Memories

I thought it’d be interesting, at least for me, to take a trip down Memory Lane. This particular trip involves books and where I found them along the way. This idea came to mind since a new bookstore opened in downtown McKinney and it’s made me realize how much libraries and bookstores have been part of my life. The story starts when I wasn’t even old enough to start Kindergarten, which is age 5 in the U.S. I’d learned to read already, though, thanks no doubt to my Grandma Brown, an elementary school teacher. She took me to the Alamogordo Public Library but they wouldn’t issue me a library card because I hadn’t yet started school. Family legend has it that Grandma was quite mad about that. I did end up getting a card at a young age, an orange ticket to other worlds that I stowed in my fake leather wallet. I checked out a LOT of books from that library, as well as from the smaller libraries at the schools I attended. All these libraries would remove a card from inside the cover, write your name or your library card number on it, and stamp the due date on a flimsy sheet glued inside the cover. That’s it, that was the contract. I remember when our city’s library modernized and issued new cards in the form of a manila square that had a small piece of metal attached to it, the metal having your card number embossed so that it could be run through a slick, modern (at the time) little machine that stamped the number onto the checkout card. Seems quaint now in the world of RFID and self-checkouts. Next time we’ll take a look at bookstores.

Summer

I got my monthly statement from the publisher yesterday, which lags a few months behind in accounting and paying for sales. The summer was good to me. It’s interesting in that the marketplace reports differently. By that, I mean the sales I’m getting paid for are from July for Amazon and B&N, while the timeframe is August for iBooks (Apple). I’m not sure why it takes so long to push everything through the system. After all, I thought computers were supposed to make everything easier and faster. Anyway, this is by far my biggest month, but it took an awful lot of advertising to do it. Let’s just say I’m not quitting my day job. We’re talking hundreds of dollars, not thousands. I’ve said this before, but if you took a look at what I’ve spent on publishing and advertising vs. income, you’d question my sanity. There’s a reason people who self-published went through what used to be called a “vanity press” although you don’t hear that term so much anymore. I suppose spending a lot of your own money to put out a book could be considered vain, although the alternative is to never publish unless it’s through a big house publisher. I like that we have the ability to self-publish, no matter what you call it.

Third Act

I’m moving into the third act of my draft of the sequel to First. Even though last week I talked about working without a net, I realized yesterday I do need to do just a skosh of planning on how this ends up. I pretty much need to know the destination, but how I get there is the part without a net. I have some ideas, of course, but solidifying a few twists will aid my efforts, because other twists will show up along the way as I write the characters. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m pleased with how this book is going and already thinking of ways to shore it up with some revisions early in the story. What’ll actually happen is that once I finish the draft, it’s going into a virtual drawer for a few months while I work on something else. I think my next project will be to edit Assignment Day once more and get it ready for publication in the first half of 2025, assuming all the economics work out.

Length

My target for the book I’m writing is 75,000 words. or thereabouts. The two books I published in the last year, First and Next Time, came in at 125k and 85k, respectively. Which brings up a couple of questions: why so wordy on the first two? Why come in at such a low word count on the new one? When I finished the draft for First, it came in somewhere in the 117-118k range, if I remember correctly. I actually had to add more to the story to explain a couple of things, increasing its word count. Could I have pared it down by 40-50k words? Probably, if I really, really tried, but it would’ve lost a lot of character development. I know, I know, writing teachers are rolling their eyes at that one. I haven’t heard anyone complain that it’s too long. As for Next Time, it came in at just the right length, at least to my thinking. Again, I probably could’ve pared 10k words, but I like how it ended up. Given that I think those are good word counts, why try for lower? Well, it’s easy. With my self-publishing company, 75k is the standard novel length. Anything above that incurs in extra charge for formatting and increases the cost of producing a paperback book. It all boils down to economics.

No Net

I’d mapped out a storyline for the sequel to First, but I’m now writing without a net. As sometimes happens, the story and characters take over and what I had planned at a very high level has kind of been pushed aside. Writers who work from an outline and plan the whole story would lose their grip on reality if they had to do what I’m doing right now. Like I mentioned last week, I’ve kind of lost track of time during my writing sessions and to me that’s a good sign. It means the story is flowing and ideas are, too. There’s nothing wrong with outlining and writing from that. I did a rough outline of bullet points I wanted to follow, but guess what? I’m not following them anymore. Given the multiple false starts with this story, it’s nice to be in the zone, so to speak. All that said, it’s not just fun and games. I already know I’m going to have to go back and change a few major plot points. The more I write, the more I’ll probably have to revise earlier in the book. That’s the danger of writing like this, but right now I wouldn’t trade it, not even for an outline.

Q4

We’re fast approaching the end of September, which means we’re in Q4. For people not in the corporate world of revenue and sales and deadlines, that means we’re in the fourth quarter, the last of the year. What does that mean to this blog writer? It means time is running out to accomplish the goals I set forth at the beginning of 2024. Looks like I’m going to miss about half of them. I’ll come out of this year having written only one book when the goal was two in a new series, but instead I decided to spin up the sequel to First. Overall, I probably wrote the equivalent of 2.5 books, what with starting the first book in a series along with several aborted attempts at the aforementioned sequel. On the bright side, I released Next Time and it sold nicely as well as winning a few awards. I’m not ready to review the whole year in detail yet and there’s one or two goals I could still meet. My focus in Q4 will be to finish this sequel and then evaluate Assignment Day one more time and make necessary edits so I can publish it next year. Three months is still plenty of time to get things done.

Reading Two

My last post told you what I just finished reading, and now I’ll answer the question of what I’m reading currently. Actually, I’m reading two books at the moment. That’s not always the best way to do it, but they’re such wildly different stories that it’s no problem at all to keep the stories and characters straight. The first is Sayonara, a James Michener novel about an Air Force pilot transferred to Japan during the Korean War. I bought this one at a discount for the eBook from a BookBub ad I saw. See, I’m not just an advertiser, I’m also a customer! I’ve read a lot of Michener books over the years, and this might be the shortest. IYKYK. The narrator of the story falls in love with a Japanese woman and the story tells of the incredible racial and cultural prejudice directed at the Japanese. After all, the narrator is told, we defeated them in the war, so why would we want to fall in love with their women? There’s a lot of the culture on both sides that seems dated, which is a good thing to know how far we’ve progressed in seven decades, and I see it as a moment in history, a tale of humanity against the backdrop of a war that changed the world and ultimately the imperial culture of Japan. It’s different from Michener’s other epic tomes, an intensely personal story. The other story I’m reading I picked up at the bookstore on Friday. I was going to get another historical tale, but when I saw American Gods by Neil Gaiman I figured I’d go for it. I know it became a TV show, but beyond that I’m really not familiar with what it’s about. I mean, I can read the ad copy on the back cover just like everyone else, but I suppose I’ll learn more about it and what the book means in the larger scale of our culture at some point. Fow now, I’m coming into this one as a blank slate. It’s not often that happens.

Reading

One of the questions I’m frequently asked is, “What are you reading?” It’s a good question, because writers should read. A lot. I always have at least one book I’m reading, and often two or three. Yesterday I finished Hampton Sides’s newest book, The Wide Wide Sea, about Captain James Cook, the 18th century explorer who is most famous for dying at the hands of the natives on a beach in Hawaii. It’s a fascinating story about a great man whose character reportedly changed in his third and final voyage. During his first two journeys he was known as a fair but firm captain. On the third, those who’d sailed with him before reported a man who was more prone to anger and doling out harsh punishments than he’d been previously. Even though it has a sad ending, it’s a good read and tells a story about exploring the islands around Tahiti and Hawaii as well as trying to find the mythical Northwest Passage. I enjoy history and learning from it, especially when the tales are so incredible they almost seem like fiction.

Trends

It’s been several weeks since I raised the price on First and Next Time, and let’s take a look at how they’re doing. In conjunction with the price change, I’m also advertising on BookBub only on weekends. Overall, the trend on sales this month is downward, which is not a surprise when you take the price and advertising frequency into account. It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, though. For instance, this morning when I checked the Amazon rankings, both books were up from yesterday, which means someone must be buying them without having seen an ad since Sunday. When that happens it’s a bit of a surprise, albeit a welcome one. The books haven’t made it to that self-sustaining sales level, whatever that is. It’d be really nice to get some word-of-mouth sales, but I tend to think that’s going to require more hard-won sales through advertising and promotions first. Let’s just say I’d like to be wrong about that. In the meantime, I’m fine with spending less on ads for a bit and getting higher royalties on fewer books. Once we get to the holiday season, that’ll be the signal to pump up the advertising and do some wheeling and dealing.

Lost

The last couple of writing sessions I got lost in the story. I can tell because when I look at my watch to see how near I am to my normal stopping time, I’ve been surprised it’s that late. That’s a good sign, at least in my thinking. If I’m getting lost in the story as I write it, then hopefully that translates into the same for whoever reads it, whenever that is. I’ve mentioned this before, but the opposite is true. If I’m writing the story and become bored, then the reader will also be bored. What does that look like when I’m writing? I can usually tell a few different ways. One is that I feel like I don’t really want to write, which means the creativity level is low, which means the words I put on the page are like going through an exercise. Sometimes I do it anyway just to write, but it means I’ll end up throwing away some pages. Another way to detect boredom is when I fire up the laptop and don’t remember what I last wrote. If my story is that uninspiring, it’s time to make some changes. Yet another way is where I detect a situation has gone on too long without change. In other words, I’m spinning my wheels, treading water, whatever you want to call it, but there’s no forward movement in the narrative. That gets boring as a writer and definitely mind-numbing for a reader. I want to be lost in the story, forgetting the world and its craziness for a brief period of time. When I’m writing, I want to be so far into the scene and the characters that I experience those a-ha moments, the rare instances where I pause and say, “Wow, that was good,” knowing eventual readers will feel the same. That’s why I enjoy getting lost.

One Star

Every writer gets them: one-star reviews. Both First and Next Time have one-star ratings on Amazon and Goodreads. I knew going in that some people wouldn’t like my books. Heck, even I don’t like every book I’ve ever read. In fact, there are some I haven’t finished, which is not my usual way of doing things. I like to finish what I start. All that aside, the question becomes one of how I, as a writer, react to one-star reviews. I believe there are two answers to that question: how I react publicly and my private reaction.

Publicly, it’s pretty simple. I don’t react. What am I going to do, start a flame war with a stranger? Yeah, that’ll get them to change their minds. And to make a public nuisance of myself brings the wrong kind of publicity. The only thing that would be helpful is if those people left a text review and not just a rating. I’d like to know what they didn’t like and why the story didn’t work for them. Did they have different expectations than what the book delivered? For example, were they looking for a Highlander bodice-ripper time-travel story in Next Time, only to find out it’s set in modern times and the bodices are spared? I wish I knew.

The other response is how I respond privately. Look, I’m a pragmatic person, and like I said, I knew some people wouldn’t like the books. I really appreciate all the high ratings the books have received. Right now on Amazon, First sits at 4.4 stars with 140 ratings and Next Time at 4.3 with 74. On Apple Books, First is 4.5 (19 ratings) and Next Time is 4.4 (10). Goodreads shows 4.49 (71) and 4.41 (58), respectively. Overall, not too bad. Statistically speaking, the one-star ratings are outliers. I don’t let them ruin my day, just like I don’t jump over the moon at 5-star reviews. Even Tolkien has one-star ratings for Lord of the Rings, pretty much a classic. On vacation, I picked up a book called Subpar Parks, which got its origin from people who left one-star ratings for U.S. National Parks. It’s pretty funny and shows how some people are never satisfied. Which is something good to keep in mind.

Vacation

What happened while I was on vacation with my writing? Well, not as much as I’d hoped. I wanted to crank out a good amount of story and had high hopes I could make a lot of progress on the sequel to First. In reality, we stayed quite busy and I probably wrote about 500 words total. Not going to be too upset, though, since we had a great time. It just turned out to not be a time for writing and that’s okay. The break allowed me to ponder some of the nagging questions in my mind about the story, although I haven’t resolved all those issues yet. For example, one of the things people liked about First included Ray, the smart-aleck AI. I don’t have enough of that in this book and that probably needs to change. Not that this needs to be exactly like its predecessor, but I can also see it from the viewpoint of the reader and coming away from the sequel wondering why I didn’t like it as much. Anyway, not much progress over the last couple of weeks, but hoping to get back to it and complete the draft before Thanksgiving in the US.

Bronze

First won another award while I was on my brief hiatus. It was kind of funny since I found out from my sister, who also won an award for her book, Milspouse Matters. She texted me one day and congratulated me on winning a Bronze Medal from Readers’ Favorite. I checked my emails and said no, that must have been from December when they gave me a 5-star review. Fortunately, my sister is patient with my sometimes intentional stupidity and sent me the link to the awards page. Sure enough, there was First in the SF category. I admitted my wrongness but still thought it odd that I hadn’t received any notification. She said she won a Gold Medal from them a few years ago for her previous book and never received an email. In this case, a couple of days later I got an email saying I needed to log into the Authors’ Area on their site since winners had been announced. Once I did that, I found a ton of follow-up as well as the opportunity to provide my address for stickers and a medal. Sure, I thought, a cheap plastic medal, but the stickers will be nice to have for my books. When I returned from vacation, the shipment had arrived. And the medal ain’t cheap. It’s a real metal medal, substantial and like something I’ve received for running marathons. Very nice to have and once again, an honor to win another award for my book. If you’re keeping track at home, I also entered Next Time in the contest but didn’t win for that book this time around. One out of two isn’t bad.

Hiatus

It’s time to take a little break from the blogging, but not from the writing. I have some obligations over the next few weeks and rather than trying to remember to write here, I’ll just say that I’ll be back later. Unless something big happens. In which case, I’ll take a hiatus from my hiatus in order to share the update. TTFN

Inflation

After mulling it over for several weeks, I finally raised the eBook prices on First and Next Time. I could blame inflation, but in reality it’s an experiment of sorts. I’ve been selling them both for $0.99 USD since they came out. First I bumped up to $2.99 and Next Time to $1.99. Trust me, it’s not a matter of making more money, since I’ll probably sell fewer copies over the next couple of months. Why? Because people will take a chance on spending a buck and finding a diamond in the rough, which seems to be what most people have done, judging by the reviews. Won’t I make more in royalties off the increased price? Sure. In fact, a $2.99 price at Amazon jumps the royalty percentage from 35% to 70%. Which sounds great until you realize it’s still a small amount. If you’re at home doing the math, 35% of $0.99 is $0.34 per eBook sold. You have to sell a LOT of books at that price to make anything that actually impacts your bank account in a positive way. On the other side, 70% of $2.99 is $2.10. Not bad and it actually means you’re in the bracket where you make more money off a sale than Amazon does. Theoretically, though, you make less overall because the volume sold goes down with the higher price. I could be completely wrong and pleasantly surprised when I get results post-price change. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Squirrel

One of my struggles as a writer is making sure I stay focused on the story I’m writing. Whatever do you mean by that, you ask. Remember the book I worked on earlier this year, the first in a series? I found my thoughts returning to it last night while The Wife and I watched a television show. Something clicked in my brain and I started thinking about the story I’d been writing, how it seemed okay but needed that extra oomph, and a way I could improve it tremendously. Which isn’t going to happen anytime soon. I’m still working on the sequel to First and not even halfway through writing it yet. I have to keep my eyes on that goal and then I can come back to this idea for a series. I don’t know how much other writers struggle with this, but I suspect it’s more than a few. In my head, I have ideas bouncing around in there constantly. .Sometimes too many. It’s a good problem to have, I suppose. You’ve heard the phrase, “discipline of writing”? Sometimes it truly is a discipline, where routine, self-denial, and consistency, are key. And so onward I go, continuing the story I’m now telling, with more waiting in the wings.

More Sales

It’s been a couple of weeks since my last sales update, so here we go. Last week trended upward a bit after the previous week. The lower ad budget remains the same, meaning clicks were probably the same or very close, but more people ended up buying the books. It’s interesting to me how effective these ads have been after I struggled a bit to find the right composition. I played with different color backgrounds, ad copy, and placement of the book cover (does it do better on the right? or on the left?). For both First and Next Time the best results came with a plain white background and a reviewer’s quote. Who knew? And apparently it doesn’t matter which side the book cover is on. Anyway, I’ll keep running those ads until they’re not effective anymore. And as I’ve been pondering, I’ll probably raise the price at the end of August. That’ll likely throttle sales, but it’ll give me good promotional material going into the holidays.

Ad Updates

Time to check in on how the ads for my books are doing. As I mentioned in a previous post, I couldn’t sustain the expense of the ads I was running, so I slashed the budget to less than half. As expected, sales took a corresponding dip. Last week was the first full week of running the ads with reduced funding, and I actually ended up surprised how many books still sold. Granted, it’s the lowest total in a couple of months, but overall I feel like it could’ve been worse. The ads are getting clicks and the budget is drained every day. I even had quite a few sales last week and this on B&N for First. For some reason, the ads I’d run previously didn’t generate a link for people who clicked on the ad with a preference for B&N, so this might be the first time in quite awhile that audience has seen these ads. I’ve been contemplating raising the price of the books, but I also have to be prepared for lower sales. The only reason to do it is for the longer-term where I can run ads at the end of the year showing a price cut. Still gotta think about that one.

School #2

Last time I wrote about the Creative Writing course I took during my last semester before graduating with an Accounting degree, so let’s continue that tale. I recall reading short stories from our textbook, probably some of the classics and maybe even some excerpts from longer pieces. Our instructor lives in my mind as energetic and encouraging, a far cry from the professors in the business college. We’d write our stories, read them aloud to each other, offer critique, and go back to the drafting board to incorporate suggestions. I also recall the quiet surprise of the other students when my writing didn’t suck as bad as they expected. Okay, maybe they didn’t expect it to suck, but I still inhabited an aura of something different. After all, I wasn’t one of their fellow English majors, much less in literature or something involving French novelists. I got an A out of the class and as I said previously, it ended up being my favorite college course. I don’t even remember what I read or wrote, but something good must have happened since I’m still writing all these years later. Not only did I not lose my love writing by taking the class, it’s actually a good marker on my way to having the confidence to self-publish my books.

School

School’s back in session here in Texas, which I don’t have to worry about since all the kids are grown. I have this recurring dream, a variety of which invaded my sleep last night, where I’m back in college again. The highlights tend to be that I’m in a class, that I’ve got one or more that I need to go to that day, and I don’t know what time and where they are. This is usually because it’s the end of the semester and I haven’t been attending classes, plus I have no idea of where my schedule is so I can’t find it to know where I need to go.

Anyway, this post isn’t about my dreams. As the wise sage Rhett Miller says, “Nobody wants to hear about your stupid dreams. We don’t even want to hear half the shit that happens in reality. Go back to sleep.” No, what I wanted to mention regards the Creative Writing class I took my very last semester when I needed three credits to maintain full-time status. I was an accounting major, seated in long rows in large lecture rooms where none of the students talked with other or interacted beyond assigned group projects, and sometimes not even then. Creative Writing provided a whole different experience, beginning with the fifteen or so of us around a large table where we had to look at each other and talk. I provided the fish-out-of-water participant since nobody believed a business school geek could write. I have fond memories of that particular time in school and always say it’s the best course I took in college. More next time…