I just finished a tenth collection of short stories, and I want to gripe about the process a little before it's either approved or rejected on kindle and paperback. Most likely they will simply fix the few things that went wrong and send it down the line, and I'll have two books tomorrow, one kindle, one paperback.
In the end there were times that I didn't know how to fix the formatting problem that their machinery set up, so I simply approved it I figured they would fix those formatting glitches probably having seen such things before and knowing that I really want title page information centered within the title page. I had no idea why it wasn't, and no clue about how to go about fixing it.
Some things like this reflect my dwindling patience. It has been after all about five moonths since my last book, way too long for me, and this has made my marketing kind of stale and I've lost my patience with that too. Because I've lost my patience I let a few things go that I shouldn't have. My covers are not quite perfect. My table of contents does not have the page number for each story, and on the kindle version it's poorly formatted. They will either fix this or not. In kindle they can link the chapters (stories) in the T of C to the stories in the main book, and they'll probably do that, so page numbers there are superfluous anyway. In paperback I end up submitting a pdf and there's where I should probably have page numbers in my T of C.
I get all wound up in the production and thus become somewhat useless in the house where I'm totally distracted and don't even notice whether people are home or not. It's good, though, that I broke the ice on my inability to produce - sure, for several months I was preoccupied with moving - but still I was beginning to feel stale myself and I needed to just see something of mine out on the market. I will work on those covers, I promise. I think you will see a bath of publicity here pretty soon, all sites, all places, all over. It'll be "all guns firing" as I like to say, for a little while, until I figure out what to finish next.
Monday, September 12, 2022
Tuesday, August 16, 2022
New covers
e pluribus haiku 2016
https://www.amazon.com/pluribus-haiku-2016-thomas-leverett-ebook/dp/B01FOLGWCE
e pluribus haiku 2017
https://www.amazon.com/pluribus-haiku-2017-thousand-moments-ebook/dp/B071WNYXTK
e pluribus haiku 2018
https://www.amazon.com/pluribus-haiku-2018-thousand-moments-ebook/dp/B07DCJD3KP
Monday, August 15, 2022
update
A few victories, a few losses on the marketing scene. For one thing, I seem to have sold two kindle copies, a couple of days ago, yet the ratings have not changed at all in Amazon. This seems to happen every once in a while. Maybe ratings aren't tabulated for library sales? Here I am checking ratings daily, even hourly, to see that millions-points bump, and it never shows up. That's discouraging.
Second, I'm in a kind of reads slump. Sales are good, reads are down. And even "good" for me, in sales, is just a couple once in a while. It's not like I'm talking any kind of real success as an author. On the one hand, my brothers and sister are beginning to recognize that I am a real author, with some books and some sales out there, but the world by and large doesn't come knocking on my door. And I've put a lot of work into the situation.
Third, the words aren't flowing out of my pen. I get ideas, I start stories, I get them on paper, but they sit for a while. Sometimes a long while. It's labor, and not joy.
I've got new covers on the e pluribus haiku series, 2016, 2017 and 2018. They will slip into history with a better look. These go years between times anyone reads or buys them, but they at least look better. I am practicing my covers in general. These three help in the process of rebranding. It may be part of my discouragement that I work hard basically on haiku that nobody reads. That may change though. I should just hold my head up and keep cranking it out. It's a little sad that basically I've stopped cranking out haiku also.
Back to the millstone, so to speak. It's been so busy moving here, and getting kids back to school, that I've had very little time to devote to updating blogs, etc. The haiku promo, for example, has to show that I've taken four off the market, and three have new covers. All promos have to have the new covers. It's that simple. People assume that new cover = new book, but in my case, it just means, new cover. I need to get the blatant self-promo site back up to be a little more blatant. I'm working on it. Be patient!
Second, I'm in a kind of reads slump. Sales are good, reads are down. And even "good" for me, in sales, is just a couple once in a while. It's not like I'm talking any kind of real success as an author. On the one hand, my brothers and sister are beginning to recognize that I am a real author, with some books and some sales out there, but the world by and large doesn't come knocking on my door. And I've put a lot of work into the situation.
Third, the words aren't flowing out of my pen. I get ideas, I start stories, I get them on paper, but they sit for a while. Sometimes a long while. It's labor, and not joy.
I've got new covers on the e pluribus haiku series, 2016, 2017 and 2018. They will slip into history with a better look. These go years between times anyone reads or buys them, but they at least look better. I am practicing my covers in general. These three help in the process of rebranding. It may be part of my discouragement that I work hard basically on haiku that nobody reads. That may change though. I should just hold my head up and keep cranking it out. It's a little sad that basically I've stopped cranking out haiku also.
Back to the millstone, so to speak. It's been so busy moving here, and getting kids back to school, that I've had very little time to devote to updating blogs, etc. The haiku promo, for example, has to show that I've taken four off the market, and three have new covers. All promos have to have the new covers. It's that simple. People assume that new cover = new book, but in my case, it just means, new cover. I need to get the blatant self-promo site back up to be a little more blatant. I'm working on it. Be patient!
Thursday, July 28, 2022
discouragement
I see an incredible number of writers giving up - stating publicly that it just wasn't what they'd hoped, and they were turning away. Most of them have a lot more invested, in terms of pure money, than I do. They bought a thousand of their own books. They paid a cover designer or an editor/proofreader. They invested heavily.
I on the other hand have invested mostly time and energy. As I've become obsessed with marketing, I've sprayed every possible free avenue with marketing until my twitter friends, facebook people, etc. are probably sick of it. I've kept up an unrelenting barrage of marketing of what I have and mostly to no avail. Sure I get a few sales here and there. On the paperback front which is especially bleak, I've resorted to buying my own to keep my ratings below ten million or below about fifteen, which is the level at which they stop even showing your rating. This is especially true of haiku, which simply doesn't sell, or at least mine doesn't sell. But I have used my marketing time to get Amazon gift cards so I'm not taking it out of the family budget.
In a sense this is an admission of failure and I know it. With the short stories I know that I have a few readers and will have more if I can crank out another collection of them, which should happen soon. My novel was a success but I also know that I've been virtually unable to write the second one, which is dying to be finished but just needs some attention to its organization.
In general I have about eight projects half done and a couple I even forgot about for a few months in the lead up to the big move from New Mexico to Illinois. A lot of these are close enough to being done that a little spurt of writing would just finish them. Instead I feel somewhat paralyzed by futility.
In my household a kid lives on McDonald's. That means twenty, thirty, forty bucks slips out the door every time we turn around because he likes to include his friends. I'm sitting here making maybe a buck on a survey, getting a book and giving it to a library, and he's out there slurping up frappes on our retirement account because he literally doesn't have a clue and feels like he absolutely needs it, and we have not effectively established a good limit. We are enabling him, I agree, so it's on us, but it piles up the futility. My ultimate goal is to be able to sit back, and let book sales and reads just kind of fill up the account whether I crank it out or not. For now, though, it will be necessary to crank some out. So it's back to work for me.
I on the other hand have invested mostly time and energy. As I've become obsessed with marketing, I've sprayed every possible free avenue with marketing until my twitter friends, facebook people, etc. are probably sick of it. I've kept up an unrelenting barrage of marketing of what I have and mostly to no avail. Sure I get a few sales here and there. On the paperback front which is especially bleak, I've resorted to buying my own to keep my ratings below ten million or below about fifteen, which is the level at which they stop even showing your rating. This is especially true of haiku, which simply doesn't sell, or at least mine doesn't sell. But I have used my marketing time to get Amazon gift cards so I'm not taking it out of the family budget.
In a sense this is an admission of failure and I know it. With the short stories I know that I have a few readers and will have more if I can crank out another collection of them, which should happen soon. My novel was a success but I also know that I've been virtually unable to write the second one, which is dying to be finished but just needs some attention to its organization.
In general I have about eight projects half done and a couple I even forgot about for a few months in the lead up to the big move from New Mexico to Illinois. A lot of these are close enough to being done that a little spurt of writing would just finish them. Instead I feel somewhat paralyzed by futility.
In my household a kid lives on McDonald's. That means twenty, thirty, forty bucks slips out the door every time we turn around because he likes to include his friends. I'm sitting here making maybe a buck on a survey, getting a book and giving it to a library, and he's out there slurping up frappes on our retirement account because he literally doesn't have a clue and feels like he absolutely needs it, and we have not effectively established a good limit. We are enabling him, I agree, so it's on us, but it piles up the futility. My ultimate goal is to be able to sit back, and let book sales and reads just kind of fill up the account whether I crank it out or not. For now, though, it will be necessary to crank some out. So it's back to work for me.
Sunday, June 5, 2022
arrived!
Please forgive a little extra time when I can restore normalcy after a family move from Cloudcroft, New Mexico to Monmouth, Illinois and ultimately to Galesburg, Illinois. It will take a while to readjust and in that time I will not be cranking out the novels as I'd like. But don't worry, they're coming!
Please forgive a little extra time when I can restore normalcy after a family move from Cloudcroft, New Mexico to Monmouth, Illinois and ultimately to Galesburg, Illinois. It will take a while to readjust and in that time I will not be cranking out the novels as I'd like. But don't worry, they're coming!
Wednesday, May 18, 2022
update
In the rush to market books I've lost sight of my creative juices, which would have me perhaps writing a short story even when I'm busy. I wrote this one, but it's true, and I don't consider that creative so much as just documenting. Life is crazy and worth documenting, but I need also to be cranking out things I can put out there.
I am definitely finding that the more I market, the less I write. I market primarily by exchange - I read others' books, they read mine. I do this as a layover so that I can gradually build an audience of pure readers - I am doing that slowly as well. People are finding out about my writing. It's not easy - in fact it's tedious - but it's what I'm doing.
The main reason writing has gone a little by the wayside is that we're moving in about two weeks. Two adults, four dogs, two cats, three teens, and a crapload of furniture, good and bad, new and old, clothes, genealogy, musical instruments, stamps and coins, you name it, it's going. An old doll case & dolls. Packing is on my mind. And the route, through about six states.
Be patient, I will come out of this a better writer.
I am definitely finding that the more I market, the less I write. I market primarily by exchange - I read others' books, they read mine. I do this as a layover so that I can gradually build an audience of pure readers - I am doing that slowly as well. People are finding out about my writing. It's not easy - in fact it's tedious - but it's what I'm doing.
The main reason writing has gone a little by the wayside is that we're moving in about two weeks. Two adults, four dogs, two cats, three teens, and a crapload of furniture, good and bad, new and old, clothes, genealogy, musical instruments, stamps and coins, you name it, it's going. An old doll case & dolls. Packing is on my mind. And the route, through about six states.
Be patient, I will come out of this a better writer.
Sunday, April 3, 2022
One Woman's Voice
One Woman's Voice:
Biography of Elizabeth Mansfield Irving (1852-1939), elocutionist, patriot, women's rights pioneer
Available on Amazon, Kindle and Kindle Unlimited
paperback %5.95 + shipping
Kindle $3.99
free on Kindle Unlimited
ACX version coming
Non-zons (people who refuse to use Amazon), contact me & we'll work something out
This is a story of a woman who wanted to be an elocutionist, on the cusp of the nation's Centennial (1876), when women were not permitted to speak on important topics of the day. A gifted reader and orator, with a beautiful voice, she went into reading war poetry to reunions and encampments of Civil War veterans. She also inherited an insurance business when her husband got sick and died, becoming one of Toledo (Ohio)'s first women business owners. It's the story of using one's voice when one can, and getting one's voice when one is able. Her life corresponed with the rise of elocutionists as a united group, and the rise of the woman's suffrage movement, which ultimately gave women their voice in the political arena also.
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