Reflection on 2015 and Plans for 2016

It is snowing lightly outside, dad is watching a football game and the fireplace is warming the room. Time to do a bit of reflection on my writing career during 2015.

First let me recap the goals I set for 2015 at the end of 2014 and how they turned out:

My Goals for 2015:

Scrooge Lives!

Well, it worked folks. It finally worked. All the stars aligned, I held my mouth just right, and crossed my fingers, and sold thirty-seven books in 2 days at the college holiday fair, Scrooge Lives.

I decided this year would be my year to try my hand at table-top shows. This summer I did three with mixed results.

The July 25th show was the NW Book Festival at Pioneer Courthouse Square in Portland, Oregon. I did months of prep for this, my first ever show. Even wrote an article of how I prepared. It was a disaster. We had weeks of long hot days only to have July the 25th pour rain. Not just sprinkle or drizzle, but POUR and wind. There was literally a stream running through the tent. I sold eight books, two more than they lady who organized the event, but still a total failure as far as I was concerned.

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The Realms refers to a parallel dimension hidden between Minneapolis and St. Paul where creatures, humans think of as only mythical, roam free.

Cody is a shape shift with some monumental problems that all started when he died. He’s escaped to The Realms from the midlands between Heaven and Hell only to find his best friend is potential food for the resident vampires, his girlfriend only loves him in his wolf form and her mother…well that’s a whole other story.

It isn’t easy being Cody, but like a good wolf he’ll do what he can to protect his pack even if it kills him. Wait…he’s already dead.

Polite Gophers of Twitter - Raise Your Hand

My mother always taught me to be polite, but she also told me that once someone said ‘thank you,’ there was no need to take the conversation any further. Oh, you could say, ‘my pleasure,’ or ‘it was nothing,’ but really that was not necessary. And, you certainly did not reply to a Thank You Note with another note. It just wasn’t done.

We used to make fun of the Looney Tune characters Mac and Tosh, two endlessly exuberant, incessantly positive and unfailingly polite gophers. “Thank you. Oh no, Thank you!”

Goofy Gophers and Marvin The Martian "Be Polite"

I feel like Twitter has reached the point of 'polite saturation.' The majority of us use bots if we have gained a following beyond 10,000. When you reach 30,000 it is impossible to keep up with the “Thank Yous” you would really like to say individually.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #8 - Platforms Part 2

Audio Creation Exchange (ACX) is the audio book arm of Amazon. They seem to be “the only kid on the block.” Everyone uses them because they make it so darn easy. When you are the writer, formatter, publisher and marketer, it is good to take it easy when you can.

With this site, you set up an account and post a few manuscript pages you think would give a good example of the voice you would like to hear read your work. You can request male or female, kind of accent, character voices, and so forth.

ACX has a stable of narrators. If one or more have interest in your piece, they do a recording of it and send it to you. You listen and choose. The lovely thing about this is that once you make your decision and have a 4×4 cover design made, you are out of the picture. The narrator uploads his or her work and posts it for you.

The Knotty and Nice of Indie Publishing #7 - Platforms Part 1

Okay, so you have your book written. Several people have beta-read it and you have proofed it to the 10th power. Now it is time to format and post it to a platform for sale.

It seems everyone posts to Amazon. There are good and bad aspects to this. The bad: everyone posts to Amazon. You are a minnow among sharks.

Once you are on Amazon, you can choose to join its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) Select program, which locks you into giving Amazon total rights for 90 days. If you have had your books posted on other platforms, you will have to pull them down. If you do not go KDP Select then Amazon does not offer your work in India, Japan, Brazil or Indonesia. Many folks in those countries crave books in English, meaning you will miss all those sales.