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.
Vol 1 is published, Vols. 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written and edited. Vol. 8 is written and edited one time. Vol. 2 is now underway.
I finished writing my latest book, A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol 8, on April 1. I set the book aside for a time of seasoning—not of the book, but of my brain. For two weeks, almost three, I concentrated on my two special projects: transcribing letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, and scanning/saving of the hundreds of pages of poetry critiques I posted at on-line poetry boards years ago.
On Friday April 19, with the two special projects making good progress, I decided to pick Volume 8 again and do a round of edits. I did one chapter that day. That felt good. I did this using Microsoft Word’s text-to-speech feature, which I am liking more and more. So on Monday April 22, I edited two chapters, then did two each day and finished up one chapter on Saturday April 27. The main problem I found with the book is what seems to be too much repetition.
I then made the decision to put the book on the shelf and let it rest until I’m ready to publish Volumes 2 through 7. That will allow me to publish them in order.
But that got me to the point where I figured it was time to get to work on Volume 2 (Volumes 4, 5, 6, and 7 are already written and simmering, waiting their turn to find the book pages of Amazon). On Saturday, April 27, I took about an hour to begin the outline of the book. I finished that on Monday April 29. That brought me to Tuesday, April 30. Time to begin writing.
And that’s what I did on Tuesday April 30. I sat down at my computer, outline in hand, and got started on Chapter 1. Each chapter has seven sections, and I decided to write just one this day. I was able to do that in less than an hour, a little over 750 words. I also did some formatting of the Bible verses already loaded into each chapter.
One section a day is less than my normal production, which is two sections a day. But for the first day writing after a layoff of almost a month, that wasn’t bad. Then, on Wednesday and Thursday, I was able to write two sections a day. The target for today is two sections, which will complete Chapter 1.
If I could equal the production I had when writing Vol. 8, I would finish he book sometime in June, possibly even early June. But I have lots of interruptions ahead: medical appointments, home maintenance need, and traveling. I will be happy if I can finish the book around the end of June or even into early July.
If I put my special projects aside, I think I could finish this well before July 1, but I don’t want to totally abandon the projects for the sake of writing. The trick will be to write the book while still working on the letters and critiques. Tuesday was a trial run of that. After writing, I transcribed two letters and scanned and saved several critiques. What I’ve found about the critiques is that each file created needs careful proofreading to check for scanner errors, as well as formatting to make sure everything is in a printable format. The goal is to someday put these in a nice concise volume, or probably two, as a record of a large part of my writing life.
I thought I was done with transcribing the Saudi years letters. I searched for letters that might have been missing to match a dozen or so empty envelopes. In the process I found a batch of letters written to us in Saudi Arabia. These were mainly from our last two grandmothers, with a handful from others. I found 43 of these letters, then another eight. So far I’ve transcribed sixteen of these. Only 27 to go. And I don’t have many more places to look for what should have been in those envelopes.
But that won’t be the end of the transcribing project. That year I kept a detailed travel journal for our trip through Asia, especially China. That will take a fair amount of transcribing. After that will be proofreading the transcriptions, then putting them in book form for the family. I don’t think I’ll finish this project in 2024. The transcription—yes; the proofreading—maybe; but assembling them into a book? Not a chance—not unless I drop everything else.
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.
The 1980s wallpaper we “bought” in 2002 is easy to remove, even the backing layer behind it.
Several times on this blog, I wrote about the home repairs we had done due to water damage. Without going into detail, we had three separate places with visible water damage. One place was discovered when we had work done on our deck. That caused us to look around and we found the second place. I was fairly sure there was a third place, which proved true when I checked it out.
Three damaged places, three different sources of water. An almost 40-year-old house cried out for maintenance.
The work began in January, and finishes next week. As I write this on April 24, the painters are hard at work, covering the repair areas. They’ve done the outside areas and almost all of the inside. They will likely be done on Friday, the day this post goes live.
they actually had a hiccup when painting over new drywall, discovering that the taping job by the remediation contractor resulted in some bubbling of the tape that had to be taken care of. I emailed that contractor Tuesday night and he sent someone on Wednesday to fix it. It wasn’t really a slowdown for the painters, as they shifted to the outdoor work while waiting on that repair to be done. Good thing, too, as Wednesday evening was the start of several days of spring rain.
Or, if work is a little slow on repainting the entire master bath (necessary due to having to replace dry wall, which damaged the wallpaper. We had wanted to get rid of the wallpaper anyway but were too lazy or busy to initiate it. Well, I stripped the outer paper on Tuesday and Wednesday. Now, the painting is all done there except the final touch-up.
That’s not all the work to be done. We still need to replace the master bathroom flooring, a project that is stalled and will be done who knows when. We are contemplating replacing a bunch of our old carpet with flooring, but that project is also stalled in the decision-making process.
Even though we have more to do, it’s a great relief to get to this point.
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.
Writing this Thursday evening for posting Friday morning at my normal time.
I had a busy day today. This morning I started with transcribing letters from Saudi Arabia. I managed to get four items documented in my files. I made a count of the letters not yet tackled. It’s 29. So if I can do four a day, the transcribing job will be complete around the end of April. I can deal with that.
Next, after a few stock trades and my usual breakfast, I scanned poetry critiques and saved them electronically. Each scan requires proofreading and some formatting to make sure the scanning was accurate. I managed to complete critiques for four poems, a couple less than my typical workday. After that, I counted the poem critiques still do be done in the small notebook. It’s 69. If I can average five a day, I can finish this notebook by around May 8th. I’m good with that. However, still looming in the background is the larger of my two critique notebooks. I’m actually not anxious to shift to that.
While I was doing that, I received a call from the admin assistant of the local insurance agency for my homeowner’s policy. Last week I received a letter from the national company, saying they were aware of the repairs needed to the house (certainly from their rep came out to evaluate our water damage claim that they denied) and asked to submit evidence we had repaired the damage, implying they might drop our coverage if we hadn’t. Last week the agent said she would come out and look at it. So the admin assistant said the agent had been at our house today and wanted us to submit invoices for the repairs.
I have to tell you that this irked me. They refuse to cover our damage, threaten to cancel our coverage, the agent comes out to look at our house and never even knocks on the door, then asks us to submit receipts to her? And doesn’t call us but has the admin assistant do it? I told the admin I was very upset. She put me on hold and in a few seconds the agent came on. I said I couldn’t believe she didn’t even knock on the door—most of the damage, which has already been repaired, is viewable only from the inside or our deck which is reachable only from the inside. She said would come out on Friday. Meanwhile, despite my displeasure at this company, I sent electronic copies of the receipts.
After that, I headed to downtown Rogers to attend an author event. I wasn’t the featured author, but I know the two women who were featured and their two book cover artists. I went mainly to support them. The venue was the Rogers Experimental House, which is the headquarters of the Artists of Northwest Arkansas; it was their meeting. The presentations and readings were fine, but then they transitioned into doing art exercises based on the readings from the books. I don’t do art, so I used the time to brainstorm my writing and make a to-do list of sorts.
From there, it was on to Scooters for a large house blend, then to the Rogers Public Library. I had two and a half hours to kill before the meeting of the Scribblers & Scribes, my writers critique group. We had eight people attend, Four people shared writing, and one passed out a copy of a short-ish book for s to take home and review.
We had one tense moment when, on one of the pieces shared, we disagreed on the effectiveness of the writing and suggestions on corrective measures. Protocol on how critiques are given were broken. I don’t know if I’m the only one who noticed it or if others did. Now I’m trying to figure out what to do about it.
It’s now just before 10 at night. The day is winding down. Tomorrow will be busy around the house, with no outside appointments. Plenty of time to transcribe, scan, maybe edit a little, complete a few stock trades and a little yard work.
Vol 1 is published, Vols. 4, 5, 6, and 7 are written and edited. Vol. 8 is written and asking to be edited. When it will happen if somewhat of a mystery to me.
I finished writing A Walk Through Holy Week, Vol. 8 on April 1st. That’s the first draft. I need to do at least two editing passes before “putting it on the shelf” to await my writing Vols. 2 and 3. In the past I’ve found getting a little distance from the first draft to help the editing to go better. Normally I would start on the next writing project, but given that it’s another Bible study in the same series I decided not to rush into it. I did, however, take an hour or two one morning to do a little planning and programming on Vol. 2.
Meanwhile, during the last two weeks of Life Group lessons, which my co-teacher taught, I got some ideas that I need to work into the last two chapters. I think I may incorporate those either tonight or tomorrow.
My time has been taken up with my two special projects. I think I wrote about these before. One is transcription of letters from our years in Saudi Arabia. I try to complete two or three letters a day. After a slow start, I’m in a groove this. Letters from 1981-1982 are done, and I’m four months into 1983, the last year. It looks as if I have another 40 letters to go. That means I will likely finish this around early May, so long as interruptions are minimal.
The other special project is scanning and e-filing the many poetry critiques I did at various poetry boards around 2001-2009. I printed a lot of these and saved them in 3-ring binders. Most of these were at the now-defunct Poem Kingdom, but I also hung out at several other sites and critiqued. My estimate has been that I critiqued somewhere between 500 and 1,000 poems. No, that’s not an exaggeration. I saved many, but not all, of the critiques I made.
So far, I’ve scanned, formatted, checked for accuracy of the scan, and saved 106 poetry critiques. These came out of a 1-inch binder. My estimate is that I have 75 sheets left to process in this notebook, which will probably be 70 critiques—meaning 175 critiques. When I finish that, next to tackle is a 2.5-inch binder stuffed with critiques. That means I’ll be well over 500 critiques. What I can’t remember is if there is a third notebook or if this is it.
If I don’t have another notebook, I will likely finish this project some time in the fall. If in fact there’s a third notebook hiding somewhere on my shelves, then the project will likely continue into 2025.
So the question I’m dealing with whether I can get some book editing done while also maintaining my pace on the special projects. I won’t be able to test that until later this week. I have medical appointments today and Tuesday and two writer meetings on Thursday. I’m sure I’ll make a report on this in a future blog.
It’s been a busy day—my wife’s birthday. We went to lunch, spent some time together.
But I usually plan my blog posts a few days ahead and write them the day before. So I need to look back a day or two to figure out why I didn’t plan and prepare a post for today.
All I can say in my own defense is I have no excuse. Yes, I was busy with medical appointments. Tuesday I had a Pulmonary Function Test, preparatory to my heart valve replacement surgery coming up in a couple of months. Also on Tuesday I made a presentation to a club I’m a member of, the Northwest Arkansas Letter Writers Society. Preparing for that presentation took time on Monday and Tuesday.
Wednesday was a haircut. That shouldn’t have taken too much time, energy, or concentration. Between all of this, I haven’t been writing. I’ve been working on the two special projects: transcribing letters from our years in Saudi Arabia, and scanning/e-filing poetry critiques from twenty years ago. I’ve worked on that every day. And I had a few letters to write over the last couple of days.
Yardwork has also started in earnest, and that has taken an hour a day. Tomorrow will be longer than that.
So this blog post is late. Hopefully, over the next couple of days, I’ll spend a little more time planning and writing my next couple of posts.
The first of Lewis’s Christian apologetics books, and I didn’t understand it.
One of my life goals is to read everything that C.S. Lewis wrote. I’m a long way from meeting that goal, but inching along, book by book, essay by essay, article by article. I’m sort of going in order that the books were written—though not exactly. I’m putting off reading his fiction, the space trilogy, in favor of non-fiction. I may not stick with that, but that’s what I’m doing right now.
So, after finishing and reviewing my last book, I decided it was time for a C.S. Lewis book. The next one in order was The Problem of Pain, his 1940 book, written by request, to help explain to the common man what Christianity was all about. The world was at war—at least Europe was , so Lewis took up the challenge. Thus this was his first book written on what we call Christiam apologetics, a fancy word for defense of Christianity.
Alas, I struggled with the book, much as I did the first two or three times I tried to read Lewis’s later book Mere Christianity. Lewis lost me early on when he mentioned the “Numinous”. Here is, I think, his first reference to it.
In all developed religion we find three strands or elements, and in Christianity one more. The first of these is what Professor Otto calls the experience of the Numinous.
Huh? What the heck is a Numinous?
Lewis took a long paragraph to explain what Numinous was, but this brought no clarity to me. Since this was in the Introduction, it seemed, as I read, that grasping what that meant perhaps was essential to understanding the whole book. Since I didn’t understand it, I suspect it caused me to partially shut my mind off. I read the rest of the book, but truthfully I didn’t comprehend what I was reading.
Alas, I never really recovered from the partial mind shutdown. I say that to my shame. I know this is Lewis’s way, to bring up terms and -isms in a shorthand way, expecting his less-well educated audience to somehow grasp the concept. I kept feeling that in Mere Christianity, and in a very deja vu kind of way with The Problem of Pain.
So, how do I rate this book, is it a keeper, and will I ever read it again? 3-star, yes, and yes. I think I really need to understand this to understand Lewis. I’m sure there’s good stuff in it, stuff that will help me in my Christian walk. But I won’t get back to this very soon. It’s on to the next book, whatever that is.
Perhaps harder than cutting with scissors right-handed is taking a picture of cutting with scissors right-handed.
Tuesday night, after a quiet afternoon and evening, while the TV was running, more for background noise than anything, I had a need to cut something and grabbed scissors from the drawer in the end table between my wife’s and my reading chairs. Except only my wife’s chair is there at present. I was sitting in it. My chair hasn’t yet been returned to its normal spot after it was moved for two months while water damage remediation was going on in our house. I don’t know if the chair would know how to act if it was moved back now.
The chair doesn’t actually enter into the story. I just thought of it. Anyhow, I took the scissors out of the drawer and prepared to do some snipping. But I remembered the problem with scissors. Ninety-five percent of you won’t know what the problem is. Not that they are sharp and moderately dangerous, but that they are made for a right-handed person.
Two features of the scissors make them righthanded. One is the holes the fingers go in. Most scissors have holes that fit fingers on the right hand but not on the left. A right-handed person doesn’t know this, but a lefthander does from years of having the fingers of the left hand in those uncomfortable scissor holes. Cut long enough and the fingers hurt.
Some scissors have “neutral” holes that are the same left-handed or right-handed, but they are rarer. But even with neutral holes, you still have the problem that the sharp edges are made for a right-handed person. The left-hander, after putting his fingers in the backwards holes, learns that you have to squeeze the two part of the scissors in a way that is unnatural in order for them to cut.
Yet you learn to do it. All through grade school you cut things with the handicap of backwards scissors. At some point you learn that they make left-handed scissors. Maybe you find a pair somewhere and try them. While the holes may feel more natural, you find you can’t cut with them even though the sharp edges are, in theory, just right for you. So you keep using the right-handed scissors uncomfortably and somehow get the job done.
But what happens if you ever have to cut something using your right hand? What would make you do this? Maybe if you’re wearing a jacket with buttoned sleeves and see a thread hanging on the left sleeve. You grab the scissors on your desk, snag the errant thread, and cut. Except you can’t cut with your right hand. Though the scissors are made for that hand, you’re too used to squeezing them the other way. You can’t cut even a simple little thread without taking the jacket off and cutting with your left hand.
I suppose that is all incidental to the main story. On Tuesday, the day I reached for the scissors, I intended to use them right-handed. Why? Not for a hanging thread, but to cut three bands off my left wrist. Why did I have them there? Because Tuesday morning, I had a heart catheterization as an outpatient. You see, I have a genetically abnormal aortic valve. I’ve lived with it just fine for 72 years. But now my cardiologist believes it’s time to replace it. So last month I had a trans-esophageal-echocardiogram, and Tuesday the heart cath. The purpose of the tests was to see if everything needed is present to do the valve swap-out in the least invasive way, through the groin.
The way things are these days, I had the results almost immediately through the patient portal. While they are not in English (but rather in medicalese), they are supplemented by what the cardiologist told Lynda. He feels that it’s not very clear that they can go through the groin and I will need open heart surgery. But I must undergo more appointments and see other doctors before we make that decision. And however it’s done, it likely won’t happen until July.
But back to the scissors. I could not get the bands cut with my right hand. I tried and tried, but those scissors sharp sides just wouldn’t cut the bands. I twisted them first one way then the other. No dice, no cut. Should I call my wife and have her do it? I decided to keep trying it. On about the tenth try, I was able to stretch the band to the right place and squeeze the scissors just right, and the first band snapped.
The other two bands cut a little easier. For maybe the first time in my life I successfully used scissors in my right hand. A small life triumph.
Now, as to the heart surgery, I don’t expect it to be easier than cutting three flimsy bands right-handed. But if it must be open-heart, then so be it. I just hope the heart surgeon has the right scissors for whatever handed he/she is.
Now, I have a thread hanging from my left sleeve that needs to be separated from its source.
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.
