As I posted on my Facebook writer’s page, 2011, my first year in the world of self-publishing, did not set any records. I sold a total of 35 books, and made a whopping $34.23 in royalties. Here are two charts that break it down into monthly figures.

I figure that sales will always fluxuate, some months being better (or much better) than others. The key is to always see sales rising. But with fluxuating months I wasn’t sure how to measure that. I can have MS Excel add a trend line, but those are not always the smartest things Excel does.

I decided to use what I call a Cumulative Monthly Average Sales. This is the total of all sales divided by the number of months I’ve had titles up for sale. This should normally be increasing as I add titles and markets. And for the most part it is, as seen in the line in the second graph. It will be interesting to follow this through the months ahead, as I add titles and continue to promote the old. Right now this number stands at 3.18. So any month I sell four or more books this number will go up, until it tops 4.0.

The spike in revenues in November and December reflect personal sales of the paperback version of Documenting America. I make $3.93 per copy. I don’t need to make that much per copy, but the price is set by the minimum I have to charge on Amazon so as not to lose money on those sales. I suppose I could discount self-sales, but I’m not ready to do that just yet.

December was my highest month for sales, with 9. No coincidentally, I did more promotion in December than any other month, and I had the most markets available in November and December. I haven’t actually received any revenue from on-line sales yet, since I haven’t accumulated enough sales for the market to pay me. Since I am a cash-basis taxpayer for writing, these accumulated royalties won’t count as real income until they are paid to me.

So, while these numbers are small, and almost every writer can wish for more sales, these are not bad numbers for a partial year, limited copies, and very little promotion. The good news is I already have my first sale for 2012, of “Mom’s Letter” on Kindle.

A couple of days ago I said I was going to post a graph of my book sales. I finally uploded all sales to my spreadsheet, and corrected an equation or two. So here’s the graph. My best month for sales was July, and my best month for royalties was November. December is young. I still hope for additional sales and royalites.

The PDF conversion saga may have drawn to a close today. I say may because I haven’t yet taken the step of actually uploading the file to CreateSpace. I’ll do that tonight, I hope. Today, a little after my expanded lunch hour, I had what looks like a good file: a PDF with the pages showing as 5.5 x 8.5 just as I want it.

But the gyrations I had to go through to get there! Last night I posted to the CreateSpace forums, saying exactly what my problem was, all the software I was using and what versions. Overnight one of the experts posted to say it ought to work. He suggested making a dummy file and seeing if I could create a 5.5 x 8.5 PDF out of that. If so, I would know something in my book file was corrupt. If not, I’d know the problem was in the software.

That seemed like a good idea. I created a two page dummy file and used Adobe Acrobat to create the PDF, and it created it with the larger pages. I pulled up a four page file I had on my computer and tried that: same thing with the larger pages. I was getting frustrated.

But then I saw that I had the option of creating the file in “PDF995” printer. This is an inexpensive program that does what the expensive Acrobat does, though supposedly not as well. I tried that with my dummy, and got 5.5 x 8.5 pages. I tried it with the four page file, and got 5.5 x 8.5 pages. I tried it with my book file, and got 5.5 x 8.5 pages. Yea! But wait, it turned out only the first two pages were the right size. All the ones following it were the incorrect size. In the Word document, the first two pages were defined as one section, the rest of the book as a separate section. Also, when I tried to use Acrobat following some instructions my helper gave me, it still created in the larger pages.

Back to the CreateSpace forums. The same one who helped me before did so again. He said it appeared my Word document was corrupt. It was a place to start. Also odd was that the cheaper PDF995 product seemed to be working better than the expensive Acrobat product. He had a few suggestions.

I went to the Word document and copied the Section Break to the end of the book. This created a third section, of just one page at the end. Then I created the PDF using PDF995. It gave me a book of all 5.5 x 8.5 pages, except for the last page that remained 8.5 x 11. This was becoming quite frustrating. I played with some settings, then decided what I needed to do was remove all section breaks. This would mean I’d lose the headers and footers, but so be it. So I removed the section breaks and created the PDF using PDF995. By this time I had decided to quit messing with the Adobe product. And it created the PDF with the right size pages throughout!

I put my headers and footers back in, which created two sections. I tried creating it with PDF995, and it created correctly. So, I had a PDF file I could upload to CreateSpace. Of course, I noticed a few things I had to change in the formatting. I forgot to add the ISBN numbers, had to add a half title page and blank page before the real title page. I had to take care of a couple of orphan lines, things like that. I recreated the PDF, and it still worked. It’s at 188 pages now instead of 196, which is okay.

So, tonight when I go home I get to work on the cover and the back cover copy. I don’t know how difficult either of those will be. My main concern now is that I have the interior margins too large, and the font too small, and that it’s going to look amateurish. I guess at this time I’ll let it run as is, and see at the proof stage if I have to make any corrections. Right now, if I had to make a prediction, I’d say the book will be uploaded by Sunday. Or Monday if I need to make another PDF.

So the saga is continuing. Stay tuned.

And that’s what a self-published writer is: his own publisher.

 I got the Kindle requirements down without too much trouble, and my two books are up and available. Sales are slow, but I’m not doing a whole lot to promote it, pending having my print book available. I figured out Smashwords, and both my books are available there, and in their premium catalogue. That means they are distributed to the Apple iTunes store, the Sony Reader store, and elsewhere. That hasn’t helped me much so far as I have no sales there. Of course, I haven’t done any promotion to speak of, because I’m waiting till I have my print book available till I promote.

So why isn’t the print book available, and when will it be available? I finally began the process this week. On Tuesday I opened my CreateSpace account. This is an Amazon company for self-publishing print on demand books. Also on Tuesday I read instructions and watched the training video.

On Wednesday I began the process of getting my book, Documenting America,  printed. I created the book in the CreateSpace system, got an ISBN for it (the freebie kind), and pulled up my MS Word file and did the reformatting needed to go from e-book to print book, including changing the page size to 5.5 x 8.5 inches, one of the CS standard sizes. Finally I was ready to upload my book to CS. I learned it had to be converted to PDF first, and here I was stuck. I only have the Adobe Reader, not Adobe Acrobat, the program that lets you create PDF files. Getting that I soon learned would set me back $139 or $179.

I was aware of several low cost or no cost alternates, but rather than go to the trouble of finding and downloading them (it was getting kind of late), I decided to e-mail the reformatted book to my office and see if I would be allowed to use our office software to create personal PDF files. This morning I learned I could use it, and so created the file on my noon hour. Problem was, it didn’t create 5.5 x 8.5 inch pages. It created 8.5 x 11 inch pages, with the print limited to the middle 5.5 x 8.5 inches less the internal margins I set.

So I did what I normally do when faced with a problem like this. I read some of the help and experimented with the menu system. I soon saw where I could convert the PDF writer to write to 5.5 x 8.5 inch pages, and created a new PDF file to overwrite the other one. Except, the new file still had 8.5 x 11 pages. Did it twice more to make sure I hadn’t made a mistake, with the same results.

So I did what I normally do when faced with a problem like this. I went to look for CreateSpace forums, where members help themselves work through problems. Found the forums, joined them, and began reading. I found the question I had asked several times in a couple of threads, but never answered. Some of those threads run twenty pages or more. At the moment I haven’t the heart to read the twenty pages. Maybe I’ll start a new thread.

So I did what I normally do when faced with a problem like this. I went and got my lunch and ate it, along with some chips I’m not supposed to have. Through all this time, I set aside writing in favor of publishing. I’d rather be writing. But writing won’t necessarily lead to books in print, sales, and readers. So do the publishing thing I will.

Somehow I’ll get some help with this PDF conversion, and get it right. I suspect that in 2 weeks to a month I’ll be holding books in my hand and have them available to sell. And I’ll rejoice.

Michael Hyatt, chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, recently posted to his blog: Four Reasons Why You Must Take Responsibility for Your Own Marketing. The post has generated over 200 comments, including mine.

I want everyone to know that I embrace the concept that an author must participate, even lead, in their own marketing effort. That doesn’t mean I like it, or want to do it. But do it I will.

It’s difficult to lose the training of my upbringing. We were taught that blowing your own horn was a bad thing. “Don’t brag” was one way it was put. “He that exalts himself will be humbled” was how a Higher Power put it, and one of the few biblical things repeated in the family. Heck, in Miss Dudley’s class in 4th grade I was nominated for room president. I voted against myself, and Susan Ehrens won by one vote. Granted, 4th grade class president is not a position of immense importance, but hopefully you get the idea.

So how’s a body trained to be humble, to stay in the background, to let others call attention to you ever going to break through the marketing wall? Darned if I know. They say to start a blog. I did that in December 2007, and have achieved 14 followers and an average of 400 non-unique page views per month. Those are pretty poor number. Obviously I’m doing something wrong there.

They say to join Facebook and other social media. So I joined Facebook, and have a little over 100 friends. I started a Facebook fan page earlier this month. At least, I guess that’s what I started. Actually my son created it for me. I still haven’t figured out the difference between a Facebook account and a Facebook fan page. I have 6 people who “liked” my page—does that mean 6 fans? And, there’s a button for me to like it. Is it against my training to like my own page? What will that look like to others who check to see who the 6 7 are who like my page?

They say join Twitter and gain a following. Haven’t done this yet. Twitter is blocked at the office (where I’m typing this). At home on week nights I have two hours of writing time, unless I totally ignore my wife and limit myself to less than 6 hours of sleep, in which case I can squeeze in four a week night. Saturdays require lots of home maintenance stuff and leaves little quality time of brain and body function for writing. Sundays might give me six hours, again with some loss of interaction with the wife. How in the world could I find time for meaningful Twitter work?

They say start a personal e-newsletter, describing your writing work and the items you are working on or have available. Give something away to everyone who subscribes to it. You get their e-mail address, send out a newsletter with some regularity, and hope some of them buy your new works when you announce them. See the time factor in the previous paragraph.

This probably sounds like a rant, and I suppose it is. How does a working, commuting author find time to both write and market? I haven’t found the balance yet. Maybe if I dug ditches all day I might find brainpower available in the evenings, but I work with my brain, and often those two hours are difficult to make productive.

What do you think? Any suggestions for how an author with a full-time job and home and family responsibilities can be his own Chief Marketing Officer?