Category Archives: Documenting America

Documenting America, self-publishing, The Gutter Chronicles, Writing

Sales Begin in December

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‘Tis the season…for book sales. People buy them for other people, and they buy them for themselves. As a writer trying to earn a little money from his sales, I’d like to be able to tap into some of this.

Last year I didn’t really see a spike in sales in December. They were the same then as in November 2012, both below monthly sale average. I’d seen an increase in December 2011 over the rest of 2011, but not so in December.

But it’s now 2013. Book sales have been abysmal in general. I have more titles available but have sold fewer books than in 2012, many fewer. In fact, so far none of my titles has sold in double digits for 2013. Reality has set in; I’m not a best seller, not even on a trend to become one.

But today gave me a little good news. One of the first things I do when I get to work is check to see if I had any book sales overnight. Since I’m selling an average of less than 5 per month in 2013, obviously I almost never see such a sale. This morning, as always, there wasn’t any. Mid-day I snuck another look at sales—still none. When I check sales like this I generally look at sales in the US, the UK, Canada, and Australia, these being the main English speaking countries that Amazon sells in. In the morning I also look for sales at Smashwords and paperback sales through Amazon, which is on a different reporting page.

Then I checked in mid-afternoon. Lo and behold I had a sale! In the USA, of Documenting America, the first one (not the homeschool edition). After a silent yahoo, I did what I always do after a sale at Kindle: I checked every country that Amazon sells in. This requires two clicks to get to each country, so I seldom do that more than once a day. And to my surprise I had a sale of “The Learning Curve” in Italy.

“The Learning Curve” has not been translated into Italian. It’s an English language book that sold in Italy. My first sale in Italy, and my first sale of “The Learning Curve”. That brings me up to three sales in December. That’s already one more than November, though only half of October and and well below my long-term average of 7.5 per month.

I realize these aren’t good sales numbers. I could say “Sales have increased 50 percent month over month, and it’s only the 11th.” That would be true, but misleading. Having 13 books for sale and selling less than eight per month is, as I said before, abysmal. But as a self-published writer, I have to take hold of any good news and ride it for as long as I can. That’s where I’m at right now.

At work today I did some file maintenance on A Harmony of the Gospels, typed some manuscript in The Gutter Chronicles, Volume 2, and advertised The Gutter Chronicles to a new employee. At home tonight I mainly worked on typing edits in the Carlyle encyclopedia articles book. I think I did about 19 pages of edits. This is tedious business. A few edits on each page resulting from optical scanning errors, about half of which must be checked against the original book that was scanned. I should do it on the computer in The Dungeon, with the dual monitors, rather than the laptop. But this gives me a chance to be next to Lynda as I’m working, so for now I’m doing it here.

The struggle continues, and the end is not yet.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, self-publishing, Writing

A Little Publicity

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October has been somewhat of a disaster as far as writing is concerned. The only original writing I’ve done is:

  • Write about 200 words in the next Danny Tompkins story, while waiting for meetings to start. I haven’t typed them yet.
  • Write 1,400 words yesterday in a scene for Headshots, the sequel to In Front Of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I typed those during breaks at work and e-mailed them to my personal e-mail address. Then last night I merged them into the Headshots document and updated my diary. The problem is it’s been so long since I looked at this book in progress that I don’t know if this scene is the next one in sequence or not.

As far as other writing/publishing tasks, I’ve managed to get a few done.

  • Have reformatted Doctor Luke’s Assistant with a smaller font, which will allow me to republish it as a slightly less expensive book. I will have at least one sale of this cheaper book, to a man at work. The cover designer redid the cover, so that’s ready to go. I was working on this Tuesday when I discovered a potential glitch concerning the ISBN number. Since then I’ve found out that I’m probably worrying about nothing, and hopefully tonight I’ll complete the publishing tasks on this.
  • A man read a book review I made at Amazon, which led him to my blog and my books. We interacted by e-mail, and he bought a copy of Documenting America. He also wanted a copy of the instructor’s notes, which I gave him. Hopefully he’s a new reader and, dare I say, fan.
  • Somehow (don’t remember exactly) I found a sports book blogger, contacted him, and he agreed to read and review In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. That is complete. He posted the review on Goodreads, Smashwords, Amazon, as well as on his blog. In addition, he’s going to interview me this weekend, which I presume will go up on his blog. I’ll link to it once it’s up.

My October sales stand at 5 so far, with 13 hours to go, Amazon time. Two of those sales came from my direct contacts; the other three are unknowns, though could be from earlier marketing efforts. I’ll report final sales numbers soon. That’s an increase from September, and any increase is gratifying even when the result isn’t bestseller status.

One other thing I did was speak to three different people about my books at an American Society of Civil Engineers state convention in Little Rock two weeks ago. I don’t believe any sales have come of that so far, but I have good hopes for at least one in the future.

All this tells me my writing “career” is still in early infancy. Sales are still one at a time. I need to finish more projects and publish them. I need to find a way to work writing into a work and home schedule have has become more busy of late.

All this I will do. As Emerson said, “There is time enough for all that I must do.”

Danny Tompkins Short Stories, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Sharon Williams short stories

What to write next?

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Readers of this blog will perhaps remember a time last year when I mused about what I was going to write next. You can see the first of those posts here. I had several follow-up posts over the next weeks.

Well, I’m about there now. Operation Lotus Sunday (previously titled China Tour) is very close to completion. Last night I began what I hope is and expect to be a final read-through. In 30 some-odd pages I found only two minor things to change, which is a good sign that this truly will be the last read. Of course, once the text is complete I’ll be at the work of formatting it for two different e-book sites, and also for a print book. I’m still working with the cover designer, who gave me the first draft but who also had a couple of physical setbacks in the last few days. And, once the book actually launches, I’ll have some promotional activities to do.

But, believing that the best marketing for your published books is to write and publish more books, it’s time for me to plan what will be next. I’m actually pretty sure what the next novel will be: Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. Last October, when I wrote the first chapters of four different books to gauge my interest and energy level, this was definitely in second place. I will be writing some outlines for this soon.

But I’m thinking I may write a couple of short stories first. I have always planned to write a third story in my teenage grief series that began with “Mom’s Letter” and continued with “Too Old To Play“. Once again it will be based on my own experience with that, and will include teenage memories relived in adult years and a poem. I’m thinking this will be next, and it will be titled “Kicking Stones”. The story line has been running through my head for a while. I’m also thinking of another short story in the Sharon Williams series, taking “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango” and turning it into an unconventional CIA agent series. This one will be harder, as a story line is only now coming to me, and I don’t know for sure that I can pull it off. It seems like I have a good character and a good basis for writing a series of stories, but great inspiration hasn’t come yet.

I should probably work on a book to follow-up on Documenting America, on the Civil War, while we are in the Civil War sesquicentennial years. But when I wrote first chapters last October I found this one the most difficult. So maybe that’s to happen in the future, but I think not now.

So, will I soon dive in to Headshots, or are a couple of short stories coming? Stay tuned.

Documenting America, Operation Lotus Sunday, Writing

Locking In Ideas, even out of season

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I wrote a blog post some time ago about capturing ideas for writing. Actually, I may have written several posts about that between here and my other blog, An Arrow Through The Air.

Two situations have come up in the last few days where I was able to do this. Actually, I guess it was three.

On my novel in progress, China Tour, I’m in the middle part of the novel now, between the two main plot points. This is the part where a novel often sags, as the protagonist overcomes a series of conflicts, preferably rising in danger/difficulty, before moving into the end game. And it’s the part of this novel I had mostly not thought out. So I’m writing each scene as it comes to mind.

But while driving home from work yesterday an idea for a conflict came to me. It seemed to be a good one, but I didn’t use memory techniques to lock it in. By the time I got in the house not only had I lost the idea but I forget I’d even had an idea. After supper and going through snail mail, I went to The Dungeon and started writing earlier than usual on a week night. I typed a few words, continuing a scene from where I left off Wednesday evening, when the idea came back. I grabbed a piece of paper to write it on, then decided to just put it at the end of the Word document, set off from the rest of the text.

While writing for the next couple of hours, two or three other ideas came to me. They went at the end of the ms. as well. So by the time I knocked off for the evening, around 10:00 p.m., having added over 2,000 words to the novel, I also had good ideas documented for middle-of-the-novel scenes. It was a good evening of writing.

So upstairs I went, intending to do some pleasure reading, but before I left the computer I saw one of the volumes of The Annals of America, the one for the Civil War years. I took it upstairs with me, and instead of reading for pleasure I went through the Table of Contents to find items to include in a future volume of Documenting America. While that book was a stand-alone volume, I have always hoped to make a series of volumes based on the style of the original book. I listed about twelve documents to include, and spot-read in two of them to make sure they are suitable. They are. The book will need about thirty documents all together, or perhaps a few less if I use some documents for two chapters. It’s not much, but it’s a start—and it’s on paper.

The other idea capture event happened on Tuesday. I was at a professional lunch, a PowerPoint presentation made by an Arkansas state official. It was all words, and sitting in the back of the room I couldn’t really see them. Plus, it’s stuff I already know, for the most part. So rather than concentrating on that I took a napkin (I hadn’t brought a note pad with me), and began thinking through books that might eventually go in my future series, The Alfred Cottage Mysteries.

Now, this is really long-range planning, as I don’t expect to be writing any book in this series. But I’ve thought of the series much over the years, had a couple of books in mind, but not the full series. So as the regulator droned on about short-term activity authorizations, I wrote on the napkin. Here’s what I came up with.

  • Alfred Cottage and The Coroner’s Inquest
  • Alfred Cottage and The Lost Love
  • Alfred Cottage and The Lost inheritance
  • Alfred Cottage and The Lost Years
  • Alfred Cottage and The Wife Murderer
  • Alfred Cottage and The Fornicators
  • Alfred Cottage and Stolen Identity
  • Alfred Cottage and The Cherokee Princess
  • Alfred Cottage and The Abolitionist
  • Alfred Cottage and The Cobbler’s Will
  • Alfred Cottage and The Soldier’s Son
  • Alfred Cottage and The Rum Runners

Each of these, except the next-to-last, comes from something in my or my wife’s ancestry. Some will have large pieces of the real family history as a basis, some just a small part. All of them will be fiction, however, with many embellishments and conflict added along the way.

As I’ve told people, when I dream I tend to dream big. Here’s a big dream: 12 books that are years away from being started, yet are already finding their way out of the gray cells and on to paper.

Stay tuned.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Looks like it’s probably “China Tour”

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I don’t recommend anyone go about their book writing they way I have for the last twelve days. As I reported in a previous post, because I felt no sense of direction of where to go next with my writing. I could write any one of three novels or one non-fiction book. So I decided to write the first chapter in each and see how the work flowed, how it felt to me during the writing, and choose based on the experience.

First up was Headshots, the sequel to In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. I labored over a Friday-Sunday period, barely getting about 1950 words and the chapter done. I found that picking up the threads of all the people who were involved in the end of FTSP was tedious. In fact, after finishing the chapter I realized I didn’t have all the threads covered: missed one I need to add in.

Next was Preserve The Revelation, the sequel to Doctor Luke’s Assistant. This went better. I did a little work on Augustus ben Adam’s family tree and children before I started the writing, to make sure he could have two sons of the ages I wanted at the time I wanted them. It all worked fine. Then I wrote the chapter in two evenings. Though I had thought much about it over a few years, it still took me in a different direction as I wrote it. The needed scenes for the second chapter ran through my head as I concluded the first, which is a good thing.

Next was China Tour, a sequel to nothing. In fact, it will be a stand-alone novel. This has run through my mind many, many times over the years. I found our trip diary from 1983, read through some of it (the Hong Kong days), and jumped in to the writing. In two evenings I had my 1,500 word first chapter. It went fairly easy; but then I’ve run that chapter over in my mind many times, and had recently explained the book in detail to a colleague.

Then, to this mix I added another volume of Documenting America. This would be a Civil War edition, in recognition that we are now 150 years away from that event, with somewhat heightened interest in the reading public. Unfortunately, I found this heavy going. I enjoyed the research, but the writing went much, much harder than I wanted. This would be the shortest of the four books, and I would certainly enjoy the research, but I think the writing would be most labored.

Based on ease of writing and flow of words, it looks as if China Tour should get the nod to be my next book. Given that, last night I decided to give the second chapter a try, and in two hours knocked out the entire chapter, about 1,050 words. The problem is, this book makes no sense to be the next one. It’s not a sequel to anything, nor is it in a series or will it ever have a sequel. It might not be all that long (I’m thinking 70,000-75,000 words), though for all I know it could run longer.

One of the sequels makes more sense. Those 92 people who bought Doctor Luke’s Assistant, or the 5,000 people who downloaded it for free, might just come looking for something similar. Headshots makes more sense because I most recently wrote FTSP, so the characters are all known commodities and fresh in my mind. I’ve thought though what will happen in considerable detail. The problem? With 3 total sales of FTSP, it’s not like the public is clamoring for this book.

I haven’t committed yet, but it is probable that China Tour will be next. I know at least one of my reader/writer friends who will be happy.

Documenting America, Headshots, Operation Lotus Sunday, Preserve The Revelation, Writing

Writing Progress

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Or lack thereof. As I reported before on this blog, I wrote the first chapter in three different novels, trying to see which inspired me most, and which didn’t inspire me at all, or at least not much. In this way I could perhaps determine which one to work on next, given that none stood out to me before actually writing.

I did that beginning last weekend (that is, Oct 12-14) and during the next week. It was last Wednesday, I think, that I finished the third of the first chapters. Thursday I did little more than re-read and maybe tweak one of them a little. Or, I could be off by a day. It may have been Thursday that I finished the last of the first chapters. One thing I did this time was to start a writing diary for each of these, so I have the exact dates recorded. Alas, the diaries are home and I’m at work as I type this.

Friday I decided to write the first chapter on one more book. I have always intended to write additional volumes of Documenting America. It’s been set aside for more than a year as I wrote other things, but that was always my intent. Given that it is, right now, the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, I thought that would be the best next volume to do.

I had also figured out where to start on that volume: with a speech before the US Senate in 1850 by John C. Calhoun, staunch defender of slavery. After that I would move forward nine or ten years, into the immediate lead up to the war and then the war years themselves.

So Friday I dusted off some old notes, grabbed the right volume of The Annals of America, and read the speech, which is actually a long excerpt in that book. Then I went on-line and found the complete speech, and read most of the parts left out in the Annals. This took all Friday evening, a shortened evening as I had a few other things to do as well as writing.

So Saturday, after my normal Saturday routine (which included cutting down a small, dead tree and cutting it to firewood lengths, as well as a good walk), I went to work on the chapter. And I didn’t get it finished. I worked on it for over three hours, finding concentration impossible. I managed to get together a long excerpt from the book (about 1250 words), which is longer than I used in the first volume. But writing my commentary on it was most difficult. By the end of those three hours, after shifting back and forth from the chapter to rereading parts of the speech to wasting time because I couldn’t concentrate, I think I had only 500 words of commentary done, short of a full chapter.

It didn’t help that I was feeling poorly. I’m not sure if it was something I ate, or having done too much strenuous exercise earlier in the day, but I didn’t feel good all Saturday afternoon and evening. When you body isn’t well, it’s tough to ge the mind in gear.

So where does this leave me? I can safely say that the time is not right for me to work on Documenting America: The Civil War Edition. Of the three novels, the one that seemed to flow best to the page was China Tour, the one that was most difficult was Headshots. Preserve The Revelation flowed fairly well.

What I think I will do is take a few more days to think about it. I have a lot of non-writing things that have piled up over the last few weeks, things like my budget spreadsheet, filing, and some cleaning. It’s those things that a married bachelor takes time to get to when his wife is away helping with the grandkids. Then Thursday I head to Oklahoma City to help said wife with said grandkids, returning next Sunday. So I don’t think I’ll do much writing till then. Although, tonight and tomorrow, if I have a spare hour, I might try my hand at chapter 2 in one of them.

Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, self-publishing, Sharon Williams short stories, The Candy Store Generation, Writing

Three Publishing Items

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That’s what I’m waiting on: three publishing items. The first two are within my control, once the proof books get here. Those are the print version of the home school edition of Documenting America, and the print version of The Candy Store Generation. I ordered the proofs Saturday, and they should be here today or tomorrow. Assuming they are good, I’ll pull the trigger right away and get them listed on CreateSpace. Not that hoards of anxious fans are waiting to buy them.

The next is In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. This is only partly in my hands. Well, I could publish it as an e-book immediately. But my wife is proofreading it right now. Last night on the phone she reported she was well into the book, less than a quarter to go. Since she’s finding a few things that need correcting, I’ll wait on her to finish. At the same time I’m waiting on my son to tweak the e-book cover. I don’t know when that will happen. But the cover he sent me would be acceptable as is (though not optimum), and Lynda says the typos are minor, so I could really go ahead and publish immediately. I think, though, I’ll wait.

Oops, there’s actually a fourth item. My short story “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango” is actually ready to be published. I’m sure it can stand another reading or two, and maybe I’ll find a few things to correct or improve, but I think it’s ready to go. I’m waiting on a beta reader to give me her comments. She’s the person the heroine is patterned after—and I even use her name—so I’ll wait for her. But then there’s the issue of a cover. I want to do it myself. I know what I want, and have played around with some graphics software to create it, but so far I’m not happy with the results.

So there you have it. Four items, not three, already in or just about fixing to enter the publishing stage. Next post will be about my current work-in-progress, The Gutter Chronicles, which really is almost complete as a novella.

Documenting America, Fifty Thousand Screaming People, Sharon Williams short stories, The Candy Store Generation, Writing

Stewardship of my writing time

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Every now and then I make a post like this, so my loyal fan(s) will know that I’m not a slacker. Well, at least not a big slacker; maybe just a little slacker. Over the last month I have been much engaged in publishing tasks, less so in writing.

As I’ve reported previously, I’ve been working with the graphics in the print version of my book The Candy Store Generation. This took up a lot of my time over the last two weeks. That’s now behind me, however, as our company’s graphic arts gal, Lee Ann Gray, volunteered to do the work needed. I worked with her. She had them all done, until I realized I had given her the wrong size for the book. So she re-did them.

But when I uploaded them, I realized I still had them a half-inch narrower than they could be. I didn’t have the heart to ask her to do them over, so I left them like that. I inserted them in the Word document, uploaded it to CreateSpace, did all the formatting stuff including on-line proofing, and ordered the proof copy. A few graph that were website captures are still at a low resolution, but I don’t care. I just want to get it published.

I also ordered a copy of the home school edition of Documenting America. I actually finished the edits to this a couple of weeks ago, but hadn’t decided if I’d bother with another proof copy or not. This book has also been frustrating in that I can’t seem to contact any local home school people for marketing purposes. I go to the websites of the groups, get contact information, send out e-mails, and either get no response or an auto-response that the e-mail address is invalid. I have no sales of it in electronic format, so have few hopes I can sell it in paper format. Oh, well, it will be available should I ever figure out how to market it.

I had conversations with two different cover designers for In Front of Fifty Thousand Screaming People. My son had said he would do it, but his life as a young professional and new homeowner is incredibly busy. Thinking he wouldn’t come through, I contacted another man. I told my son about it, and he came through with a draft cover. It’s a good start, and actually good enough if I never got another one. But he’s going to tweak it some. So I’m getting very close to publishing this, at least in e-book formatting. I have one mini-scene to add to the text, which I’ll complete today.

I have done some writing this week, on two different thing. I wrote a short story titled “Whiskey, Zebra, Tango”. I began it last Monday and finished it yesterday at about 6,400 words (perhaps 25 printed pages). My intention is to publish this as an e-book only, and attempt to do a simple cover myself. I want to get FTSP out first, then this.

The other thing I worked on is my spoof of the civil engineering industry. Titled The Gutter Chronicles: The Continuing Saga of Norman D. Gutter, E.I., I use situations from my career and put them in the life of the unfortunate Mr. Gutter. I had 11 episodes (i.e. chapters) written as of a few years ago. I never planned on publishing it, but lately I’ve been circulating copies of it to a new batch of CEI employees. That made me realize I had a bunch of words written that could easily be transformed into an e-book. I’m adding four new chapters, one of which is done and another of which is 500 words from being done. The other two are outlined, so completion isn’t far away, maybe three weeks or so.

So that’s where I stand. I hope the next four weeks can be as productive as the last four. If they are, my list of titles for sale will climb from six to nine.

Doctor Luke's Assistant, Documenting America, The Candy Store Generation, Writing

A Day of Accomplishment

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It’s 6:09 p.m. as I begin to write this, on Saturday afternoon. While there are still hours left in the day, I can look back on what I have done so far and say this was a day of accomplishment.

I should have written down what I did. I’m very sleepy right now, and the list of things done would help me recount them. Maybe I can work backwards. I spent the afternoon working on layout of the print version of Documenting America – the Homeschool Edition. That is done, sitting on my computer. I’ll want to give it one more go, and maybe play with the margins a little. It’s up to 234 pages long, a little longer than I expected. I think I indented some quoted items too much, but can easily play with that and finalize it in less than an hour. I’m still waiting on the cover, so I’m ahead of where I need to be on this one.

Earlier I formatted the same book for Smashwords and uploaded it. It seems I did everything right, because it generated no error messages. It’s already listed for sale on Smashwords, though I have to wait and see how it does with premium catalog distributions.

Before that I re-did some of the interior of the print version of The Candy Store Generation, and uploaded it to CreateSpace. Or maybe I did that last night. Whatever. I received back an error message saying that the cover didn’t work because it didn’t have any bleed around the edges. I contacted the cover designer and she said she’d make that correction this weekend.

Before that, maybe last night, I completed a look through Doctor Luke’s Assistant to see what kind of marks Lynda made on her recent read-through/edit. They aren’t too bad, requiring less than one evening of typing. I may do that in a couple of days, then re-upload it to Kindle and add it to Smashwords. I’ll even look at a print version, but I’m afraid it’s too long to be economical at POD book costs.

I started the day reading in a couple of psalms and praying, then reading 15 pages in a novel I’m reading for pleasure. I’m only 1/3 of the way through it, so I need to be reading more.

For tonight, I have a Sunday School lesson to preview for tomorrow, and will have to fix my own supper with Lynda gone. Then I may do the first typing on the short story I’ve been playing around with on paper. It will be good to be doing the work or a writer for a couple of hours, rather than of a publisher.

Documenting America, self-publishing

Kindle Sales of “Documenting America”

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Last week I posted about sales of “Mom’s Letter,” and how I had some in early March. Since then I had one more, making 3 in March, 6 in 2012, and 15 over all. My total royalties for it are $5.65, some paid, some accrued and waiting for the next payout. So that’s less than I would have received had I placed the short story in a literary journal, but more than I would have earned if it never placed at all. In fact, I don’t know if I’ve earned enough to cover the postage to the places I mailed it to, all of whom rejected it.

But the subject of this post is really Documenting America. I ran the sales graph for it this morning from Amazon Author Central, for all available data. Here it is.

As I hope shows on this graph, the most recent sale was in mid-February; the highest ranking was 53,121 in early November, and the current rank (as of the hour in which I pulled this chart; it’s updated hourly) is 499,108.

As I mentioned before, I’m not all that concerned about ranking. I’m more interested in sales and royalties. This chart does show, however, the power of a single sale when you’re way down the list.

Someday I’ll have enough sales that I won’t worry about this stuff, or at least won’t bore you, my faithful readers, with it. But it’s new enough to me that I want to do it at the moment.

News Flash: A fellow author just contacted me to say she bought a copy of “Mom’s Letter” today, which isn’t yet showing on the charts. Woohoo!