our King. And could the choice of independency be offered the colonies, or subjection to Great Britain upon any terms above absolute slavery, I am convinced they would accept the latter.

Per Otis, Great Britain could do almost anything to the colonies in the way of short of “absolute slavery” and the colonies would stay with Britain. But he falls into the trap of equating lack of representation in Parliament with slavery. Here’s how I explained it in Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution:

But I think Otis, to some extent, falls into a trap so many of the Founders did when he wrote that the colonists would be willing to accept more British control “upon any terms above absolute slavery.” I find this echoed in the writings of many of the Founders. Taxation without representation equals slavery is a common theme. They go on to say, We won’t be slaves, and a revolution resulted. They are essentially saying, Slavery is a bad thing. Yet many saying that owned slaves and treated them like a commodity, to be used up until they died then buy some more.

If you carry the logic out, were they not saying, Slavery is acceptable for Africans but not for Europeans. Or, Slavery is acceptable for people with black skin but not for those with white? Why was it not acceptable for whites? Because it was evil. So they were really admitting, We will treat black-skinned people in an evil manner, but we will not let others treat us white people that way. Yes, it was racism.

Fortunately, we have come a long way since then. We don’t think that government oppression, however we might define that, is slavery. No, slavery—especially the race-based slavery of the 1700s—was something much, much worse. Those that hated what Parliament was doing and said it made them slaves, didn’t understand what slavery really was.

So the way the leaders in America brought forth the arguments that led to the American Revolution were blind as far as slavery went. Surprise, surprise.

American Colonial History, Documenting America

Shall Be Deemed An Enemy

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I love studying history and learning things they never taught in history class.

My study for writing Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution resulted in me learning an awful lot about that time. We tend to look back at the American Revolution as a glorious event in our history, and the Founding Fathers as great men, who broke with an over-bearing Great Britain and forged a new nation. But was that the truth?

One document I looked at was the Resolves of the Virginia House of Burgesses in 1765. Written by Patrick Henry, it gave the Virginia response to the Stamp Act. The resolves covered the typical colonial complaints about taxes without representation. Then the last resolve reads:

Resolved, that any person who shall, by speaking or writing, assert or maintain that any person or persons other than the General Assembly of this Colony have any right or power to impose or lay any taxation on the people here, shall be deemed an enemy to His Majesty’s Colony.

Then, after other things Great Britain did didn’t sit well, the New York Sons of Liberty made several resolutions in 1773, the last of which was:

Resolved, That whoever shall sell, or buy, or in any manner contribute to the sale, or purchase of tea…shall be deemed an enemy of the liberties of America.

Really? You disagree with someone’s opinion as to how government shall work and they designate you an enemy? That seems rather extreme, to dismiss someone simply because they hold a different opinion than you. Who knew that, in the 1760 and 1770s in Colonial America they cast you out as an enemy if you analyzed an issue and came to a different conclusion. Kind of like cancel culture, no?

That kind of thought process, coming from two different colonies about two different issues nine years apart shows that this wasn’t a rare thing. It may, in fact, have been a dominant opinion at the time.

It was documents such as these that hit me hard as I researched and wrote the book. Not everything the colonists did was nice. Not everything was right. They have some things to answer for in history. Not that I think the outcome was all that bad, but I’ve come to question some of their methods.

But I need to file this in the “More Research Needed” category.

American Colonial History, Documenting America, self-publishing

Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution

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Book 4 in the “Documenting America series—or Book 5 if you include the homeschool edition of the first one.

Saturday morning I awoke around 3:45 a.m. with a need which, unfortunately, happens about every night. When I went back to bed, I could not fall asleep. I laid there until about 4:30 a.m., then decided to just get up and start my day. I went down to The Dungeon to work on the computer.

I decided the best thing to do was the publishing tasks of Documenting America: Run-Up To Revolution. The e-book I had published March 1st, but there are more steps to the print book than the e-book, so I didn’t jump right into print book tasks.

But a very quiet Saturday morning, long before daylight, seemed a good time to concentrate on that. I first took 20 minutes or so to wrap up my stock trading accounting for the week, then plunged into my Word print book file. It all went pretty easy. It helped that I had just done this for another book and thus it was fresh on my mind. I made one or two minor errors in entering headers but they were easily fixed. By 8:45 I had the book interior finished.

After breakfast, I went back to tackle the cover. Any regular reader of this blog knows I had making covers, though I haven’t posted about that for a while. This cover was easy, however. Calculate the book size based on the number of pages. Upload the e-book cover, resize it to the print book size. Add a text box to the back cover with the already-written text. Add a text box for the spine, rotate it 90°, center it two ways on the background. Export as a PDF file. Upload to Amazon.

It really as that simple. I had a little trouble aligning layers relative to the background, and accidentally moved the background a little. I thought no big deal. I clicked “publish” on the print book, and went on to another task, writing a letter to my granddaughter. Amazon needs a little time to review the files before they are published.

Yesterday, during Sunday school, an e-mail from Amazon came in. The book was not acceptable. The only problem was with the cover, something about the back of the book not being acceptable. I knew right what is was: that accidentally moved background. In the afternoon, after a good Sunday school class, worship service, Subway lunch, and pleasurable reading time in the sunroom, I went back to The Dungeon to make adjustments.

Except I found the adjustments too difficult and decided to start over. It was much easier the second time. All layers were properly created again and aligned. It took less than 30 minutes to create, check, export the PDF, and upload to Amazon.

Using the online book viewer, I checked the cover. Something appeared that I hadn’t noticed. Some of the back cover text overlapped onto the spine. That took two minutes to fix, and soon I had to book re-uploaded. This time all items on the cover were in the right place and within the guidelines. I clicked “approve” then “publish”. And now I wait.

Here’s the link. Hopefully both the print book and e-book will be available by the time you read this. Hopefully too, this is something some of you will want to read.