My Books and Kindle Unlimited

Things are looking up. Sales I mean, and my KDP pages read is now looking better than ever at nearly a thousand pages each day.

Whether or not to put books in the Kindle Select or in the Unlimited program is a decision many self-publishers are having to make. Basically, self–pub authors have two choices, go with the Select or Unlimited program on Amazon, or go wide and publish on many platforms. There are certainly good points and bad to each, so why did I choose to go with the Amazon only, Select program? Easy, I’m pretty lazy, much-preferring writing, taking photos, working in the garden, traveling and playing golf to trying to sell books. 

All this and a great short - free on Kindle Unlimited

Don’t get me wrong, I love selling books, just not crazy about all the time it takes to do promotions. I still do some and will continue but only on Amazon. Over the past two years, my sales have been mostly through Amazon or with the soft cover books I sell myself or that are sold in bookstores. I don’t believe it will harm my sales to be exclusively on Amazon, so far it is helping.

Relaxing at the Guernsey Dam Spillway with a nice rainbow

Meanwhile, I am researching, time-lining, and rough outlining the third in the series of my Marshall Blade Holmes western mysteries. Still early, but I like the way the story is shaping up. Also, I am still working on my nonfiction Fort Laramie book.

Fort Laramie

What am I reading?

Fort Laramie by Donald Clayton Porter

The Man From Hanksville by Oscar W. Case

I am nearly finished with both and will write a full review. I have read much of Donald Clayton Porter’s work and always like it, but at the moment I am really enjoying Mr. Case’s book. My Kindle says I am at 71% of the read (I do miss page numbers when I read on my Kindle) and am sure I will wish for more when it is finished. I started the Hanksville book a few weeks ago but put in on the backburner as I was off on some speaking engagements and heavy into the research part of my Fort Laramie book, now it is my go to each day. Click the link above and take a look at Oscar Case’s Man From Hanksville.

See my Amazon Author Page and all my books here.

Edit or Self-Edit and Book Covers Too

I have been spending more hours than I want to count this week updating two of my book covers. I like the new ones, probably because I may have a better understanding now than I did when I built my first ones two years ago.  I am not going to re-do all of them, right now, but likely will do one or two more soon.

I am also back working on my nonfiction book. I took five months off to finish up some other projects and am now enjoying the research and writing of nonfiction once again.

At one time in my life, I spent a lot of time, often too much, editing other writers works. I don’t do much of that any longer as I mostly worked with historical nonfiction although I did take on a few fiction projects. Now I mostly edit my own. What am I getting to here? All the advertisements I get in the form of tweets or email offering, book doctor or editing services. Often the promo starts with a line telling all who read that there are so many, maybe millions, of books and eBooks for sale that are chalk full of errors. And, it’s possible there are, but I would rather read a book with a handful of errors than one that is perfect but without a good story.

 I have downloaded, read and enjoyed, self-edited books by several authors. All were people I follow online or on Twitter, and most were pretty good reads. I did not notice a multitude of errors in any of them and the things I noticed can sometimes be found in mainstream novels. As I said above, if the story is a good one, I will read it.

My point is not that books do not need a good edit, but that some self-edited books come out pretty clean. If you are writing a book and hope to sell a thousand copies, which is what you will need to sell to pay for a middle of the road priced editor. I mentioned book covers above, and good ones will help sell books if the book can be found among the 8,000,000 or so on Amazon. Once again writers like myself, who sell books, steadily but not spectacularly, need to be weary of not spending too much for the creation of a cover. I am not crazy about many of the new covers that seem to be black no matter what the subject, they all look the same to my old eyes.

Today’s photos are from my backyard.

Meanwhile, keep on reading and keep on writing.

Oh - one of the redone covers, this for my first kid's chapter book

Writing Short

Books seem to be getting smaller, at least that is what I have been reading. Many traditional publishers, in their author note sections, are still listing word count by genre the same as they did many years ago, but they may be a bit out of touch by doing this. I recently looked at a book series on Amazon where each book was less than 30 pages. I am not sure that would be considered a book, not in my world anyway. It does seem to me that the new book may be closer to 200 pages than the 400 in the past. Looks like 100-page books are also doing well. Now when buying an eBook, I check the page count. I don’t mind paying .99 cents for a good short story, but am against paying several dollars for a book that is less than 30 pages.

Are We Still Reading? - Maybe the scientists who tell us all the texting and instant gratification of video games are on to something. Kids do not sit around and read, not much anymore. Many parents still require kids to read 20-30 minutes each evening, kind of like the music practice in my growing up days.

My new western novel, is complete at 237 pages, with a few pages of front matter and some author stuff and a pitch for my other books, in the back, this would make the actual book around 230 pages. I tend to write shorter chapters, which is the new wave in fiction, and this one has 50 chapters. That would make each chapter four or five pages long. As a reader I like to quit at the end of a chapter, short chapters make it easy.

By the way, for my format, I use a 6 X 9 book layout and size 12 font. This lets my book come in at just under, 50,000 words. Many authors suggest 11 as a better font size, but I use what is easy for me to read, and I like it slightly larger. I also use 1.15 spacing, for ease of reading. It costs a bit more this way, as it adds pages, but I like the look and feel of books printed this way.

Trying for a short - Not sure if I can do it, but I am going to try to do some shorter books, we used to call them novellas. I will shoot for 20,000 to 25,000 words, might be fun. I already have an idea, although it may be lame, as are many of my early ideas, I like it so far.

Enjoy the week and keep reading and keep writing, only keep it short.

Today’s photos from two great hikes over the weekend.

I Only Know Three Things About Editing

First - Print it out and edit from the paper copy

Editing from the screen has become the method of choice for many writers, and will work if you plan to send it off to a professional editor afterward. If you do not have the time, or money, for a professional editor, you must edit from paper.

The last time I posted about not hiring a professional editor I got quite a few comments from writes saying a book should never be published without proper professional editing. This is wonderful advice if the writer can afford the over $1,000 needed to get a good job.

As I have stated here before one of the problems in editing, and the writing business in general, is finding a good editor. Book doctors and editors need only to advertise and they are in business. Sad, but there are some real scam artists calling themselves editors who may or may not run your works through a quick editing program and pronounce it edited and ready for publication.

Second - Read it aloud

Reading out loud will let you find, bad punctuation, poor word choice, awkward sentences and sometimes tense changes. The good news here is that programs are available that will read your work. They will sound like a computer reader, odd, but maybe not so odd since it is the computer reading.

I like to read it myself and listen to myself, which sounds a bit full of myself, but it works. Wives, husbands or friends reading your words to you works great.

Third – Look for overuses of easy/lazy words. Here’s my list.

That, stuff, things, very, got, all, every, seem, almost, sometimes, big, little, have got, just - and the dreaded, was-is-are-am

It is simple to use the find and replace editing function to pick up these and at least, attempt a fix.

There you have it the only three thing’s I know about editing, not much.  Must be why I am looking out my window at a foot of new snow instead of writing today.

Oh- don’t forget to spell and grammar check, often.

Becoming a Famous Writer

Combing over the nonfiction section of a book store recently it looks to me that famous people write lots of books. Most of these titles didn’t tempt me much, not much at all. Funny how, not many authors get famous, but many famous people fancy themselves as authors. It does do one thing for the writing profession, it keeps authors willing to research and ghost write busy.

 I have been told that the average self-published book sells less than 100 copies and that the smallest of publishing houses often sell less than 100 of a title also. That’s not many books, the competition is fierce, but I still believe that well written fiction or nonfiction can sell if properly promoted. Therein lies the answer to most self-published authors selling so few books, marketing. If someone is already famous and has instant name recognition the selling part is easy.

Seems like I saw more unknown authors that were trying to sell fiction and how-to books than nonfiction. Not sure why, just what I ran across in my most recent visit to a book store – and it was an independent.

Oh – did I buy anything? One paperback by a midlist author that I like, I have read a half dozen or more of her books. When I read unknowns, I always download from Amazon. My price range for these unknown author books, free to $2.99.

Just Looking for a Good Book