The Promise of Fall: How to Achieve a Balanced Writing Life
Labor Day has come and gone, marking the end of a summer that went by so fast it gave me whiplash and the beginning of fall, which has always been my favorite season, even here in Southern California where September is often the hottest month of the year. I was one of those odd kids who loved the return of school days, as the nights grew cooler in my Pennsylvania home town, my blood ran faster, washing away the sluggish dreaminess that a summer spent reading had produced. Adulthood, and a teaching career that mimicked the rhythms of my youth, meant fall continued to represent a time of increased activity. This summer I was supposed to make serious progress on my second historical mystery, Uneasy Spirits. I was supposed to make so much progress that when fall came, and I Read more…
Late to the Fair: Why I became an indie author
Last week I caught up to the fact that Chris Kelly was having a blog carnival on Indie Publishing just as the deadline closed. However, after reading the blog posts of those who made it to the fair, and mulling over my reactions, I thought it would still be useful to post on this topic. I have written previously on my blog about the path that lead me to self-publishing, which echoed other writers (disappointment with the traditional route, issues of control, greater financial opportunities, etc) so in this post I am focusing more narrowly on the most important personal reason I had for deciding to become an indie author. The traditional publishing route takes just too damn long (and I am too damn old). I remember a year ago last June coming back from a mystery convention, business cards Read more…
Help! How do I get people to find my book while on Smashwords?
I put my book, Maids of Misfortune: A Victorian San Francisco Mystery, up as an ebook on Smashwords and Kindle at approximately the same time, for the same price ($4) in December 2009. In the six months since I published the book I have only sold 2 books on Smashwords, while at the same time, I have sold 120 books on Kindle. What I am trying to figure out is: why the difference and is there anything I can do about this? A year ago on the Smashwords blog, (http://bit.ly/c79MXp)Mark Coker wrote that “Approximately 80 percent of Smashwords web site visitors arrive to Smashwords via deep links, meaning they arrive to an author page or an author’s book page…” But today, the group I am interested in is the other 20% who are simply browsing for a book to check Read more…
On Second Chances and Role Models: A Tribute to my Father
I just returned from the melancholy task of moving my father into the “memory care” wing of an assisted living facility. My Dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s about eight years ago, and caring for him has been increasingly difficult for my step-mother. Two weeks ago they both got very ill, my father ending up in the hospital with pneumonia, and the crisis made it clear that something had to change. They live in central Oregon, near one of my step-mother’s daughters, and I live in Southern California. Because my step-mother was so ill herself, when my Dad was ready to be discharged from the hospital, she wasn’t able to take him home, and I flew up to get him settled in the care facility. I spent four days with him, sleeping in his room on an air-mattress, trying to explain Read more…
Analysis of first quarterly Sales or Can I call myself a real published author yet????
Last year as I was making the decision whether or not to self-publish my historical mystery, Maids of Misfortune, I read blog after blog post that tried to parse the differences among traditional publishers, small presses, subsidy and/or vanity publishers, and independent or self-published authors. While I found little absolute agreement, I was left with the impression that if you self-published a book that ended up being bought primarily by immediate family and friends, you were probably involved in vanity publishing, no matter what method you used. This idea was reinforced when I read such statements as those by Jane Smith in her blog How Publishing Really Works that self-published books sold on average “between forty and two hundred copies…”(http://bit.ly/6gvvj2) and that “Despite some highly publicized successes, the average book from a POD service sells fewer than 200 copies–mostly to the authors Read more…
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