Too long since my last post

Wow! Where has the time gone? I have been so wrapped up in trying to promote my book with book talks, book signings and such, and with craft fairs, promoting my handmade jewelry, and that I have not taken the time to keep up with my blog. Sorry about that. The experts tell me that blogging is a good way to promote the books that I write, but sometimes it just becomes a chore. I do a lot of my promoting on facebook, so the blog has suffered. The new book I started is for young adults, and I am eight chapters into it. The writing is not going as fast as I would like because I keep making changes in the plot. I guess this is not unusual for most writers even if, like me, they have a prepared outline to follow. It seems, every time I make a change I have to go back and make changes elsewhere. This, of course, means a lot of time spent on rewriting. It is making the going slower, but, hopefully, a better end product.
While looking for something altogether different on the Internet, I found something that makes writing e-books much easier. It is an extension to Openoffice.org's Writer. It is called Writer2ePub. Since I have not had a chance to fully assess it, I shall have to await doing so before making any comments as to its efficacy. On the surface, it appears to have all of the elements required to produce a finished ePub product. My first book, Double Trouble on Corned Beef Row, is done in several electronic versions including ePub. Since electronic publishing is rapidly gaining ground, and printed books are losing it, it makes sense to make sure that anything you write goes into electronic formats, ePub and Adobe's .pdf being the most popular. ePub is the format used on the Apple iPad, Sony, and many other popular readers. Amazon.com and BarnesandNoble.com both have proprietary formats, which the writer is compelled to use. With the proliferation of e-readers, it only makes sense to make your product available to this wide audience. Many people still value the printed page, but with the use of e-Readers, Smart Phones, the Kindle, and the Nook that can download a book from the Internet to be read while traveling on an airplane, waiting in line at a doctor's office or for an appointment with a client, this option is being used more frequently. My advice, do whatever it takes to get your writing into the hands of the largest audience possible, and it looks to me like electronic publishing should not be overlooked. I will experiment with Writer2ePub and will report my findings later.

The Perils of Self Publishing-Part III

It nearly takes a miracle to get national attention. Unless you have an agent, or a publisher with a marketing department to make the necessary contacts, you are left to your own devices. Self-publishing still carries something of a stigma in the eyes of the national press. Getting reviewers for national magazines or newspapers to look at your product is next to impossible. But not totally. Sometimes the most unlikely sources will actually want to take a look at them. When my stepson read my book, Double Trouble on Corned Beef Row, he interpreted it as a spy novel. I did not write it as one even though it contains spies. He suggested that I contact Eye Spy Magazine, which is circulated internationally, for a review. At first, I passed this off as an impossibility, but when I contacted their website, they wanted to take a look at it. I mailed the book, per their instructions, to England, where the magazine is published. A couple of weeks later, I received a phone message from the editor saying that he liked the book and would recommend it (which he did in the July/August 2011 issue). Whether or not this will mean a boost in book sales is yet to be seen, as it is too early to tell. However, one good magazine review can lead to another, and that is what I hope will happen. The task now is to spread the word of this review to other publications. Other attempts to publicize the work are still ongoing. Attempting to get coverage by local television and radio, doing book talks and personal appearances, and reviewing works by other authors are other ways of getting your name and product into the public eye. Using blogs like this one and social media such as FaceBook and Twitter are other useful ways of spreading the word. If you are a self publisher, you cannot rest on your laurels, you must keep plugging away at every opportunity. If you snooze, you lose, and, if an opportunity is lost, you may never have it again.

The Perils of Self Publishing-Part II

As a self publisher, promoting your book is probably the most difficult thing you're going to have to do once you have put into the final form. How you do that is up to your own ingenuity. Doing personal appearances and book signings is always a good avenue for publicity, especially if you can get it into the newspaper or mentioned on TV or radio. Blogs, like this one, are another good way of spreading the word. Using social media like FaceBook and Twitter give you inexpensive ways to put your message in front of larger crowds. FaceBook, for instance, gives you the possibility of having a fan page that enables you to announce to a larger audience whatever events you wish to publicize. There are, also, many free websites available. They are easy to set up, as most of them provide templates that you can use to design a site that looks fairly professional. I used Microsoft's OfficeLive.com for mine, and to me, it looks pretty good. Making sure that press releases are sent out prior to any personal appearances will ensure that the media is, at the least, informed. I have had relative success using this strategy with several of the smaller local publications. If you can form a relationship with any of the local media people, that will greatly enhance the possibility of having your events publicized. Don't turn down the opportunity to speak to book clubs or any local organization that likes having guest speakers talk to their members. Book clubs are good in that prior to addressing them, their members will buy copies of your book for discussion purposes, and if they like it, the word-of-mouth advertising that comes through them is priceless. The problem with all of these things is they require vast amounts of time. Time away from your major pursuit, which is, hopefully, working on your next writing project. The biggest trick is getting national attention, and if getting the word out locally is difficult, getting it out nationally is damn near impossible. That is the subject for the next post.

The Perils of Self Publishing-Part I

When I started writing my book, Double Trouble on Corned Beef Row, I had no idea that I was creating a monster. Writing and re-writing the story was the easy part. What happened when I finished it came as big surprise. The first thing I learned was that, in general, agents do not want to hear from you. They are only interested in promoting authors they already represent. Many do not even give you the courtesy of a reply to letters or emails asking them to take on your book. Most will direct you to a web page with submission requirements, and these will vary wildly. After wasting several months looking for an agent to no avail, I decided to self publish. The problem with that process is that if you don't have the money to pay for expensive services that most print on demand publishers offer, you are stuck with doing all of those things for yourself. My solution? Publish on CreateSpace.com or Lulu.com. I settled on CreateSpace, as I was only required to purchase one copy: a proof. That would solve my minimal finances problem. After going through numerous file structure changes that were necessary to upload the files, I had a real copy of my work in my hands, but it was flawed. I had somehow uploaded the same chapter twice. With the proof in hand, we, my Darling Judy and I, scoured the pages for other problems and found lots of them. Re-editing the entire book for redundancies, poorly worded passages, and grammatical errors took us to the point where we were ready to upload the changes. Confident that we had corrected all of the problems, we ordered several copies of the proof to give away. The strategy we used for doing this is in the next installment.

Status Quo: Hopeless

I have, as do most people, a "To Do" list. I have come to the conclusion it will never get finished in this lifetime. It keeps growing longer as I get older. Filled with things I want to do as well as things I need to do, I have to keep paring it down so I can keep it from getting completely out of control. Not that it really is under control. It seems to stay static at about two dozen items because when I finish one task, another quickly takes its place. Add in the things my wife wants me to do, and it grows like a sprig of ivy: climbing up, grabbing me by the throat, and squeezing it shut. Or so it seems. I looked at it this morning and realized what a mixed up mess it is. I am going to have to re-write and prioritize it. Again. Then, I am going to have to get busy doing what is on it. Does the time ever come when a person can just say, "to hell with it," and throw the damnable thing in the trash? Is there no rest for the weary? Anyone who thinks old age is the time for taking it easy and slowing down needs to take a look at my list. I didn't work this hard before I retired. Oh, well! Enough whining. Time to get to work.

A Fed Up American

Like many others, I have grown to hate the federal government. It has completely lost, not only its credibility, but its purpose. It is no longer government of the people. It is an oligarchy run by the rich and powerful. Political correctness has taken the place of common sense. The government now decides who in its opinion is making too much money making it unfair to people, on the dole, who are unwilling to work,
but not unwilling to do drugs and add their illegitimate children to it. Illegal aliens are given rights that are withheld from the elderly who have paid into Social Security and their taxes all their lives. Jobs are sent overseas and Americans are put out of work for the sake of corporate profits. Young Americans are fighting and dieing for the rights of other peoples in lands whose citizens do not appreciate what they are doing. They should, instead, be protecting our homeland from those who sneak across our borders either to gain access to benefits that should be reserved for American citizens, perform terrorist acts, or to participate in the lucrative drug trade. It is a government whose priorities are convoluted. It is my belief that we need to go back to fundamentals. By that, I mean the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the constitutional amendments that guarantee the rights of American citizens. It is time to scrap the crap and start over. I see the need for American Revolution II. I love my country, and would gladly give my life for it. God bless America, but god damn its government whose leadership, the likes of Obama, Pelosi, and a plethora of career politicians, has betrayed us too many times to catalog.

Past, Present, and Future

Last Saturday was a great day for me. My wife and I went to Greetings and Readings, the largest local independent bookstore in the metropolitan area. We sold a bunch of copies of Double Trouble on Corned Beef Row, and had a lot of fun in the process. According to one of the people who works there, I sold triple the number of books sold by the average author who comes there for a book signing. Today, Judy and I went to a store called All Things Country. The owner there was a lady, who greeted us with great warmth. We dropped off some books and will be included in a multiauthor book signing on August 6. We also took a bunch of old coins to a dealer and sold them for just under $400. I had been a collecting them for many years. I have several other things on my to do list that I MUST get out of the way before I can get back to serious writing. I have eight more items on that list, and hopefully, I will be able to knock them out without too many problems. Have you ever noticed how few lives never seems to get shorter? There is always something added to its end that makes it go on and on and on and on. Ah well, such is life.